VENGEANCE FOR THE JEWISH VICTORY

...These events contributed heavily to the antiSemitic incitement by Gomulka and company...

...Three days later, in the poison-pages of this same party organ, came the unmistakable threat: "How long must we wait for their statement...

...The Poles' admiration for Israel stemmed in part from their sense of their own history: they, too, had often risen in armed struggle for independence...

...2 The Central Committee replied that we had not gone far enough...

...The Polish press now was inundated with demagogic anti-Semitic articles and resolutions...

...What finally compelled us to condemn Israel was the threat of an immediate pogrom...

...And I saw the men in militia uniforms who more than 20 years earlier had helped to murder the Jews of Kielce...

...This comparison of the Polish Jews, whose Naftali Botwin Brigade had been in the front line defending the Spanish Republic, with the Fifth Column—Franco's agents—outraged every Jew in the country, as well as many honest gentile Poles...

...These men were capable of anything —waiting only for the signal to settle accounts with the most eminent Polish writers who, 2 David Sfard was a leading Yiddish poet, editor of the literary monthly Literarishe Shrtftn...

...Second, the Polish people's great sympathy and admiration for the heroic Israelis in 1967 showed the party and the government how remote and isolated they were from popular sentiments...

...The merest suspicion of sympathy for embattled Israel resulted in human tragedy...

...An attack on Number 5 Nowogrodski Street (the building that housed all the Jewish institutions) could come any day...

...Jews coming to our editorial offices or seeing us on the street would shake our hand and thank us for making accurate information available...

...Gomulka was forced to yield on this narrow issue, but the official press issued elaborate, viru' Maki—Communist party of Israel—was mainly composed of Jews and critical of the Soviet Union...

...It was a sign that the Polish army was not too "secure...

...The presidium therefore decided to give my proposed text to presidium members Shmuel Tenenblat and Israel Felhendler for their editing and emendation...

...WHAT MOTIVATED this explosion of anti-Semitic fury...

...They understood why we had to print the views of Maki and Rakach side by side.' Our maneuvering was blocked by Stefan Olszowski, member of the Central Committee in charge of the press, who summoned me and issued a blunt warning: there could not be two centers reporting on Polish foreign policy...

...He was replaced by Jusef Kempo, an anti-Semite with the mentality of an SS man...

...He wrote: ". . I fail to understand the silence of the executive committee and the Warsaw section of the Social-Cultural Organization of the Jews in Poland on so many questions...

...In the beginning it was not too difficult for us at the Folks-Shtimme to print the war news both on the basis of reports issued by the Polish News Agency and on foreign sources...

...At a special meeting of members of the party's Executive Committee and the Warsaw Committee of the Jewish Social-Cultural Organization, the proposal was made to adopt a resolution condemning "the Israeli aggression against the Arab countries...

...He left Poland in 1971 and took up residence in Israel, where he is a Fellow at the Diaspora Research Institute in Tel Aviv...

...After the war he returned to Poland and became one of the leaders of the Jewish community and editor-in-chief of the Yiddish newspaper Folks-Shtimme ("People's Voice...

...A purge of high officers —A la Moscow—soon followed...

...So I concurred with Leyb Domb's proposal that we issue a statement in accord with the official line...

...On this pretext, the editors of the most popular weekly, Kobieta ("The Woman") were dismissed from their posts and expelled from the party...

...This upset not only Gomulka and the Polish army command but, even more, the leaders of the Warsaw Pact military forces...

...Before long, our paper was receiving resolutions from local Jewish executive committees that were in complete accord with the official line...

...Whom does the SocialCultural Organization serve...

...Tragic letters came in from local leaders of our organization...

...Those who attended the meeting sat there with their mouths shut tight...

...But when the victories of the Israeli army began to dominate the news, it became necessary for us to present the information in a "more balanced" way...

...I saw before me the plainclothesmen who had been hanging around the door of the Polish Literary Society when I had left there in the early morning hours...

...Representatives of the party's Warsaw City Committee came to this meeting to present the text of such a resolution...

...it was common knowledge that there were persons among us who would promptly pass relevant information along to the "proper authorities...

...I saw before me the disguised Moczar thugs who on March 8, 1968 had broken into the courtyard of Warsaw University and brutally beaten students and professors...

