A crowded court room was amazed and amused yesterday when it heard the Endek attorney Kowalski charge that the Jewish Telegraphic Agency and world Jewry were responsible for the Przytyk pogrom of March 9, in connection with which 43 Gentiles and 14 Jews are on trial.
Kowalski cited an appeal made last January by the Jews of Przytyk through the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in support of his charge. The appeal asked for aid against the anti-Jewish boycott that was being enforced on peasants by agitators using terroristic methods and voiced fear of the consequences.
This appeal, Kowalski told the court, resulted in world Jewry’s ordering the Przytyk Jews to “help yourselves.”
“It is now clear,” the Endek lawyer, one of counsel for the 43 Gentile defendants, said, “how they helped themselves.”
Kowalski also attacked Sholom Asch, noted American Jewish novelist, for allegedly defaming Polish soldiers.
The court sentenced one of the Jewish defendants, Kerszenzweig, to three days’ solitary confinement for having ironically shouted during Kowalski’s speech that the Endek lawyer had forgotten to mention the ritual blood libel.
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.
