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The Polish 1968 political crisis involved a state-organized anti-Semitic campaign in the People's Republic of Poland, under pretense of anti-Zionism, that drove out most of Poland's remaining Jewish population. Before this campaign (which began in 1967), Poland had 40,000 Jews; within a few years, fewer than 5,000 remained. Prior to the Holocaust, 3.3 million Jews lived in Poland, at that time it was the second largest Jewish community in the world.
Background
In 1967, during the time leading up to and during the Six Day War, the Polish public was generally sympathetic towards Israel. A popular joke of that era based on the knowledge that a significant percent of the Jews living in Israel were emigrants from Poland stated "The Polish Jews won war with the Russian Arabs" (Polscy Żydzi wygrali z ruskimi arabami). This contrasted with the party line in the Soviet Union, which had begun to attack Zionism and Israel and had switched their allegiance to the Arab states. Władysław Gomułka and the Polish leadership saw an opportunity to both please Moscow by moving against pro-Israeli sentiment, and to bolster Gomułka's own government by using anti-Jewish sentiment to clamp down on political dissidence.
Gomułka had previously begun a quiet campaign against the Jews, as well as other minorities. In 1965, the Politburo had decided to ease Jews out of executive positions and other jobs by 1970, and had already taken action through making Tadeusz Walichnowski, an "anti-Zionist expert," the head of the minorities branch of the government, and by moving that department from social services to counter-intelligence. In the words of Polish scholar Wlodzimierz Rozenbaum:
- The Six-Day War in the Middle East started at the right time in view of the domestic developments in Poland. It provided Gomułka with an opportunity 'to kill several birds with one stone': he could use an "anti-Zionist" policy to undercut the appeal of the liberal wing of the PUWP; he could bring forward the Jewish issue to weaken the support for the nationalist faction and make his own position even stronger; he could through this policy participate in a larger effort by the Warsaw Pact countries; and the Jewish question could be solved once and for all. To Gomułka's nationalist challengers, the war in the Middle East and its international and domestic implications provided - what seemed at the time - a very tempting opportunity to test his strength and to build a meaningful power base for the future. National Convention of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies in Atlanta, Ga., 8-11 October 1975.
Thus Gomułka ordered that anti-Israel and anti-Zionist propaganda be increased, and on June 19th, 1967 he gave a speech calling the Jews "the fifth column" suggesting they should be transferred to Israel. The Polish Communist party began a process to purge Zionist (Jewish) elements. Many Jews were accused of being Zionists, and were expelled from the party.
Persecution and the March 1968 Events
Dariusz Stola of the Institute of Political Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences, called the events that followed in 1967 and 1968 as an anti-Semitic "massive hate campaign," clearly aimed at Polish Jews, despite the use of the word Zionists:
The term “anti-Zionist campaign” is misleading in two ways, since the campaign began as an anti-Israeli policy but quickly turned into an anti-Jewish campaign, and this evident anti-Jewish character remained its distinctive feature. Firstly, the words Zionism and Zionist, were a substitute and code-name for “Jew” and “Jewish.” Secondly, “Zionist” signified Jew even if the person called Zionist was not Jewish. PDF
In March 1968 student demonstrations at Warsaw University broke out when the government banned the performance of a play by Adam Mickiewicz (Dziady, written in 1824) at the Polish Theatre in Warsaw, on the grounds that it contained "anti-Soviet references." Mieczysław Moczar, the leader of the hardline faction inside the Party, blamed the riot on "Zionists" and used this affair as a pretext to launch a larger anti-Semitic campaign (although the expression "anti-Zionist" was officially used) to target the Jews, following on the earlier anti-Zionist movements.
More intense official government persecution followed, in the words of The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe (Yale University Press): "The Interior Ministry compiled a card index of all Polish citizens of Jewish origin, even those who had been detached from organized Jewish life for generations. Jews were removed from jobs in public service, including from teaching positions in schools and universities. Pressure was placed upon them to leave the country by bureaucratic actions aimed at undermining their sources of livelihood and sometimes even by physical brutality."(PDF)
The campaign equated Jewish origins with Zionist sympathies and thus disloyalty to Poland. Jewish organizations were shut down, Yiddish was banned and anti-semitic slogans were used in rallies.
Approximately 25,000 Jews lost their jobs and were forced to emigrate.
Official reaction in Poland
Despite worldwide condemnation of the March 1968 events, for many years the Communist government did not admit the anti-Semitic nature of the anti-Zionist campaign, though some newspapers were allowed to publish critical articles. Finally, in 1988, the Polish Communist government officially acknowledged that the events were anti-Semitic, although they avoided taking full responsibility, calling them "political mistakes". After the fall of the Communist government, the Sejm issued an official condemnation of the anti-Semitism of the March 1968 events in 1998. In 2000, President Aleksander Kwaśniewski gave his own apology for the event in front of a group of Jewish students "as the president of Poland and as a Pole."
See also
External links
"Polish 1968 political crisis"