Immediately following
These were not merely local or
sporadic sprees on the part of a people overcome with their newfound
independence. Shortly thereafter, there was a rash of bulletins reporting on
pogroms breaking out across the country: in Lemberg, Psczymisczyl, Sambor,
*
The common Polish folk, town peasants and urban working people, took to
saying “Yak Polska wiebuchala--“My, how
With the exception of Lemberg
itself, where the population was a mixture of Poles, Ukrainians, and Jews, the
Ukrainians constituted the large majority in that part of
The Polish state fell into the
hands of the reactionary, nationalist parties and clerics, chauvinists and old
guard bureaucrats.
The political situation was no
better. The young administration remained unconsolidated. Deluded by a poorly
conceived democracy,
and
factions and their power-hungry leaders. The question of the national
minorities demanded a comprehensive solution. The government and its chief
leaders issued an accounting, establishing that those ethnic and regional
minorities living between the Soviet borders to the East and Southeast and the
German borders to the West could not be abandoned. Parenthetically, these
groups did little to conceal their contemptuous attitude towards
The
government leaders were oblivious to
The period of the Bolshevik war in 1919-1920 was a time of great suffering. Frame-ups were common,
It was alleged that Jews threw boiling water
from the windows at Polish soldiers, that they spied for the
Bolsheviks,
that Jews snitched or that they were responsible for military defeats. The
agitated military and civilian masses took out their anger on the Jews,
hundreds of innocent victims died, thousands were injured, and countless others
were left permanently disabled. Women were violated,
Jewish properties were plundered, burnt, and destroyed. Jews were rounded up
for forced labor, were beaten, and humiliated. The war was engineered on two
fronts: setbacks on the military front were championed by the Poles as
"victory" on the "Jewish front".
Not a day went by when Haynt,
censors notwithstanding, failed to report about the horrific pogroms, looting and assaults that
the military, together with the local peasants and hooligans, committed against
the Jews. During the Polish March to Kiev and thereafter, when the Bolsheviks entered Warsaw during their counter-offensive
and even later, as the Polish army repelled the Russians, the pogroms and looting continued not only in the
territories spanning the military lines on the front, but in all of Poland,
including Warsaw, Jews were incessantly beaten and robbed. Haynt volume 109 (May 13, 1909) published the official communiqué
from the official Polish telegraph agency "PAT", that by order of the
Prime Minister a special commission was to be created to investigate the events
in the Kolbusiev, Rapshitz, and Zheshoveh districts (western Galicia) which were
"somewhat", according to the communiqué, "hostile to their
Jewish population". No one ever found out what the commission's findings
were and, in fact, what they had concluded. Two separate, bloody, pogroms occurred during those horrible days, weeks and
months that were uniquely violent and took the lives of over 100 innocent Jews.
These were the Vilna and Lida
pogroms.
The pogrom in Vilna lasted three days, during Chol Hamoyed, Pesach
(Passover), 1919. The Polish Army entered Vilna on April 19 and two days later,
on the seventh day of Pesach, the army entered the neighborhood of the talented
writer Isaac-Mayer Devenishsky (1878-1919), who published under the psudonym
A. Vayter. He was staying at the home of the literary-historian and critic
Shmuel
into the building, violently
dragged Vayter out in the street and shot him.
