The repeal of the Czarist restrictions against the Jews, though of no practical value in itself, must not be underestimated, however, as representing the formal annulment of the last anti-Jewish restrictions left in Europe, the Jewish press here says in commenting to-day on the third reading given by the Seym to the Government bill for the abolition of the Czarist restrictions.
The fact that the National Democratic and Christian Democratic Parties voted even now against the repeal of these restrictions shows that the principle of Jewish equal rights has not yet matured in the minds of the masses of the people, the papers proceed, and the fight for equal rights for Jews not on paper but in actual fact must still go on.
The next meeting of the Senate has been fixed for next Wednesday, February 4th. The agenda is not yet available, so that it is not possible to say yet whether the Bill for the abolition of the Czarist restrictions which still has to be passed by the Senate is coming up for consideration then.
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL JEWISH PROBLEM IN POLAND: RESULT OF TWENTY YEARS OR MORE OF ERRORS AND CRIMES: LAW DOES NOT DENY ANYTHING TO JEWS BUT ANTISEMITISM TAKEN HOLD OF PEOPLE: COULD NOT HAVE BEEN WORSE IF JEWS HAD BEEN SUBMITTED TO GREATEST LEGAL DISABILITIES: WHAT LUCIEN WOLF SAID AFTER VISIT TO POLAND.
The Jewish problem in Poland was not political; it was psychological, the late Mr. Lucien Wolf said when he returned from Poland in 1925 after the conclusion of the Polish-Jewish Agreement of that year. It was the result of twenty years or more of errors and crimes, from which the whole country had suffered. There had been a terrible antisemitic agitation, organised with a subtlety and perfection not known in any other country, and on the other hand, there had been the natural resentments which must flow from such a state of things. Confidence had to be created on both sides. The Polish Constitution was most liberal. The Law does not deny anything to the Jews, but Polish antisemitism had taken hold of the people, defied the Law and kept the Jews in a position which could not have been worse if the Jews had been submitted to the greatest legal disabilities. Wise men on both sides had seen the injury of such a state of affairs to Poland. The position must be watched with tact, sympathy and patience, and he hoped that extremists on both sides would not interfere with the arrangements which moderate men had made.
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