Foreign News: Exodus

Of Poland's prewar Jewish population of 3,250,000 about three in a hundred survived the Nazi massacres. Despite the fact that the present Jewish community (an estimated 45,000) is only an infinitesimal part (less than .2%) of the population of Communist Poland, a wave of anti-Semitism is sweeping the country. Since the break with Russia last October and the relaxation of border regulations, more than 25,000 Jews have applied for passports to Israel. An exodus, including intellectuals, manual laborers and Communists, is in progress, reported New York Times Correspondent Sydney Gruson.

Wladyslaw Gomulka's Communist regime blames Polish Stalinists for the migration. Deprived of office, the Stalinists, they say, spread the lie that the "Jewish administration had pauperized Poland" after World War II. When the Russians set up the Polish Communist regime in 1944, they placed Jews in key positions in the bureaucracy. An obvious reason for this was that the Jews were beyond question reliable "anti-Fascists." A more sinister accusation is that in Poland as in Hungary, Stalin deliberately placed Jews in high positions in order to have convenient scapegoats at a later date for the vast depredations he planned in Poland.

A sense of Communist guilt was expressed last week by Juliusz Burgin. a leading Polish Communist, in Przeglad Kulturalny. Wrote Burgin: "The exodus is a fact containing a frightful charge against our people's authority, our party and all of us. The preponderant part of the Jews who remained after the Hitlerite slaughters have reached the conclusion that in the conditions that prevail after twelve years of the people's authority, they are unable to work, breathe and live."