p.368, Translated by Lars Gerland, Germany
Dearest friend, Chaim Finkelstein,
I received your letter. Unfortunately, I couldn't answer you up to now because of several important causes.
The monograph* on the Haynt is an important matter. The Haynt has been the most circulated Jewish newspaper in Poland. In addition to the timely information, Haynt has not only deepened the national Jewish awareness, but also bravely defended the general democratic and humanistic point of view, which wasn't an easy affair at this time in Poland. By the way, a local friend of Bucovine told me that also there the Haynt (printed in Warsaw with a different name) has been very appreciated and very widely circulated.**
And now my answer to your questions: for which sins I was sent to Bereza Kartuzka, when was I freed, and when I started to write for the Haynt.
In the special lawlessness in Poland, Bereza Kartuzka** was controlled by the government’s administrative power. Concerning Bereza Kartuzka, the government didn't follow any statutory or judicial procedure. People were arrested and sent there without any explanation, neither to him nor to his family, so that it wasn't possible to complain and to prove if the allegation was wrong. I think that the government took revenge for my strong peace article and my speeches. At this time "International" was suspicious for the Polish rulers. And I, as a representative of the revolutionary wing of the international labor-movement, was especially strong connected with the English "Labor-Party", particularly with the "Independent Labor Party", which fought against all kinds of dictatorial, fascist and half-fascist governments. In fact I was accused for the strong public appearance in England (and also in France and the Swiss) against the Polish fascist racism. I also spoke strongly against Hitler and all who
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were friends or coquetted with the Browns*. From time to time the English press cited my opinion (I wrote for the English press) and the rulers from Warsaw accused me in all appearances against the government. My close friend and fellow, the famous leader of the "English Independent Labor Party" James Maxton once strongly criticized in parliament, the government in Warsaw. "That is the work of Dr. Kruk" - the men of the regime in Warsaw claimed. Additionally, there came a "supplement" - they couldn't forgive me that I have not only influence over the Jewish workers, but also over the Polish progressive public. I was arrested in the summer of 1937, I was freed the 31th of December, 1937. In Bereza Kartuzka, my number was 1481 (in Bereza Kartuzka the arrested people wasn't called by name but by their number). I was arrested together with Hershele Erlich (my secretary), with the leader of the professional unions, Melekh Rudi, and with the cultural leader of our committee from Warsaw, the dentist Jacob Segal. I have to admit there that they wanted also to arrest a fifth fellow: engineer Leon Feigenbaum. In Warsaw he was a very popular and liked personality, he was a rich man, he wrote in our press under the pseudonym "L. Warshavsky". He belonged to revolutionary leaders already in the Tzarist Russia (Warsaw and Minsk) in the beginning of the century. In 1905, during a demonstration in Minsk, the Cossacks shot on him and wounded his foot. Since then he limped a little bit. He wasn't found in his apartment, he was in Lodz, and because of this accidental manner he became a survivor of Bereza Kartuzka.
I was freed from Bereza Kartuzka, thanks to the massive intervention of renown West-European characters: archbishop of Canterbury in London, philosopher Bertrand Russell, Lord Morley, the political and parliamentary leaders of our sister party in London. Also the executive committee of the socialistic international protested (I was a member). To the Polish ambassador in London came even a special delegation in context of its intervention. In Paris "the league for human rights" demonstrated. I had good acquaintances in the circles of the Polish government and especially in the foreign ministry. My defense lawyer was the famous advocate Franciszek Podskalsky, an extremely close person to Jozef Pilsudski. We were friends
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and he always defended me in court without money. From the executives and from advocate Podskalsky, I learned later that the Polish ambassador in London telegraphed to the foreign minister to Warsaw that "the arrest of Dr. Kruk worsens the English-Polish relation". Therefore it has to be also acknowledged that my old and loyal friend Robert Grimm, the chairman of the Swiss federal parliament, intervened at the Polish ambassador in Bern.
I don't know why we four wren't put in the large chambers where 30-40 people used to do time, but we was put in an especially small room, where the iron oven was cold (At 20 minus degrees Celsius) [-4o Fahrenheit]. I caught a chill, became ill in the lung and I have a hole in the right lung until today. After I was freed, I lay for 2 years in a sanatorium.
