p.117, translated by Lucas Bruyn
Chapter Six
The Struggle Between Haynt and the Governments.
The twenty years of Polish independence were both for Haynt and for the Polish Jews years of
fighting for survival. The paper wrestled with the regime that did not want the
truth about the Jewish situation to become known to the world. But Haynt never stopped printing reports and
articles about the persecutions and was punished severely for that. The paper
was confiscated often; several times they closed it down. But as long as the
police had not sealed off the printing shop at the same time, Haynt would come out under several other
names.
The first time Haynt
was closed down was on
Other papers were not prepared to bring such sacrifices.
They even tried to put pressure on Haynt, that at the time appeared under the name Der Tog,
not to expose itself to the attacks of the government either.
Aaron Gavze tells about this in the Haynt-Anniversary-Book 1908-1928 , (p.6):
"... After the bloody excesses in
Lemberg the Jewish deputies submitted an interpellation to the Sejm. According
to the law 'immunity' is applicable to interpellations, just like it applies to
all reports concerning the proceedings of the Sejm. But that time the censor
'kindly advised' us not to publish the interpellation. But none of us, neither
the owners of Haynt nor anyone on the
board of editors, ever thought of heeding this good advice to keep silent on
the Lemberg affair.
Suddenly I was called to the phone (I had
put down my name as the editor responsible for Der Tog); one of the
proprietors of the Moment was on the line:
p.118
Really, I heard him arguing through the
phone, what good will it do to publish the
interpellation? Have pity on your wife and children. No doubt they will arrest
you tomorrow and you will lie in jail for a long time. They will close down the
paper and you won't have an income.
... I put down the receiver. The Moment
didn't stop calling: How is this possible, You're
known as a quiet person, what good will it do you to cause an upheaval, after
all, it would harm the paper. I had only one reply: The interpellation will be
printed and you can do whatever you want ... Early next morning they arrested
me indeed and Der Tog was closed down. They didn't keep me long in the
commissariat (the police-precinct); after an hour or two they set me free
..."
More than once bitter polemics broke out between both
papers, when Haynt criticized Der Moment for its opportunism. During one
of such periodical outbreaks the Moment was accused of 'servileness',
and also that Noah Prilutski , the son of the editor
Tsevi Prilutski, used his mandate as a deputy to intervene with the authorities
on behalf of private clients that approached him as lawyer. Der
Moment replied with 'a protest of the board of editors', stating that Haynt made it impossible for one of the
energetic Jewish social activists to do any work. That opened the way
for Haynt to submit more in general
to the judgment of public opinion the attitude of the Moment towards Jewish resistance. On
"On whose authority does the board of editors of the Moment
go public in questions pertaining to Jewish society by publishing protests
directed against Haynt? Where was the
board of editors of the Moment when
the editorial staff of the Moment
refused to print the motion of the Jewish deputees on the issue of forced
Sunday rest? And where was the board of the Moment
when the editorial staff of the Moment
refused to print the declaration of the Jewish deputees concerning the
'foreigners' (Jews from the Eastern region of the Polish state whom the
government didn't want to reckognize as citizens. Ch. F.) and
concerning the breaking of the treaty on the national minorities ? The
editorial board of the Moment did not
protest about those issues, it kept silent, even though then it really was
about defending Jewish interests and about repudiating the obnoxious false
accusations of the antisemites. Or, is the board of the Moment of the opinion that we ought to remain silent about
p.p.119.
and cover up the less pleasant
things in our little Jewish world, so that that the non-Jews don't find out
about them, in order not to help them to demoralize our public opinion even
further?"
Barely a week later, on October 20, the paper again
criticized the attitude of the Moment
in an article entitled: " It is our duty to
unmask." Yizhak Gruenbaum published a cycle of very sharp articles with
the telling title: 'About intercession, politics, Kremlin and lies.' These
articles appeared in the issues of October 18, 19 and 20, 1920.
