p.331, Lars Gerland, Germany
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I became acquainted with Sh. I. Yatskan a short time after I arrived in Warsaw (October 1902) in the house of our unforgotten friend, the wonderful, Jewish tribune and inventive thinker Alter Khazan of blessed memory, who died in our arms. After the closing of the Hatsufah (The Spectator) (in July 1904), when H. D. Namberg and I were without work, I became a member of the staff of Hatsirah (The sounding of a siren) with the strong support of Sh. I. Yatskan and of course, with the approval of N. Sakalavs', in order to, as it was called at that time, bring a bit fresh blood to the editorial staff. And when the Hatsirah also was closed, different plans were brought up and finally, Yatskan started with the Jewish penny-newspaper. "The editor of the newspaper" - he confided to me - "will be Nakh Finkelstein"...
Finkelstein and I were born in the same town, Brisk, and already in my very young years, I knew that Nakh Finkelstein was the darling of the town. On the outside he was like a rich and silky man (mentsh), he had had an open heart and an open hand, and his apartment was a council-house for the sages in the best sense of the word. He had been delegate of the First Zionistic Congress and at his apartement, had been the center of the social and the zionistic work, one got from him "Di Welt (The world)" (Zionistic Central Agency, published in Berlin), the latest issue of "Post-Tsenter (Post-Center)" (Kishinev), at his place we also saw for the first time a letter by Herzl's own hand, and from him one had gotten the latest books in nearly all European languages (of course: first of all in Hebrew and in Yiddish)... He has been chairman of all zionistic associations in Warsaw...
After certain technical achievements, in which Nakhim Finkelstein, Nakh's younger brother, strongly participated, Monday the 28th of May 1906 was published the first issue of the penny-newspaper Tageblatt (Daily Gazette)
* Haynt Jubilee-Book, 1908-1928, pp.
3-4.
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edited by Sh. I. Yatskan and with the collaboration of the friend A. Gavse (also a former employee of Hatsirah) and me.
From September 1906 until August 1907 I did not work at the Tageblatt. When I returned to my work, we often spoke about publishing a big newspaper... And at the beginning of January 1908. we released the first issue of the two-penny-newspaper - Haynt...
For the first few issues, Haynt did not have the expected success, and as usual in such cases, one searched for the deficiency in the newspaper itself, namely: Haynt has been something of a complete new quality in the Jewish press, to which the world was not accustomed. The name Haynt (which was by the way, according to my suggestion) cannot be popular, it is soon to decline, and so on. But later, when through intense, skillful journalistic work... The print run of Haynt rose properly only when the former "deficiencies" had been transformed into advantages.
*
Yet a few words about the way of Haynt, i.e. because of its Jewish direction, its aims and its tasks... The founders and leaders of our newspaper were children of the generation, which in its youth have experienced the difficult twilights of the Jewish life as well as the general life... When they heard the call of the immortal Herzl: namely, creating a home, the old home of the Jewish people! And although they have stood and stand with his poems about the Jewish life, they also have belonged to the camp, which understood that at the same time as the creation of the home, also the people has to be created. And the latter can be done only by a long stiff-necked fight at two fronts: On the one side - against the desperation, against the fossilization of the heart, and on the second side - against the equalization-ideology, against the assimilation in all of its forms, in all of its expressions, in all of its appearance.
The Jewish press, the Jewish Journalism, have not been for us only like a source of income, like a trade (even though, as nobody dares to deny, nobody has excelled us as experts). It has been for us means that helps us to fulfill the ideal of our life. First of all, a newspaper as means for such a big aim has to be pure; a newspaper as means for such a high ideal cannot be transformed into a "cute" information-rich leisure-gazette. Each of its issues have to be only a narrator, a dunning, an alarm. A newspaper with such a tasks must not concentrate the ones, which call for peace with our present living conditions, not the ones, which sing
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lullabies as if everything is in order, but those, which are unhappy with our life, the ones who dun, the ones who alarm, and they nevertheless have to be the best in Judaism, they nevertheless have to be experienced...
Often when we wanted to check if we were still on the right way, the fact was sufficient that no Jewish newspaper had as many foreign confiscations and bans as we. No Newspaper, no editor of any newspaper was antagonized and attacked as we.
And not rarely in the day of a blow, the ones that do not fall, because of this difficult and responsible work, when tiredness and exhaustion seem to overwhelm you, it is enough to remind yourself of the hundred thousands that you and your nearest have taught, that they should hear your call, speak with your tongue, fight for your truth; it is enough, when to your ears come the singing of the Jewish mountains, the valleys and the Galilee, a singing that comes up only during great historic creation processes. The tiredness disappears by that, the chest swells by the internal, deep happiness and you alone do not know who - Probably the old man Nezakh Israel (one of the names of God in the Torah) - it comes to you:
- fortunate are you, who participated in that.
of mixed feelings of pride and responsibility the... members of the Haynt family... have to cope with, when they look back to the path they went. The path has been full of ditches, stones, and thorns. In this thirty years of the Jewish people, there was a lot of shaking up, rising and failing in the life, which would have sufficed
* Haynt Jubilee-Book, 1908-1938 pages 5-6
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for whole centuries. And a newspaper, which takes seriously its role as an organ... cannot content itself with telling of the events. But it has to participate in and to contribute to these events. How then can someone, who nearly the whole time has taken part in the activity of the workshop, where the Jewish public opinion was formed significantly, at the same time take a look on the long pass, we went through? How should not his heart be stodged with a blaze of feelings in this moment? Feelings, which the end of this extremely rich period has to arouse?
