Shofar Supplements in Jewish Studies

A Memoir of Interwar Poland

Bernard Goldstein, Marvin S. Zuckerman

• Publisher: Purdue University Press
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781612494470
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Jewish Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Bernard Goldstein's memoir describes a hard world of taverns, toughs, thieves, and prostitutes; of slaughterhouse workers, handcart porters, and wagon drivers; and of fist-and gunfights with everyone from anti-Semites and Communists to hostile police, which is to say that it depicts a totally different view of life in prewar Poland than the one usually portrayed. As such, the book offers a corrective view in the form of social history, one that commands attention and demands respect for the vitality and activism of the generation of Polish Jews so brutally annihilated by the barbarism of the Nazis. In Warsaw, a city with over 300, 000 Jews (one third of the population), Bernstein was the Jewish Labor Bund's "enforcer, " organizer, and head of their militia—the one who carried out daily, on-the-street organization of unions; the fighting off of Communists, Polish anti-Semitic hooligans, and antagonistic police; marshaling and protecting demonstrations; and even settling family disputes, some of them arising from the new secular, socialist culture being fostered by the Bund. Goldstein's is a portrait of tough Jews willing to do battle—worldly, modern individuals dedicated to their folk culture and the survival of their people. It delivers an unparalleled street-level view of vibrant Jewish life in Poland between the wars: of Jewish masses entering modern life, of Jewish workers fighting for their rights, of optimism, of greater assertiveness and self-confidence, of armed combat, and even of scenes depicting the seamy, semi-criminal elements. It provides a representation of life in Poland before the great catastrophe of World War II, a life of flowering literary activity, secular political journalism, successful political struggle, immersion in modern politics, fights for worker rights and benefits, a strong social-democratic labor movement, creation of a secular school system in Yiddish, and a youth movement that later provided the heroic fighters for the courageous Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

CHAPTER 1

I Go Home

Kiev, Ukraine, 1918: The Ukrainian labor parties readied themselves for an armed uprising against the pro-German Skoropadskyi regime.¹

Each of the labor parties created its own armed battle unit. We of the Bund assembled an armed unit of several hundred comrades. I was put in command, becoming a member of the Executive Committee (Ispolkom²) of the uprising.

The Bundist armed unit fought in the center of the city, occupying the quarter between the following streets: Kreshtchatik, Male Vasilkovske, and Fundekleyevske.

The success of the uprising brought the Ukrainian nationalist Vasylyovych Petliura³ to power, and, officially, the various political parties disbanded their armed party detachments. But in fact, every party—including the Bund—kept an organized core of its battle unit intact, just in case, as well as its store of arms.

The joyous mood of the Socialist parties after the uprising didn’t last long. The Petliura government lost no time in turning away from the labor parties that had helped bring it to power.

A telling incident: When Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were murdered in Germany, the Bund committee organized an open meeting to mourn and honor their memories. The Petliura administration forbade the gathering. I went to the offices of the administration to intervene, and to my great surprise met there with an official who had sat with me on Ispolkom just a short time ago. He ultimately withdrew the ban, but it left me with a very unpleasant feeling. Not very long ago we had fought side-by-side for the same goal; now we each of us stood opposed to the other.

The internal situation within the Bund itself also embittered our mood. The Bolsheviks were marching on Ukraine and approaching Kiev. The closer they came, the more our comrades appeared to give themselves over to the pro-Bolshevik view. But this was no longer simply a change of opinion, something we in the Bund were long accustomed to. This shift was something altogether new, and it was the chief cause of our bitterness. The Bundist comrade who became pro-Bolshevik did not simply change his opinion. He suddenly became unrecognizable, an altogether different person. In the factional fight, betrayal, trickery, and disloyalty became his weapons. Painfully we witnessed how the Bund spirit of comradeship, the feeling of belonging to one family, began to dissipate. In its place came distrust and suspicion.

In this situation and in this depressed mood, I attended a party meeting and listened to a report by Comrade Emanuel Nowogrodzki⁴, on a short visit from Warsaw. He talked about the revived Bundist movement in the new, independent Poland, and specifically, in Warsaw. He spoke about how the trade unions, now operating legally, had, as if overnight, branched out and grown. He told about the leading role the Bund played in these trade unions, about the Warsaw Labor Council and the important part the Bund played in that, and about the Bund’s many-branched cultural activities, centering around our Grosser Club.⁵ In passing, he spoke of comrades, the mere mention of whose names brought them vividly to mind for me. These were people with whom I was bound by many unforgettable moments of illegal activity during Czarist times.