The majority of the arrested Jews were held in isolation in
Lida and
The second pogrom, which was as bloody and
vicious as that in Vilna, occurred in Lida. 35 Jews were slaughtered
there, according to a report published in Haynt
(No. 99),
The news of the pogrom in Sczezhov was published in Haynt (No. 104),
The accounts of the mass murders filtered into
In order to mobilize the Polish people to free their homeland, which was in danger of being swallowed up by the Bolsheviks, a coalition government was formed with the peasant-leader Vincenti Vitos (1874-1945) as Premier and leader of the Polish Socialist Party (PPS), and Ignace Dashinski (1866-1936) Vice Premier. This same government of National Unity, as it was called, was not only incapable of preventing the assaults and looting, and of protecting the Jewish population, but actually stood by as thousands of Jewish academics who had freely left their studies and, en masse, volunteered to serve and defend the government during these perilous times, were placed in concentration camps for no apparent reason
and for indefinite duration. The
young Jewish patriots, officers and enlisted men were pulled out of the
military ranks and interned in a specially created camp in Yablona, near
The order to isolate Jewish military personnel came from
the General Staff in early July, 1920. When the Bolsheviks reached the outskirts of
while friendly to the Bolsheviks and expressing hostility to the Poles. These developments contributed to the murder and looting during
that period. Under the prevailing conditions of strict censorship, when,
as documented in Chapter 6, Haynt was
routinely confiscated and on occasion closed down, the situation of the
publication was very fragile. On the one hand, the paper strived to inform the
outside world of the situation in
In Polish society the reaction to the Yablona camp was varied. There were several dozen
intellectuals who campaigned vigorously to free the detained Jews and to punish
those who issued the edict. The PPS sponsored press also criticized the edict.
At the same time, the opposition press had a fresh opportunity to incite. Just
as in the case of the "blood accusation" in
The camp in Yablona remains one of the forgotten chapters in
Polish-Jewish history. One could search the Polish literature in vain to find
information about it. Polish historians, researchers, and memoirists are silent
and the matter still begs for a thorough investigation to uncover the
behind-the-scenes intrigues surrounding the camp. A retrospective beginning may
lie in two articles in a Polish Immigrant journal, published in Paris
("Historic Volumes", 1971). After half a century the "deadly
silence" surrounding the camp in Yablona may be broken.
Morris Addus, one of the former detainees at Yablona, writes that in his memoirs ("Pomientiki"), Vincetti-Vitos, the former Polish Premier, chronicled his career in two thick volumes without making a single reference to the camp that was built when he was head of the government. Addus decided, therefore, to recount what he and other Jewish inmates went through in Yablona
Terror and the uncertainty of their fate left the detainees
in disarray. They were routinely terrorized and the barracks were set on fire
at night. The fear was so great that the inmates enlisted guards to make sure
that their quarters were not set on fire in their sleep. The food was awful and
insufficient and if the men did not starve to death it was because of their
mothers and sisters who brought food into the camp. The stress, despair, and
deep disappointment of the young Jewish inmates gushed forth in the song
"We of Yablona Camp" composed by an anonymous author.
This was a black, sarcastic, paraphrased version of the hymn "We of the
First Brigade" from Pilsudski's Legion and it was sung to the same tune.
The mournful tone of the Yiddish protest song stood in marked contrast to the
rousing march music of the Legion version. The camp song became popular amongst
the Jewish masses. The Polish Jews never had the opportunity to voice their
discontent. This dirge of bitterness, from grief to despair, which emerged from
Yablona, accurately reflected the feelings of the greater Jewish population
("Jewish History", pp. 173-177).
In the same issue of "Jewish History" (pp. 178-200)
Adam Tchialkascz (1901-), the former deputy and leader
of the PPS, put out an article in which he dismisses the Yablona matter. He marginalizes the camp and the
detention of Jewish military personnel to a minor
"episode that lasted for a mere 25 days", maintaining that it should
not be overblown in the same way as the pogrom in Lemberg ought not be overstated.
Tchialkascz's article is long and polemic. He writes about
other "episodes" that caused consternation amongst Polish Jews in the
same spirit as Yablona and he trifles over the transgressions and
violations that victimized the Jews during the twenty years since
It was typical of the Polish Socialist, a leader of the
Worker's Party that clearly supported progressive people, a democrat and a
liberal, that he entitled his article "The Jewish Quarter
in
Yablona Camp". That is, as known, a term
appropriated by the Nazis for the ghettos of
In his accounting, did Adam
Tchialkascz ever conceive of the analogies that the title of his article would
call to mind amongst Jews when he wrote about the Yablona "episode" as well as the others?*
It is fitting to conclude this
account of the internment of Jewish military personnel in the
Yablona camp with
the epilogue with which Yitchak Greenbaum ended his memoirs in
"After considerable
intervention and negotiation, we received the cynical response that the
generals made a mistake. And in their scornful explanation they went so far as
to say that they had believed they were doing the Jews a favor, since so many
Jews would otherwise have lost their lives on the front and, as a result of the
internments, their lives were saved. Therefore, they continued, we ought not take issue with the Army General Chief of Staff. The
shocking cynicism of that response devastated us. We refused to listen to any
more of these impudent excuses. After several discussions, we realized that,
given their odious approach, they assumed our efforts would lead nowhere and it
had already been determined that this distasteful matter would go away."
