Jewish Religious Supreme Council to Be Created by Polish Government

Body Would Represent All Jewish Communities in Poland, Minister of Education Declares (Jewish Telegraphic Agency)

The Polish Government intends shortly to create a Jewish Religious Supreme Council to represent all the Jewish communities in Poland, and to give the Jewish communities an opportunity of common action with regard to problems affecting the whole Jewish population, M. Dobrucki, the Minister of Education, declared in an interview with Jewish press representatives here.

At present, the Jewish communities will have to retain their religious character, M. Dobrucki declared. It will be the task of the future legislature to change this character in accordance with the just demands of the Jewish population. He has already signed a circular, he stated, extending Marshal Pilsudski’s decree about the rights of the Jewish communities to the Eastern provinces of Poland where this decree had hitherto not been in force. He is now considering the question of extending the same decree to Galicia.

The Polish Government, M. Dobrucki stated, agrees to subsidize those of the Jewish schools which use Polish as their language of instruction. But the Yiddish and Hebrew schools will also be subsidized, in compliance with the school regulations concerning the national minorities. Personally, M. Dobrucki stated, he has no objection to full rights being granted to the Yiddish and Hebrew schools. Nor was the Government against it on principle, as was shown by the fact that the Vilna Hebrew Teacher’s Seminary had been permitted by the Government to hold its final examination in Hebrew. The right would also be granted to the Vilna Yiddish Teachers’ Seminary, he said.

M. Dobrucki refused to say anything about the problem of Jewish corpses for dissection purposes, declaring that the whole matter was too ridiculous for words.