News Brief

The Jewish trading community here has been the victim of economic depression. Official statistics published indicate a decline of about ten per cent in the number of trading licenses issued during the year to date. The figure is 27,136 smaller than last year’s.

Inability to pay the license fee means that tradesmen are obliged to drop out of their old place in economic life. Last year when the same question of lapsing licenses faced Polish Jewry, Dr. Rosmarin, vice-president of the Club of Jewish Deputies, complained before the Sejm, budget commissin, that Polish Jews are being crushed out of existence.

The eastern district and Galicia, two densely populated Jewish districts with a correspondingly large number of tradesmen, are suffering most heavily. Since 1928, according to the figures, 121,000 workshops have been closed down, the majority of them Jewish-owned. Dr. Rosmarin had asked that the merchant class receive government assistance.

Deputy Minzberg, Jewish member of the government party, speaking at the Sejm last year, said:

“I declare here that the Jewish population is in addition to the general crisis suffering from a specific crisis, for the ways of life of Polish Jewry make our distress more acute. Trading and artisanship, the principal sources of Jewish economic life, are crushed ten times more than any other branch of activity in the midst of this general catastrophe. Over 100,000 Jewish trading enterprises have been shut down. Hundreds and thousands of artisan workshops owned by Jews have had to close down. If you add to this several hundred thousand Jewish unemployed workers, you will find that there are a quarter of million Jews in Poland who are earning nothing at all. The government policy of etatism and monopolization of production and trading is strangling the whole merchant class and most of all the Jewish merchant class. Impoverished Polish Jewry cannot hold out any longer.”