Haynt was the first Jewish daily newspaper in Europe. It had predecessors. But Haynt has been the first Jewish newspaper in Europe that has united organically the Jewish street with the printed Jewish word. It was the first that have awaken the Jewish street and that have transformed the Jewish word to a social force...
The day on which Haynt was born was the day when the Jewish press invaded like a storm the widest and most abject street of the Jewish poor.
With which skills did Haynt reached it? What were its special properties, thanks to which it broke through a way to the broadest masses of the people, which the previous newspapers couldn't reach? ... The main reason for this has been that Haynt has come with fresh and hot social and journalistic blood. Its founders threw themselves into the work for the new tribune with pioneering fervor and zeal and what's most important - with a good knowledge of the Jewish soul, that was most urgent, in order to be well understood by the people so that the newspaper could become the organ of the broad Jewish masses.
... Haynt was the first Jewish newspaper in Europe that knew how to fight for something or against something and to fight with the whole fire, which was required by the "for" or by the "against". Some of the campaigns run by Haynt stayed moments of change in the history of the Polish Judaism...
...Is it allowed to remind of the Jagelo-act, in which Haynt played the leading part?
...For the new generation of readers, which lives in a time of lost passions in all areas, and over which are brought severe, daily, political campaigns, it is possibly not quiet understandable
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if we say that this election campaign has had the most important historic meaning for the formation and the deepening of the Jewish awareness. But the older generation of readers, which has observed these fights and in parts participated in them, will testify that Haynt and only Haynt carried out these historic fights on its back...
That Haynt also has lost some of its fights, we are absolutely in no mind to hide. But those lost fights can also be admitted for the moral assets of Haynt because they have proven that in its journalistic work Haynt had the least interest in knowing what the public opinion is. They dared to throw slogans in the street, even if they knew that they are unpopular. It was enough for them that they alone have been wholey convinced in their correctness, and the position of Haynt in most different disputes in Jewish and in general life always came from deep conviction - because of that even enemies have to be thankful.
Haynt is one of the very few Jewish newspapers which had a very strong idealistic line and which doesn't want to know anything about following fashions. It served the Zionistic ideal ten years, which is its fire column in all its deeds. One thing must be noticed, which some possibly do not know - namely that Haynt is not and never has been the organ of any organization or party... Not a single time did it take a position in which it was influenced by pressure from whichever official, zionistic corporate body, or of whichever leading character of the Zionistic movement. It is the "organ" of the Zionistic organizations only as much as the articles of its leading journalists always, or almost always, come from the conviction of the characters that are at the wheel of the Zionistic movement...
We conclude the three decades of Haynt in the full awareness that in the duration of this long, difficult, and bitter time, we have served the interests of the Jewish people in general and especially the Polish Judaism with the maximum of good will. And strengthened by this awareness, we also want to continue on the same way, which is full of thorns, but also full of honor. We want to continue to on the guard of the Jewish interests and of the Jewish honor. We want to continue to endeavor
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to care for the love of the Jewish masses to our people with all forces, affiliation to its great ideals and sincere belief in the unavoidable realization these ideals. And however long the darkness that surrounds us will last, we will not cease to strengthen the bravery of the Jewish man (Mentsh) and to awake in him the hope for happy times that will come.
Even at the Jubilee we don't drop into careless complacency because of the achievements of the past thirty years. Even at the jubilee we carry the burden of the tasks that we have to fulfill in the sight of the happenings and the problems, of which our stormy time is so rich. Not without reason our Jewish newspaper is called Haynt. Today (Haynt) is always the bridge that connects yesterday with tomorrow.
Today, the Jewish today is filled with concerns and troubles, with sadness and distress. In this time, in the Jewish exile-spirit, are born moods of despair and of strange Jewish confidence. Both are like the two different sides of the same coin, which have both the same origin, the Jewish passivity. There the Jewish newspaper have to fulfill a first-ranking duty to educate the people: awake the Jewish activism; to build the Jewish national awareness, which to a higher being by the sufferings and anyhow dispels the despair; to care for the great Jewish hope in the Jewish hearts, which is like a fountain of vital energy, and which acts as a substitute for the confidence, which is full of resignation.
