Accusations against Joint during the Anti-“Zionist” Campaign in Poland 1967: Prompt Termination of the Program
Accusations against Joint during the Anti-“Zionist” Campaign in Poland 1967: Prompt Termination of the Program

Summary/Abstract: The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) played a major role in Jewish life in Poland in the immediate post-war period. In 1958, the Polish government invited JDC to return, only to expel it again in 1967, following the Six-Day War. JDC became one of the targets of unprecedented and constant antisemitic and anti-“Zionist” propaganda in 1968. The first accusations against the JDC were made in Sztandar Młodych, the Communist Youth newspaper. On 1 April 1968 that newspaper accused the JDC of “having spied for Israel and the United States.” Similarly to the Soviet press in January-February 1953, at the time of Doctors’ Plot, Polish newspapers published articles about the Committee as a “Zionist agency carrying out subversive and intelligence tasks” in the spring of 1968. In Wrocław, Łódź, and other provincial cities, the newspapers carried out very strong attacks had against JDC, using lies in a most vicious way. At the very same time the authorities began a well-planned systematic action to destroy all Jewish institutions that received financial support from JDC. An exodus of some 12,000 Jews from Poland followed increased antisemitic propaganda. JDC provided aid to several thousand of emigrants.

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