A series of major student, intellectual and other protests against the ruling Polish United Workers' Party of the Polish People's Republic took place in Poland in March 1968. The crisis led to the suppression of student strikes by security forces in all major academic centres across the country and the subsequent repression of the Polish dissident movement. It was also accompanied by mass emigration following an antisemitic (branded "anti-Zionist") campaign waged by the minister of internal affairs, General Mieczysław Moczar, with the approval of First Secretary Władysław Gomułka of the Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR). The protests overlapped with the events of the Prague Spring in neighboring Czechoslovakia – raising new hopes of democratic reforms among the intelligentsia. The Czechoslovak unrest culminated in the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia on 20 August 1968. Excel HSC modern history By Ronald E. Ringer. Page 384. Encyclopedia of the Cold War, Volume 1 By Ruud van Dijk. Page 374. Taylor & Francis, 2008. . 987 pages.

The anti-Zionist campaign began in 1967, and was carried out in conjunction with the USSR's withdrawal of all diplomatic relations with Israel after the Six-Day War, but also involved a power struggle within the PZPR itself. The subsequent purges within the ruling party, led by Moczar and his faction, failed to topple Gomułka's government but resulted in an exile from Poland of thousands of communist individuals of Jewish ancestry, including professionals, party officials and secret police functionaries appointed by Joseph Stalin following the Second World War. In carefully staged public displays of support, factory workers across Poland were assembled to publicly denounce Zionism.Dariusz Stola. ""The Anti-Zionist Campaign in Poland of 1967–1968." The American Jewish Committee research grant. See: D. Stola, Fighting against the Shadows (reprint), in Robert Blobaum, ed., Antisemitism and Its Opponents in Modern Poland. Cornell University Press, 2005.The world reacts to the Holocaust By David S. Wyman, Charles H. Rosenzveig. Ibidem. Pages 120-122. At least 13,000 Poles of Jewish origin emigrated in 1968–1972 as a result of being fired from their positions and various other forms of harassment.Dariusz Stola, Kampania antysyjonistyczna w Polsce 1967 - 1968 [The Anti-Zionist Campaign in Poland 1967–1968], pp. 213, 414, published by Instytut Studiów Politycznych Polskiej Akademii Nauk, Warsaw 2000, Andrzej Leon Sowa, Historia polityczna Polski 1944–1991 [The Political History of Poland 1944–1991], pp. 346–347, Wydawnictwo Literackie, Kraków 2011, Book review at Historia.org.pl.Monika Krawczyk (March 2013), Nie zapomnę o Tobie, Polsko! (I will not forget you, Poland). Forum Żydów Polskich.

Background The political turmoil of the late 1960s was exemplified in the West by increasingly violent protests against the Vietnam War and included numerous instances of protest and revolt, especially among students, that reverberated across Europe in 1968. The movement was reflected in the Eastern Bloc by the events of the Prague Spring, beginning 5 January 1968. A wave of protests in Czechoslovakia marked the high point of a broader series of dissident social mobilization. According to Ivan Krastev, the 1968 movement in Western Europe, emphasizing individual sovereignty, was fundamentally different from that in the Eastern Bloc, concerned primarily with national sovereignty.Krastev, Ivan. (21 February 2018). Will 2018 Be as Revolutionary as 1968?. The New York Times. Retrieved 28 February 2018.

In Poland, a growing crisis having to do with communist party control over universities, the literary community, and intellectuals in general, marked the mid-1960s. Those persecuted for political activism on campus included Jacek Kuroń, Karol Modzelewski, Adam Michnik and Barbara Toruńczyk, among others.Barbara Toruńczyk, Opowieści o pokoleniu 1968. Dwutygodnik No. 09/2009. A decade earlier, Poland was a scene of the Poznań 1956 protests and the Polish October events.

Reaction to Arab–Israeli war of 1967

The events of 1967 and Polish communist leaders' necessity to follow the Soviet lead altered the relatively benign relations between People's Poland and Israel. The combination of international and domestic factors gave rise in Poland to a campaign of hate against purported internal enemies, among whom the Jews would become the most salient target.Dariusz Stola, Kampania antysyjonistyczna w Polsce 1967 - 1968, pp. 7–14