The period of the Bolshevik campaign was accompanied by the painful,
humiliating "game" of the soldiers who enthusiastically amused
themselves
_______
*The
strategy of isolating "undesirable elements" was devised not by the
Polish authorities or the Bolsheviks or Nazis. It is
actually of British origin. During the military campaign against the Dutch
farmers (Boers) (1899-1902) in
__________
by throwing Jews off of moving
trains and cutting off their beards and sidelocks. Countless Jews were left
disabled for life. To protect themselves against assault religious Jews wrapped
scarves around their faces to hide their beards. But that did not really help,
and even non-Jewish Poles with beards were victimized. In addition, the
"Paznatchikehs"(military divisions from the
The Jewish representatives in Parliament could not help
much. They were able to launch investigations into the incidents and to draft
resolutions requesting that the government take steps to end the orgy (of
lawlessness), and they did, in fact, do this, even though this was no small
matter. However, to initiate such procedures they had to have a certain number
of signatories and because they were such a small minority they had to approach
the Polish Parliament members. But the Polish members, including the PPS,
didn't exactly rush
to sign
and endorse the measures. The Jewish members recount the following concerning
the report in the House of Parliament:
"The introduction of these
measures in Parliament was no simple matter…. It was difficult to obtain the
necessary number of signatures…even the Socialists often refused to support
Jewish motions, except for those who were already amongst the signatories.
Accordingly, such motions were not introduced because of their refusal to
endorse actions concerning the pogrom in Kalisce…." (p. 9).
In fact, these motions did not
even generate significant parliamentary activity. The Jews were typically
either brushed off as dismissive alibis or as disturbances that were
misrepresented, as opposed to what actually happened. On an almost daily basis,
the pages of Haynt carried alarming
accounts of unspeakable terror and brutality but the paper was regularly
confiscated under the pretext that the accounts were false and cast aspersions
on the good name of the Polish government across the world.
Thus the Jewish people were under
constant strain. The calamities, economic hardships, and vicious hatred persisted
with furious consistency. Jews lived in an atmosphere of anarchy, rife with
robbery, bloodshed, and administrative and judicially sanctioned
discrimination. Stories were concocted about a covert government
("Anonymova Mazartsvo" in Polish) that had designs to take down the
Polish Republic, or that Jews wanted their own state within the Polish nation
("Panstwo vo Pantstvieh" in Polish).
The second half of the 1930's,
beginning in 1936, witnessed a renewal of bloody aggression and destruction in
Jewish communities across the country. Pshitik, Minsk-Mazowiescke, Brisk, and
Czeztochowe became the symbols of Jewish suffering. But that was not enough for
the anti-Semites. One Adam Dobaczyski, a landed citizen of Mishlenicia, a town
in
Chaim Finkelstein went to Mishlenicia and wrote a detailed
account of this incident, unimaginable even for
reprinted a major portion of that article. A number
of newspapers called for punishing the participants of the "Mishlenicia
invasion", as they termed Dobaczyski's anarchistic action. The "Ehndekishe"
press heralded Dobaczyski as a hero and patriot who fell into despair, because
the government did not act forcefully enough against the Jews.
Pshitik was at the forefront during the days when the
government adopted a strategy of casting blame for the pogroms on the Jews exclusively. Those killed, maimed,
and beaten were really those guilty of deprecatory acts while the robbers,
assailants, and attackers were depicted as martyrs and victims of the Jews.
After the Pshitik pogrom, where two Jews were killed
and tens were injured, several Jews were arrested and sentenced to hard time.
In other cases, for example the 1936 pogrom in Minsk-Mazowiescke, the accused
criminals were either quickly released or sentenced to short terms, inclusive
of the periods served between arrest and sentencing, then released.
