Translated by Deborah A. Green

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Chapter Twenty-Two

The Last Days of “Haynt”

 The sudden German attack on Warsaw on Friday, September 1, 1939, was not mentioned in the early editions of the Warsaw press. The first air attack on Warsaw occurred at 4:30a.m., after the newspapers had already been printed. Haynt, which was not published on the Sabbath, did not disseminate any information until Sunday, September 3.

The Jews believed that the war would put an end to Hitler’s reign. The Jewish population eagerly performed its wartime civic responsibilities. Jewish youth enthusiastically reported for military duty. Haynt printed the patriotic proclamations issued by the central-committee of the Zionist organizations; the Jewish _____ deputies, the “Agudath Harbonim” and other Jewish organizations which called upon Jews to actively participate in protecting the country and giving succor to the family of soldiers.

The press was fed false information concerning military operations. We read, for instance, in the Sunday edition of Haynt (number 204), that the Polish army destroyed one hundred German tanks and shot down 34 planes. Other publications published morale boosting messages, attributed to “well-informed sources” that “the first day of the war ended with a complete success for our army”; that the Polish army entered Germany; and that 30 Polish planes had bombed Berlin.  On Monday, September 4, attorney Roman Omeastowsky, in an interview on Warsaw radio concerning the military situation, announced that the Polish army was better equipped than any other army. Haynt, along with the rest of the press, published these optimistic stories in its afternoon edition “Today’s News”, in good faith.

On Friday morning, September 1, “Today’s News”, in its first war time edition,  published a headline the width of its entire front page: “Release Polish Soil!”

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The historian Bar Mark (1908-1966) wrote in his memoirs about the first days of the war in Warsaw (published in Polish in 1965, at page 302) that the first war time edition of “Haynt”, published on Sunday, September 3 “made the strongest impression” on the Jewish street.  In an unattributed article (Mark believes that the article was written by Aaron Einhorn), Haynt, in forceful words and with great optimism, spoke of the intertwined destiny of Jews and Poles. In a highly patriotic tone the newspaper proclaimed: “With a deep, holy belief in Poland’s correctness and future, with a belief in the ultimate victory of the power of honorable people over the power of their Enemy and his baseness, the Jews of Poland, hand in hand with the Polish people, will face this struggle which has been foisted upon them and they will prevail. Keep your heart high! Poland is not lost! (The title and first words of the Polish national anthem) In the same ultra patriotic tone, T.M. Newmon wrote an essay entitled “In a Heroic Hour”. Mark wrote that these two articles in the Sunday edition and the symbolic poem “After the Surgical Table” by Israel Shtern, which was printed in Haynt on September 1, the day that Hitler invaded Poland, reflected the mood of the Polish Jews during those days. Shtern’s poem resounded like a portent of the mad times that would soon befall the Jews. The poem was forgotten in the tragic occurrences of the Holocaust era and was not printed again. The poem was reproduced in a monograph about Haynt that the author published in “The Future” (number 4, April 1974, p 149). The reader will find the poem in the second part of that work.

Haynt, like all of Warsaw’s press, continued to publish normally until September 6. On that day all men of military age were ordered to leave the city. Haynt was reduced to two pages but even such limited production entailed great effort and self-sacrifice. The buildings surrounding Klodno 8 had been heavily bombarded and the work of preparing the paper was done in the ruins. Many fell victim to the German bombs, it was perilous to venture into the street. Few of the newspaper workers who had remained in the city came to work.

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The newspaper distribution was limited to Warsaw as the paper could not be sent to its readers who lived in the provinces. There was no money to pay salaries; the newspaper’s workers received only a small fraction of their salaries and then only when the newspaper received some money for the papers sold in Warsaw. Searching for cash, the management of “Old-New” decided to sell a portion of its paper stock. Shlomo Zucker tried to find customers for the stock but there were few available. Ber Mark, who prior to the war had worked as a technician at “Moment” writes in his memoirs (pp 304-305) that “on September 6 Moment’s auditors fled east with Moment’s treasury... Haynt was in a better position than we were economically. Nobody stole their money. The workers received ten percent of their normal pay.”

The last edition of Haynt was published on September 22 (the Polish press stopped operating the following day; Warsaw surrendered on September 28). Moshe Grossman, a young writer who worked in the paper’s management, was the last person left on the editorial board. On his way to work he had to climb over the mountains of rubble that had destroyed Warsaw’s streets. He prepared the last edition of Haynt that day. It contained a chapter of psalms in Yiddish translation. After the war he published the journal “Heymish” in Israel.

There is doubt as to whether any copies of Haynt’s last few editions from the days just prior to Warsaw’s surrender survived. In his memoirs (p 306) Beryl Mark states that there are no copies of the Jewish press for the second or third of September in either the Warsaw University library or the Warsaw National Library. The latest edition of Haynt in the Jerusalem library is dated August 28, 1939. Dr. Lucien Dobroshitzky, historian and researcher of the war era press, who worked in the historical institute of the Polish Scholarly Academy in Warsaw, advised the author that he saw copies of Haynt dated as late as September 16 in the National Library.  The author endeavored to obtain photocopies of those editions but was only able to get the microfilm of the eight sides of the Sunday, September 3, edition. The reader will find a copy of page one,

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which incidentally is addressed to the National Library, in the third part [of “The Future”]. The author received information from a trusted source that there is only one wartime copy of Haynt, number 204, dated September 3 in the National Library and in the Jewish Historical Institute.

The Gestapo rounded up Aaron Einhorn, Moshe Indelman (as we described in Chapter 9, Moshe Indelman was sent to a camp), B. Yushon and Chaim Finkelstein shortly after Warsaw’s surrender. The Gestapo agents raided Klodno 8 and left the place in a shambles, the furniture broken, the manuscripts and archives torn and scattered, the technical components destroyed, but not the press. A 7 linotype, a big rotation printing press, and other equipment and machines were sent to Germany.