...The entire staff of the Polish air force, in a special document addressed to the army's General Staff, expressed its admiration for the strategy, tactics, and personnel of the Israeli armed forces...

...AT THIS POINT, the Folks-Shtimme began to receive complaints from the Central Committee: "Why are you silent...

...And our local activists were "invited" to meet with the political police, who brought all kinds of pressure to bear upon them to disregard our executive committee's resolution—and to condemn Israel "spontaneously...

...Next, the Central Committee ordered all party organs, unions, and cultural associations, and especially their leaders, to adopt resolutions based on Gomulka's anti-Jewish speech, condemning the "Israeli aggression" and Zionism as an instrument of imperialism...

...But a reaction to this racist outburst came quickly...

...From that moment on, our portrayal of the Six-Day War echoed the line of the official Polish press...

...A source of encouragement for us in those days was the position of various Polish artists who expressed their solidarity with the Jews by joining our Social-Cultural Organization, by cooperating with us, or by demonstrating their sympathy in their artistic work...

...These commentaries, distributed in special brochures, echoed and amplified the Arab-Soviet claim that the Jewish state came innto existence through aggressive war against the Arabs...

...He emigrated to Israel as a result of the anti-Semitic campaign of the 1960s...

...482 lently anti-Jewish "commentaries" on his speech...

...Rapacki warned Leyb Domb that Moczar was preparing "an outburst of popular anger" against the "allies of Zionism"— the leaders of the Social-Cultural Organization who had refused to join with the "entire Polish people" in condemning Israeli aggression...

...We are the center, he said, not you at the Folks-Shtimme...

...Among them were, for example, the poet Jerzy Picowski...

...A group of plainclothes secret police, specially selected for their "non-Aryan" looks and headed by a Polish colonel who definitely looked Jewish, were sent to the airport to shout insults, to signify that even "Jews" were demonstrating their hatred for the state of Israel...

...BROKEN IN SPIRIT, we avoided each other's eyes...

...After diplomatic relations with the Jewish state had been broken off, the Polish authorities organized a shameful and brutal "farewell" for the members of the Israeli embassy...

...Rakach—a second Communist party of Israel—is composed mostly of Arabs and adheres to Soviet policy...

...Mass hatred of the Soviet Union and joy in its defeat gave rise to a widespread Polish quip: "Our little Jews beat the Soviet Arabs...

...Jan Kofta, satirist of the Pod Egida Theater, changed his name publicly and officially to Jonah (Yoineh), a name that anti-Semites pronounce derisively...

...He still uses that name today...

...We discussed routine matters, items of practical work, without alluding to the danger that faced us all...

...Even when we did, Trybuna Mazowiecka, organ of the party's Warsaw City Committee, still denounced us...

...A revision of our resolution was also rejected...

...The Polish Press Bureau kept checking on us to see whether . we were printing these resolutions...

...WE DID NOT CAVE IN under the pressure from the Ministry or the growing anti-Jewish agitation in the Polish press...

...484 by a large majority, had condemned the antiSemitic, reactionary Gomulka policy and stated that it was really, at bottom, also aimed at Poland's national culture...

...This was only the beginning...

...When the first news of the Six-Day War reached us, we realized that we were faced with an unexpected threat...

...Among other things, it said: "We want to know with whom we are living under the same roof...

...It was still possible to avert this tragedy by making a statement in accordance with the general political line...

...Adopt a [suitable] resolution, otherwise it will be the end of us all...

...We then called a broader meeting of our members in order to inform them of the pressure that was brought to bear upon us...

...This was the only time in the history of the Warsaw City Committee that such a thing had happened and, at once, "higher authorities" were informed...

...This opposition, however, was unable to stop the anti-Jewish campaign of the Gomulka leadership...

...But our real consolation was the fact that not a single drop of Jewish blood was shed in that frightful situation...

...The people grew angry about the government actions, but increasingly cautious in their relationships with Jews...

...the writer Adam Wlodek...

...Speaking at the Congress of Polish Trade Unions, Gomulka vented his fury about Israel on the Jews of Poland, branding us a "Fifth Column...

...We understand," he said, "the experience of our Jewish comrades and their attitude toward Israel, but...

...Even Edward Ochab and Adam Rapacki, who were members of the Politburo, protested vigorously and demanded that this tirade should not be published...

