Now Editorial Notes

THE confiscation of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency Bulletin, published in Warsaw, because it contained a communique protesting against the projected visit to Poland by Dr. Paul Goebbels, Nazi Minister of Propaganda, reveals in a measure the changing tendencies in Poland since the conclusion of the German Polish non-aggression pact.

The communique, voicing the feelings of all political and economic organizations opposed to the Hitler regime and Hitlerism, protested against “the visit here of Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels, who is co-author of the Jewish tragedy in Germany and the instigator of the burning of the books,” and added that “the visit may be construed as intended to give encouragement to the anti-Semitic forces in Poland.”

The Polish government has issued an order according to which “the authorities have undertaken to supervise the civic peace,” The order also contains the following significant statement:

The authorities have undertaken the systematic liquidation of radical groups. Since the last regrettable incidents in War-saw, they are carrying on a program of searching through houses and centers where the attacking organizations have their headquarters, with a view of crushing them. It appears that police intervention in these incidents has not been sufficient to stamp them out.”

While the headquarters of the Nara (the National Radical Poles) has been raided, the offices of Jewish organizations have also been searched for hidden arms, No arms were found in the offices of the Jewish organizations.

At a conference of the Club of Jewish Deputies in the Sejm the situation was discussed and a statement was issued by the Jewish deputies declaring that the attacks on the Jews by the Nara were in reality a disguised attack on the present Polish government. The Jewish deputies urged the government to suppress the excesses with a firm hand.

We have pointed out on several occasions n the past that the anti-Semitic outrages committed by the Polish National Democrats (the Endeks) and the Polish National Radicals (the ###aras) are at the same time a political maneuver to discredit the Polish government and to undermine its prestige at home and abroad. The National Democrats and especially the hoodlums of the National Radicals are playing the game of the Nazis in Poland. They are resorting to anti-Jewish violence and terror. They have become emboldened ever since the non-aggression pact between Poland and Germany was concluded.

The Polish government, headed by Moscicki and Pilsudski, is opposed to anti-Semitism as a governmental policy. The scientist who is the President of Poland is a broadminded man. Pilsudski, the semi-dictator of Poland has behind him the tradition of the enlightened Russian revolutionists who fought against the Tsar and for the oppressed peoples of Russia. He has, of course, undergone a great change in his ideology since his revolutionary years, but he still remembers that anti-Semitism was always identified with the destructive reactionary elements in Russia. He knows well that the destructive elements of the National Democrats and National Radicals in Poland today constitute a sort of combination of the Russian Black Hundreds and the German Nazis. And he should also know that these elements are working for the disruption of Poland.

With the improvement in official relations between Poland and German, the Polish government has not been sufficiently energetic n curbing the anti Jewish outrages perpetrated by Nazi-inspired and Nazi-directed Poles.

Poland may have received a breathing spell through the signing of the pact with Nazi Germany. Hitler has surely gained a great deal more by this pact. He has gained time for his war preparations.

If the Polish government s shortsighted enough to overlook the consequences of the spread of Nazism and Nazi terrorism in Poland, through such organizations as the Nara, it will discover its grave error when it will be too late to remedy it. A Nazifled Poland would mean a lost Poland.