The pogrom in Minsk-Mazowiescke broke out after Yehuda
Chaskelewitz, a mildly retarded man, shot and killed an Army sergeant.
Chaskelewitz was sentenced to death and in its verdict the court stated that
Jews were Communists and enemies of
In Brisk, the pogrom broke out immediately prior to Shavuoth, 1937. The catastrophe was unbelievable. Several tens of Jews were severely brutalized and beaten, practically all Jewish shops and hundreds of houses, synagogues, schools, orphanages were looted and destroyed. As in the days of Czarist Russia, the town was covered with feathers from torn up bedding that the hooligans dragged out from Jewish homes. One of the maimed died from his wounds. To protect themselves from the looters, some of the Poles in Brisk set out crosses and holy pictures in the windows with signs "Christians reside here" and "This is a Christian store". The pogrom lasted six hours and neither the police nor the civil authorities
raised a finger.
The news from Brisk alarmed the Jewish public. Haynt dispatched Moshe Layzerovitch to
report the events. As a native Brisker, he had friends and relatives there who
helped him in his investigation and he called in and reported extensively. The
police had him arrested, accusing him of inciting the Jewish masses to riot
against the Christian population. He was imprisoned for two days and, upon
release, he was ordered to leave town immediately.
Following the Brisk pogrom and as a protest against the pogroms and riots in the country, a general strike was
proclaimed by Polish Jewry. Jewish shops closed down, mass meetings were held,
and the effect on the "Jewish Street" was great, but nothing really
changed. Bloody attacks, and anti-Semitic hate accompanied by cries for expulsion
("Zhidzhe do Palestineh"; "Jews to
Translated by Pam Singer
The economic war with the Jews was carried out with the same
ruthlessness as the physical terror. The slogan called for freeing the Polish
nation from the “Jewish exploiters”. The ultimate aim was to establish a Polish
middle-class out of the ruin of Jewish manufacturers, shop-keepers, grocers,
workers. The government created state-run monopolies on alcohol, tobacco, salt
and matches. But as soon as “statism”, as the monopoly system was called, was
introduced, Jews were thrown out of their positions in the state-monopoly
factories. Polish workers, managers and directors were installed in their
place. They were not short of other, equally radical, methods of economic
annihilation.
In January, 1921 Sunday was declared a compulsory day of
closure for businesses. Haynt
calculated that Jews who wanted to observe the Sabbath and Jewish holidays had
to close their businesses for 134 days a year. Non-Jews only had to close up on
62 days a year. Not only was this law introduced to ruin the Jews economically,
it was also intended to undermine religious practice and traditions of Polish
Jews.
The Jewish Deputies did everything they could to combat this
law. They called upon the Polish Deputies and the government not to ruin the
Jews. Their words fell on deaf ears. The Polish Deputies and the Jewish
socialists from the Polish Socialist Party united and supported the Sunday
closing law.
After the vote was taken and recognising the prevailing mood
within the Sejm, Isaac Greenbaum bitterly exclaimed to the Polish Deputies,
“You have just lost Lemberg and Vilna”. At that time the eastern borders were
not well-defined -- the coalition government only recognised Vilna for
Taxes were used as a method of reducing Jewish business
influence. Polish business leaders had never demonstrated any particular skills
in establishing healthy foundations to
On
At the same time the boycott movement effected
Jewish trade a great deal. The government subsidised the Polish middle-class
very generously. Private undertakings were set up, formally registered as
co-operatives, and they were supported with massive subsidies. Polish
shop-keepers and tradesmen got cheap credit from the national bank. Jews had to
find private sources and paid high interest. Many Jewish firms had to close.
Tens of thousands of workers were suddenly left with no income. The more
enterprising went out into the world with wives and children. Many went to
The economic crusade against Jews received a fresh impetus in 1936 after Prime Minister General Dr. Felicjan Slawoj Skladkowski, (1885 – 1962) declared in the Sejm that, while the government is against attacks, the economic battle (with Jews) was “owszem” (acceptable). Until that time, the economic war against the Jews was carried out by the Polish business community of its own accord, without any government involvement. The government played no official role in the economic war against the Jews. It enforced economic restrictions under the mantle of laws and codes of practice which, on the surface, applied to everyone, but in reality sought to undermine the economic basis of the Jewish population. The “owszem” declaration became the order of the day, a foretaste of an even sharper course against Jews. In 1937 Colonel Adam Koc, the leader and theorist of the regime included in his speech about the goals of the regime the task of completely sidelining the Jews from the Polish economy (see below).
The government rarely ordered goods from Jewish businesses. It would rather pay higher prices for inferior conditions from Polish businesses than give Jews the business. After “owszem” they did not deal with Jews at all. Jewish shopkeepers and manufacturers formed bogus partnerships with influential people within the regime who, on paper, were the heads. That way they got orders from the army, police, railway, civil administration. Those chiefs never got their hands dirty and took huge kickbacks while the Jews did all the work.
The fatal results of this extermination campaign came soon
enough. In the Haynt Jubilee Book of
1908-1938, Dr. Philip Freeman (1901 – 1960) published a major work,
“The up-to-date history of Jews in
Haynt dedicated a
lot of space to economic and financial questions. In 1918 the first one started
systematically writing about the businessman Henech Eish (1890 - ?). Once a week Haynt devoted
a whole side to news and reports about commerce and trade, about prices,
seasonal forecasts, and so forth. Eish worked for Haynt until 1921, when he left the newspaper and opened his own
business for rain boots and raincoats in
Senator Fishel Rothenshtreich (1882 – 1931) wrote regularly about taxes, financial legislation and new economic projects. As a member of the Senate’s Finance Commission, he was familiar with the government’s economic plans, so was able to use his articles to advise about new evil decrees against Jews.
Moishe Mark (1909 -- now living in
*Major shopping Street in
**American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, Inc. (JDC)
He came to the drastic conclusion that Polish Jews would
have to seek new ways of making a living and to find radical ways of rebuilding
the Jewish economic situation. In
Economic articles in Haynt
were also published by Gedalia Weisbord (1890 – 1943). He mainly concentrated
on issues concerning small entrepreneurs. He perished during the second
Chapter 17 (“The Jewish Salvation
Committee”) and the last paragraph of Chapter 19 deal with Haynt’s initiatives on the situation of financial help for Jews who
were uprooted from the economic life of
When Poland was resurrected almost all Jewish judges,
railway employees, prominent workers in the finance industry and other
government employees in Galicia, where they occupied government positions
during the Austro-Hungarian Empire, were thrown out. (In Congress
In his aforementioned work in the Haynt Jubilee Book, Dr. Friedman says that, out of the
almost 1,700 professors in
The lot of the Jewish student youth was bitter. According to the figures that Dr. Friedman presents in the Jubilee Book, there were 8,228 Jewish high school students out of 35,000 in 1921-22, i.e. 24%. Fifteen years later in 1936-37, there were no more than 5,700 Jewish students out of 48,200 – about 11% (page 138).
There was no actual law limiting Jews’ access to higher education. Individual high schools imposed their own discretionary entry limits from year to year. As a rule the number was generally small and the unofficial “numerus clausus” diminished from year to year to “numerus nullus”.
Very few Jews got accepted into the “practical” faculties
such as medicine, dentistry, law or engineering. It was a bit easier for Jews
to study the humanities which in
The smallest number of Jews were taken on within the Faculty of Medicine. In his article, “The pauperisation of the Jewish masses”, printed in the Haynt Jubilee Book of 1908-1938 (page 150) Ya’akov Leshtsinski says that in the academic year 1923-24 Jews represented 30.2% of the students in the medical faculties in Poland, which was more or less average of the urban Jewish population. But in the academic year 1937-38 there was barely 8.7% of Jewish medical students. In the academic year 1921-22, 352 Jewish students studied dentistry, but in 1937-38 there were no more than 82 Jews in all of the dentistry schools. The few individuals who were accepted into medicine
did not have it easy. For example:
Edward Lott (1884-1944), the anatomy professor at the
A delegation from the Union of Jewish medical students went to see Professor Lott. They did not have a friendly welcome. The Professor argued that according to Jewish law, it is forbidden to disturb a corpse. Therefore, Jewish students would no longer receive Christian cadavers for autopsies. If they wanted to continue with their studies they would have to provide their own cadavers. Moishe Kleynboym, the Official from the Union of Jewish medical students, retorted that the university was obliged to provide students with the necessary resources and materials for their studies. Students were not required to provide their own chemicals or microscopes, therefore they could not be expected to provide their own dead bodies. Kleynboym put it this way: “You, Professor, are the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, and are responsible for ensuring that your Jewish students have the same opportunities as all the other students.”