Therefore, we do not stop to make clear to the Jewish world that the persecutions of Jews from the side of a Hitler, a Mussolini and his spiritual slaves in the different countries - this is not a natural disaster, not thunder from the bright sky; that the Jewish situation in the world depends on the general events and on processes of today's period; that our
* Haynt Jubilee-Book, 1908-1938, pp. 7-8
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period is dominated by dramatic struggles, of a war of Gog and Magog* between to powerful forces: between the force of hate of people and the hostility against humans, of war and violent deeds, of godlessness and degradation of human individuals - and the opposite force of freedom of the people and love for humans, of peace and integrity, of the rising of the individual and to care for him as image of god. This fight fills the history of today's generation, it dominates all events, all confrontations all connections, all misfortune and every consolation. The Jewish people is involved in this big historic struggle, in which the war between anti-semitism and Jewish freedom is one of the primary elements. Therefore, here is no place for despair, and not for passive confidence. One can have inside the confidence of reality, of the evolution of history, active supporting the friendly forces and hope for a common victory. It is a war for the future of the whole humanity; we are involved in this war; we can win or loose with our stronger and weaker allies (there are still weaker): where then is there place for the despair, or to resign, passive confidence? One can resist the hate, participate in the elements, which resist the wild "zeitgeist", cease to be an object, a will-less tool, a ball under the feet of others.
... Not the individual, not the natzis, only the state is [nowadays] the subject of the history. In such a time a homeless, stateless people faces the threat of demise. In our generation, in the very nearest period will be decided the question of a Jewish kingdom in Israel. Haynt will continue to preside the fight for a positive solution of this question of life. In the name of the highest national-political ideal of our nation Haynt will oppose to each attempt to diminish the drive of Zionism, to disturb its realization by fruitless separatism, by inner diversity, by cyclical bits on the side. Haynt will preside its tradition of the fight-organ of great-Zionism.
In the fight for the existence and the raising of our people is the polish Jewry a key-position. After the amputation of the Russian Jewry, after the amputation of the German Jewry, the Jewish gathering (Kibutz) in Poland became the largest reservoir of the forces of the Jewish people. Large pioneering camps want to go thence to Eretz-Israel, thence
* Names, respectively, of a king and of his supposed kingdom, mentioned several times in chapters 38 and 39 of the Book of Ezechiel, and once in the Apocalypse (20:7). In the first passage of Ezechiel we read the command of Yahweh to the prophet: "Son of man, set thy face against Gog the land of Magog...and prophesy of him...Behold, I come against thee, O Gog, the chief prince of Mosoch and Thubal" (38:2-3).
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flows a stream of spiritual values to the much more wealthy Jewry of America. The conservation of the political, economical, and cultural positions of the Polish Jewry is furthermore - after the strengthening of the community in Israel - the first task of the Jewish politics. And Haynt is still the newspaper of the Polish Jewry. Furthermore we must protect the character of Haynt under all circumstances like a tribune of the fight for Jewish civil, and national rights in Poland, and like an organ of the Jewish national education of the Jewish masses in Poland, of its spiritual and cultural revival.
We live in a time of large, Jewish distress. And in times of pain and distress at the same time great ideals evolve, great heroism, great spiritual ascent - and big demoralization, dark enslavement, fearful downheartedness. Haynt has to continue, often for the price of major fights, to lead on the Jewish street the battle against social dirt, for true moral in the public life. Haynt will teach the Jewish public to differ between honest service for the people and sleazy interest in the career, between leading the people and demagogy.
It will be difficult to be at the fore of the Jewish public opinion in the period that is awaiting us. It will be difficult to steer the ship of the Jewish society through the stormy torments of the general and the Jewish life. It will be difficult not to lose the way, which leads to great ideals, not to walk on paths and detours, which are dominated by day-to-day realities. The infinite love to the people, the unlimited sorrow for its destiny and future - for Haynt, for our Jewish newspaper, they will always stay the only guidepost.
To the editorial staff of Haynt, the stubborn and unresting protagonist of the zionistic idea, of the zionistic movement and organization, of the Jewish revival and of the construction of our
* Haynt Jubilee-book, 1908-1938, p. 17
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land Israel, to the protagonist and fighter for the freedom of the Jewish people there in Poland and in the whole world, I send my best zionistic regards for its jubilee. I don't do this only because I am the vice-chairman of the action committee and the chairman of the world organization of the general zionists and in the name of its leadership, but only as a studious reader of Haynt.
Not a single time, it appeared to me to cross the train of my thoughts and my perceptions with the method for which Haynt has fought for years. Not a single time, our ways was separated in the question of tactic and in the approach of the problems of the daily life, from time to time in severe words, but in spite of this all, in spite of the diversity of our ways - we all are like different streams, which flow together in a sea of zionistic love to our people, to its past, presents and future...
Haynt has introduced an element of criticism, of constant analysis, of constant reflection, and today we all can emphasize with the feeling of inner satisfaction - probably the word happiness will be not to strong - if the fight for ideas in the general zionistic camp again brings us all closer to the final union, affiliation, and synthesis of all parts of the general zionism. Haynt for sure will be the carrier and the protagonist of just this general Zionism. Each of us, who knows our powerful press in the whole Jewish world, has to be grateful, when Haynt marches in the first row of the Jewish and zionistic press since years. His voice is heard in the chorus of the Jewish journalism. And as you know in a chorus different voices sing and in an orchestra different instruments play. The most important treasure, which today we have to protect in this dramatic times of our history, is our optimism... From the columns of Haynt, day out, day in, even in the most difficult times, it sputters this unbroken optimism of the stiff-necked people and for this, the brave owner of this optimism gets the best regards from all of us at its jubilee.