'Sins of. Sons Visited on Their Fathers'
(Continued From Page 10)
long attempt to legitimize the de-
sire for a genuinely Polish iden-
tity.
"Though born to a father con-
verted to Catholicism, Slonimski
is also the grandson of Chaim Zelig
Slonimski, editor and publisher of
the first Hebrew weekly in Poland.
He has in the past written some
foolish things about Jews (Gomul-
ka quoted at him an 'anti-Semitic'
piece he had written back in 1924),
but he has also taken a very
courageous stand on cultural free-
dom. To round out Slonimski's
problems one must add a detail
of not-frivolous meaning in Poland;
an apparently vengeful Jehovah has
endowed this son of a defector
from the fold with a strikingly
Semitic appearance. He is an ideal
target. _
"This leads to the brunt of
•"tomulka's attack on some Jews—
his statement that certain partici-
pants in the recent student dis-
orders were 'of Jewish origin or
nationality' and the offspring of
parents occuping responsible and
even very high positions in the
government. In Gomulka's some-
what obscure language, this has
caused a `distorted interpretation
of the slogan of struggle against
Zionism.'
"Yet, distorted or not, the pro-
cedure of visiting the sins of sons
on their fathers has already_ex-
tended to the removal from his
top party and govermnent position
an old and devoted Communist,
Roman Zambrowski, born Reuben
Nussbaum. Others will no doubt
follow. What role the children of
the privileged have played in the
recent unrest we do not know, al-
though by inference from other
societies, East and West, it would
not be surprising to find them
among the leaders of a protest
against the system.
"They most certainly were not
agents of any CIA-Zionist-West
German conspiracy. But it is quite
possible that these sons and daugh-
ters of parents who had hoped to
gain for their children a lasting
and unquestioned place in the
Poland of their choice have be-
come converted to a militant Jew-
ish and even Zionist identity by
the evidence of stubborn rejection
staring them in the face."
The puzzling fact and to some
a most amazing aspect of the
anti-Jewish developments in Pol-
and is that the Jews who have
been dismissed from public of-
fices have long ago left the Jew-
ish fold, some had been baptized,
yet their Jewishness — in spite
of the changes in their names
and their personal antagonism to
Jews, Judaism and Israel—has
suddenly been discovered so that
they could serve well as scape-
goats in the present Polish cam-
paign of hatred of the Jewish
minority or some 30,000 out of
what had been, in pre-Hitler
times, a community of 3,500,000.
A communication crediting the
"heroic fight" of "Jewish insur-
gents" for temporarily halting the
Nazi extermination campaign
through the Warsaw Ghetto Up-
rising was sent to the Jewish Tele-
graphic Agency bureau in Wash-
ington by Andrezej Konopacki,
first secretary of the Embassy in
Poland.
The letter offered the JTA four
articles by "distinguished Polish
historians" for publication in con-
nection with the 25th anniversary
of the Ghetto Uprising. It re-
vealed that the Polish Communist
authorities, despite the current
anti-Jewish campaign, have decid-
ed to celebrate the uprising pub-
licly, although the letter made no
mention of current developments
in Poland affecting the Jews.
Konopacki said the Jewish re-
volt on April 19, 1943 was "the
first time, in the 11th year of the
Nazi rule in Europe, when the
criminal realization of the thesis
of final solution of the Jewish
question was suddenly stopped.
For a month, the Jewish insur-
gents fought their heroic fight on
the barricades of the ghetto."
(This statement was in contrast
to recent allegations in Warsaw
that sought to minimize and de-
bunk the Jewish resistance.)
In London, Dr. Nahum Gold-
mann, president of t h e World
Jewish Congress, Tuesday deplored
the Polish government's refusal to
re-schedule official ceremonies in-
augurating the Jewish pavilion on
the site of the Auschwitz death
camp, despite repeated requests to
do so because the date set, April
20, falls on the Sabbath and is the
last day of Passover. )
University of Michigan dean
Dr. William Haber, president of
the American ORT Federation
and chairman of the central
board of the World ORT Union,
rejected as "utterly preposter-
ous and without a scintilla of
truth," accusations made over
the Polish State television sys-
tem last week that the Jewish
training and rehabilitation
agency had been involved in es-
pionage activities in Poland.
"The only activities in which
ORT has ever been engaged in
Poland or elsewhere are educa-
tional and humanitarian," Dr. Ha-
ber declared. "Our only motive
has always been the welfare of
Jews in the areas where we work.
The government of Poland was
perfectly aware of what we were
doing and approved of it." He
stressed that the ORT organiza-
tions have "at all times and every-
where refrained from ,political ac-
tivities."
A memorandum protesting the
Polish government's anti-Jewish
campaign will be presented to the
United Nations today by a delega-
tion representing the United Jew-
ish Survivors of Nazism, headed
by David Dubinsky, retired presi-
dent of the International Ladies
Garment Workers Union and other
American Jewish labor leaders.
The presentation will be made
following a memorial march to
UN headquarters commemorating
the 25th anniversary of the War-
saw Ghetto uprising.
National and local agencies af-
filiated with the National Corn-
munity Relations Advisory Coun-
cil called on the United. States
government to protest through
official and unofficial channels
against the. anti-Semitic cam-
paign in Poland and to permit
Jews seeking to emigrate from
Poland to be admitted to this
country.
The nine national organizations
and 81 local community relations
councils that comprise the NCRAC
also called on Jewish communities
throughout the country to combine
their observance of the 25th anni-
versary of the Warsaw Ghetto up-
rising with protest and demonstra-
tions against the anti-Semitic poli-
cies of the Polish regime.
The Bureau of the Socialist
International unanimously adopt-
ed an emergency resolution urg-
ing the Polish _government to call
a halt to its anti-Jewish cam-
paign. The bureau also said it
was informed that the Council
of Europe would appeal to all
the parliaments of Europe to
protest against the treatment of
Jews in the Soviet Union.
The bureau disclosed that the
secretariat of the Socialist Inter-
national has written to the Soviet
Embassy in London calling their
attention to the report of a special
working committee on the situa-
tion of the Jews in the USSR.
In Rome, an Italian Communist
senator Tuesday assailed the Polish
government's a n t i-J e w i s h cam-
paign, which he termed. "an at-
tempt' by the authorities to divert
attention from the true nature of
unrest in Poland."
* * *
Jews in Poland Mark Passover
but See No Let-Up in
Regime's Anti-Semitic Drive
LONDON (JTA) — Passover
came to the Jews in Poland this
year with little outward difference
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
from years past. In Warsaw, Lodz,
and elsewhere, as in recent years,
the Jews in the old-age homes —
they number some 5,000 — had
prepared in advance for the strict-
est observance of the holiday. They
had baked enough matzo for the
eight days for themselves_ and for
the private families which so often
in the past have chosen to cele-
brate the seders with them. The
old-age homes are, in effect, Jew-
ish religious centers with their own
synagogues.
Friday, April 19, 1968-11
Many families attended seders in
these homes, but there were no
difficulties for private families in
obtaining all the matzo they re-
quired and in holding their own
seders.
LEE FRANKLIN
WEINSTOCK
Wishes all a
"Very Happy Passover"
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