18 Friday, January 8, 1982
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS'
Emerald Dealers
Plan Convention
Heroic Poles Are Too Ready to Accept Anti-Semitism
—
JERUSALEM
Emerald dealers are plan-
ning a World-wide conven-
tion in Israel in 1983.
Emeralds produced in Israel .
account for half the world's
production.
By VICTOR BIENSTOCK
Henry Fairlie, a British
journalist who makes his
home in Washington and is
a veteran observer of the
world scene, has just per-
formed a service for us in an
whem there's wan
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article in the Washington their history, under right-
Post which should be re- wing and left-wing regimes,
quired reading for all those one of the most anti-Semitic
who see things only in ex- nations in Europe.
treme shades of black and - "Just as Austria, even
white and uncritically iden- with its Jewish com-
tify with and accept at face munity shrunk to a few
value anything that is de- thousands, is still anti-
scribed as a liberation Semitic, so is anti-
Semitism also strong in
movement.
"It is all very well sud- Poland with its Jewish
denly to see the Poles as population also shrunk,"
heroes," writes Fairlie. "I Fairlie reminds us.
am the last person to deny "When such hostility to a
the recurring vitality that race of people persists,
they keep on displaying in even in countries where
their history. But they have there is not even a popu-
never been, under right- lation to provoke it, one is
wing or left-wing regimes, talking of a terrible evil
very reliable defenders of against, which we dare
n our guard."
not let dow
civil freedoms.
Jew-hatred is endemic in
"They have also been in
Poland today as it has been
for centures and it persists
even though there are but a
handful of Jews. Persecu-
tion and pogrom. were the
story of the Jews even in the
Poland partitioned among
foreign empires. Anti-
Semitism flourished in
Paderewski's republic, in
Marshal Pilsudski's dic-
tatorship and in Col. Beck's
right-wing regime which
collapsed in the first
onslaughts of World War II.
It was felt by many Jews
conscripted into General
Sikorski's army in the
Soviet Union which was
moved out to the Middle
East in the later stages of
the war. Its existence is a
significant reason why only
a handful of Jews were to be
found in Poland after the
war out of the three million
who had called Poland their
home.
Of course there were
Poles who did not share this
feeling of anti-Semitism
and who tried to shield their
Jewish neighbors both from
the Nazis and from home-
grown pogromists. But, as
the outcome shows, they
were not many in number
and relatively-unsuccessful
in their efforts.
By and large, the Poles
were extremely suscepti-
ble to incitement against
the Jews and the Com-
munist authorities after
the war were as quick
and adept in using anti,
Semitism to divert dis-
content
from themselves
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as their predecessors.
Anti-Semitism was also
a very useful weapon in
the savage infighting that
went on in the upper
echelons of the party in
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Founder Director
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contemporary Poland as
it had been in the Soviet
Union when Josef Stalin
destroyed his opponents
and consolidated his
autocratic power.
There are possibly 6,000
Jews left in Poland, a coun-
try of 35 million. Many of
these are old and infirm and
chose to remain in the coun-
try which had been their
lifelong home rather than to
join the exodus in 1 968
when an anti-Semitic drive
headed by Gen. Mieczyslaw
Moczar — part of an up-
heaval within the Com-
munist leadership — forced
most of the Jews remaining
in post-war Poland to get
out.
Among Moczar's targets
was Julius Katz-Suchy, a
Jew who had served the
Communists well as Polish
Ambassador to the United
Nations, a post in which he
distinguished himself as a
savage foe of the state of Is-
rael.
It is one of those little
ironies to be found in the
chronicles of every age that
this man, who, if he had not
been Jewish would have
been execrated as a vicious
anti-Semite, should have
found his refuge in the
Jewish state he had so bit-
terly harassed.
"The • anti-Jewish
theme has been used re-
peatedly in the political
struggle in Communist
Poland," according to a
research report pub-
lished a year ago by the
Institute of Jewish
Studies of the World
Jewish Congress. Anti-
Semitism, it noted, had
surfaced in the party in-
fighting in 1956 and again
in 1967 when there was
an anti-Jewish purge of
the army, the security
services and the state
apparatus.
A year later, the Com-
munist regime initiated a
major anti-Jewish cam-
paign which forced the
emigration of the great
majority of the surviving
Jews.
Again in 1975 and 1976,
the regime sought to deflect
public ire over mounting
prices with propaganda de-
signed to convince the
workers and peasants that
the Jews were the cause of
all the trouble. As the insti-
tute report points out, this
campaign resulted in the
removal of most of the Jews
from positions not only in
the state and party appara-
tus but also in the cultural
and economic spheres.
Anti-Semitism, although
in a-quieter form, remained
an official policy after 1978
because the Communists
recognized its potential use-•
fulness as an instrument to
control the Polish public. In
the past, Jews were singled
out as Stalinists and allies
of Zionism, and the objec-
tive was not so much the
masses as the members of
the party itself.
In the current crisis,
however the purpose of
the anti-Jewish prop-
aganda is to discredit Sol-
idarity, the workers' and
peasants' movement
-
.
which threatens the
,supremacy of the Polish
Communist party. It
seeks to accomplish this
by portraying Solidarity
as under the control of
Jews who have in-
sinuated themselves into
positions of power and
influence in the move-
ment.
(Nationally syndicated
columnist Jack Anderson
this week wrote that anti-
Semitic leaflets are being
sent to Poland by neo-Nazis
in Sweden.)
Since there aren't enou 0
Jews in Poland to be res -
sible for all. the blackma -
keting, food-hoarding and
other deeds with which the
Communist regime charges
them, the Communist press
warns that there are at
least 100,000 Jews living in
Poland who conceal their
true identity under Polish
names. All of Poland's eco-
nomic woes are blamed on
the machinations of these
camouflaged Jews.
Three or four Jews are
known to sit in the high
councils of Solidarity and to
serve as advisers, particu-
larly on economic issues, to
Leach Walesa, the Solidar-
ity leader. The Jaruzelski
regime has gone to great
lengths to exploit their role,
to discredit Solidarity and
shift the blame for Poland's
economic plight from the
corruption and misman-
agement of Communist re-
gimes to a Jewish conspi-
racy. It's a procedure that
has worked well and often
in the past.
"Anti-Semitism both
feeds on and engenders no-
tions of conspiracy," Fairlie
points out. "In at least one of
its aspects, anti-Semitism is
an escape from complexity.
All conspiracy theories are
efforts to find tidy explana-
tions of an untidy world. If
. something goes awry
somewhere in the world,
someone, somewhere, must
be issuing secret protocols.
"Our politics are, day
by day, being reduced to
simple responses to situ-
ations that are simply de-
scribed. Anti-Semitism is
a • simple explanation of
anything that we find too
complicated."
But anti-Semitism is
more than a threat to the
Jews, Fairlie warns; it does
not stop with the Jews.
"Anti-Semitism is for the
simple-minded a final solu-
tion of any and every 'diffi-
culty. If only it were only
that. The bother is that it
never stops there. It leads
where it points and always
in one direction. Not many
steps beyond the mild anti-
Semitic remark there is
ways torture and mut
tion and death. Not only for
the Jew."
Refugee Returns
JERUSALEM (JNI) —
Morris Cassouto, the
newly-appointed director of
the Israel Government
Tourist Office in Cairo, left
Egypt as a refugee in 1956.
Cassouto will return to
the city in which he lived
and worked as an account-
ant until forced to leave.