P. 342, Translated
by Zulema Seligsohn
When in the largest Jewish
reservoir, between the Black Sea and the Baltic, the walls of the Ghetto began
to disintegrate at the end of the 19th century
B from the inside and from the
outside B there began at the same time a
strong wave of assimilation that invaded the cracks that opened up in those
walls. In
The language assimilations were strengthened for Jews by the official
governments, where various procedures had to be transacted; the school to which the Jewish child was to be sent; the
foreign book and, especially, the newspaper that, like the proverbial
continuous drop of water, would eventually penetrate the stone: the Russian, Polish,
and German daily newspaper...
It was difficult to halt the flow of
assimilation....and here is where the triumph of the founders of Haynt can
be noted. They began daily, day after
day, to spread Yiddish newspapers
around the street.... They began to teach, to call, to awaken the national sense, the
national pride, defending against the attack.
And from the newspaper pages, little
by little there grew a thicker stratum, thicker and thicker strata, until a
wall was created, a Apaper rampart@ against the flood of
assimilation....
The rampart of paper that Haynt
built up in 7000 days held off the flood of assimilation, it defended the
national meaning, the national pride B it brought up a whole generation
and did it in European style: AToyreh, Skhoyre,
un Gepitste Shtivl (The
Divine, the Earthly, and Well-Polished Boots),@ in no way inferior to the
newspapers of other peoples and at the same time all for its own sake, not for
the sake of advertising.
And also in times of election
struggles, between persecution and damage, Haynt kept its way, the way
of principles and truth, looking neither to the left nor to the right. It did not sell its body to anyone on the
street that offered to pay.
*Haynt-Jubilee-Book,
5669-5689, 1908-1928, p. 11.
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Twenty years ago, we were a small group of collaborators at the birth of
Haynt. Now we are the largest collegium of all Jewish publishers.
Twenty years of existence, twenty
years of work of and in an Yiddish newspaper that stands, almost without any
break, in the struggle, deserve to be written about. Twenty years of upsurges and crises, ascents
and downfalls, joyful happenings and disillusionment, difficult trials B and again Haynt stands at
the center of Jewish life, again Haynt is the
front-fighter, the leader of the written word, and the conscience of Jewish National social thought....
I would like to describe the conditions under which we, the first
contributors, worked to create Haynt.
Above all, I must be allowed to mention the forerunner of Haynt, Yidishes Tageblat, from which
Haynt was later brought about.
This was after Passover in 1906. Hatsfirah had closed down and I ended up
unemployed. One day, walking from the
newspaper offices with S. I. Jackan (who
was the de facto publisher of Hatsfirah), he
told me that he was planning to put out a newspaper and invited me to be a
contributor....
The newspaper office was on Nalewki 38, in two
rooms and a kitchen. The two rooms
housed the printing press and the typesetting apparatus, and the kitchen was
made into an editorial office. A small
desk stood against the water connection and in another corner B a bookcase. At the desk sat our colleague Goldberg, and next to the bookcase I would write
standing up.
Two days before Shavuoth, the first issue of Yidishes Tageblat was
published.
This was a small newspaper, smaller than two pages of Haynt, and
it cost 2 groschen.
But it was a tiny thing that held a great deal, a small fire-spurting
lead article by S. I. Jackan (once in a while a feuilleton and later a weekly
feuilleton on Fridays), telegraph news, Jewish and general
* Haynt-Jubilee-Book,
5669-5689, 1908-1928, pp. 4-5.
P. 344
chronicles, and news about
...During its first few months, Haynt was not as successful as
the Tageblat in its first weeks. After Passover, Haynt, following the
example of the large European newspapers, began printing a novel as a
serial....
The circle of readers of Haynt grew from day to day and it
reached a circulation that no other Yiddish newspaper in
Those were the shining years of ever increasing success. But the war came and ruined everything...
One of the most ardent followers of Haynt is our dear Dr.Thon. His
patriotism is so far-reaching that, in his own words, there is no newspaper
like Haynt anywhere. It is, he
states, the best newspaper in all of
* Haynt-Jubilee-Book, 5669-5689, 1908-1928,
pp. 7-8.