Herschel Erlich, Melekh Rudi, and Jacob Segal were freed together with me. After he was freed, Melekh Rudi was active in allying the S.S. [translator: Socialist-Territorialist Party] with the Poali Zion [translator: workers of Zion]. Before the war, he left to Australia, where he became an important figure in the professional movement. He died 1968. His family, the wife and two daughters, died during the occupation. Jacob Segal jumped out of the train on the way to the concentration-camp and was killed. Concerning Herschel Erlich, Emanuel Ringelblum wrote in the "Notes of the Warsaw Ghetto" (p. 198) that he had sold my whole socialistic literature, the socialistic brochures, reports from international conferences and so on. Everybody bought them willingly and learned English by them. Erlich was killed by the Nazis.
Regarding Leon Feigenbaum, he was the assistant for technical affairs of Adam Chernikov. He knew German excellently and when the Nazis used to come to Chernikov in the office, he learned how to speak with them, how to disappear, and not to compromise someone. When Feigenbaum was sent to the reloading point and our fellows knew about it, they ran to Chernikov, so that one should free him. Chernikov really received a certificate of exemption, but Feigenbaum didn't want to take advantage of it and he stayed at the reloading point and he died with all Jews.
I stayed several months in the famous sanatorium in Otwock with Dr. M. Pshigoda. The expenses were very high there, and it was a to heavy burden for my budget. Once,
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Mrs. Dora Neumann (the wife of the Haynt-employee Y. M. Neumann in blessed memory, now the wife of Mordechai Zanin, the editor of Tel Aviv's Letzte Neyes (Latest News)) visited me. Usually I was not allowed to see visitors. I was strongly throaty and I could speak only single words. Mrs. Neumann was one of the few exceptions. During this visit she told me that Haynt has an agreement with first-class pensions in Otwock. The newspaper prints for free their ads and in exchange the Haynt has the right to send employees without money in each pension. Misses Neumann suggested that I become an employee of the Haynt and in this way I could reap the benefits of the agreement.
From this time on I wrote for Haynt. My pension was in the neighborhood of the sanatorium of Pshigoda and a nurse used to come each day to give me the injections. I worked for Haynt until Hitler liquidated the general and the Jewish press.
In general, my articles were of an ideological and principal character. As far as I remember, the first article was about the famous German social-democratic leader August Bebel, a strong hater of anti-semitism. His words sounded high that "anti‑semitism that's the socialism of fools", and that "the German freelancers get drunk, they spent the time in pubs and in even worse places; they don't know what to do about the skillful and hard-working Jewish doctors, advocates, engineers, and because of their failure, they make anti-semitism." The second article was a detailed portrait (in several issues) of Benito Mussolini. The readers of Haynt understood well the analogy between Italy and Poland. The third article was about the "workers organization" and the free-workers-movement in Israel.
I have to say that the editorial and the administrative staff were gentlemen-like. The high fee helped me a lot with my budget. If I am not mistaken, just in that time in New York A. Koralnik, a regular employee of Haynt, died. The newspaper needed a new "star" and my way to write and the topics were very well suited for the newspaper. My articles were in the socialistic spirit, but from the general humanistic point of view and the editorial staff told me that my collaboration was well received by a large number of readers.
Probably you are interested in the fact that 1912 my wife Dr. Raya Kruk, in blessed memory,
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(died two years ago in Jerusalem) together with Abraham Goldberg (later the editor of Haynt) deliberately traveled from our home in Bern to visit Maxim Gorky on the Island Capri to talk with him about his relation to Jews*.
In about several weeks my memoirs will me released in two volumes: tachat deglin shel shalosh mehfikhot (Ishim vetnuaot bedori) and Under the banner of three revolutions (Men and movements in my generation). At the same time the memoirs (very short) of my wife will be released: Fon Moskva bis Jerushleym ("From Moscow to Jerusalem"). When the books are released, I will willingly send you an exemplar. So long I wish you success with your work and personal luck.