Figure 10. Emanuel Nowogrodzki (1947–1961). From the Archives of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York.

The picture that Comrade Emanuel painted captivated me. I imagined it all. I suddenly felt that the place Emanuel was describing was, after all, my home, and I was filled with a longing to return.

After the meeting, my mood, this sudden homesickness, grew even stronger. The report of a revived Bund in Poland sounded to me—here, in Kiev—like an idyll. The more I thought about it, the stronger my inner voice grew: Go home—now! Work in your own hometown Bund! Go where you will be battling with enemies of the working class, not with those who were your comrades only yesterday!

I decided to return to Warsaw. I went to the Kiev Bund offices to give my notice, submitting a report to the committee, and turning over all the bookkeeping items and party materials I had accumulated. I started preparing for the journey. My wife, Lucia, had just recovered from an illness. A very severe influenza epidemic was raging, and Lucia had contracted the disease. She had just started recovering, when we decided to go back home to Warsaw. Travel on the trains at that time was terribly risky for her. She was too weak to attempt such a difficult journey. We began to look for some other, more comfortable way for her to travel the distance, and suddenly, just such an opportunity presented itself.

Felye Kasel—the wife of the Yiddish writer, Dovid Kasel—and her sister, Pola, were living in Kiev at the time. They both worked for a large German company with a branch in Kiev. The company was leaving Kiev and arranging comfortable railroad cars for its staff. These two sisters were Lucia’s close relatives. After much effort they obtained permission for her to travel on this special train with them, so she was able to travel home quite comfortably. I remained in Kiev for a few more weeks, until I was able, as a Polish citizen, to obtain legal travel papers. I then started packing for the trip.

Actually, there was nothing to pack. I was dressed in an old military uniform, a long alpaca, and a pair of boots. Aside from those, I had only some underwear. I also took along a teakettle, a little sugar and tea, a spoon (just in case there was an opportunity to eat something hot), and a piece of soap. That was it. It was not a very heavy load. I did, however, end up carrying quite a heavy load, and one that was not even mine.

Right before my departure, Shuel Kahan, a brother of our comrade Virgili Kahan⁶—a one-time “United,”⁷ now a Bundist—approached me and requested that, since he had heard I was traveling to Warsaw, and since his family members, who were in Lodz, were also traveling back home to Warsaw, would I please help them out with some luggage? I agreed. These people—I forget their names, Silverberg or Silvermintz—had two very heavy valises. I helped by carrying one of their valises as my own luggage. We couldn’t all fit into one railroad car, so I went off by myself with my small bundle and their heavy valise. They sat separately in another compartment.

The journey was difficult. Trains were few and far between and ran irregularly. The individual train cars were also few, unheated, broken down, and packed full of people. Entire families with all their belongings were traveling in all directions, running from city to city, seeking some out-of-the-way, secure spot to settle. When the steam locomotives ran out of fuel, as happened often, the trains would stop in the middle of nowhere. The stokers would run over to a nearby forest, chop some wood, feed the locomotive, and then proceed a bit farther. Trains would often have to stand waiting for a long time. If the passengers were lucky, another train would come they could transfer to and continue their journey. We dragged on in this way from Kiev to Warsaw for ten days. In normal times such a journey would have taken around 24 hours.

The family whose valise I was carrying took very good care of me the whole time. They would often come into my railroad car to see how I was doing, bringing me a piece of bread and some tea. After a time, this attentiveness seemed somehow excessive. When we arrived at Otwock, near Warsaw, I had to leave the train for a moment. The train started to move, and I was unable to jump back on in time. Seeing this, the family became frantic. I shouted at them to wait at the next station, and I would join them with the next train (trains were running frequently from Otwock to Warsaw). I did in fact catch the next train, and there they were, waiting for me at the next station. They thanked me profusely for my help and asked me to please accompany them to the hotel.

We got into a droshky⁸ and were on our way.

I was greatly astonished to see they were going to the Hotel Bristol, the most elegant hotel in Warsaw. They checked into a suite of rooms. I went with them. They opened the valises, and I grew dizzy at the sight. The valise they had asked me to carry for them had a false bottom, in which lay gold and jewelry and other expensive luxury items. They offered me several hundred marks for my trouble. I answered that if I were willing to be paid, my due would be half the value of the items I carried, but that I wanted nothing from them. I left their hotel room without a goodbye.

For a long time afterward I could not forgive myself for taking such a dangerous mission so lightly. The inspectors on the trains were then very strict, especially with evacuees from Russia. Had they caught me smuggling such a valise, I would have been in a great deal of trouble.