P. 345
or not this compliment concerning the newspaper is a bit exaggerated, as
all compliments are, it is, however, wholly true with regard to the reader of
our newspaper. About him one can boldly
assert that there is no other Yiddish reader that can compare to the reader of Haynt.
When I came to join Haynt three and a half years ago and caught
sight of this reader, he was a pleasant surprise for me. For many years I worked for newspapers and
all that time I had no idea of what a reader looked like, what he requires and what his demands
are. The reader of those newspapers had
no contact with the contributors. Very
rarely did he respond or react to all that
those writers said or wrote to him day-in and day-out; he seldom wrote a letter to them....If he ever did
write such a letter, no one was able to read it, perhaps because its style, its
language, its spelling were horrendously botched and the words did not make
sense.... The writers had before them an
unknown, anonymous multitude, a gathering of people of undifferentiated mien
and character, which one might refer to as AOilem-Goilem (the masses),@ who can be told one thing today and
the opposite tomorrow. He will not ask
questions and will not catch you red-handed; he may not recollect or hardly
have paid attention to what you wrote yesterday. Quite often he does not even read the
articles and feuilletons which you write for him. Besides the AWarsaw Chronicle@ and the novel about AMary and Jerry,@ and on Friday the jokes and the
cartoons, he has no need for all those worthless Asilly articles.@
That was the way the general reader I dealt with in those fifteen years
seemed to me....
At Haynt I saw for the first time the actual shape of the better
type of Yiddish reader, who asks and demands and controls and reacts about
every little thing, a reader whom the writer is entitled to be proud of....and
whom he must respect just as the reader respects the writer. This is a reader that can, above all, hold a
pen in his own hand, a reader that swamps the writer with his daily letters,
20% of which, more or less, are written in a fine Hebrew, the rest in a
generally clear, print-worthy Yiddish.
Let you make the smallest error in the writing, the tiniest
P. 346
slip-of-the-pen, and tens of letters are received,
not just from
This is the kind of reader Haynt has. He does not just react about every detail, he
does not just give his opinion about every social question discussed in the
newspaper, but he stands on guard, and with his letters he awakens and reminds
the writer of what needs to be written about, what matters are absolutely
important to react to. And God help the
writer at Haynt who forgets himself at times and gives an opinion that
goes contrary to one he had held
previously. It seems, in such a case,
that the reader has a better memory than the writer has, and reminds him
immediately by overnight post with an appeal: ADon=t you remember, Sir, what you wrote
about something similar a year ago, in such and such an issue on such and such
a date?@
And God help also the Haynt
writer if, touching a delicate matter, trying to remain neutral and just to all
sides, he gets rid of it with a few generalizations that speak out of both
sides of the mouth. He immediately
receives a politely toned letter from the reader, saying APlease explain what you meant to
say, I would like to hear it. Speak the
language! Use clear words!@
That is the reader of Haynt.
He is a person of strong opinions, independent
ideas, which he will not switch or trade, this today and that tomorrow. One can count on him; one can rely on him.
On the day of the latest Sejm
elections, we sat in the newspaper offices and attempted to put together a
hypothetical count of how many votes Number
P. 347
18 (on the ballot) would get. We
counted it as follows: There are so and so many copies of Haynt sold
every day in Warsaw; every copy sold is read by so and so many readers, so that one can figure
so and so many votes, because it is almost absolute Bwe told ourselves B that the Haynt reader will
vote for a different slate, not for 18.
And so it was, our figures were almost on the nose, and it could not
have been otherwise.
No, it could not be otherwise at all, because that is how they are, the
readers of Haynt: the most intelligent, the most knowledgeable of the
Yiddish-reading public, a true, sworn, disciplined army, on whom one can count
and calculate.
There is no greater satisfaction for a writer than to dip his pen and write
for such an army, for such active, almost one by one, mature, adult readers.
such as the readers of Haynt.
Fate willed that I, the youngest in age among the co-workers of Haynt,
should participate in the Jubilee-Book of the oldest Yiddish newspaper, and particularly in the portion
that has so much to do with memoirs and
recollections. But what kind of recollections
can I have since I am barely older than the newspaper? I can, however, tell some things about the
role that Haynt took on in its first years as part of the Jewish
family. To this day I remember vividly a
scene at my parents= home.