Jerusalem, the 15th February 1971
With honest compliments,
Yours, Dr. Yoseph Kruk
The connection of an author with the Haynt woke an awareness of importance, a kind of Holiday-mood. One was really younger and the Zionism wasn't yet as popular and favored as today. At this time, the Zionism also hadn't developed the refined method as in our progressive time. Haynt was for the journalist not only a employment, where a staffer was secured with his regular monthly payment; Haynt was social, moral, and a kind of roof over ones the head. There on was in the very kitchen of the life-problems of the Polish Jewry. They didn't "take place" in the newspaper - they screamed with pain and anger from their columns, from leading articles and from the feature pages, from reports from the latest chronicle-note. In their manner, the other Jewish newspapers did the same, but I was close to Haynt. Sometimes it seemed that blood is running from the language of a Jewish newspaper: a daily language of hot elegies that protest and whine and bicker with the last strength of life in the sieged fortress of the Polish Jewry.
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All-around proliferated the hate - the whole country an integral hate, - which long before Hitler had brutaly and cynical grabed the Jews by the neck by the scrawny, squirming neck under the heavy beard of sadness - and he presses and presses. The hate, the hate is everything: the government and the Seym (Polish parliament), the university and the market, the "Endek (member of the Polish natonalistic party)" in city and village, the "mayor" and the police-man, which hunts with fierce murders the Jewish street hawker with the little trade-poorness in the suitcase, and the tax executor, which carries away from mildewed cellar-rooms the bashful shabbat-candlesticks and the last cushion. It was a big world of squirming need and shame and vast treasurehouses of povert, which was expressed in "Haynt" - a Jewish fight-organ, which educated for the active resistance, for economic struggle, for national awareness. It was a fight for the naked survival in the melacholical small shops, workshops, and unfirm stalls in the marketplace in rain, wind, chilly frost - and Haynt formulated Jewish postulates, gave the people desperate will to live, drive, and temperament. Thereby the certitude of the attitude was the purity of the language, the instrument of the fight, which was protected against the street-slang, kept itself far from political demagogy and journalistic rubbish - although it goes without saying that here and there a mistake has slipped in. Hand in hand with the fight against annihilation, "Haynt" lead at the inner front a wide, aggresive fight for national land-political aims, for constructive Jewish help, for the realisation of the zionistic ideal in Israel, for the modernisation of the communities, against the solutions of the "Bund (alliance)", against the attacks of "courtyard" of Gora Kalwaria, against the assimilation of the Polonized "Jews".
That was Haynt, a piece Jewish world, not just a newspaper-business, - authors, although we also spoke often about the difference of wages, about increases and bonuses, the main thing in the difficult years of economical and social crises in Poland between both world-wars.
I remember form this time a talk with Sh. I. Yatskan, the editor of Haynt. That was 40 years ago, after the Zionistic congress in Viena. At this time I was invited like an employee of "Haynt" and habitual correspondent of Viena. At one of my visits in Warsaw Yatskan talked brotherly with me,
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although at this time he was the famous Yatskan and I was a newcomer in this branch. I tried with several manouvers to lead the talk to the very important point: an increase! Yatskan "pointed out understanding" - already bad! - suddenly he stroke my hair (it was full!) and revoke acceptance with a paternal voice: "No, it is not for you, my friend, and it doesn't fit you refined Viennese style at all... livelihood... livelihood... livelihood... have the faithfull never-do-wells, which are completely untalented. They have a job - but for you, an elegant writer, for you livelihood would be really an offense. It is not your style" ...
For the sake of skills the old profit-seeking Litvak (one who comes from Lithuania, used as a pejorative) exaggerated with the so called "never-do-wells". Factually the employees of "Haynt" was famos writers and poets, influencial publicists and journalists, men with a high genaral and Jewish standard of cultur... - All-around an agile ensemble of political personalities and literate masters of words, which turned "Haynt" into the representative zionistic fight-organ of the Central European Jewry in Yiddish.
A short letter to the Haynt-author Chaim Finkelstein
Dear colleague, dear friend,
I send you a chapter of memories of my co-work at Haynt in the years 1925-1939. Actually this is a chapter of a whole book, which would be written by my, if I wasn't lazy and if I had steadiness. But better something than nothing. And for this "something" I have to thank solely you. Without you, dear Chaim, without you literally terrorizing me and compelling me to write, this one chapter also wouldn't have seen the light of day. I thank you for this, Rabbi Chaim, how you effected and affected me amicably but also toughly to aerate and to note down purely journalistic memories of the tragically lost Haynt-period.