Notes

1.Skoropadskyi (1873–1945), aristocrat, decorated Russian and Ukrainian general; in 1918 led a coup d’etat, sanctioned by the occupying German army, against the Ukrainian People’s Republic, becoming the reactionary, autocratic leader of the Ukraine.—MZ

2.Russian abbreviation for Ispolnitelniy Komitet, “Executive Committee,” the lead organization consisting of representatives of all the Ukranian labor parties, as well as the illegal, military party cadres.—MZ

3.Vasylyovych Petliura (1879–1926), publicist, writer, journalist, Ukrainian politician, statesman of the Ukrainian People’s Republic, and national leader who led Ukraine’s struggle for independence (1918–1921) following the Russian Revolution of 1917. On May 25, 1926, Petliura was slain with five shots from a handgun in broad daylight in the center of Paris by the Jewish-Russian anarchist, Sholem Schwartzbard, to avenge Ukranian pogroms against the Jews.—MZ

4.Emanuel Nowogrodzki (1891–1967): General Secretary of the Polish Bund’s Central Committee. In America by chance in 1939 when the war broke out. Founded the Bund Representation and the Bund Coordinating Committee in America. Editor and writer for the Bund’s monthly in New York, Undzer Tsayt. Author of The Ghetto Speaks (Warsaw, 1936?); Individual, Rank and File, and Leader (Warsaw, 1934); Henryk Erlich and Victor Alter (1951); and The Jewish Labor Bund in Poland 1915–1939 (2001), later translated into Polish as Żydowska Partia Robotnica Bund w Polsce 1915–1939 (2005).—MZ

5.Named after Bronislaw Grosser (1883–1912), a Bundist writer and theorist on Jewish nationalism. A lawyer by profession, he was recognized as one of the party’s most articulate defenders of Jewish national-cultural autonomy. Defining himself as a Polish-Jewish Socialist whose task it was to defend the interests of the Jewish workers in Poland, he became a Bundist legend, with several cultural, educational, and health institutions established in his name in interwar Poland, including the Bund’s renowned Bronislaw Grosser Library in Warsaw.—MZ

6.Borukh Mordkhe Kahan (Virgili), 1883–1936; beloved Bundist activist and labor leader; also active in organizing and supporting the Yiddish secular school movement; 20,000 Jewish workers attended his funeral in Vilnius.—MZ

7.United: A member of the Fareynikte Yidishe Sotsyalistishe Arbeter Partey (United Jewish Socialist Workers Party), a unification (fareynikung) in 1917 of the Zionist Socialist Workers Party and the Jewish Socialist Workers Party. The Uniteds, like the Bund, believed in fighting for civil rights and cultural autonomy in Poland and the Ukraine, but also, unlike the Bund, in seeking to create a Jewish state in any available territory (not necessarily in Palestine).—MZ

8.Droshky: a low, four-wheeled, horse-drawn, open, passenger carriage.—MZ

CHAPTER 2

Back in Warsaw

Upset, I left the hotel and started walking. With my small bundle in my hand, I walked in the direction of Nowolipie 7, the editorial offices of Lebns-Fragn, the Bund’s daily newspaper. As I walked, I looked around at the streets of Warsaw. They made an awful impression. Warsaw was somehow darker, greyer, the streets neglected, the houses shabby, gloomy. I had not seen her since the prewar years. The city appeared to be terribly neglected.

Now I found myself at the end of Długa Street. I trembled. At this spot was the jail, the so-called “Arsenal.” Over four years ago they had led me out of there in chains, when I, together with Yankl Levine and several hundred other political prisoners, were exiled deep into Russia. On this street my wife, Lucia, had waited for me, along with Comrade Mania Majerowicz (now Mania Mayer, in New York), Czilba Krisztal (now in Melbourne, Australia), and others. Here is where we left Medem¹ behind, sick and in the hospital. Now I pass that same “Arsenal,” free, unshackled, and without fear. It is different now, Warsaw.

I turned down the little way from the crossing and was already at Nowolipie 7, at the Lebns-Fragn building. I went up to the fifth floor, entering the editorial offices....