On
Both papers took the course to 'censor' the speeches by the
Jewish deputies in the Sejm and they usually did not write objectively about
their interventions with the government, or they misquoted them. This keeping
silent about the urgent motion of September 29 caused ties to snap and the
parliamentary lobby in the provisional Jewish national council took the
decision no longer to give information to Der Moment or Der Yud
about its activities. Der Tog had
mentioned this decision in a small local news
p.120
message. The effect of this message
was altogether unexpected. The paper was shut down for 'stirring up one section
of the population against another', as it was stated in the official
announcement. But nobody was in any doubt, and the censor did not make a secret
about it either, that the punishment was meted out because of the publication
of the pressing motion on the situation of the Jews by the Jewish deputies.
According to press regulations the authorities could not confiscate a paper for
publishing the text of a motion or interpellation submitted to Parliament. Nor for publishing an address by a deputy in the Sejm or by a
senator in the Senate. Since it was therefore not possible to punish Der Tog for publishing the pressing
motion of September 29, the newspaper was punished with the notification that Der Tog had 'stirred up one section of
the population against another'!
The closure of Der Tog
made a big impression on Jewish society. It was clear that the Government
favored those Jewish circles that were passive, that
did not protest, that did not voice demands. The deputies of the
parliamentarian lobby in the provisional Jewish national council submitted an
interpellation to the Sejm on October 8, addressed to the Government, in which
they stated that "the authorities did not have grounds to mix into the
polemics between Jewish newspapers, because they did not mix into polemics
between Polish newspapers either." They demanded that Der Tog would be reopened.
The interpellation did not have any practical results. Der Tog remained closed and the decree
was not cancelled. On the contrary, this time the authorities were more strict than on the several occasions that Haynt had been closed down before: It
was impossible to obtain a permit to start up a new paper under no matter what
name. Not having an alternative they were forced to make use of a legal trick.
According to the law one did not need a concession to bring out a paper that
appeared only once. So, in one single week, between October 6 and 11, 1920 Haynt appeared every day under another
name: Der Nayer Haynt (The New Today), on Wednesday
October 6; Varshever Haynt (Warsaw
Today), on Thursday October 7; Extra Haynt , on Friday, October 8; Nekhtn
un Haynt (Yesterday and Today),
on Sunday, October 10; Hayntiker Tog (Today's Day), on
Monday October 11. Only on October 12 they succeeded in obtaining
p.p.121.
the permit to bring out a permanent
daily paper under the name Nayer Haynt.
Under this name Haynt would appear
for a period of almost 5 years, until
The readers and , of course, the authorities, understood
very well that the different names were merely a pretense and that even though
the paper did not have its name, it still was the same Haynt all the time. The contents were the same, the writers were
the same, the news was treated in the same manner, the
persecutions of the Jews were as always extensively covered and sharply
criticized in its articles. Also the typographic lay-out of the paper did not
change. The heading remained the same, only with the addition 'Nayer',
'Nekhtn', etc. to the steady name Haynt.
When the paper came out as Der Tog,
the name was designed just like the heading of Haynt.
At first they tried to pretend that the new paper was an
altogether newly conceived edition and not Haynt.
For example, we read the following announcement of the administration in Der Tog, number 1, that came out on
October 23, 1919: “According to an agreement with the administration of Haynt, which was closed down yesterday
by court order, Haynt readers will
receive our paper Der Tog which
started appearing today, in which the complete staff of the closed Haynt participates.” A day later, in
number 2 of Der Tog,
When Haynt was shut down for the first time it came as a shock to the editorial staff, to the readers and to Jewish society in general. In a lead article, named 'Why?', Sh. Y. Yatskan (Polish spelling: Jackan) wrote, that the editorial staff did not know the reason why Haynt had been closed down. But later they did not publish special announcements and articles or ask questions. They simply went on with the order of the day and continued printing Haynt under another name, like nothing was the matter.
p.122
The administrative procedure involved in constantly changing
the paper's name was not an easy affair. Every time a request had to be made to
the authorities, the new editor-in-chief had to get himself registered as the
person taking responsibility for the published contents. At the railway station
notice had to be given concerning the mailing of the 'new' paper to the readers
in the province, the bank accounts had to be changed and also other kinds of
technical formalities had to be cleared every time when the name of the paper had
to be changed.
With the steady increase of the anti-Semitism of the
government and the simultaneous increase of the repression of the freedom of
speech in the country the repressions directed against Haynt became stronger at an ever increasing pace because the paper
wrote the truth about Jewish life in
Haynt tried to
protect itself against the repressions and often wrote in guarded terms.
