While the two Jewish victims of the Przytyk pogrom were being buried, speakers at an emergency conference of Jewish leaders from all parts of the country today voiced sharp criticism of the Polish Government for failing to combat the anti-Semitic wave.
The conference proclaimed a month of mourning to draw the Government’s attention to the seriousness of the situation. During the mourning period Jews will be asked not to hold weddings or to attend the theatre and all other forms of entertainment.
Speakers particularly assailed the Government for permitting the great volume of anti-Semitic agitation which has attended introduction into the Sejm (parliament) of a bill to ban shechita, Jewish ritual method of slaughtering animals for human consumption. The American Consulate here meanwhile announced today that it has been instructed by the State Department from Washington to dispatch a full report on the shechita bill and how it would affect the religious, economic and minority rights of the Jews.
A significant development in the shechita situation suddenly resulted when Mgr. Bronislaw Zongollowicz, vice-minister of religions, was forced to resign today as a result of his statements before the Sejm commission that the bill was unconstitutional since it violated religious and minority rights guaranteed the Jews.
Fearing further anti-Jewish riots, the Przytyk authorities ordered that the funeral of Pesach Minkowski, who with his wife was killed during Monday’s pogrom, be conducted in the quietest possible manner. Minkowski, therefore, was given burial in the local cemetery before dawn.
Funeral services in nearby Radom for his wife, Chaia, however, were made the occasion of a great demonstration with thousands of Jews participating. Chief speakers at the rites were the Jewish deputies Emil Sommerstein and Rabbi Rubenstein. The funeral procession was led by the eighty-year-old parents of the victims.
The four children of the Minkowskis, one of whom was seriously injured in the riots, are being adopted by the Jewish orphanage in Radom.
Announcements of the funeral, issued by the Jewish Community of Radom, were confiscated by the police.
Reports of pogroms in Nowemiasto, near Przytyk, were without foundation, although Jews of that town were today advised not to visit the neighboring villages on account of the high feeling there.
Meanwhile, the Polish press today reports that Jews were attacked in a train on the Warsaw-Grodzisk run, five being injured.
The Polish Socialist Party today appealed to Polish students not to permit the demonstrations at the universities in Warsaw and Lwow for reduced tuition fees to be converted into anti-Semitic manifestations.
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.
