Jews in Łódź, 1820-1939 9781904113157, 9781909821576

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THE INSTITUTE FOR POLISH JEWISH STUDIES The Institute for Polish—Jewish Studies in Oxford and its sister organization, the _American Association for Polish—Jewish Studies, which publish Polin, are learned

societies which were established in 1984, following the First International Conference on Polish—Jewish Studies, held in Oxford. The Institute is an associ-

ate institute of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, and the American Association is linked with the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis University. Both the Institute and the American Association aim to promote understanding of the Polish Jewish past. ‘They have no building or library of their own and no paid staff; they achieve their aims by encouraging scholarly research and facilitating its publication, and by creating forums for people with a scholarly interest in

Polish Jewish topics, both past and present. ,

To this end the Institute and the American Association help organize lectures and international conferences. Venues for these activities have included Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, the

, Institute for the Study of Human Sciences in Vienna, King’s College in London, the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish

Studies, the University of L6dz, University College London, and the Polish Cultural Centre and the Polish embassy in London. They have encouraged academic exchanges between Israel, Poland, the United States, and western Europe. In particular they seek to help train a new generation of scholars, in Poland and elsewhere, to study the culture and history of the Jews in Poland. Each year since 1986 the Institute has published a volume of scholarly papers in the series Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry under the general editorship of Professor Antony Polonsky of Brandeis University. Since 1994 the series has been published on its behalf by the Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, and since 1998 the publication has been linked with the American Association as well. In March 2000

the entire series was honoured with a National Jewish Book Award from the Jewish Book Council in the United States. More than twenty other works on Polish Jewish topics have also been published with the Institute’s assistance. For further information on the Institute for Polish—Jewish Studies or the American Association for Polish—Jewish Studies, contact .

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| JEWISH CIVILIZATION MANAGING EDITOR Connie Webber —

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JoserpH AARON LITTMAN

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| | Forsake her not and she shall preserve thee’ PROV. 4:5

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| STUDIES IN POLISH JEWRY VOLUME SIX

Jews in Lodz 1820-1939 Edited by

ANTONY POLONSKY

Published for

The Institute for Polish—Jewish Studies and

The American Association for Polish—Jewish Studies

Oxford - Portland, Oregon

The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization

The Littman Library of Jewish Cuihzation Chief Executive Officer: Ludo Craddock

PO Box 645, Oxford 0x2 ou], UK Published in the United States and Canada by The Littman Library of Jewish Cwrlization c/o ISBS, 920 N.E. 58th Avenue, Suite 300 Portland, Oregon 97213-3786 First published in hardback 1991 by Basil Blackwell Lid First issued in paperback 2004 First digital on-demand edition 2004 © Institute for Polish-Fewish Studies 1991, 2004 All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of The Littman Library of Jewish Cwilization. The paperback edition of this book 1s sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it ts published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser A catalogue record for this book is available from the Britesh Library

ISSN 0268 1056

ISBN 1-904113-15-X Cover design: Pete Russell, Faringdon, Oxon. Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Laghtning Source UK, Milton Keynes

This book has been printed digitally and produced in a _ Standard specification in order to ensure tts continuing availability.

NEIL, ROGER, AND GLENN ASCH dedicate this volume to the memory of

THEIR GRANDPARENTS AND TWO UNCLES TABACZYNSKI whom they never had the prwilege to know, who perished in Trawmki and Poniatowo,

3 November 1943

The Institute for Polish—Jewish Studies, which sponsors Polin, has also benefited from the support of the following:

Mrs Eugenia Shrut; Mrs Irene Pipes; the Jewish Presence Foundation; the M. B. Grabowski Fund; the American Jewish Committee; the Polish American Congress; the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith; Commentary magazine; Present Tense magazine;

Gadsby & Hannah; Paisner & Co.; Edmund Gibbs & Co.; and the American Foundation for Polish—Jewish Studies

kditors and Advisers EDITORS Monika Adamczyk-Garbowska, Lublin Israel Bartal, Jerusalem _ Antony Polonsky (Chair), Waltham, Mass. Michael Steinlauf, Philadelphia Jerzy Tomaszewski, Warsaw

REVIEW EDITORS Wtadystaw T. Bartoszewski, Warsaw ChaeRan Freeze, Waltham, Mass. Joshua Zimmerman, New York

EDITORIAL BOARD

Chimen Abramski, London Elchanan Reiner, Tel Aviw David Assaf, Tel Aviv Jehuda Reinharz, Waltham, Mass. Wtadystaw T. Bartoszewski, Warsaw Moshe Rosman, Tel Avw

David Engel, New York Henryk Samsonowicz, Warsaw

. David Fishman, New York Robert Shapiro, New York Jozef Gierowski, Krakow Adam Teller, Haifa Jacob Goldberg, Jerusalem Daniel Tollet, Paris

Yisrael Gutman, Jerusalem Piotr S. Wandycz, New Haven, Conn Jerzy Ktoczowski, Lublin Jonathan Webber, Birmingham, UK Ezra Mendelsohn, Jerusalem Steven Zipperstein, Stanford, Calif. ADVISORY BOARD

Wiadystaw Bartoszewski, Warsaw Lucjan Lewitter, Cambridge, Mass.

