Warsaw Yiddish Daily is Compelled to Publish Regime’s Attacks on ‘zionists’

Pressure from official quarters has forced Poland’s only Yiddish daily newspaper, the Folkstimme, to publish a Communist Party leader’s attack on “international Zionism” as one of the agencies responsible for student rioting and unrest that has shaken Poland for the past week. The Yiddish paper, organ of the Polish Jewish Cultural Society, had until last Saturday, scrupulously deleted all references to Jews and Zionists in speeches condemning the student riots which it otherwise published in full. Folkstimme did not report either the mass arrests of students in recent days although a disproportionate number of them were Jews, including Alexander Smolar. son of Hirsch Smolar, the paper’s editor.

On Saturday, Folkstimme published the full text of a speech delivered at Katowicz, capital of Silesia, by Edward Gierek, Politburo member and party leader for Silesia, who castigated “international Zionism” along with “imperialists” and “revisionists” as enemies of Poland. The report of the speech was supplied by the official Polish Press Agency (PAP).

It is believed that Folkstimme deliberately remained silent on the officially inspired campaign against “Zionists” and, by implication, all Polish Jews, in order to avoid taking a position which might offend the Communist Party leadership and could result in the paper’s shut-down. The Folkstimme’s editor was one of a number of well-known Jews, including high Government officials, who were chastised by the party because their children allegedly participated in the student riots.

(Freiheit, the New York Yiddish-language Communist daily editorially criticized the Polish regime today for its “senseless” attempt to place blame for student unrest and rioting on the tiny Polish Jewish community. It said the attempt was “dangerous” for Poland and warned the regime it was playing into the hands of reactionary anti-Semites. The editorial asserted that the Polish Government had conducted a campaign against anti-Semitism and said that in the light of this past activity, certain features of the present situation were “tragic, inexplicable and dangerous.” The Worker, the English-language Communist publication here, completely ignored the Polish situation in its current issue.)

NEW DIRECTION SEEN IN SHAPE OF REGIME’S CAMPAIGN TO DISCREDIT CRITICS

Victor Zorza, the Guardian’s Warsaw correspondent, reported today that the controlled press and radio has changed its tactics somewhat and instead of concentrating on “Zionists” as the culprits, is attacking so-called “bankrupt politicians” and “discredited Stalinist,” who happen to be Jews, for inciting unrest. The change, he said, is due to their failure to convince the students that they were being manipulated by “Zionists” or that Poland’s small surviving Jewish community, between 18,000 and 20,000 in number, was a formidable enemy of the regime.

An example of the new turn was a half page attack in the official Communist Party newspaper, Trybuna Ludu, on Stefan Staszewski, a Jew who was the Party secretary at the time of the Gomulka takeover in 1956. He was accused of seeking to use the unrest to return to power. A similar accusation was leveled against Roman Zambrowski. The Polish Press Agency (PAP) reported today that Zambrowski, who was vice-chairman of the Supreme Chamber of State Control, has been dismissed from his post in the Government and the Communist Party on charges of instigating student riots. Zambrowski is a veteran Stalinist.

(The American Embassy in Warsaw has sent reports to the State Department confirming that anti-Semitism had been used by the Polish regime to discredit the student unrest. The embassy is closely following the situation and reporting to Washington, officials said.)

Conflicting appraisals of the past week’s events in Poland were offered the British public today as reports from Warsaw indicated no let-up in the official campaign to blame “Zionists” and their sympathizers for mounting student unrest. According to Richard Davy. Times correspondent who was expelled from Poland on Saturday, the student riots were seized upon by Interior Minister Mieczyslaw Moczar as a means of increasing his power at the expense of Party leader Wladyslaw Gomulka who was out of town at the time. Mr. Davy, writing from Prague, noted today that Gen. Moczar, who heads the powerful Polish veterans’ organization and “has a reputation for being anti-Semitic,” had used anti-Zionism and anti-Jewish accusations to force Jews out of key positions in the Communist Party apparatus and ease in his own men last year at the time of the Six-Day War.

The Telegraph reported from Warsaw however that Polish students are convinced that the riots were provoked by the Gomulka regime to serve as the pretext for “a thorough and sweeping purge” of the Polish Communist Party and Government institutions.