1968 Polish political crisis
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The Polish 1968 political crisis (also known in Poland as 'March 1968' or 'March events', Polish: Marzec 1968 or wydarzenia marcowe) describes major student and intellectual protests against the communist government of the People's Republic of Poland, their repression by state forces and the concurrent Soviet anti-Zionist reaction. 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.
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[edit] Background
[edit] 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.
[edit] 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.[citation needed] 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). Anti-semitism also had a long and deep history in Polish society which continued even after the German occupation destroyed most of the Jewish population. However, despite modern attempts to brand Poles and Poland as purely anti-semitic, it should be recognised that many Jews found sanctuary in Poland over a period of hundreds of years, after fleeing persecution and hostility in other parts of the world.
During the 1967 Six-Day War between Israel and Egypt and the majority of the Arab nations, Israel occupied the Sinai peninsula, Gaza Strip, West Bank, and the Golan Heights. Israel's relations with the socialist block drastically deteriorated. Members of the international community, including the Soviet Union, condemned Israel for "aggression" and occupation. This continued a Soviet party line which attacked Zionism and Israel and backed the Arab states. Władysław Gomułka and the Polish leadership saw an opportunity to both please Moscow by taking an anti-Israel stance, 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:
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- 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 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.
[edit] Student and intellectual protest
In January, the Polish government banned the performance of a play by Adam Mickiewicz, (Dziady, written in 1824) and directed by Kazimierz Dejmek at the Polish Theatre in Warsaw, on the grounds that it contained Russophobic and anti-socialist references. The play had been performed 14 times, the last on January 30. Dejmek was expelled from the Communist Party and later fired from the National Theatre.[1]
The Warsaw Writers' Union condemned the ban on March 2, followed by the Actors' Union. A crowd of some 1,500 students protesting at Warsaw University on March 8 was met by attacks. Within four days, protests spread to Kraków, Lublin, Gliwice, Wrocław, Gdańsk, Poznań, and Łódź. Bands of state-aligned "worker-activists" attacked the students, followed by police in Warsaw and Lublin. Student strikes took place in Wrocław on March 14-16, Kraków on March 14-20, and Opole. A call for a general strike was issued from Warsaw on March 13, but went largely unheeded. A hardline speech by Władysław Gomułka on March 19 cut off the possibility of negotiation. Further student protests, strikes and occupations were met with the mass expulsion of thousands of participants. National coordination by the students was attempted through a March 25 meeting in Wrocław; most of its attendees were jailed by the end of April. At least 2,725 people were arrested for participating. According to internal government reports, the suppression was generally effective, although students were able to disrupt May Day ceremonies is Wroclaw.[1]
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. In fact, despite the participation on a number of Jewish activists in the protests, the relation of the protesting students to Zionism was mixed if not negative. The national strike call from Warsaw opposed both anti-Semitism and Zionism.[2] A banner hung at a Rzeszow high school on April 27 read: "We hail our Zionist comrades."[1]
[edit] Anti-Semitic 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
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.
[edit] 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."
[edit] References
- Andrzej Friszke, "The March 1968 Protest Movement in Light of Ministry of Interior Reports to the Party Leadership," Intermarium 1:1 (1997 [translated from Polish; original 1994]).
