Warsaw Paper Denounces Jdc, Former Jewish Security Officials, for ‘espionage’

The Warsaw Communist youth newspaper, Sztandar Mlodych, has attacked the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee for alleged espionage in Poland and leveled the same charge against three Polish Jews who held high military and police posts in the Communist state apparatus before they defected to the West between 1955 and 1965, it was reported here today. The attack was the latest development in a growing press campaign to discredit Communist officials of Jewish origin and to back up charges that Jewish leaders and organizations abroad were engaged in a conspiracy against Poland.

The JDC was ousted by the Warsaw regime last year because of its spying, the newspaper claimed. It accused the JDC of having used its charitable work as a cover for intelligence activities for Israel and the United States. The three Jews accused of espionage before defecting were Jozef Swiatlo, a former colonel employed by the Ministry of Public Security (secret police) who, the paper pointed out, was born Izaak Fleishfar; Wladislaw Tykockinski, who was once chief of the Polish military mission in West Berlin, and Pawel Monat, another former colonel and military attache. Swiatlo defected to the United States in 1955, Monat in 1960 and Tykockinski in 1965. He died there last autumn. All three were labeled “Zionists” by Sztandar Mlodych.

(The New York Times reported from Warsaw today that the traditional anti-Semitism that the behind the current anti-Zionist campaign, is compounded by the proportionately large number of Jews who served in the secret police or important party posts during the Stalinist period. “Nonetheless,” the Times said, “many Poles believe that the campaign is a smokescreen designed to keep public attention distracted from the party power struggle. Some observers suggest that the dismissal of many Jewish officials serves the purpose of making way for younger men.”)