Polish Stand on Jews is ‘equal Obligations, Equal Rights,’ Sikorski Tells Congress Delegation

The Polish Government considers it is helping to fight an ideological war from which a new world order will emerge, based on freedom and justice to all, Polish Premier Wladislaw Sikorski told a delegation of the American Jewish Congress and the World Jewish Congress in an interview held at the Hotel Buckingham yesterday. He said the principles to which the Polish Government was dedicated were the five freedoms enunciated by President Roosevelt. The slogan of the present Government is “equal obligations and equal rights,” he added.

These remarks followed presentation to Sikorski of a memorandum setting forth a series of steps which the Polish Government was urged to take to assure the Jewish community that “full equality of civic and national rights before the law” would be accorded Polish Jews in a reconstituted Poland. The memorandum was presented by Dr. Stephen S. Wise, president of the Congress, on behalf of the delegation.

Gen. Sikorski declared anti-Semitism was foreign to and opposed by the Polish Government. Common suffering, he said, has created a community of spirit between the Poles and the Jews. The Polish Cabinet has unanimously opposed anti-Semitism and the circulation of the anti-Semitic magazine, Jestem Poliakem, is forbidden in the army. The Polish Government regards the publishers of this paper as having violated Polish national discipline, he said.

Recalling the statement in London last November by the Polish Minister Stanczyk, that full equality would be granted in a reconstituted Poland, he said it was issued only after full discussion and by the unanimous decision of the entire Cabinet. He emphasized the collaboration between Polish Americans in the United States and American Jews was of utmost importance and requested the Polish Ambassador to the United States, who attended the interview, to further such collaboration.

He offered to consider with the Polish Minister of Justice the advisability of declaring null and void legislative and administrative decrees of former Polish governments, which discriminated between one kind of Polish citizen and another. This, he asserted, was a formality, because the present Polish Government stands for a new world order which must emerge from a victory of the democracies, making such acts impossible.

At a press conference earlier in the day, asked why the Polish Government-in-exile was permitting publication of Jestem Poliakem and whether it should not be suppressed, the Premier replied: “The Polish people are now passing a considerable evolution. The theories of the Jestem Poliakem will in no way influence the Government’s attitude towards the Jews in the reconstituted Poland. The Jestem Poliakem group in London is small and of little importance. No importance should be attached to it abroad. The Polish Government does not want to assume the role of a gendarme and order the closing down of this publication, but it has condemned it and has prohibited its circulation in the Polish Army.”

Asked why the Polish army organ, Polska Walszowa, had published an article accusing the Jews in Soviet-occupied Poland of being pro-Communist, Gen. Sikoraki said the army paper “is not anti-Semitic, but is only registering facts. While in the part of Poland occupied by the Germans, the Jews are united with the Polish population against the occupation forces, the case in Soviet-occupied Poland is somewhat different. There some fifty per cent of the Jewish population have remained pro-Polish while the rest lean towards cooperation with the Soviet administration.”