Had the Polish Government wished the student outbreaks in Poland would have been nipped in the bud, and prevented from spreading throughout the country, was the view expressed by all the speakers at a big mass meeting held here yesterday, under the auspices of the Federation of Polish Jews in America (already reported briefly at the time by cable).
The speakers, who included Rabbi Dr. Stephen S. Wise, Congressman Samuel Dickstein, Mr. Bernard S. Deutsch, President of the American Jewish Congress, Dr. S. M. Margoshes, editor of the “Day”, Hon. Nathan D. Perlman, Mr. Benjamin Winter, President of the Federation of Polish Jews, and Mr. Z. Tygel, Director of the Federation, ridiculed the suggestion that the Polish Government, with the largest military force and the best organised police department in Central Europe was unable to suppress the excesses. Had the Government employed the same energy in suppressing its antisemitic students as it had in suppressing its political opponents, order would have been restored long ago, they said.
“It is not enough for the Polish Government to say that it does not want pogroms. We demand from the Polish Government action to suppress the pogroms”, was the view of the meeting.
No Polish Republic would exist to-day if President Wilson had ever conceived that antisemitic pogroms could occur there, Rabbi Wise told the meeting, speaking, he said, from intimate knowledge of President Wilson’s views.
Mr. Bernard Deutsch urged that the State Department of the United States be asked to intervene in the situation.
Dr. Margoshes accused the Polish Government of playing politics at the expense of the Jews, and contended that this accounted for its weakness in putting down the rioters.
The resolution adopted by the meeting states in part:
We, American Jews of Polish extraction, assembled in New York on the 15th. day of November, 1931, at the mass meeting held at the Hotel Pennsylvania, raise our voice in solemn protest against the horrors of these atrocities perpetrated on our innocent brothers and sisters in the Republic of Poland. We express our loathing and indignation at the wanton and cruel destruction of life and property. We solemnly declare the instigators and perpetrators of these atrocities to be not only the enemies of our people, but of the Republic of Poland as well, whose good name they drag in the dust of obloquy and ignominy at the time when that country is in the process of rehabilitating its independent national existence. We brand this cowardly outcropping of bestiality as an insult to the moral sense of the world and as degrading to the race where it raises its ugly head.
We call upon the responsible authorities of Poland to suppress these riots with a stern and unyielding arm, to bring speedily the perpetrators to justice, and to use all measures to prevent the recurrence of these outrages. We appeal to the innate justice of the Polish people, to its educators, journalists, and intellectual leaders, to its press and pulpit, to its toilers and industrialists to resist the spread of this cancerous growth upon the body of the Polish people.
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