From: avr@cbnewsj.cb.att.com (adam.v.reed)
Subject: Polish Jews 1934-1939: References and Background
Organization: AT&T
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1992 17:08:28 GMT
Followup-To: soc.culture.jewish
Keywords: Antisemitism Etatism White Bolshevism

Continuing with background and references:

> > 10. During Pilsudski's final illness, and after his death - from
> > 1934 to 1939 - power in Poland was held by a clique of former
> > Pilsudski cronies who did not share his aversion to
> > anti-Semitism. During this period Poland repudiated the
> > Minorities Treaty, and proclaimed an official "economic war"
> > against its Jewish citizens. This "economic war" was carried out
> > by means of selective taxation, selective application of
> > licensing and other nominally equal regulations, confiscation of
> > Jewish business enterprises and firing their Jewish employees,
> > barring the entry of additional Jewish graduates into several
> > professions (notably Law, Pharmacy, and Professional
> > Engineering), and other similar methods. A system of
> > segregation, the so-called "ghetto benches", was established in
> > Polish universities and enforced by officially tolerated murder
> > of any Jewish student who dared sit outside the "bench ghetto".

W. Dobosiewicz writes:

> You seem to have some information that I could not find. Can you give
> details of this"selective taxation", of confiscation of Jewish
> businesses and of entry into professional engineering (is there
> "amateur" engineering?). I may believe Law and Pharmacy.

"Professional Engineering" is standard American English for
those aspects of engineering practice that require a
professional license - e.g. certifying safety, operability,
conformance to specifications; giving expert testimony on
engineering issues etc. In 1936, the Polish government delegated
the testing of candidates for a professional license in
engineering to the Engineers Association, which excluded Jews
(and even non-Jewish spouses of Jews) from mebership.
In Law, the lists were officially closed (in 1938? I don't have
the book on hand) but the Minister of Justice was authorized to
make exceptions, which were only granted to non-Jews. In
Pharmacy, the requirement of a business license was added to
that for a professional license (new business licenses were not
issued to Jews).

Confiscation of Jewish businesses (a.k.a. "Etatyzm" or "White
Bolshevism"), and limitations on entry into the professions,
are documented in

Studies on Polish Jewry, 1919-1939. New York, Yivo, 1974.
(edited volume. Look up editors?)

Selective taxation and selective licensing are documented in

Heller, Celia Stopnicka: On the Edge of Destruction - Jews of
Poland between the Two World Wars. New York, Columbia University
Press, 1977. (see, in particular,  ch.3, "The Pattern of
Oppression".)

For interesting comments on these two books, see also

Ezra Mendelsohn: Interwar Poland: good for the Jews or bad for
the Jews? pp 130-139, in "The Jews in Poland" (cited before).

The political background is discussed in

Emanuel Melzer: Antisemitism in the Last Years of the Second
Polish Republic. In "The Jews of Poland between Two World Wars",
edited by Yisrael Gutman, Ezra Mendelsohn, Yehuda Reinharz, and
Chone Shmeruk. Hanover and London, University Press of New
England, 1989 (pp 126-137).

				Adam_V_Reed@ATT.com
Newsgroups: soc.culture.jewish