We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
The Political Influence of World Jewry as seen by the Polish Foreign Ministry, December 1940.
- Authors
David, Engel
- Abstract
In December 1940, on his way from Romania to London, where he was to take up his new post as director-general of the exile Polish Foreign Ministry, veteran Polish diplomat Mirosław Arciszewski passed through Palestine, where he met with Anshel Reiss, a member of the Zionist Executive and employee of the World Jewish Congress who was among the initiators of an organization known as the Representation of Polish Jewry (Reprezentacja Żydostwa Polskiego). Founded in Palestine in September 1940, the Representation claimed to act as a spokesman for all Polish Jews as long as Polish Jewry was under foreign occupation. Arciszewski and the Polish government-in-exile were keen to establish good relations with this body. The Polish government believed that its senior ally, Great Britain, was especially sensitive to Jewish opinion and it wished to make certain that Jewish opinion would express itself favorably toward Polish interests. The Representation did not mention Arciszewski's meeting with Reiss in the detailed report of its activities published in 1945. Reiss did not write about it in his autobiography, nor has an account of the meeting by Arciszewski been located. The fact of the meeting is known only from a set of Hebrew-language minutes evidently prepared by Reiss. The minutes, whose text is presented in full, offer a significant window onto some of the concerns that guided Polish-Jewish political relations before the June 1941 German invasion of the Soviet Union and the subsequent onset of German mass killings of Jews in Poland.
- Subjects
POLAND; NSZZ "Solidarnosc" (Labor Organization); POLISH Jews; HEBREW language; DIPLOMATS; HISTORY; INTERNATIONAL relations
- Publication
Gal-Ed: On the History & Culture of Polish Jewry, 2015, Vol 24, p107
- ISSN
0334-4258
- Publication type
Article