A bill prohibiting Jews from selling dairy products and vegetables in Poland went to the Senate today after passage by the Sejm (lower house), while a proposal to prohibit kosher slaughtering was returned to committee for conclusion of a provision to permit sufficient kosher slaughter for religious needs.
Reports from the provinces on yesterdays strike of Polish Jewry against failure of the Government to check anti-Semitic excesses stated that the demonstrations for the most part were peaceful, being marred only by minor clashes with police. Included in the reports were Lodz, Bialystok, Wilno, Cracow, Lwow and other cities.
Following termination of the strike, the two principal Jewish papers, the Warsaw Haint and the Moment, were confiscated by the police for reasons that have not been made known.
It was learned today that District Commissioner Tremarucek of Radom, where anti-Jewish rioting occurred last week, had called a meeting of rabbis and leaders of the Jewish community, threatening them with “further consequences” unless they signed a statement warning Jews not to participate in the general strike.
With spectators barred from the gallery as a precaution against demonstrations, the Sejm passed the bill on sale of dairy products and vegetables on the third reading.
The bill to ban kosher slaughtering was referred to committee by a large majority after Deputy Premier Eugen Kwiatowski had stated he did not object to the bill as such, but feared it might be held unconstitutional without a provision for religious needs.
He asked that the Government be given the power of filling religious needs under a numerus clausus system of government concessions.
The committee began consideration of the amendment today under instructions to bring the revised measure in for a vote on Friday.
In introducing the bill, Deputy Rudnitzky, rapporteur for the committee, asserted that prohibition of shechita was not unconstitutional. He read a letter purporting to have been written by a Warsaw Jew named Isaac Koenigsberger to show that Jews favored the bill. It was later established that Koenigsberger is mentally deficient.
In Jewish circles it was declared today that even if Kwiatowski’s amendment is included, passage of the bill would mean that kosher slaughtering is officially banned and that thousands of Jews working in kosher abattoirs are deprived of their livelihood.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
