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p«0« Two
THE SOUTHERN ISRAEUTE
Friday, May 10, 1968
AS WE WERE SAYING
By Robert E. Segal
(A Seven Arts Feature)
Atlanta's Finest
SMORGASBORD
All You Care To Eat
• Lunch $1.25 11—2:30
• Dinner $2.25 5—9
• Sun. and Holiday
Dinner $2.25
11:30—9
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FOR 25 TO 300
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fj*WS£
The Viking Lounge
Introducing the genius of
Chuck Cusic at the Organ
and sensational James Pow
ell at the Drums.
9 P.M. to 2 A.M. Daily—
Broadview Plaza A-Level
2581 Piedmont Rd., N. E.
Telephone 261-0272
In ,the current j struggle tor
Polish power between Commun
ist Party Leader WLadyslaw Go-
mulka and Interior Minister Mie-
czyslaw Moczar, the use at Po
land’s pathetically small Jewish
community at 20,000 to 25,000 as
prime scapegoats may at long last
serve to light up the skies of
understanding for even the most
innocent of bystanders.
Who are the Jews of Poland
today? The*' are perhaps some
2000 white collar workers, some
1500 or so aged and disabled, and
many thousands dependent upon
such assistance as the Joint Dis
tribution Committee and other
faithful emissaries of mercy can
still bring to them. Jewish re
ligious life has been practically
annihilated in Poland; bar
mitzvas are rare; almost all
rabbis have been slain or have
departed; Yiddish — cradled and
nurtured in ancient Poland — is
learned and spoken by few. And
that great Jewish community of
3,000,000 to 3,500,000 Jews in Po
land on the eve of Hitler’s mur
derous escapades has been almost
completely crushed.
The ancient thread of Jew-
hatred in Poland, a nation whioh
so pathetically marked its 1000th
anniversary just two years ago,
is rod with the blood of Jewish
martyrdom. The name of Bogdan
Chmielnicki, shrewd Polish Cos
sack leader of the mid-17th Cen
tury, is not as familiar to some
Jews as are Torquemada and
Hitler; but the pogroms originat
ed and executed by Chmielnicki
400 years ago were the epitome
of primitive, sadistic savagery
unrestrained. Jews who were used
as ri-nt collectors and money
lenders by the landed gentry in
the old days became all too vis
ible targets for the wrath of Po
land’s peasants. It was at Poland’s
colleges that the idea of ghetto
benches for the sequestration and
humiliation of Jews originated—
forerunners of England’s and
America’s college quota system.
It was in Poland also that the
old teachings of the Church, ap
pealing to the superstitions, so
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The curriculum, designed to facilitate transi
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frequenUy took the form of a
primitive anti-Semitism. True
enough, Poland haul its share of
Christian humanitarians who hid
Jews at the peril of their own
lives during the Hitler era; true
enough the Jewish heroes of the
Warsaw Ghetto had some help
from non-Jewish anti-Nazis in
the beleaguered world outside.
But the pattern of pogroms, orig
inating in Chmielnicki’s day, or
even before, persists now after
the hell of Treblinka and Mai da-
nek. No blacker story of religio-
racist persecution has ever been
written than the evil against the
Jews of Poland, that land in
whioh so many honored customs
of Jewish life took root and oame
to gentle fruition.
The ironical aspects of the cur
rent Polish excesses may escape
most of a world preoccupied with
other matters; but they should
not be overlooked by the Jewish
communities everywhere.
There is, first of all, the irony
that Gomulka, fighting to stay in
power, appears ready to offer to
the few Jews still in Poland
emigration passports for Israel.
(“These people are by their
hearts and minds not linked with
Poland, but with Israel,” he said
late in March. “Can we blame
them? Only in the way Com
munists blame all nationalists.”)
Irony No. 2: The cry we have
heard in the Arab world finds
echo in Poland, “we’re not against
Jews, only against Zionists.” All
Jews, save the handful still chew
ing at the crumbs of self-hatred,
must have learned by now that
totalitarians have their own way
of making distinctions between
Jews and Zionists: this is the
distinction of convenience. Peo
ple insensitive to the meaning of
the crisis in Poland will never
understand it; but Jews and other
lovers of freedom fail to compre
hend the double talk only at the
peril of their own liberty.
Irony No. 3: The current Polish
ferment springs from youth. The
revolt at Warsaw University,
soon spreading to Jagiellomian
University in Krakow, suggests
that young people even in a
Communist land still dare to pro
test, to strike, to defy the iron
hand of governmental authority.
That Jewish young people, espec
ially those in the Bable Club,
helped spark the demand for re
dress of grievance is greatly to
their credit. That their parents
should have felt the hammer
stroke of fast governmental re
taliation is a story as old as
vengeance. One wonders whether
America’s extreme right and their
counterparts thro u g h o u t the
world will be willing to give
propier credit to these rebels who
not only abhor Communism but
dare to move against it with their
lives at stake.
Irony No. 4; Poland’s sole re
maining Yiddish daily, the Folk-
stimme, has been forced to pub
lish a Communist Party leader’s
attack on international Zionism
as one of the agencies responsi
ble for student rioting in Warsaw
and Krakow. What good is a
newsp»ap)er in chains? What hope
remains for breaking the harsh
authoritarianism of any totalitar
ian regime when the slightest ges
ture of dissent is killed struggling
to be bom?
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IN ATLANTA 5 LOCATIONS TO SERVE YOU:
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Dr. Marvin Goldstein, President