- POLSKA LUDOWA
factions, notably the 'Partisans' of General Moczar, now Minister of the
Interior, were looking for trouble.
The crisis of 1968 was thus the result of accumulated failures. It was fore-
shadowed in the previous summer when a group of Polish officials and Army
officers had reacted to the Israeli victory in the June War by celebrating the tri-
umph of 'our Jews over their Arabs'. By this act, a link was forged between
political dissidence and pro-Israeli (and anti-Soviet) sympathies. The point was
not lost on General Moczar who saw the prospect of denouncing his rivals as
subversive 'Zionists'. In March 1968, a relatively trivial incident in Warsaw,
where the Soviet ambassador successfully ordered the closure of a theatre per-
formance of Mickiewicz's classic, Dziady (Forefather's Eve), sparked off an
open clash. As the students took to the streets in pro test, Moczar's militia went
in to action in a deliberate campaign to fan the flames of protest. The students
were gratuitously beaten, and arrested in large numbers. The organs of the press
called on workers to take action against 'Zionist traitors'. In Cracow, where no
demonstrations had taken place, the Market Square and the student hostels
were surrounded by units of the ORMO factory police, and a special riot-squad
was brought into the city to attack the Jagiellonian University. The Vice-Rector
joined dozens of students, employees, and cleaning women injured by the mili-
tia's clubs and tear-gas grenades. It was a classic example of political provoca-
tion so common in the annals of East European dictatorships. Its only
conceivable purpose was to discredit Gomulka's leadership, and to advance the
career of that watchful Minister who had taken such prompt action against the
Republic's (imaginary) enemies. But Moczar was baulked. Neither the workers,
nor the Army, were prepared to humour his adventures. The hunt for Zionists
proved frankly puzzling to the mass of the populace who knew perfectly well
that the only substantial number of Jews in Poland were to be found in the
higher ranks of the Party. In Cracow, the workers of Nowa Huta disrupted a
meeting called to express their (spontaneous) support for action against the stu-
dents, and had themselves to be dispersed by police dogs. The Colonel of the
local paratroop garrison obliged the militia to withdraw their armed cordon
from the main student hostel, and sent his regimental band into the city to
advertise his success. Similar confrontations undoubtedly took place in other
centres, although they were never reported. In the circumstances, Gomuika was
able to reassert his authority. The Party closed ranks, the militia's campaign was
called off, and its authors demoted. In a broadcast speech, Gomuika appealed
for national unity, and named a number of intellectuals who were supposed to
have inspired the troublemakers. In this Leszek Koiakowski and Pawel
Jasienica, the popular historian, joined the stream of Jewish scapegoats and
refugees who were dismissed, or had resigned from their jobs, in the course of
this most confusing episode.^40
As a result of the disturbances of March 1968, the great majority of Poland's
surviving Jews were forced to emigrate. In the course of a few months, the
country's Jewish community was reduced from c. 40,000 to a mere four or five