Pogroms became 'excesses' or 'events' , 'armed men'
was an allusion to soldiers who had assaulted and robbed Jews* and 'uniformed
men' to policemen, who had themselves participated in attacks or had passively
looked on as Jews were beaten up and robbed. But this was to no avail. The
downpour of confiscations kept hitting the paper. Haynt was the only one of the whole public press that refused to
follow the 'kind advice' of the censor, about what to print and what not. The
paper fought for the right to print the truth about the Jewish situation and
paid a high price for it.
In April 1919 Haynt
was involved in a court case for having published the details about the bloody
slaughter carried out by Polish troops in the city
*Polish
soldiers, especially during the first years, were had little discipline. There
was even a saying in use: "Polskije wojsko same rabushnik" (Polish
troops, only robbers).
p.123
sent by former citizens of the city
living in
Haynt was
confiscated for publishing a detailed report on the murder of the innocent
Zionist youngsters
and the paper was sued for the publication of false news harming the
The Polish-Bolshevik war was approaching. The years 1919-1920 are
written in blood in the chronicle of the Polish Jews. Again hundreds of Jews
were murdered, thousands were wounded while the
country was flooded with pogroms and 'excesses'. Jewish homes were ruined.
Polish soldiers, specially the 'Poznantshikes' and 'Halertshikes' (see chapt 4)
and their allies, the Haydamakes of 'ataman' Semion Petliura and general
Stanislav Bulak-Balachowicz surpass each other in murdering parties, slaughter
parties and robberies. Haynt brings
details to the outside world about the never-ending bloodbath and is
confiscated almost daily. So passes, year after year, the war with the
Bolsheviks has been over for a long time now, but what
has not ended is the terror against Jews or the repressions of Haynt.
The Polish officials were masters in persecuting Haynt and had several methods of
punishment. I will try to give the reader some insight into how very
sophisticated they were.
The press in
p.124
had been printed yet. Especially when, if time permitted, they had waited for the
reaction of the censor. They would quickly prepare another edition and
start up the presses again. The losses were easy to overcome. Sometimes it
would even happen that the issue was only confiscated the next morning, when
the paper had been sold out a long time ago. But it was worse when the censor
waited until the complete first (provincial) edition had been printed, packed
and sent off to the railway station. There the police would already be waiting
and take away the papers. They kept begging the censor to read the paper as
soon as it was handed in, but to no avail. They would answer that
It was a form of censorship that was quite painful which hit
us hard those years. It was also very costly. It happened that the censor
confiscated the paper but was not willing to give a reason. The editorial staff
had to figure out for itself what actually had not found favor in the eyes of
the authorities. In case they had not guessed it correctly the new edition
would be confiscated again. This game went on until they succeeded in
eliminating the lines that displeased the censor.
The confiscations on Fridays and on the eves of high
holydays were the heaviest and most expensive form of repression. On those days
Haynt used to come out with 12 pages
and the circulation would be between 50 and 60 thousand copies. Such issues
accounted for about one third of the revenue on the budget of the paper and
such a confiscation really entailed a big loss, especially in those cases that
the authorities waited until the paper had been printed or did not want to tell
why the paper had been confiscated.
For many years it sufficed to eliminate those lines that had
lead to the confiscation or even whole articles, from the paper, leaving white
spaces in the new version of the edition. Later they came with a regulation
whereby white spaces were no longer allowed and the staff had to fill in the
spaces with new materials. The intention was obviously that the world should
not notice that the paper had been censored.
However refined the censorship was and however much expense
the confiscations caused, it was far from being the only means of punishing Haynt. One
p.p.125.
of the other means to cause panic at the paper was the
invention of the 'Wobbling ceilings' , in 1928, during the first elections for
the Polish Parliament after the May coup d'état by Marshall Jozef Pilsudski .
His party had issued its own list of candidates and on it figured two or three
Jews. The intention was to draw away voters from the candidates of the Jewish
parties. Haynt opposed the Jewish
candidates of the government and supported the candidates of the legitimate
Jewish parties. The paper pointed out that the placement of some Jews on the
government list was nothing but a diversion aimed at undermining the influence
of the recognized Jewish leaders and at reducing the Jewish parliamentary
representation to a minimum. The reaction of the government came swiftly.
One day, suddenly, without any previous announcement, a host
of officials, about 25 men, entered Haynt.
They caused a clamor and a din, announcing that they were a special committee
commissioned by the construction department of the city to check whether the
print shop was technically in good order in accordance with official
regulations. It was their 'duty' to inspect the ceilings and floors, to see if
they did not wobble and to see whether the stairs were strong enough and safe
in case of a fire. They wanted to check whether the print shop had enough
windows, whether the sewer pipes functioned well, whether the installation of
gas and electricity was according to regulations and whether the hygienic
conditions were up to legal standard.
It was clear that the authorities had decided to settle
accounts with Haynt because of its
stance in the elections and that the officials had been sent as a warning of
what the paper could expect if it refused to behave better in future.
The work in the print shop and in the editorial offices came
to a halt. Everybody stood watching nervously what the officially sent
inspectors were doing. They were absolutely not in a hurry. They proceeded
slowly, standing, quietly whispering, significantly nodding their heads,
writing in notebooks. Some measured the ceilings,
others measured the floors, the windows and the doors or checked the pipes.
That way a whole day went by. When they had departed they
left everybody in uncertainty about the fate hanging over the paper. But nothing
came of it. Nothing more was heard from the 'special committee'. But the
authorities had given a clear message that Haynt
should be more careful, or else ...
p.126
After this mass-visit by the 'inspection-committee'
occasionally smaller committees or single officials came to visit, ordering all
kinds of expensive repairs. It even came to pass that one of such committees
found out that the big entrance gate at Chlodna no. 8, where Haynt was situated, was simply too
small, although it had two door halves that could be opened over the full width
of the gate.
On
It was the Jewish deputy Vatslav Vishlitski (1882-1935),
belonging to the Sanacja camp who saved Haynt.
Haynt had criticized Vishkitski for
his participation in the 'Sanacja' and had not considered him to be a
legitimate Jewish representative. But when Chaim Finkelstein went to him begging him to help the paper in
its hour of trouble he promised to do whatever he could. The next day he let us
know that the government had simply tired of fighting Haynt and therefore had decided to put an end to the paper once and
for all. If the publisher wanted to continue the managers responsible would
have to sign a declaration stating that the government would no longer be
criticized in its publications. But Haynt
was not prepared to make sign such a declaration. Eventually deputy Vishlitski
succeeded in getting the authorities to lift the ban. The print shop was opened
on April 9 without signing the requested declaration of loyalty.
A new series of persecutions started after the government
had, in 1934, concluded a friendship treaty with Hitler .
A month later, in February, a notice to the press was issued, announcing that
the Polish government had pledged that Hitler and his consorts would not be
offended in the press. The Government would also see to it that the press would
not even criticize the internal relations in Nazi Germany. The Polish
government duly took care of its commitments and did not only confiscate
p.127
Haynt when it
criticized the friendship with Nazi Germany, but also when it published news
items and articles about the persecutions of the Jews under the Nazi regime.
That was called 'interference in the internal affairs of a friendly nation'.
Also those issues of Haynt containing
articles against the policies of the minister of foreign affairs, Jozef Beck
were confiscated. He actually was the man behind the policy of rapprochement
towards Hitler. When earlier, in 1934, Goebbels and later, in 1935 and 1938
Goering came to
Haynt was the
first in
After Pilsudski's death in 1935, when his political
inheritors had made common cause with Hitler, Haynt was the subject of physical attacks several times. After the
paper had pledged solidarity with the democratic camp and had called on the
Jews to boycott the elections for the Sejm and the Senate, which had been
shaped by the regime after the Nazi model, hooligans would be ordered to smash
the windows and destroy the machines. The police was never 'able' to find the
attackers. The workers were harassed to such a degree that a group of Zionist youth set up a 24 hours watch at Chlodna no.
8. They would also accompany the workers to work and from the editorial offices
back home.
In those days the terror against Haynt was directly related to the paper's opposition to the
elections which had the ligitimazation of the new regime as objective. Even
before Pilsudski's death a new constitution had been introduced which had robbed the democratic camp of all its influence.
It aimed at establishing a foothold in post-Pilsudski's
p.128
the ever lasting domination of the
regime. The entire Polish democratic movement decided to boycott the elections
in protest. Haynt and its Polish
language weekly 'Opinia' were the only civil organs in Jewish circles to call
upon the citizens not to go to the polls. That is why the publishing house was
persecuted in such a way, why it suffered huge material losses, why its workers
were terrorized, why they sent hooligans to sabotage the machines, why the
paper was confiscated constantly and had to suffer other severe punishments. It
is also the reason why Mr. Kleynboym was recruited into the army (see chapter
9). But neither these nor other persecutions affected the position of Haynt.
It become steadily more difficult
for the paper to function normally. To give an example: Haynt had a great number of workers and correspondents in
More than once they gave workers clear warning that they
might be sent to the terrible prison camp in Bereza-Kartuska , were the
government kept its adversaries in isolation under inhuman conditions, without
a previous warrent, without a trial, without the opportunity to contact family
or a lawyer. The name 'Bereza' caused terror in
Once at daybreak, when the author was working as night
editor, a phone call came in from the censor Daniel Shteinbok
, on the pretext of a small matter. But soon the conversation turned to
politics and he complained
p.129
in a friendly tone of voice that Haynt caused him big problems. During
our conversation he said a propos of nothing :
"You don't think I would be pleased if they sent you to Bereza, do
you?" His well meant advice was, that workers of Haynt should watch their step ...
Shteynbok himself was a friendly person, a minor official
with no influence and without personal initiative, who loyally served the
people in power. He had already started working as a censor of the Jewish press
during the German occupation, in WW I and later he had faithfully served the
Polish government, afraid to go a hair's breath beyond his instructions. Two or
three years before the Second World War, Shteynbok was pensioned off and
someone named Shmuel Shimkevics took his place. He was a young man, fresh from
During the bitter years, from 1936-1939 (see chapters 4 and 21) Haynt brimmed over with descriptions of aggressive anti-Jewish boycott actions, unrests, pogroms and lootings. In those days the censorship had its hands full with work. Twenty four hours a day instructions would come in over the phone about what to write about the bloody unrests and in what way. The censor, excited and edgy, dictated the wording of the official communiqué and ordered staff not to write one word more. But the communiqués would
*Abandoned Judaism and became an anti-Semite
p.130
normally not tell the truth, were
false and tendentious. Often the blame was put on the victims. Actually, the
Jews themselves had provoked the bloody events. When Haynt gave its own facts about events, gathered by the paper
through its correspondents on the spot, the paper was confiscated. It became
more and more difficult to report on the Polish inferno in which Jews suffered.
But when one leafs through the complete sets of Haynt one finds that the paper, despite all warnings and
confiscations found ways to give the world an understanding about the
atmosphere in which three million Jews lived in
On
"We
pass the threshold of the New Year, 1939, at a moment when the Jewish people
are suffering gruesome persecutions and heavy tribulations, when all the forces
of darkness on earth are engaged in thoroughly uprooting virtually each and
every Jewish community in Europe, when an armed assault on our
'Alt-Neu-homeland' has been going on for about three years and when serious
dangers threaten the only hope of the sorely tried Jewish people . At such a
time the national responsibility of a Jewish newspaper is greater and weightier
than ever. At such a moment, more than ever, a Jewish paper has to carry out
the very important mission of expressing the will of the people truly and
honestly and also to wake up the population, sending it off on its road of
struggle and resistance, of self-liberation and revival.
Der Tog has proven through its service to
the nation of over 30 years, that it understands its mission as a Jewish
newspaper and that it is up
p.p.131.
to the task. Der Tog has earned itself the title of honor as the, 'main
organ' of Polish Jewry. Der Tog will, under all circumstances, remain the voice
of the brave, resolute and uncompromising struggle for Jewish rights in
At that time it took over three months before the decree was
revoked. On
Hardly nine months later the paper
stopped for ever. Under its own name, Haynt',
it fell, together with its readership, victim to the foe of the Jews. Guarding until the bitter end the interests of the Jewish people,
for almost one third of the present (twentieth) century.