It is a Friday night, after the traditional meal, but no one rushes to
leave the table. On the contrary, it
became a custom at our home to stay in and read the newspaper out loud. By the newspaper one means Haynt. On a Friday evening one could find around
twenty people. Many of them bought Haynt for themselves, many read other newspapers,
but all would rather come to hear Haynt being read,
* Haynt-Jubilee-Book, 5669-5689, 1908-1928, p. 16
P.348
exchange their impressions and enjoy the readings together.
In this shared way, people used
to read and probably still do in many houses, particularly in the
provinces. And without doubt, this is
one of the reasons that made Haynt a loved and popular newspaper, with
so many committed friends and sympathizers, tied to their newspapers as to an
old and intimate friend with whom one
shares the dearest remembrances.
Another
such a memory:
A couple of
women friends come to visit my mother.
Over tea they carry on a normal women=s conversation about clothes, about
men, about children, until the fountain runs dry and then there is
silence. Mother is in a quandary: how to
entertain the guests, how to break the unpleasant quiet? Suddenly she thinks of a tale that is coming
out in Aher@ newspaper, in Haynt, and she
begins to tell the story. It turns out
that they are all reading the novel;
they all wait impatiently for the next episode, which they inhale before
breakfast. The women have found a new
topic to discuss, the conversation resumes, and the satisfied hostess silently
thanks Aher@ newspaper that has come to rescue her in a Abad moment.@
The newspaper that demonstrated right from the beginning of its
existence its ability to develop strong ties to its readers and to become a
family-friend without whom one cannot manage even one dayB-this newspaper may truly be proud
of its work.
*
* *
But I want to write about Haynt as the work-room. I don=t
believe that the average reader, when he buys Haynt every day,
considers the human, and at times superhuman work, that is contained in those few pages of
printed paper. For the reader, Haynt
is naturally a source of news, a signpost that helps him become oriented,
understand correctly and assess political events and financial-economic issues;
a leader that carries on the Jewish ideal, calls him to work, demands action
and sacrifice.
But we who produce Haynt, have an entirely different relation to it.
For us, the newspaper is a work-space, a place of work, heavy and
strenuous work, and its goal is to B Aput the paper to bed@ in the proper way Haynt
requires.
APutting the paper to bed@ means getting the issue ready to be
printed,
P.349
getting
together the material, the articles and chronicles, placing them according to
the rubrics, handing it in to the press room and waiting for the printed
copy. This is done twice a day, for both
editions.
The person who is not close to
this operation can have no inkling, when he picks up the newspaper, of the
relief that comes when the machine begins to run and the issue begins to print
out and one verifies that Aeverything is in order.@
Every issue of the paper faces particular worries, difficulties that
have to be avoided and fought, and always in a hurry because time is pressing
and it gets later and later; and so it goes, day in and day out....
In the smallest news item of just a few lines lie nerves and
effort. Do not believe when you see the
item take up so little space, that it is probably of little interest. Listen to
the sound of the words, read between the lines, and you may perhaps sense how
difficult it was to obtain before it made it into the newspaper.....
....I believe that in the newspaper office of Haynt there is
greater effort, ambition, and commitment, and a greater willingness to
sacrifice oneself than in other places.
I think that the cult of work finds its highest expression in our
offices, and that that is precisely the secret of our success that has brought
Haynt. to its
present status and made it the most influential Jewish organ in
On the sixth floor of an ugly big-city type building, there lies
condensed the history of 30 years of human passions, evil-mindedness, and sin, in the shape of
millions of files of trials....this is the archive of the Warsaw Circuit
Court....
* Haynt-Jubilee-Book, 5669-5699, 1908-1938,
pp. 41-42, 44.
p. 350
In this archive, Haynt also has its place B like every newspaper, needless to
say B that considered its duty to tell
the truth. The catalogue of the archive
is not comprehensive. It is therefore
impossible to reconstruct a complete list of the trials in which Haynt was
involved in the person of its contributors and edtors. Many records were simply lost during the
years of the world-storm.
....The few fragments that we woud like to
pass along do not pretend to have been researched. The aim is rather to arouse interest in such research,
and if they will be useful in the least degree to such a future reasearcher, they will have fulfilled their duty.
