Warsaw Ghetto Memorial Rally in New York Hears Appeal for Polish, Soviet Jewry

An appeal to “the conscience of the world” not “to be apathetic to the conditions of Jews in Poland and the Soviet Union” was voiced here by Benjamin A. Gebiner, national executive secretary of the Workmen’s Circle, the world’s largest Jewish fraternal order. Mr. Gebiner spoke at a mass rally marking the 25th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising sponsored by the Workmen’s Circle, the Jewish Labor Committee and various labor unions. He denounced the reported impending visit to the U.S. of a Jewish “religious delegation” from the Soviet Union. He said the group is coming to this country “to mouth propaganda that anti-Semitism does not exist” in Russia.

The Jewish Labor Committee announced that, at its request, the New York Board of Education sent a bulletin to all Bronx public schools suggesting that they arrange student visits to the Warsaw Ghetto exhibition at the Workmen’s Circle Center in the Bronx. The exhibit contains pictures and documents salvaged from the ghetto and from Nazi concentration camps.

The Polish Communist regime was accused here by a former Polish diplomat of “malignant fulminations against modern-day Jews” and with “a manipulation of history which would transform the victims of persecution into criminals or cowards arraigned in a kangaroo court.” The charge was made in an address to the Association of Polish-American Journalists by Dr. Joseph L. Lichten, who left his post in the Polish Embassy in Washington when the Communists took control in his native Poland and who is now director of intercultural affairs for the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith.