Thousands of New Yorkers attended an open air rally in Times Square today honoring the 25th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. They heard a message from the State Department, delivered on behalf of President Johnson, which condemned the revival of anti-Semitism in Poland and wherever it occurs. They also heard a telegram from Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey acknowledging that “the frightening disease” of anti-Semitism had not been eliminated from the world.
The memorial rally was organized and sponsored by 55 national Jewish organizations. Times Square was re-named Warsaw Ghetto Square for the day. Mayor John V. Lindsay proclaimed Thursday. April 25 as “Warsaw Ghetto Commemoration Day” and Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller issued a proclamation in Albany designating the period of April 21-27 as “Warsaw Ghetto Week.”
A resounding condemnation of Polish anti-Semitism was voiced by Senator Jacob K. Javits. New York Republican, who addressed the Times Square rally. “I believe it is essential,” he declared, “for the United States to express its deep concern to the Polish Government regarding mounting incidents of anti-Semitism in that country and their dire implications for the future.” Warsaw’s reaction to popular demands for freedom, he said, “is sadly reminiscent of the tactics of Czarist times when the Imperial Russian Government blamed Jews for its woes.” Senator Javits noted at the same time that there “are manifestations in the United States of vocal anti-Semitism by certain Negro extremists as a component of ‘hate Whitey’ racism.” It indicates, the Senator said, “how extremist dangers are bred in social turmoil.”
The State Department’s message, prepared on behalf of the President by Dixon Donnelley, Assistant Secretary of Public Affairs, was read at the rally by Abram Salomon, chairman of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Anniversary Committee. It said: “In connection with your understandable concern about the current situation in Poland, I do not need to tell you that the United States condemns anti-Semitism wherever it occurs. The President has asked that I thank you for inviting him to address the Warsaw Ghetto Day Rally in New York City. He regrets he cannot accept but he is fully with you in spirit.”
Other speakers at the rally included Congressman Emanuel Celler, Deputy Mayor Robert W. Sweet, and Israel Consul General Michael Arnon and Rabbi Herschel Schacter, chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. Rabbi Schacter referred to a recent conversation he had with the Polish Ambassador to the United States who, he said, insisted that official government policy in Warsaw was to contain and control latent anti-Semitism in Poland. “However,” Rabbi Schacter declared, “more recent events reported in the world press, indicate without question that it is the policy of the Polish Government to cover up the widespread purges and general ferment seething in Poland by a thinly veiled anti-Semitism, even if clumsily disguised as anti-Zionism.”
The American Jewish Congress challenged today the Warsaw regime’s claim that its current anti-Zionist campaign is not anti-Semitism and demanded that it cease its attacks on Polish Jews “who are guilty of no offense other than membership in the Jewish people.”
In a telegram to Jerzy Michalowski, Poland’s Ambassador to the United States, Rabbi Arthur J. Lelyveld, president of the AJC said that “attempts to disguise the mounting drive against Poland’s Jews as being against ‘Zionists’ in no measure conceals its anti-Semitic nature.” The telegram noted that “no other participants in the current Polish demonstrations have been identified in terms of their religious or ethnic affiliation.”
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