*
* *
When Haynt was born, preventive censorship had already been
eliminated in
Namely, on
p.351
diamonds....This sort of Afamily tangles@ in high circles would have
interested readers of that time tremendously.
But it also interested the censors, who confiscated the newspaper.
In passing, another news item was confiscated in the same issue, that
Alexander Kerensky (one of the leaders of the Russian
Revolution in 1917 and later Prime Minister) had reported in the Duma, in connection with the events in the Lensky gold mines where 400 mine workers had been shot,
that persons in high positions were involved, and that a few days before the
shootings the hospital had been told to prepare for many casualties and the
cemeteries for an increase in burials.
For both of these Aoffenses,@ Haynt B in the persons of Shmuel Yakov Jackan and Noah Finkelstein B was charged with responsibility;
first, for spreading false reports for the purpose of stirring up opinions
against the government; and, second, for revealing secrets of the Tsar=s family without authorization,
i.e., the story about the romance of Zhukovskaya, the
lady-in-waiting. Who knows whether the
editors and publishers would not have been punished harder for the second Aoffense@ than for the first? But before the trial came to a close, war
broke out and the Russians left
*
* *
....During the war, Haynt had no trials because everything that
appeared in the paper was pre-approved.
The Germans did not prosecute Haynt either, but laid
administrative fines on it for various supposed sins against press
prohibitions. The fines were repeated
and constantly raised monetarily....
*
* *
The rebirth of
Soon Haynt was prosecuted for the matter of Pinsk. For reporting the event, Haynt was
charged with the responsibility of spreading false news.
P. 352
I was not able to locate the documents of this trial. I only heard about one of the defense attorneys and his actions. the noted Henryk Ettinger. Since the
prosecutor claimed that the young people who were shot had been condemned by a
military tribunal, the defense attorney requested the
documents from that tribunal. If, he
stated, it was found that there really had been such a tribunal, then the
accused editor of Haynt should be convicted, because he wrote that there
had been no such tribunal. If, however,
the tribunal had not existed, the editor could not be convicted because
spreading true news reports was not punishable.....The circuit court agreed
with these undertakings and deferred the proceedings until the documents could
be obtained from the military tribunal.
These documents were never provided.
This prosection of Haynt was swallowed
up in the amnesty...
*
* *
The amnesty also superseded a second serious Haynt press trial in
those days.
Nehemiah Finkelstein and Aaron Einhorn were
brought up on charges, the first as editor and the second as author of AAnnual Overview 5679" (Haynt
No. 221, September 24th, 1919). In that overview, under the rubric APoland,@ A. Einhotn
mentioned the@sad excesses@ carried out against Jews in the
first years of the Polish rebirth. The
accusation brief cited a significant portion of the article, and emphasized
that because of this article, the circuit court decided to stop Haynt=>s publication on the 15th of October, 1919, because it had already been
confiscated previously, and because Athrough the conscious spreading of lying reports the newspaper is
attempting to smear the Polish government in the eyes of the civilized world
and to alarm popular opinion.@...
And finally another characteristic trial of Haynt
in the past season. The prosecutor=s office in Lomza
has found that the description in Haynt of the Aevents@ in Ostrov-Mazowsze
is not correct, and the author of the piece is charged with Aspreading false reports whose
purpose is to raise alarm in the general population.@....For the prosecution, there were
police witnesses brough
up. After their testimony, it was almost
unnecessary to hear the numerous
P.353
defense witnesses B the Jews that had been the
victims. Photographs of demolished
houses were also introduced as evidence.