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Translator’s Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Bernard Goldstein: A Chronology
• Translator’s Note
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: I Go Home
• Chapter 2: Back in Warsaw
• Chapter 3: Praga
• Chapter 4: The Seven Lions
• Chapter 5: The First of May Demonstration in Praga, 1920
• Chapter 6: Pogrom at the Praga Bund Club
• Chapter 7: Janek Jankelewicz
• Chapter 8: The Cracow Convention
• Chapter 9: A Hail of Persecutions
• Chapter 10: Illegal Work—Once Again
• Chapter 11: The Danzig Convention
• Chapter 12: Coming to the Defense of the Movement
• Chapter 13: Organizing the Bund Militia
• Chapter 14: The Communists and the Underworld
• Chapter 15: The 1922 Election Campaign
• Chapter 16: Unifying the Trade Union Movement
• Chapter 17: The Slaughterers Union
• Chapter 18: Three Slaughterer Dynasties
• Chapter 19: The Transport Workers Union: Back Porters
• Chapter 20: Back Porter Types
• Chapter 21: Rope and Handcart Porters
• Chapter 22: The Food Workers Union
• Chapter 23: The Bakers Union
• Chapter 24: Bagel Bakers and Peddlers
• Chapter 25: A Day in a Slaughterhouse
• Chapter 26: Jewish and Polish Meat Workers
• Chapter 27: At Parties and Celebrations
• Chapter 28: Resistance: The First of May Demonstration, 1923
• Chapter 29: Struggles over the Saturday Edition of the Folkstsaytung
• Chapter 30: Commissar Cechnowski
• Chapter 31: Kalmen the Bootmaker’s Death
• Chapter 32: The Piłsudski Coup, the PPS, and the FRACs
• Chapter 33: The FRAC Militia
• Chapter 34: A New Gang of Communist Strong-Arms
• Chapter 35: Communists Shoot at a Workers Convention
• Chapter 36: Morgnshtern
• Chapter 37: The Labor Sports Olympiad in Prague
• Chapter 38: Ominous Dark Clouds on All Sides
• Chapter 39: Concerns about Self-Defense
• Chapter 40: A Wave of Wildcat Strikes
• Chapter 41: An Attempted Murderous Assault on Me
• Chapter 42: In Zakopane
• Chapter 43: Attacks on a Night School
• Chapter 44: The Medem Sanitarium Attacked
• Chapter 45: Another Attempt on My Life
• Chapter 46: Krochmalna Street
• Chapter 47: Fat Yosl
• Chapter 48: Khaskele
• Chapter 49: “Malematke”
• Chapter 50: Yukele
• Chapter 51: Troubles with Cultural Awakening
• Chapter 52: The Militia Comes to the Aid of Bundist Members on the Warsaw City Council
• Chapter 53: The First of May Demonstrations Under the Piłsudski Regime
• Chapter 54: A Joint First of May Demonstration with the PPS
• Chapter 55: In Red Vienna
• Chapter 56: Street Fights with the Polish Hitlerites
• Chapter 57: The Battles Over the Boycotting of Jewish Businesses
• Chapter 58: The “Ghetto Benches” in the Universities
• Chapter 59: My Son at the Skif Camp
• Chapter 60: The Bakers Union Turns Away from the Communists; The Murder of Neuerman
• Chapter 61: Nathan (Nokhem) Chanin’s Visit to Warsaw
• Chapter 62: Three Bloody Attacks in One Day
• Chapter 63: Temptations and Doubts
• Chapter 64: Shloyme Mendelson
• Chapter 65: In the Trap of the “Shetshke Gang”
• Chapter 66: The FRACs Try to Take Over the Newspaper Deliverers Union
• Chapter 67: The FRAC Transport Workers Union and Itshe “Zbukh”
• Chapter 68: Returning Stolen Goods to a Leather Merchant
• Chapter 69: Among the Retail Clerks; Another Worker Murdered
• Chapter 70: Auctioning Off the Folkstsaytung
• Chapter 71: A Defeat for the Priest, Father Trzeciak
• Chapter 72: Przytyk and the Protest-Strike on March 17, 1936
• Chapter 73: The Pogrom in Minsk-Mazowiecki
• Chapter 74: Antisemitic Hooligans Kill a Jewish Child during a First of May Demonstration
• Chapter 75: Oenerowcy Leaders Are Taught a Lesson
• Chapter 76: Guarding the Folkstsaytung
• Chapter 77: The Pogrom in Brisk
• Chapter 78: The Bund’s Warsaw Locales
• Chapter 79: A Bombing of the Bund Offices—And Our Answer to the Oenerowcy
• Chapter 80: An Oenerowcy Attempt to Murder Comrade Henryk Erlich
• Chapter 81: December 18, 1938
• Chapter 82: A Final Look at Our Youth
• Glossary of Terms, Names, and Acronyms
• References
• Index