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From The Militant, Vol. X No. 28, 13 July 1946, p. 7.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
The terrible plight of the Jewish people in Europe has once again been forcibly called to the attention of the world. On July 4 in Kielce, 39 Jews were killed in the worst pogrom since the Kremlin set up its puppet government in Poland. According to dispatches, the pogrom was set off by a 9 year old boy’s repetition of the medieval atrocity story about being kidnapped by Jews and seeing the mutilated bodies of Gentile boys they had killed.
The Jewish victims of the anti-Semites were beaten, clubbed, stoned and kicked to death. The dead included nine women and one prematurely-born girl. In addition 42 were injured.
Where does the guilt lie for this horrible slaughter? The July 7 N.Y. Times, authoritative mouthpiece of American capitalism, declares that although the prewar Jewish population of 3,500,000 in Poland was liquidated by the Nazis so that only 100,000 are left today, “Yet anti-Semitism in Poland still survived.” The Times makes no attempt to explain why this foul prejudice “survived” nor does it offer any hope for the Jewish people.
The July 6 Daily Worker, official mouthpiece of the Stalinists in America, attributes the pogrom to the “fascist banditry in Poland” but declares that “The primary responsibility falls upon our State Department and the Attlee Government.”
By “our” State Department, the Stalinists mean Wall Street’s State Department. The Stalinists argue that their late Allies in the Second World War “deliberately incite these disorders.”
Meanwhile the July 7 Times reports that the Jews “want only one thing: to leave Poland. Streams of Jews, estimated at over a thousand a week, trek westward in the hope of finding a haven in the American and British zones of Germany or getting to an Italian port and gaining passage across the Mediteranean.”
It is this terrible fear among the Jews – a thoroughly justified fear as the Kielce pogrom demonstrates – that is at the bottom of the present civil strife in Palestine. For the British government, working hand in glove with Washington, has stopped immigration there. The Palestinian Jews are trying to aid the hounded, victimized survivors of Hitler’s terror who are still, left in Europe.
The role of the Stalinists and of the American government in this situation is especially atrocious. Washington has offered “to assume technical and financial responsibility” for the transportation of the Jews – to Palestine! But the gates of America are locked fast against these helpless refugees.
And what mockery are the crocodile tears of the Stalinists! The Soviet border is only a few miles from the scene of the latest pogrom. Yet that border is sealed just as tightly as the borders of imperialist America.
True enough, the Soviet Union under the brutal Stalinist dictatorship offers no attraction even to the pogrom victims. Significantly, the trek of a thousand a week is westward toward the American and British zones of Germany. The Jews of Poland believe conditions are better in the crowded, famine-stricken areas once ruled by Hitler than in the immense land now ruled by Stalin. What an indictment of the Kremlin! What an oppressive regime that even these pitiful victims of anti-Semitism turn away in terror!
The American workers must come to the aid of the survivors of Hitler’s terror. Fight for the ancient democratic right of asylum. Let the gates of America be opened wide to the Jews of Europe. Truman has promised them “transportation.” Let the ships bring them to this country!
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Last updated on 19 June 2021