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Attracting readers in Galicia was a difficult and complicated endeavor but Haynt began operations there as soon as the Polish nation was established.
Polish territory encompassed Jews that had previously lived under Russian rule and Jews from Galicia, which had previously belonged to the Austro-Hungarian empire. The Jewish community constituted ten percent of Poland’s entire population. Due to the isolation of Russian Jewry, Polish Jewry became the most important national group, second only in numbers to American Jewry. Without doubt, Polish Jewry was first in terms of the desire to continue to forge the golden chain of Jewish tradition and culture. The task was to form a cohesive national body of the three million Polish Jews. This was easy to accomplish.
The Galician Jew lived in a very different political climate, in a unique cultural environment with specific economic conditions from his brother on the other side of the border in Poland. These were two different worlds. As opposed to the Russian Jews, who had suffered under the reactionary Terrorist regime, the Galician Jews lived under a benevolent caesar, the “merciful king” Kaiser Franz Josef (see Ch.7). Within Jewish life the Hasidic court, with its dynasties, descendants and other assorted intimates controlled a significant portion of Galicianer Jews. The majority of Jews, however, were conscious of their national status as Jews and were Zionist. The Jewish masses were influenced by the rich and original contributions of their articulate cultural leaders. No other Jewish community had such a large number of educated intelligentsia as Galicia. Even the intellectuals and professional class who were raised within the Polish culture, were assimilated more in language than nationally. For the most part, the Jewish intellectual class consisted of good Jews and Zionists,
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tied to the common man and his ideals and hopes.
Galicia, particularly east Galicia, was considered one of the most backward provinces of the Austro-Hungarian empire. The population was poor, the economic situation of the Jews not favorable. Jews made an austere living, unemployment was rampant, the future looked bleak.. The central government in Vienna considered Galicia to be the boondocks. The clerks assigned there were poorly qualified, slow witted, unintelligent bureaucrats who had failed in the more progressive western sections of the Empire. A posting to Galicia was considered equal to a posting to Siberia. Because supervision was minimal and the average citizen had no ability to complain to the government the clerks ruled as they wished. Government in the Galician province was corrupt. The Polish government inherited this bureaucratic apparatus, but did nothing to improve the situation. On the contrary, the central government in Warsaw shut its eyes to the situation. The legal process in Eastern Galicia revealed how morally corrupt and decayed the administration was there. We write in greater detail about this in Chapter 16.
The Jews in East Galicia had another difficult obstacle which frequently took on explosive form. They lived on a volcano, between a hammer and an anvil, surrounded by a sea of the nationalistic, militant Ukrainian Greek Orthodox majority (except for the city of Lemberg), on an island of conservative, if not reactionary, Polish-Catholic minority. The Ukrainians saw in the Jews Polish allies, Poles complained that the Jews were not sufficiently loyal. In 1918 this tenuous situation resulted in the Lemberg pogrom, which we describe in Chapter 4.
Notwithstanding these wide-spread unfavorable circumstances, the Jews in Galicia had a rich cultural and social life. Although poor, their economic base weak, politically they felt disenfranchised but despite that they produced a multitude of distinguished artists.
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Russian Jews and even Jews from neighboring Poland, had little understanding of their brothers across the border. These Galician Jews felt a kinship with other Jews from the former provinces of the Austrian-Hungarian monarchy, such as Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Bukovina. It had to take time, understanding and good will from both communities in order to find the path to a spiritual, political and social cohesiveness in the new nation of Poland. Otherwise it would have been impossible for conditions to exist which permitted the Polish Jews to contribute so much to the cultural treasures of our people during the inter-war period.
Haynt’s writers had to make a great effort in order to enter into the “Galicianer consciousness”, understand the “Galician style”, before they could hope to interest the Galicianer Jews in the newspaper. This required planning and a significant financial investment. The entire publishing house, the editorial board and the management of the newspaper were brought into this planning stages.
From the onset of this project it was understood that Galicianer writers would better understand the interests of the Galicianer Jews. The paper’s top executives consulted with distinguished local businessmen concerning how to make Haynt relevant to the Galicianer reader. Well known Galicianer writers and political leaders were invited to write for the paper and over time became members of the Haynt family. We wrote of the most prominent, Dr. Yehusha Thon in Chapter 8; others, the columnists, historians, fiction writers and poets are mentioned in Chapter 12 and 13.
