1968 Polish political crisis: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 18:09, 9 September 2006

Revision as of 19:22, 14 October 2006

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[[Image:1968 Poland banners.jpg|thumb|200px|right|Banners from March 1968. They read: ''Anti-semitism: no, Anti-zionism: yes'', ''Zionists go to [[Moshe Dayan]]'', and ''Students, don't let yourselves be provoked''.]]

The '''Polish 1968 political crisis''' wasdescribes amajor Soviet[[student]] state-organizedand intellectual [[anti-semitismprotest|anti-Semiticprotests]] campaignagainst inthe [[communist]] government of the [[People's Republic of Poland]], their repression by state forces and the concurrent Soviet state-organized [[anti-semitism|anti-Semitic]] campaign under pretense of [[anti-Zionism]], that drove out most of Poland's remaining Jewish population. The student and intellectual protests coincided with and supported the events of [[Prague spring]] in neighboring [[Czechoslovakia]]. Before the 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==

===Protest in 1968 Europe===

An escalating wave of protest and dissent in Czechoslovakia marked the highpoint of a broader series of dissident social mobilization. The protests of the workers within the communist framework seemed to recall the 1956 protests in Poland. Numerous events of protest and revolt, especially among students reverberated across the continent in 1968, but many followed rather than preceded the Polish crisis.

A growing crisis in Communist Party control over universities, the literary community and intellectuals more generally marked the mid-1960s. Among those persecuted for their political activism on campus were [[Jacek Kuron]] and [[Adam Michnik]].

===Antisemitism in the Polish government===

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 [the 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.

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Thus Gomułka ordered that anti-Israel and anti-Zionist propaganda be increased, and on June 19th, 1967 he gave a speech calling the Jews a "[[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 expelled from the party.

==Student and intellectual protest==

==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:

<blockquote>The term “anti-Zionist campaign” is misleading in two ways, since the campaign began as an [[Anti-Zionism|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. [http://www.columbia.edu/cu/sipa/REGIONAL/ECE/stola.pdf PDF]</blockquote>

In March [[1968]] student demonstrations at Warsaw University broke out when the government banned the performance of a play by [[Adam Mickiewicz]] (''[[Dziady (poem)|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.

==PersecutionAnti-Semitic persecution and the March 1968 Eventsevents==

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:

<blockquote>The term “anti-Zionist campaign” is misleading in two ways, since the campaign began as an [[Anti-Zionism|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. [http://www.columbia.edu/cu/sipa/REGIONAL/ECE/stola.pdf PDF]</blockquote>

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."([http://www.yivoinstitute.org/pdf/poland.pdf PDF])