Professor Lott did not carry on the discussion with the delegation, but two days later the order was dropped.
Jews were forced to study in an atmosphere of hostility and terror. Polish students actively took part in the attacks in the streets and carried on the same way at the Jewish academics as in High School. A predominant section of the professors sympathised with them, and even turned a blind eye.
In the years that the Polish government became racist,
reactionary Polish students put forward a demand that Jewish students must sit
separately on the left-hand side during lectures. Jewish students repudiated
this demand. However small their number amongst the thousands of Polish
students, they still stood firmly against this. This caused serious clashes,
resulting in fatalities. The Jews, however, did not give way and during the
lectures they either stood or sat on the floor along the walls. To be fair it
has to be said that there were professors who were against this “bench ghetto”,
as the “left-hand” benches were called. A few dozen signed a declaration of
protest which was printed as a leaflet. In the
At the beginning of the academic year in autumn, it was a
school “custom” for Polish students to attack the Jewish students. Fights used
to break out in the Universities and Polytechnics in
During the early years of the new Polish regime, the anti-Semites proposed the abolition of the “Shekhite”. Just as with the Sunday compulsory closure law, the aim was not only to deal Jews a hard economic blow, but also to assault the vast majority of Polish Jews who kept a kosher kitchen for religious, traditional or health reasons.
The first formal proposition to abolish “shekhite” was
introduced into the Sejm in May 1923. The movers of the motion were two members
of the virulently anti-Semitic Christian National Party, Deputy Father Adam
Virembovski, and Dr. Tadeusz Dimovski. The latter was woefully infamous for his
anti-Semitic activities from his time as a city councillor in
and chief directors of the organization
“Rozvoi” in
“Rosvoi” set up a massive propaganda machine with newspapers, journals, pamphlets, appeals and placards. Just as Dimovski himself and his followers preached this at mass meetings, the printed material called for a campaign against the “Jewish yoke”, against the “Jewish flood” against the Jewish “bloodsuckers” and “Exploiters”. They illustrated the printed material with Jewish caricatures, just as the Nazis did later. A number of Jewish business were ruined, a number of Jewish lives were lost as a result of the “Rozvoi” campaign.
Dimovski and his followers were too hasty. In 1923 the
Polish regime was not yet ready to introduce the anti-“shekhite” legislation.
The land was barely surviving economically. They had to borrow from other
countries, which were not well-disposed towards
The main agitator was a priest, Stanislaw Trzeciak, (1873 - ?). These days no one remembers his name. But for many years he was very threatening to Jews. There was a rumour that he was of Jewish descent, but very few anti-Semites could match him for hatred towards Jews and Jewishness. He delivered viciously anti-Semitic sermons in churches and at mass meetings, incited superstitious house watchmen, ignorant servants, all sorts of shady characters in towns, and peasants and farm labourers in the villages. They swallowed the priest’s words and after his sermons, took out their enflamed mood on the Jews. Wherever he showed his face there was mayhem directed against Jews. He travelled around often and extensively, the length and breadth of the land.
Trzeciak presented himself as an expert in Talmud. In
reality he was an ignoramus. This enemy of the Jews drew his “knowledge” from
anti-Semitic brochures with which Hitler’s
Dr. Tadeuzs Zaderecki from Lemberg, a renowned Polish author
and genuine scholar of the Talmud, often branded Trzeciak a charlatan and an
ignoramus, a falsifier of Jewish religious texts. In an interview with Haynt’s correspondent, B. Tsegrovski in
Lemberg, printed in Haynt on
Father Trzeciak did not make much of Dr. Zaderecki’s revelations, and continued with his incitement, and called upon the regime to abolish “shekhite”. Janina Pristor (1881-1975) came to his assistance. Her husband, Colonel Alexander Pristor (1874 – 1941), a close collaborator of Marshall Pilsudski was the Premier and then the President of the Senate. His wife was a Deputy in the Sejm. She herself had been campaigning for the abolition of “shekhite” and quoted Trzeciak’s brochure: “Ritual slaughter in light of the Bible and the Talmud”, which he put out in 1935.