Simultaneously, a web of local correspondents was established. The most important of these was Ben-Zion Ginsberg (born Tsegrowski) in Lemberg. A native of Rawa Russka (1893) he was raised in a Hasidic home and from an early age was active in the Zionist movement. He started writing early for the Galicianer Jewish press and was an editor of the “Lemberg Tagblatt”. As a correspondent for Haynt, he undertook to reflect Galicia’s Jewish life. In Haynt’s Anniversary Book 1908-1928, he printed a comprehensive work, “Galicianer Jewry on the Crossroads” (pages 103-105). He gives a historical analysis of the social structure, the political life, the cultural achievements of the Galicianer Jewish community and highlights that Haynt constructed
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the paper bridge that brought together the Jews of Galicia with the Jews of the former Russian-Polish provinces. He points out ...”and it should not be thought of as a cheap compliment, but as an earned honor for Haynt, on its anniversary, that although a Jewish newspaper for Polish Jewry she (Haynt) valued the spirituality of Galician Jewry and granted the community heartfelt acknowledgment. That is why Haynt now has such great influence on Galician Jews and was significantly able to change it’s “consciousness”.
Of greatest importance, Haynt was able to put a stop to the rate of linguistic assimilation by Galician Jews and such assimilation has now been stemmed. Galician Jews, who might have unwillingly distanced themselves from the Jewish word by reading Polish, started to read Yiddish again. The local Jew obtained a newspaper which addressed his particular concerns, concerns that were not met in the non-Jewish newspapers. Others learned Yiddish as a result of reading Haynt. As a result the Jewish nation profited greatly, both nationally and educationally, as a conqueror of assimilation”.
Haynt familiarized the Galician Jew with the strivings of Polish Jewry and cultivated in him an interest in all of Poland’s Jewry, regardless of province. The great popularity of Haynt in Galicia evidences its enormous influence.
Ben-Zion Ginzberg was murdered during the Nazi occupation.
Senator Dr. Michael Ringel (1880-?), acknowledging “Haynt’s” 30 year anniversary, also underscored the important role that the newspaper played in countering the linguistic assimilation of Polish Jews and in strengthening the Jewish-national consciousness. The reader will find excerpts of Dr. Ringel’s article in Part II.
The high tenor of Haynt was familiar to the Galicianer Jews. The newspaper evoked the excellent Viennese German newspapers “New Free Press” and New Viennese Journal” which were distributed in Galicia prior to the first world war and also afterwards, in Poland.
Galicia became one of Haynt’s most important outposts. The local Jewish press had not expanded into all of post-war Poland. Galicia was too distant from Warsaw and from the activity of the major Jewish organizations. The other newspapers in Warsaw did not understand how to accommodate the concepts and needs of the Polish
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“Galicianer ”. As a result, they were practically non-existent in Galicia. Haynt dominated the region.
Haynt’s management had a great part share in creating the newspaper’s success in Galicia. From a practical perspective, new subscribers had to be found, a traditional worry of every newspaper. In Part II we will bring you recollections of Haynt’s administrator, Joseph Leon Lebenbaum, about the difficulties that the newspaper faced generally in the early years of its existence when it had to develop readership in the provinces and did not have any newspaper distributors for this project. Lebenbaum had to create something substantial. Zolmen Silbertzweig describes in his memoirs how difficult it was to find distributors for Jewish newspapers in Lodz prior to the first world war.
The success of organizing the mass distribution of Haynt in Galicia was the work of one person, Shlomo Tsukor (1900-1942). He worked for Haynt as a traveling inspector of the province’s newspaper distributors and showed himself to be a highly effective organizer. He was energetic and traveled throughout the country in order to find responsible people to work as Haynt’s agents and create a successful operation. The agents earned a nice living and circulation expanded.
Shlomo Tsukor loved Haynt. He was convinced that there was no better Jewish daily newspaper and worked with heart and soul to distribute the paper.
Each time that he would return from an inspection in Galicia he would talk for months about the wit, the intelligence and the way of life of the Galician Jews. He would also discuss their problems and what approach Haynt should take to these problems. In the 1908-1938 Anniversary edition Tsukor printed an article “How Haynt conquered Galicia”
When the war broke out Shlomo Tsukor left Warsaw and headed east, in the direction of Vilna. As a result of his trips on behalf of Haynt he had made friends in that province and hoped that he would be able to find refuge for his wife and daughter, Helenka, who waited for word from him in Warsaw. Tzukor was a very doting husband and father.
En route he realized that it was possible that he would never
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see his family again and regretted the whole venture. He got no further than Malkia when he decided to return to Warsaw. He suffered great poverty in the ghetto and performed many jobs. For a time he peddled bread.
Shlomo Tsukor and his wife and daughter died in the Warsaw ghetto. The exact date and circumstances are unknown.