Polish Party Acknowledges Anti-Semitic Purge

Poland’s Communist Party said Wednesday that a sweeping political purge of two decades ago showed “manifestations of anti-Semitism,” but it added that most party members took no part in the religious bias.

More than 9,000 Jews lost official positions in the 1968 “anti-Zionist” purge, and an estimated 12,000 to 20,000 emigrated, more than half the Jews then living in Poland.

The acknowledgement of anti-Semitism by the party newspaper Trybuna Ludu carried the authority of an official statement. It also was reported on state TV and radio.

But one leader of the 1968 student protests that sparked the purge said the newspaper’s article did not go far enough in its condemnation of anti-Semitism and that it repeated past slanders.

It “amounts to drawing wool over people’s eyes,” said Adam Michnik, a writer and prominent leader of the opposition.

The article in Trybuna Ludu, the official daily of the Polish United Workers (Communist) Party, was timed to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the 1968 “events.”

Discrimination against Jews, in the guise of “anti-Zionism” that had begun after the June, 1967, Israeli victory in the Six-Day War, accelerated sharply after student protests in March, 1968, against censorship.

The purge, which began within the party, soon spread to the government, army, academia, press and other official institutions.

The paper said some conservative, nationalist party factions “took advantage of the Jewish ancestry” of their political rivals.

“They did not realize then that they were being manipulated by political factions which . . . made use of their actions.”