As the Israeli–Arab Six-Day War started on 5 June 1967, the Polish Politburo met the following day and made policy determinations, declaring condemnation of "Israel's aggression" and full support for the "just struggle of the Arab countries". First Secretary Władysław Gomułka and Prime Minister Józef Cyrankiewicz went to Moscow on 9 June for a Middle East conference of communist leaders. The participants deliberated in a depressing atmosphere. The decisions made included the Warsaw Pact's continuation of military and financial support for the Arab states and the breaking of diplomatic relations with Israel, in which only Romania refused to participate.Dariusz Stola, Kampania antysyjonistyczna w Polsce 1967 - 1968, pp. 29–46 A media campaign commenced in Poland and was soon followed by "anti-Israeli imperialism" rallies held in various towns and places of employment. After the government delegation's return to Warsaw, Gomułka, pessimistic and fearful of a possible nuclear confrontation and irritated by the reports of support for Israel among many Polish Jews, on 19 June proclaimed at the Trade Union Congress that Israel's aggression had been "met with applause in Zionist circles of Jews – Polish citizens." Gomułka specifically invited "those who feel that these words are addressed to them" to emigrate, but Edward Ochab and some other Politburo members objected and the statement was deleted before the speech's publication. Gomułka did not issue a call for anti-Jewish personnel purges, but the so-called "anti-Zionist" campaign got underway anyway, supported by his close associates Zenon Kliszko and Ignacy Loga-Sowiński. It was eagerly amplified by General Mieczysław Moczar, minister of internal affairs, by some military leaders who had long been waiting for an opportunity to "settle with the Jews", and by other officials. A list of 382 "Zionists" was presented at the ministry on 28 June and the purge slowly developed, beginning with Jewish generals and other high-ranking officers of the Polish armed forces.Andrzej Leon Sowa, Historia polityczna Polski 1944–1991, pp. 334–336 About 150 Jewish military officers were fired in 1967–1968, including Czesław Mankiewicz, national air defense chief. Minister of Defense Marian Spychalski tried to defend Mankiewicz and by doing so compromised his own position.Dariusz Stola, Kampania antysyjonistyczna w Polsce 1967 - 1968, pp. 69–78 The Ministry of Internal Affairs renewed its proposal to ban the Jewish organizations from receiving foreign contributions from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. This time, unlike on previous occasions, the request was quickly granted by the Secretariat of the PZPR's Central Committee and the well-developed Jewish social, educational and cultural organized activities in Poland faced stiff reductions or even practical liquidation.Dariusz Stola, Kampania antysyjonistyczna w Polsce 1967 - 1968, pp. 47–68

About 200 people lost their jobs and were removed from the party top leadership in 1967, including Leon Kasman, chief editor of Trybuna Ludu, the party's main daily newspaper. Kasman was Moczar's hated rival from the time of the war when he arrived from the Soviet Union and was parachuted into Poland. After March 1968, when Moczar's ministry was finally given the freehand it had long sought, 40 employees were fired from the editorial staff of the Polish Scientific Publishers (PWN). This major state publishing house had produced a number of volumes of the official Great Universal Encyclopedia. Moczar and others protested in the fall of 1967 the supposedly unbalanced treatment of World War II issues, namely stressing Jewish martyrdom and the disproportionate numbers of Jews killed in Nazi extermination camps.

In the words of Polish scholar Włodzimierz Rozenbaum, the Six-Day War "provided Gomułka with an opportunity 'to kill several birds with one stone': he could use an "anti-Zionist" policy to undercut the appeal of the liberal wing of the party; he could bring forward the Jewish issue to weaken the support for the nationalist faction (in the party) and make his own position even stronger..." while securing political prospects for his own supporters.Włodzimierz Rozenbaum, CIAO: Intermarium, National Convention of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, Atlanta, Ga., 8–11 October 1975.

On 19 June 1967, Gomułka warned in his speech: "We don't want an establishment of a fifth column in our country". The sentence was deleted from a published version,Dariusz Stola, Kampania antysyjonistyczna w Polsce 1967 - 1968, p. 274 but such views he repeated and developed further in successive speeches, for example on 19 March 1968. On 27 June 1967, the first secretary characterized Romania's position as shameful, predicted production of nuclear arms by Israel and spoke generally of consequences faced by people who had "two souls and two fatherlands".Dariusz Stola, Kampania antysyjonistyczna w Polsce 1967 - 1968, pp. 277–279 Following Gomułka's anti-Israel and anti-Jewish rhetoric, the security services began screening officials of Jewish origin and looking for 'hidden Zionists' in Polish institutions.

Protest in Warsaw

The outbreak of the March 1968 unrest was seemingly triggered by a series of events in Warsaw, but in reality, it was a culmination of trends accumulating in Poland over several years. The economic situation was deteriorating and a drastic increase in the prices of meat came into effect in 1967. In 1968, the market was destabilized further by rumors of upcoming currency exchange and the ensuing panic. Higher norms were enforced for industrial productivity with wages reduced at the same time. First Secretary Gomułka was afraid of all changes. The increasingly heavy censorship stifled intellectual life, the boredom of stagnation and the mood of hopelessness (lack of career prospects) generated social conflict.Andrzej Leon Sowa, Historia polityczna Polski 1944–1991, p. 346 The disparity between the expectations raised by the Polish October movement of 1956 and the actuality of the "real socialism" life of the 1960s led to mounting frustration.Dariusz Stola, Kampania antysyjonistyczna w Polsce 1967 - 1968, pp. 13–27

At the end of January 1968, after its poor reception by the Central Committee of the ruling PZPR, the government authorities banned the performance of a Romantic play by Adam Mickiewicz called Dziady (written in 1824), directed by Kazimierz Dejmek at the National Theatre, Warsaw. It was claimed that the play contained Russophobic and anti-Soviet references and represented an unduly pro-religion stance. Dziady had been staged 11 times, the last time on 30 January. The ban was followed by a demonstration after the final performance, which resulted in numerous police detentions.Adam Leszczyński, Marzec '68 [March 68]. 7 March 2014. Marzec '68 . wyborcza.pl. Retrieved 10 March 2014. Dejmek was expelled from the party and subsequently fired from the National Theatre. He left Poland and returned in 1973, to continue directing theatrical productions.