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My duty at Haynt was to interview officials, artists, authors, like a social reporter. Until today, I remember one interview, which I had with a young, Jewish illustrator and portrait-painter of America, who had become famous, {Elihu (Elaies) Grosman}. {Grosman} painted the portraits of Benito Mussolini, Thomas Masarik, Albert Einstein, Chaim Weizmann, Nahum Sokolov, Ze'ev Jabotinsky and he came to Poland to paint the portrait of the royal president Ignazy Moscicki and Marshall Josef Pilsudski. In my interview with {Grosman} I described how the mentioned characters behaved, when the posed in front of him and what they spoke with him during the posing. I remember that he conveyed me, that Mussolini told him that he don't understand why Hitler is such a dogged anti-Semite. "In my party", Mussolini strut to {Grosman} "Jews have important positions!"
Allow me to remember me of a planned interview with Nahum Sokolov, which didn't came about. I wanted to have a talk with the famous man in the Jewish literature-union of Warsaw, Tlomazke 13, when in the thirties Sokolov came as a guest to Poland. At this time the literature-union organized a large banquet for Sokolov, which the left writers boycotted. They claimed that Sokolov is not a writer, only an imperialistic-Zionistic politician.
At the banquet I addressed to Sokolov, he should give me a special interview for the Haynt, because of the boycott of the writers against him. But Sokolov rejected.
- Why do you need that? - he asked - additionally to my sermon that I will give here at the banquet, you will not need an interview.
His Conclusion after the banquet-speeches was a true masterpiece. So spoke Sokolov, this said Sokolov at this time: - Dear colleagues, I know that for weeks you struggled and argued because of the little me. There was doubts, if I am a politician or if I am a scientist, but in one thing everybody agreed that I am a writer. On the way to Warsaw I knew that writers just regard me as a politician, but not as a writer and therefore I wasn't invited to the literature-union. But finally I was invited by the society of the writers, my delight about that is very big.
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It is a big relief for me. Now I have no doubt about what I am. I already have a "licence", an affirmation that I am a writer... That reminds me of a custom in Lithuania. There it is a custom that one is dead in the grave, the community-mourner screams into the grave three times: " You such-and-such, so-and-so, have to know that you have died". This is done, so that the dead clearly knows that he is really dead"...
* * *
Until today I still think a bit about Solokovs "oral Torah", that I printed in Haynt at another occasion. Let us here at least give several of his words:
- In Poland Jews accept me with heart and soul, but they forget that I am not anymore a young man and one should also let me breath... We Jews have three big commandments: to let in guests, to visit the sick, to bury the dead. But presently cities and villages in Poland, where one tires the guests so as one wants to fulfill all three duties at the same time...
- I am in favor of Hebrew in Israel, but when I see the mice-wars of the extreme anti-Yiddish people, I say: It is better to build the Land on Yiddish than to bring it down with Hebrew.
- Polish Jews suffer from enormous extremes. One preaches either right fanaticism or left fanaticism. Either on sways in a mikve, or one carries out a organized, public desecration of Yom Kipur. Nobody searches for a middle course. This reminds me of our beadle of the study-house of Vishegrad. In the winter he uses to put seventy pieces of wood in the oven. When everybody screamed that one is melted by the heat, he put on the next day three pieces of wood, one was frozen by the cold. He didn't accept a middle number between seventy and three.
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I want to tell to episodes of my travels to Poland for the Haynt. In the thirties I traveled like a representative of Haynt to Kelm, with a large journalistic delegation, to the grand opening of the railway head office, which moved from Lublin to Kelm. I remember that from the Jewish press went there my friends {Moshe Elboym} peace on him, {Moshe Nudelman}, Mark Tarkov, David Flinker, and I think Barukh Shefner, too. After we walked around in the city of Kelm a whole day, I went to a group of Jews and started to look over them.
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I introduced myself as an author of Warsaw Haynt and I said to them more or less this:
- Dear Jews of Kelm! I heard a whole life so much about the fools of Kelm. Today in the early morning I came to Kelm and I wanted to use the opportunity to have a talk with the fools. Finally, I walked around the whole day and could not find any fool. All Jews of Kelm whom I met have a keen mind and are clever like the world. I will leave Kelm disappointed. Tell me the truth, Jews: Is there really not a single fool in Kelm?