...Support for Israel came from surprising places...

...The English translation is by YURI SUHL and MAX ROSENFELD.-EDS...

...After the war he was rewarded by Stalin with a ten-year prison term, after which he returned to his native Poland, where he assumed the leadership of the Jewish Social-Cultural Organization and became the director of the publishing house Yiddishe Bukh...

...Soon after he uttered these words, Kociolek was removed from his post...

...At the next plenum of the Central Committee of the Polish Communist party some blunt speeches were made, even by a few conservative leaders (for example, by former government ministers Julian Takarski and Boleslaw Ruminski) opposing this incitement of Jew-hatred...

...There was also an element of surprise: Poles had always regarded the Jews as ill-suited to warfare, and suddenly—a great, daring Jewish victory...

...A comforting word came to me from my "old friend" in the Polish Academy of Sciences...

...The terror organs intensified their hunt for "Zionists and Revisionists...

...With the outbreak of anti-Semitism in Poland in 1967, he was removed from both posts...

...At a meeting of the presidium of our executive committee, we agreed upon the text of a 483 resolution proposed by David Sfard...

...My two sons and my daughter-in-law were then in the Mokotow jail for participating in the student protests of 1967-68...

...On March 26, 1968, Trybuna Mazowiecka published an article headlined "Who Are You...

...Just a few days after the war had ended, we were confronted with an ultra anti-Semitic diatribe by party leader Wladislaw Gomulka...

...he died in Jerusalem in 1981...

...As Leopold Trepper, Leyb Domb had headed the famed Soviet anti-Nazi intelligence group known as "The Red Orchestra...

...Remarkably, the secretary of the Warsaw Committee (a man named Kociolek) tried to speak to the Jews in more moderate tones...

...To break our obstinacy, the party's Central Committee, together with the heads of the Ministry for Internal Affairs, took steps to isolate us from our own local organizations...

...The victory was especially sweet to the Poles because it was an indirect defeat of the military influence of the Soviet Union, which had prodded Egypt and Syria to attack Israel...

...In the end," he said, "your resistance lasted longer than that of the entire Polish army in September 1939, longer than the resistance of the entire Polish population during the siege of Warsaw...

...There were instances when people who had gathered for family or birthday parties at which Jews happened to be present were punished for engaging in "celebrations of Israel's victory...

...This set the tone for the mass production of such "literary works" as The Revolution Beneath the Pyramids by Kazimierz Sidor, Poland's ambassador to Egypt, who characterized the Jews as scabbyheaded descendants of lepers...

...On April 1, 1968, Trybuna Lucia, the central party paper, printed a cunning article by Henryk Saniowski...

...First, in 1967, Gomulka was responding to the ascendancy of the lifelong anti-Semites Mieczeslaw Moczar and Boleslaw Piasecki, who had been organizing for years to seize power in the party...

...One pleaded: "Don't destroy us...

...This article is drawn from Smolar's memoir, Last Stand, Last Hope, written in Yiddish and published by the Y. L. Peretz Verlag, Tel Aviv, 1982...

...Not one Polish historian or statesman, even during the period of liberalization, has ever dealt with this honestly...

...My standing with the party's Central Committee was, however, greatly diminished...

...HERSH SMOLAR, a native of Poland and a muchdecorated Resistance hero, was head of the Minsk ghetto underground during World War II and a member of the high command of an entire Partisan zone comprising four brigades...

...From towns and cities throughout the country we received information that local leaders of the Jewish Social-Cultural Organization had been summoned to party committees, where they were threatened with expulsion from the party if they refused to condemn "Zionist aggression...

...We called for "peace without annexation...

...By stealing these anti-Semites' thunder, Gomulka managed in 1967 to strengthen his position in the party—at least for the moment—and to get Moczar removed from his power base as head of security...

...it is now defunct...

...During the voting, not one hand was raised in favor...

...Thus, for example, we interspersed news items from Western agencies with Polish News Agency releases...

...the painters Zdzislaw, Maciey Lachur, Jerzy DudaGracz—and S. Kobylinski, who painted a series of Jewish figures from the vanished shtetls...

...I then was told by Leyb Domb 3 that he had been summoned to a private meeting by a member of that Politburo and the Foreign Ministry—our good friend Adam Rapacki...