Doctor Hillel Seidman (1915-),
today in
in
The convincing arguments made a great impression also in the
Polish scientific world, but that didn’t keep the Jew-baiting [“yidnfreserish”
is much more vivid] couple from continuing their dogged opposition to ritual
slaughter. These particular partners, the ignorant and Jew-baiting charlatan,
the plagiarist and forger in priest’s garb, who was publicly unmasked as
Hitler’s agent in
Haynt on 25 May
1937 reported that statistics from the Agriculture Ministry showed that the
consumption of meat during the first four months of the limitations on ritual
slaughter dropped by 25% and it was expected that in May the consumption of
meat would fall to 40%, since there wasn’t enough kosher meat and the Jewish
population wouldn’t buy non-kosher meat. But the government did not consider
that and three days later,
That still didn’t satisfy the anti-Semites. In extreme secrecy, Alexander Haftka [?] (1894-1964), the
Agent [?] for Jewish Matters in the Interior Ministry, warned the Deputy Dr.
Emil Samerstein in the spring of 1937 that the government had decided to ban
kosher ritual slaughter [the redundancy is in the Yiddish, so I left it] entirely.
A bill would be introduced in the Diet [Polish Parliament] and there was not
the slightest doubt that ritual slaughter would be abolished.
The upsetting news of the forthcoming edict spread widely and Haynt warned of the danger that threatened tens of thousands of families with the loss of their livelihood. The trade in cattle, hides, leather
and leather goods, in meat and meat products for use
locally and for export abroad, was one of the most important economic
activities among Polish Jews, the means of subsistence for a large part of the
Jewish population. There could be no doubt that Jews would be eliminated from
the meat business, as merchants and as manufacturers, when the ritual slaughter
edict came into effect, and that the Jewish workers and slaughter houses,
tanneries and leather finishers would remain without work as had happened with
[other?] monopolized branches of the economy.
In the winter of 1938 there was a meeting of rabbis in
Polish Jewry participated solidly in the boycott. Many Jews
who didn’t keep kosher didn’t buy meat during the days of the boycott; Jewish
butcher shops and sausage factories closed; and in Jewish restaurants no meat
was served.
To help Jewish housewives cook meatless dinners, the School for Jewish Servant Girls [I presume that is a proper name; Yiddish could use capital letters] in Warsaw took upon itself the preparation of lists of meatless foods (by the way, the school itself was a sign of the times and the severe economic crisis among Jews: its purpose was to provide professional training to unemployed Jewish women as cooks and servants). The school prepared food cards showing how many calories a person needed and which food items, apart from meat, had the necessary number of calories, and planned menus with these cards for meatless meals for every day and for Shabes. This was done by Dr. Sonya Sirkin-Bernstein, who directed the school, and Pearl Weiss, the wife of Dr. Abraham Weiss. They made sure the meals were kosher, nourishing, and dietetically varied. The menus were distributed to the Jewish newspapers. Haynt printed them under the title “What are Jews eating today for dinner?”
The “United Committee for [the Defense of?
– cf. p. 89] Ritual Slaughter”, to which belonged rabbis, political parties,
and the central social organizations, was also involved in organizing the
protest boycott. Two days before the meat boycott began, 12 March,
a meeting was called to deal with the situation. In Haynt for 13 March it was reported that the meeting included all
the rabbis in the Warsaw Rabbinate and all the parties and organizations had
sent representatives. Also invited to the meeting were representatives of the
fish merchants. One could foresee that because of the meat boycott the
consumption of fish would increase and at the meeting an appeal was made to the
merchants that they not raise their prices. They were also told [challenged?
ordered?] that “under no circumstances” should they import fish from
The government paid no heed to the Jewish protest. The
damage suffered by the agricultural economy was of no concern to anyone. On the
contrary, it became known that the officials were further occupied with
preparing the law concerning a complete ban on ritual slaughter and it was only
a matter of time before that project was complete.
