PRYSTOR, JANINA°, deputy in the Polish Sejm; wife of Alexander Prystor (1874–1941), premier of Poland from 1931 to 1933. With the growing influence of the reactionary anti-Jewish elements in leading circles after the death of Marshal Piłsudski (1935), Janina Prystor proposed in 1936 that sheḥitah should be prohibited, claiming that it contradicted Christian moral and religious principles. The proposal had an obvious economic aim for it would have broken the Jewish monopoly on trade in cattle destined for slaughtering. After a struggle in which the Jews boycotted buying meat and strong objections were voiced by all Jewish circles, the proposal, which would have prevented Jews from eating kasher meat, was rejected. After prolonged discussions the government adopted a compromise, allowing limited sheḥitah in areas of dense Jewish population and prohibiting it in districts where the Jewish population was less than 3% of the total. Although intended to reduce political tension, the compromise succeeded in breaking the Jewish livestock monopoly.
H.M. Rabinowicz, The Legacy of Polish Jewry (1965), 179–82; Y. Gruenbaum (ed.), EG, 1 (1953), 116. ADD. BIBLIOGRAPHY: J. Majchrowski et al., Kto byl kim w drugiej Rzeczypospolitej (1994), 404.