Between the Lines

It is difficult to believe that the Polish government, with all its intentions to oust the Jews from their economic positions, is on the road to surpass even the anti-Jewish legislation now existing in Nazi Germany. The report which appeared yesterday in the Gazeta Warszawska gives ground, however, to assume that this is the case.

The Gazeta Warszawska knows to report that the Polish government is now revising its regulations for admitting lawyers to the bar, so as to make it impossible for a Jew to practice law. One of the new provisions which the Polish government makes is that every lawyer, before being admitted to the bar, must serve at least five years as a judge in court.

This novel plan to oust the Jews from the law profession goes much further than the “Aryan paragraph” in Germany. Even under the “Aryan paragraph” Jews can still become lawyers in Germany. Under the new regulations in Poland the bar will be totally closed to Jews, since Jews could never hope to be judges in Poland.

ANTI-JEWISH PROGRAM OBVIOUS

The new regulations with regard to Jewish lawyers are only a part of a program which the Polish government is carrying out silently to oust Jewish professionals from their positions. This program is becoming more and more obvious. Not a week passes without a new move on the part of the Polish authorities in this direction.

There was a time when Jewish youth of Poland, hampered in its studies in the Polish universities, completed its education in universities abroad. The universities of France, Switzerland, Germany and Czechoslovakia had a large number of Jewish students from Poland who, after graduation, returned to their native country, ready to start their practice there.

Now difficulties are being made by the Polish government even for such Jewish students as graduated abroad. Jewish doctors, despite the fact that they practiced in the best clinics abroad, will have to undergo a new examination in Poland if they did not graduate from a Polish university. The same is true also with regard to Jewish dentists.

ADMIT BARE SCORE

All these restrictions which are being instituted day in and day out follow the same line: to expel the Jewish professionals from their positions in Poland and to make it impossible for them to practice.

At the same time the number of Jewish students admitted into Polish universities is growing smaller and smaller. According to the Jewish press of Poland, only twenty Jewish students were accepted this year at Warsaw University.

Conferring with an officer of the Federation of Polish Jews in America, a high official of the Polish government stated that the news coming from Poland with regard to the economic plight of its three and a half million Jews is exaggerated. I wonder what this high Polish official would say if he had a chance to get acquainted with the facts and figures compiled by leading Polish Jews who have recently visited Poland and who have gone to the trouble to verify whether the news about the anti – Jewish discriminations there is really exaggerated.