The judge brought in a Anot guilty@ verdict. And in his reasoning, the judge complimented Haynt:
AOne wishes,@ the judge stated, A that newspaper reports might never
be less truthful than the report in Haynt was. The newspaper imparted unpleasant but true facts.@
(It turned out that the Aspreading of false reports@ consisted in that a certain Jew had
had his head split open not in his house, as Haynt had written, but on
the street)
This happened over 16 years ago, and it was not just that it happened,
but that it turned into a piece of history that filled one of the most beautiful pages in the
history of the Jews of Warsaw. This
happened during the balloting for the fourth Russian Duma
(Dr. Davidson writes in detail how the AEndekes@ and their candidate ran the anti-semitic campaign and tells): ...About all this the
candidate to the Duma, Mr. Kubazewski
spoke with a pathos worthy of higher matters at the meeting at the Philharmonia. AIf a miracle happened,@ the Polish historian Kubazewski sais at that time, Aand the Jews left Poland in the way
they once left Spain, we would have to beg them to come back because we do not
have the capability of replacing them with Poles; to create that capability by
pushing out the Jew from every position, that is our task.@
Mr. Kubazewski, in
his lyrical address, made a round of the streets of
* Haynt-Jubilee-Book, 5969-5989, 1908-1928, pp. 12-13
P. 354
Staszic
Palace,@ he said, Ahe remembers the great pages of Polish
history, but the Jew sees the worn-away walls and thinks about how much a
square cubit of land is worth here, in the heart of Warsaw. Such rhetorical jewels were poured over our
heads at that, for me, unforgettable meeting!
Behind Kubazewski stood everyone, not
excluding the Polish Progressive party. Kubazewski had promised, during a campaign meeting, that as
a Congressman in the Duma he would carry through with
his Ahumanitarian@ postulates. Kubazewski=s followers held, in their
delusional state, that the Jews, who were opressed
both under the Russian government as well as the local Polish antisemites, should
be slaves, slaves of slaves. One
should not be concerned about them, they will eventually vote for Kubazewski over Dmowski. But it
never occurred to them that the
Jews could reject the one as well as the other.
And here comes in the historic role of Haynt.
Like a water drop that eventually bores into a stone, so did Haynt every
day bore into the Jews a sense of national pride, unafraid of the harsh
censorship. Risking its whole existence,
Jackan, the editor, called for Jews to persevere, to fight for the defense of their rights and of human worth B he raised their spirit, destroyed
the apathy of those who trembled, and returned hopes to the bold. At the campaign meetings he spoke with energy
and his eyes sparkled with a gentle fire....
Haynt....printed without charge announcements and
appeals, and besides
participated
in the vote-action publications. Mr. Noah Finkelstein was the treasurer of the
ballot committee. When money ran short,
he reached into his own pockets, and a significant amount of the deficit has
yet to be repaid to him. The work of Haynt
did not go to waste. The Warsaw
Jews, the simple run-of-the-mill Jews
did not let themselves be frightened. Of
the 80 Aelectors@ voted for in Warsaw, we Jews got
46.
And here bgins the second act in this
struggle. The Aelectors were supposed to elect a
Congressman. Because of the strictures
of the ballot-rules, there were not many leaders of Jewish National labor among
them. It was necessary to set up
meetings of the Aelectors@ with the A non-electors@ against the rules. Among the Aelectors@ was (Abrahum)
Podliszewski, (Heshl)
P. 355
Farbshtein,
(Abraham) Goldberg, Dr. (Meir) Klumel, and others. (Itzhak) Greenboim, one of the main leaders of the movement at that
time, was not an Aelector,@ but with his personality he turned
the balance at the critical time, and the Jews, despite being oppressed and
persecuted and despite possessing 46 of the 80 votes, which would allow them to
elect a Jewishcongressman, did not do so. Their sense of what was right told them that that
unique mandate, the one congressman for
....It was demanded that Jews stay at home because this was a Polish
society activity. It was required that
we should willingly give up our voting rights, the most sacred rights that an
oppressed sector of the population had fought for with such hardships and won. They threatened to revenge themselves on the
Jewish Aelectors.@
They sent anonymous threats to their homes, phoned their children and
told them their fathers would be assassinated
today.
Haynt continued to inspire the people, and the Jews
showed themselves as free people who are no longer to be called Amaszki@ (one of the names used with
derision by Polish antisemites for Jews)....
So I ask that I, who took part in that campaign, be allowed here to bow my head before such an unselfish, bold, indeed heroic work of Haynt in such difficult circumstances, for its gains in the area of Jewish national work in the struggle for the rights and values of a free Jewish people. Let me be allowed, ar Haynt=s jubilee, at least in brief words, to illustrate the successful actions of Messrs. S. I. Jackan, N. Filkestein, and A. Goldberg. The ensuing years ...have demonstrated to us again that Haynt does not concern itself with its own gains but only with the gains of the whole Jewish collective, and that is what constitutes its great social significance.