Sunday Closing Law and Taxation Facilities for Polish Jews for Cast in Yiddish Daily.

The Government intends introducing at the beginning of the new year a number of modifications of the Compulsory Sunday Closing Law which will provide facilities for Jews to conduct their businesses on Sundays, the Yiddish daily “Najer Hajnt” reports to-day.

Under the modified law trading will be permitted for three hours on Sundays in several specified branches of trade, the paper says.

Several important modifications will also be made in regard to taxation, relieving the trading community of some of their present crushing burden of taxation.

The Government has agreed to make these important changes as a result of negotiations which the Central Jewish Merchants’ Federation has been conducting for some time with the Ministry of Finance.

Rumours of Government action to modify the Sunday Closing Law in Poland, by allowing Jews who keep closed on Saturdays to carry on their business for a few hours on Sundays, have been repeatedly spread in recent years. Particular attention was attracted by such a rumour in the summer of 1929, when it was stated that Mr. Dewey, the American Adviser to the Polish Government, had taken occasion in his quarterly report to direct the attention of the Government to the inadvisability of compelling the greater part of the merchants and artisans in the country, because they are Jews, to suspend work for two whole days in the week.

The last Government, under Professor Bartel, it was added, had intended to revise the Compulsory Sunday Closing Law along these lines, but its courage failed it when it encountered the organised opposition of the antisemitic parties. The later attempts to amend the law, however, encountered the opposition also of the Polish Socialist Party, which objected on the ground that the amendment would bring down the labour conditions of the workers, by destroying the principle of one complete day’s rest in the week at present secured by the Sunday Closing Law.