Poland Aims to Make a Point

In a gesture that is part rescue mission and part splendid symbolism, Poland is moving to break with the tragic anti-Semitism of its past. Last week, a combination of terrorist threats and Soviet actions suddenly shut down a route that most Soviet Jews have used recently to emigrate to Israel. Poland’s Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki plans to replace it with a new one.

About three-fourths of the roughly 1,500 Soviet Jews who have been arriving at Tel Aviv every week so far this year have flown from Moscow by way of Budapest, Hungary. Last week, Hungary suspended charter flights to Israel after an Islamic fundamentalist group threatened to attack planes and airports. The goal of the threats is to stop further Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank. Most of the travelers still could have made their way on scheduled flights, but Moscow--under pressure from Arab groups--then announced that it would no longer sell Jews tickets for flights to Israel by way of Budapest.

Winding up a six-day tour of the United States, Mazowiecki said during a Sunday night address that LOT, Poland’s flag airline, would charter planes for the flight to Israel by way of Warsaw. An airline spokesman said later that LOT would also increase its scheduled flights to Tel Aviv.

During the Nazi occupation in World War II, more than 3 million Polish Jews were killed. Jews were also purged from Poland’s government and then from the Communist government in 1968. The new government formally renounced anti-Semitism when it took office. The rescue operation nobly demonstrates that it meant what it said. We share Washington’s concern over expanded settlement on the West Bank, but opening an escape route for Soviet Jews is such a powerful rejection of anti-Semitism that it commands a salute.