Hand-Washing

August Cardinal Hlond, the stern-faced Roman Catholic primate of Poland, having been accused of doing nothing to prevent or discourage the Kielce massacre of Jews (TIME, July 15), last week washed his hands of the matter. After deploring the pogrom, he said: "The fact that this condition [anti-Jewish violence] is deteriorating, is to a great degree due to Jews who today occupy leading positions in Poland's Government and endeavor to introduce a governmental structure which the majority of the people do not desire. This is a harmful game, as it creates dangerous tensions. In the fatal battle of weapons ... it is to be regretted that some Jews lose their lives, but a disproportionately large number of Poles also lose their lives."

Ten years ago, when Jewish influence in the "Government of the Colonels" was nil, Cardinal Hlond had found very different reasons for encouraging antiSemitism. Said he, in a pastoral letter of 1936: "It is an actual fact that the Jews fight against the Catholic Church, they are freethinkers, and constitute the vanguard of atheism, bolshevism and revolution. The Jewish influence upon morals is fatal, and the publishers spread pornographic literature. It is also true that the Jews are committing frauds, practicing usury and dealing in white slavery. . . . One does well to prefer his own kind in commercial dealings, to avoid Jewish Stores and Jewish stalls in the markets, but it is not permissible to demolish Jewish businesses."

Last week the Government, which had been accused of negligence in the Kielce affair, did some hand-washing of its own. It tried and convicted twelve of the Kielce Jew-killers. By week's end nine were already dead by hanging and the others were in prison.

Meanwhile, pitiful remnants of Poland's Jews continued to flee the country by any means and with the utmost speed possible. TIME Correspondent John Scott last week estimated that within a year all the Jews would have left Poland, which once harbored four-fifths of all the Jews in the world.

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