Then one of the Jews ironically examined me with the eyes from my had to my feet and answered with a smile: - Usually when there is a fool in Kelm, he is from Warsaw...
But not all Jews of Kelm were content with a witty answer. Others scolded on a truth.
The popular Haynt-author and folksinger Menachem Kipnis was strongly liked in Kelm like in whole Poland. When he came to give a concert with his wife Zmira Seligfeld, they had there big success. All of a sudden Kipnis lost the favor in Kelm and he was accommodated angrily. What happened? That's what happened: Kipnis enjoyed to write in Haynt a long series humorous tales about Kelm, old and new ones.
Because of this a part of Kelm's Jews was angry with Kipnis. They wrote him letters with reproaches and claimed that they have enough disgrace and shame because of the old fools, new tales are not needed.
The biggest anger about Kipnis had a young author from Kelm Moshe Lerer, a collector of Jewish folklore. The Moshe Lerer, whom Zalmen Reyzen brought to Vilnius and employed him in "YIVO", really pestered Kipnis. He proved scientifically that Kipnis faked up the tales historical, or deluded the geography; he took fools of other cities and assigned them to Kelm.
Only I wrote once in Haynt a feature about the city Kelm. I asked a question: "Korakh shepike'ach haya, ma ra'ah leshtut zo? (Korakh [a name of a biblical figure which protested against Moses's leadership], which was wise, what did he see in such nonsense?)" Kelm is after all a city of sages, Why one made fools out of them? Thereon, I made such an assumption: It happened due to a typo.
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Once a Jew, an author, presumably long ago printed a holy-language book, in which he used the saying:"Lo lekhakhamim lachem (There is no bread for the wise.)". The young typesetter changed by mistake the word "lakhem" and instead of "lakhem" was printed "Khelem". The Jews read: "Lo lekhakhamin khelem" - Khelm is not for sages. * * * The Polish government once ordered a journalistic trip to Spala, the summer-residence of president Ignazy Moscicki. When we arrived at Spala, we was told that the president was just then in Warsaw and the reception, which was prepared for the journalists of the capital, will take place without him. A Polovnik showed us the historical palace and the large cabinet hall of the president. I personally was more interested in a different hall: In a corner at a window stood the huge desk of the president, on which laid a lot of books. And I was strongly interested, what the Polish royal-president reads. I couldn't overcome my journalistic instinct to do evil. I sheered out of the line of Polish journalists, I moved close to the desk and with curious eyes I examined the title of the books, which laid there. In the article in Haynt about the trip to Spala I didn't mention with a single word, what I saw on the desk of the president. If I actually did it, it would have bad cosequences for me. What do you think, which kind of books I saw on the desk of the president? Books with shvastikas on the cover have these been, which only appeared in Nazi-Germany and they addressed the Question of the Jews... * * * From the hundreds of interviews, which I had for the Haynt without exaggeration, the talk comes always to my mind, which I with the last Piotrkow Rabbi, the rabbi Moshe Chaim Lau hey yud dalet (the abbreviation of "Hashem Yinkom Damam" (May God avenge their blood) has been carved into the gravestones of Jewish martyrs throughout the centuries.). After the death of the Rabbi of Lublin and the head of the Yeshiva of "Yeshivat Khakhami Lublin (Yeshiva of the sages of Lublin)" the Rabbi Meir Shapira of blessed memory, the academic-educated Rabbi Moshe Chaim Lau became the spiritual leader of the Yeshiva. Two years before the outbreak of the second world war he called a press-conference about his Yeshiva in Lublin. A large bus brought the journalists together with Rabbi Lau in the middle of the night back from Lublin to Warsaw. I sat on purpose to Rabbi Lau, in oder to have a talk with him for the Haynt.*a detailed and documented treatise on a particular
subject.
**Ukrainians were often arrested by the Polish police
"bez prava zakhystu," without the right of a defense. This was
illegal, of course, even under Polish law, but it was done anyway.
*** For more about the circulation of the Haynt in Romania, see Chapter 19.
* Brown was the color of the fascist parties.
*The memories of Dr. Raya (Irene) Kruk was
printed in Haynt anniversary-book
(1938) pp. 28-31. Longer extracts are handed on.
**"Korot (history)" Jewish journalists-chronicle, Tel-Aviv, nr. 10, 22. may 1966, pp. 31-32