Thousands of Jewish bakery workers and hundreds of Jewish bakery proprietors are in danger of losing their means of livelihood because of the announcement today by the Warsaw municipality that it will take drastic steps to make the municipally-owned and operated bakeries paying propositions.
The city-owned bakeries, which when first established caused serious concern to the Jewish bakers, have since proved to be a total failure, costing the municipality over 8,000,000 zlotys and involving a deficit of more than a 1,000,000 zlotys in the last year alone because the products of these bakeries were found to be not fit to eat.
Consequently the city authorities have decided to rent the municipal bakeries to a private German company. The National Democrats, however, from allegedly patriotic motives oppose the renting of the bakeries to a German concern. As an alternative they suggest that more privately-owned bakeries be closed down for so-called unhygienic conditions thus compelling the consumers to use municipally-baked bread products.
The realization of the scheme proposed by the National Democrats would largely affect the Jews because it would not only mean the closing of many private-owned bakeries whose proprietors are mostly Jews but it would also increase the unemployment problem among Jews. It is known that the Christian bakers thrown out of work by these projected closings would have no difficulty in obtaining employment in the municipal bakeries while the Jews have no such hope.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
