Memorandum from the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs to Mr. Michal Glazer

T. Lubaczewski

Having examined the proposed method of financing Jewish emigration from Poland submitted by you, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, refers to its remarks made in March 1937 on this subject and begs to advise you as follows:

The point of issue of your plan is the tacitly accepted postulate of the assimilation of Jewish capital in Poland within the category of 'frozen' funds and the desire to treat such capital in the same way as one releases 'frozen' sums due to other countries in respect to commodity trade or balance of payments operations.

You quite rightly consider the Polish-Palestinian barter-trade clearing system to be an inadequate means and suggest the extension of the principle of exporting such capital in the form of goods by applying it to Jewish populations not resident in Palestine, the United States being particularly envisaged. You propose that this be done in conjunction with the planned liquidation of Jewish property in Poland.

The banking aspect of the plan is a secondary one and requires no mention herein.

The means of effecting this liquidation would be: (a) supplementary export to the United States the receipts from which would serve to finance the emigration; (b) the buying out of Jewish property in Poland by American Poles desirous of returning to the land of their origin.

There can naturally be no fundamental objection to item (b), but no large wave of re-emigration to Poland from the United States can be expected.

The realization of item (a) would require: (1) the erection of a system for supplementary export to the United States in such manner that it would not disorganize Poland's normal export to that market; (2) some arrangement of the mode of payment for the supplementary export to the United States without transferring U.S. dollars to Poland.

Whilst the clearing system in Polish-Palestinian relations assures Poland the advantage of helping to introduce equilibrium into the balance of payments, the proposed method of liquidating Jewish property in Poland by export to other countries has limits which should not be passed. In this case, the same criteria (and objections) find application as in 'thawing out' foreign capital in Poland.

Communicating the above objections, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs begs to inform you that it considers the plan interesting and worthy of closer examination.
No. RE 57/P1/68 4


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