Polish Anti-semitism Denied by Embassy in Response to Charge on Emigration

A spokesman for the Polish Embassy here, reacting to a charge that Polish anti-Semitism had led 14,000 of Poland’s 25,000 remaining Jews to register for emigration, asserted that the charge was “fantastic.” Dr. S.J. Roth, director of the institute of Jewish Affairs, who had voiced the charge, also said at a press conference here that some 3,000 Jews had left Poland because of the Gomulka regime’s anti-Jewish campaign. The spokesman told the London Times that there were no Polish Government statistics for the number of Jews resident in Poland but he estimated that number to be between 20,000 and 40,000. He also asserted that it was “completely untrue that there is anti-Semitism in Poland. The Government has always been against anti-Semitism. We do not know why this campaign alleging anti-Semitism has been conducted against Poland in the past two or three months.” Charging there had been “a constant campaign against us by Jewish and Polish emigre circles,” he said that “this latest campaign is probably the result of our stand in the Israel-Arab conflict” in which, he said, Poland was pro-Arab.” The Embassy spokesman denied that anti-Semitism had anything to do with the admitted widespread dismissals of Jews from Government and Communist Party positions. He added that there were still Jewish organizations, such as theaters and bookshops, in Poland.

(In New York, the Warsaw correspondent of the Westinghouse Broadcasting network reported today that the Polish Communist Party had decided to continue the use of anti-Semitism as a political weapon. She said that the Communist Party’s First Secretary Wladyslaw Gomulka “has clearly given in on anti-Semitism as a concession to Gen. Mieczyslaw Moczar,” the former Interior Minister. As a result, she said, for the remaining Jews in Poland, “life promises to be grim in the foreseeable future.”