The Association of Polish Jews in Britain has sent a protest to the Polish Government expressing “deep disappointment” over the Government’s attitude toward Israel and denouncing Communist Party leader Wladyslaw Gomulka for his warning to Polish Jews against being sympathetic to Israel in the recent crisis and war.
The statement criticized Poland’s abrupt severance of diplomatic relations with Israel, “the irresponsible and vicious campaign of the Polish press, particularly the spreading of one-sided false information, inciting the Polish people against Israel, as well as the demonstration organized at Warsaw airfield when a group of hooligans attacked departing Israeli diplomats.” The statement added that such developments prompted the association to “express our strongest protest in the name of truth and elementary loyalty to the Jewish people so tragically tried.”
The statement declared that Gomulka’s warning of “repressions” against Polish Jews produced “shock and apprehension. If the sympathy of the Polish Jews towards Israel should come to be considered as an expression of disloyalty toward their native land, then sympathy and aid of millions of Poles throughout the world for Poland today could also be regarded as an act of disloyalty in respect to the countries in which they now live.”
“No country and no government has ever drawn such illogical and inhuman conclusions,” the Association added. It also said that this kind of policy and official declarations of such a nature “must inevitably reawaken dormant anti-Semitic sentiments and threaten the security of the Jews in Poland” and “inevitably damage also the interests and image of Poland in Britain and the world.”
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.
