Warsaw Uprising Memorial Meeting Told Anti-semitism Still Rampant in Many Countries

Simon Frisner, chairman of the Association of Polish Jewish ex-Servicemen, today charged that although “the generation of the holocaust is still alive, anti-Semitism is still rampant in many countries.” Speaking to more than 700 people attending the 28th commemoration of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, Frisner declared: “The danger comes now not only from the Right but even more from the old and new Left. The Polish Communist regime has accomplished what Hitler did not achieve, and today Poland is almost free of Jews.” At the conclusion of his address, he issued an appeal to the world asking that “the Holocaust not perish with the generation that witnessed it,” and noted that those at the commemoration must “rededicate themselves to the struggle for Soviet Jewry.” A Christian leader, Lord Chancellor Hailsham, delivered the keynote address in which he paid tribute to the six million martyrs and also “the millions who escaped with their lives, but will carry to their death the results of their tribulations, and the millions of children who are fatherless and motherless in our midst.”

Lord Janner, chairman of the Board of Deputies, observed that just as “Israel was the goal of tens of thousands of Polish Jews in the years preceding and following its independence, so too, today. Soviet Jews seek refuge in the ancient and restored Jewish homeland.” He added, “On this solemn day too our hearts go out to the Jews of Iraq, the victims of continued discrimination and oppression. It is with deep foreboding that we recall the hangings of Jews in Baghdad and Basra two years ago.” He declared that “there must be no repetition.” Lord Janner also issued an appeal “to governments and men and women of good will throughout the world to secure the release of Jews held in (Iraqi) prisons on trumped up charges and the complete emigration of this small community to lands of freedom.”