THREE MILLION "SURPLUS" JEWS

Forty per cent of the population of the new Polish Empire were non-Polish—a much higher percentage than the non-Russian population of the tsarist Empire, termed "prison-house of nations."1 The four important national minorities were White Russians and Ukrainians, the Jews and the Germans. Since there was no Jewish State across the border to champion Jewish rights the nullification of the minority treaty, so far as Jews were concerned, was a simple matter. Accordingly the birth of the second Poland was celebrated by a wave of pogroms that swept the country. The official Morgenthau commission, appointed by the American Versailles delegation to investigate the massacres, reported that 280 Jews had been killed and ma[n]y hundreds wounded. Between these intermittent outbreaks of violence there was always an unabated and less spectacular but far more effective "cold pogrom"—the publicly sponsored boycott of Jewish stores, industries and professions, the exclusion of Jews from all public or municipal employment and by numerus clausus (limited number) from the universities, climaxed by a licensing law which forced old Jewish tailors, shoemakers and other artisans to pass arbitrary written tests in order to "practice."

As the late Raymond Leslie Buell, President of the Foreign Policy Association, testifies: "The most visible form of anti-Semitism is an economic boycott which has been approved by courts, the government, and dignitaries of the Catholic Church. The head of the Catholic Church, Cardinal Hlond, in a pastoral letter in 1936, declared 'One does well to prefer one's own kind in commercial relations and to avoid Jewish stores but it is not permissible to demolish Jewish businesses. And Prime Minister Skladkowski declared in that same year 'Nobody in Poland should be harmed, but economic warfare—that's all right.' A Swedish authority, Hugo Valentin, writing in 1936 says: 'It cannot be said that the Polish Jews are subjected to the same physical torture as the German Jews but their material distress is far worse.'"

The object of this policy, as the leading Polish political parties made it clear in their platforms, was nothing less than the program which the Nazis are now carrying out in all of occupied Europe including Poland—not the suppression but the complete elimination of the Jew from Poland. Thus the Camp of National Unity, the party dominant at the outbreak of the war, declared: "The Jews are an element weakening the state . . . the best solution is emigration." Colonel Wenda, the Party's Chief of Staff, said: "The departure of the Polish Jews is a necessity on account of national defense." The National Democratic Party, the opposition party, urged that "Jews be prohibited from voting, holding any public office or owning land." The National Radical Party demanded that Jews be forbidden to work for Poles or employ Poles. "Elimination of the Jew from Poland is the ultimate solution of the Jewish problem." In view of this record it is difficult to suppress the suspicion that the authors of these statements, many of whom are now members of the Polish Government-in-Exile, must have a sneaking admiration and gratitude for the thorough job which Hitler is doing on the "Jewish Problem" in Poland.

In its anxiety to get rid of its Jews the Polish Government even turned Zionist and could always be counted on in a pinch to vociferously back the Balfour Declaration. Enlightened Polish statesmen complained euphemistically of Poland's "surplus" Jewish population, or more specifically of Poland's three million surplus Jews, i.e., all of them. In 1938, shortly after Munich, when there was talk of redistributing the colonial world, Poland actually demanded colonies on the basis of her need to export her "superfluous Jews." As Vice Premier Kwiatkowski declared plaintively: "The rich nations call upon the poor overpopulated ones to practice humanitarian principles while they themselves close the doors of their colonies before the superfluous Jews from Poland." When President Roosevelt called the first Refugee Conference at Evian, the Polish Government protested against the Conference concentrating on the victims of the Hitler terror to the exclusion of its own "superfluous Jews." It is this same Polish Government, which considered its three million Jews "superfluous," which is taking such an active interest in the fate of two Jewish traitors executed by the Soviet Union.2


1The "prison" referred to is that of Russification and cultural annihilation through forced assimilation. A policy begun in the 19th century, we see it in practice today in the re-Russification of Russian-occupied Crimea.
2The topic of "Eastern European" anti-Semitism, that is, the boundary between stereotypes and persecution, is too complex for discussion here. In Poland, the ultra-nationalist Oboz Zjedoczenia Narodowego, OZON (Camp of National Unity) tightened their control on the government; Jews were banned from their membership; their ideologues advocated for the forced emigration of Jews. Catholic bishops called for segregating Jewish children in elementary school. Over time, the number of "surplus Jews" grew to the point that some politicians advocated that there was no place whatsoever for Jews in Poland, that all should be compelled to emigrate. Indeed, Polish and British authorities held discussions over the future of Palestine in the context of resettlement. Unfortunately, interwar Poland was merely symptomatic: comparing to the United States during the same time period, Jews were discriminated against in employment and social venues; restricted by enrolment quotas at colleges; and proscribed from purchasing certain properties. The aforementioned Évian conference is a litmus test of the times: aside from Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic, no other country agreed to increase its immigrant quota to accept more Jews.
Updated: April, 2021
"Behind the Polish-Soviet Break" was published by Soviet Russia Today, New York. We do not endorse the Soviet account of historical events or their circumstances contained therein.
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