Plan World-wide Student Protest Against Polish Trial of Faculty, Students

A world-wide student protest is being organized here to attempt to prevail on the Polish Government to cancel its scheduled trials of university faculty members and students, mostly Jewish, who were arrested in last spring’s student uprising for democratic reforms in Poland. The World Union of Jewish Students announced that Nov. 18 will be International Protest Day and said Jewish and non-Jewish student groups all over the world have indicated willingness to participate. “We hope that our protest will bring about the release of the arrested students and cancellation of their impending trial,” a World Union spokesman told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency today. The British section of the World Jewish Congress has urged the Polish Government to reconsider its trial plans. A telegram addressed to Wladyslaw Gomulka, first secretary of the Polish Communist Party, cited “adverse and unfortunate effects such trials will have on world public opinion, particularly on the many well-wishers of the Polish Socialist Republic.” In the telegram, Jacob Halevy, British section chairman, said, “We also ask you to request the Government and party organs to cease their anti-Semitic propaganda and to restore fully their (the accused) human rights and freedom.”

According to reports from Paris today, 21 French organizations, including representatives of the World War II resistance movement and deportees, have organized a Committee Against Racialism in Poland to alert public opinion to racial measures taken against Polish Jews and other Polish citizens by the Warsaw regime. Constituents of the committee include the Comite d’Action de la Resistance, French section of the World Jewish Congress, French section of the International Union of Resistance Fighters and Deportees, International League Against Racialism and Anti-Semitism, and the Zionist Federation of France.