The legal project was formally introduced in the Diet by one
Julius Dudinski, a deputy from the government party[?].
He demanded that ritual slaughter be immediately banned in all of
The government didn’t succeed in introducing the edict. The
Polish rulers had other worries in the summer of 1939. The Nazis introduced the
decree for them in October of 1939, shortly after
In 1935 there arose a serious danger: that the entire Jewish
press would fall into the hands of the regime and be forced to write as the
government dictated, or lose all chance of reaching their readers. Quite
unexpectedly the government commissariat in
Rukh, which was
formed by private entrepreneurs, was later taken over by several Sanatsie[?]-leaders from among the A. G. “Pulkovnikes”[Colonels?] [?]. Foremost were Boguslav Miedshinski
(1891-1972), Chief Editor of the “Polish Gazette”, chief organ of the Sanatsie,
Edmund Zeyfried, a former officer of the Second Division of the General-Staff
(Espionage), and a few other men of the same sort [“men of the same Rebbe”],
who belonged to the Old Guard of Marshall Pilsudski. Rukh was better than a goldmine for them personally. The
undertaking was created as a commercial firm to sell newspapers, popular
literature, cigarettes, candy, and other such items; in fact however it was a
covert and very effective instrument for keeping the press in the dark and
helping the “Pulkovnikes” to fight opponents in their own circle and in the
opposition parties. According to the agreement, which the publishers had to
sign, Rukh reserved [“oysnemen zikh”
isn’t that, but in the context …] the right to stop distributing a newspaper
without the slightest reason and because of that it happened that an edition
that Rukh didn’t want to sell
couldn’t reach its readers. It is likely that the regime now wanted to restrain
the Jewish press the same way. On
If that wasn’t bad enough, Rukh required that its liaison with the Jewish press be the
newspaper agent Hershl Ziskind, a man known as a bad payer [financial risk?]
and in whom the publishers had no great trust. The memorandum also emphasized
that in the event Rukh took over the
sale of the Jewish papers, in
For their part the Jewish newspaper publishers suggested
creating a cooperative of Jewish Newspaper Agents which would pay Rukh a specified percentage for the sold
Jewish newspapers. For that Rukh
should give to the cooperative the sale of the Polish papers in the Jewish
areas of the city. The memorandum [“memorial” but that makes no sense] was
rejected. An official from the government commissariat explained to the lawyer
Henryk Erlich (1882-1941), the representative of the Union of Jewish Newspaper
Sellers, that the cooperative was not established because only Rukh itself had the right to sell
newspapers.
Fortunately nothing came of this plan. At the time, no one
knew why; the reason was only made clear 30 years later. The
At the end of February 1937 the Pulkovnik Adam Katz (1891-1969)
announced on the radio with great pomp the political program of the ruling
party, “Obuz Ziednatshenia Narovego” [?] (camp [?] of the National Union”
[the opening quotation marks are missing from the text; maybe the closing
ones are the error], known as “OZON” from the initials of its Polish name).
The regime threw itself openly into the arms of Hitler, and “OZON” declared
itself to be a totalitarian and racist party with extreme anti-Semitic goals. Each time the issue of Jews in
The authorities warned the press not to attack the
declaration and not to criticize the government’s politics. The Jewish press
was threatened with severe repressions against the printing plants and with
personal penalties on the writers of news and articles about the persecutions
of Jews. Despite this terror however, Haynt
did not stop informing the world about the position of Jews in
After the Katz declaration the government quickly began official persecution of the Jews in the well-known Hitler style. Terror, a strengthened boycott, and very severe economic oppression were the means by which the government sought to destroy the Jews. The struggle with the Jews led the land into anarchy, to a moral decline and to economic catastrophe, but the extermination actions continued. The pogroms and plundering in the years right before the Second World War, about which we wrote above, grew directly from the ground of Katz’s declaration. “Jews out”