Jan Btonski, Krakow - Stanistaw Litak, Lublin

Abraham Brumberg, Washington Heinz-Dietrich Lowe, Hetdelberg

Andrzej Chojnowski, Warsaw Emanuel Meltzer, Tel Avw | Tadeusz Chrzanowski, Krakow Czestaw Mitosz (Hon. Chair), Berkeley

Andrzej Ciechanowiecki, London Shlomo Netzer, Tel Auw

Norman Davies, London David Patterson, Oxford

Victor Erlich, New Haven, Conn. Zbigniew Petczynski, Oxford

Frank Golczewski, Hamburg Szymon Rudnicki, Warsaw Olga Goldberg, Jerusalem Alexander Schenker, New Haven, Conn Feliks Gross, New York — David Sorkin, Madison, Wise. Czestaw Hernas, Wroctaw Edward Stankiewicz, New Haven, Conn

Maurycy Horn, Warsaw Norman Stone, Ankara Jerzy Jedlicki, Warsaw Shmuel Werses, Jerusalem Andrzej Kaminski, London Jacek Wozniakowski, Lublin

Hillel Levine, Boston Piotr Wrobel, Toronto

CONTENTS

STATEMENT FROM THE EDITORS ! JEWS IN LODZ 1820-1939 | Wiestaw Pus The Development of the City of Lodz (1820-1939) 3 Julian K. Janczak The National Structure of the Population in

Lodz in the years 1820—1939 20

Stanistaw Liszewski The Role of the Jewish Community in the

Organization of Urban Space in Lodz 27

before 1914 37

Stefan Pytlas The National Composition of Lodz Industrialists Kazimierz Badziak Great Capitalist Fortunes in the Polish

Lands before 1939 (The Case of the Poznanski Family) — 57 Pawet Samus The Jewish Community in the Political Life of

16dz in the years 1865-1914 88 Leszek Olejnik The Emergence of the Yiddish Press in Lodz

(1904—1918) 105

Jacek Walicki Sources for the History of the Jewish Community

in Lodz in the years 1918-1939 119

Lédz 1914-1939 133

Robert Moses Shapiro Aspects of Jewish Self-government in

Barbara Wachowska The Jewish Electorate of Interwar Lodz in

the Light of the Local Government Elections (1919-1938) 155 Jerzy Tomaszewski Jews in Lodz in 1931 According to Statistics 173 Janusz Wrobel Between Co-existence and Hostility. A Contribution to the Problem of National Antagonisms

in Lodz in the Inter-war Period 201

Maria Kaminska References to Polish-Jewish Coexistence in the

Memoirs of Lodz Workers: A Linguistic Analysis 207

Jerzy Malinowski The Yung Yiddish (Young Yiddish) Group and

Jewish Modern Art in Poland 1918-1923 223

vill CONTENTS

(The Street) 231

Chone Shmeruk Yisroel Rabon and his Novel D1 Gas

Tamara Karren Tuwim as he was 253 DOCUMENT

Yehiel Yeshaia Trunk Lodz Memories 262

1982) 288

REVIEW ESSAYS Yosef Salmon Shmuel Almog’s Zionism and History (Jerusalem,

Natan Gross Requiem for the Jewish People (Polish Literary

Judaica in the Years 1987-1989) 295

BOOK REVIEWS

by John Bailey 309

Aleksander Fiut The Eternal Moment. The Poetry of Czestaw Mitosz

Coates 314

Ben-Cion Pinchuk Shietl Jews under Soviet Rule. Eastern Poland on

the Eve of the Holocaust by Jerzy Tomaszewski 311

Annette Insdorf [ndelible Shadows: Film and the Holocaust by Paul

Randolph L. Braham (ed.) The Treatment of the Holocaust in

Textbooks: The Federal Republic of Germany, Israel, and the United

States of Amenca by Frank Bialystok 316 E. Wiesel, W. Bartoszewski, J.-M. Lustiger, R. Suessmuth Auschwitz-Birkenau, Eine Ernnerung die brennt, aber sich niemals

verzehrt by Sir Sigmund Sternberg 318 Ludwika Barszczewska and Bolestaw Milewicz (eds.) Wspomnienta o fanuszu Korczaku 319

Adam A. Hetnal 319

Alexander Lewin (ed.) Janusz Korezak. Zrodta i studia, vol. 7 by

Yisrael Gutman Ha-Yehudim be-Folin aharet Milhemet ha-Olam ha-

Shnia by Robert Moses Shapiro 323

A. Hetnal 325

Stephen D. Corrsin Warsaw before the First World War: Poles and Jews in the Third City of the Russian Empire 1880-1914 by Adam Jerzy Jedlicki fakie; cywilazacj Polacy potrzebuja: Studia z dztejow ider 1 wyobrazni XIX wieku part of Polska XIX 1 XX wieku. Dzteje

spoteczne, Janusz Zarnowski (ed.) by Adam A. Hetnal 329

J. M. Rymkiewicz Umschlagplatz by Joanna Michlic 333

CONTRIBUTORS 339

POLIN

: ‘,.. The place is specially intended for Jews. When the Gentiles had greatly oppressed the exiled Jews, and the Divine Presence saw that there was no limit and no end to the oppression

and that the handful of Jews might, God forbid, go under, the Presence came before the Lord of the Universe to lay the grievance before Him, and said to Him as follows: “How long is this going to last? When You sent the dove out of the ark at the time of the flood, You gave it an olive branch so that it might have a support for its feet on the water, and yet it was unable to bear the water of the flood and returned to the ark; whereas my children You have sent out of the ark into a flood, and have provided nothing for a support where they may rest their feet in their exile.” Thereupon God took a piece of Eretz Yisroel, which he had hidden away in the heavens at the time when the Temple was destroyed, and sent it down upon the earth and said: “Be My resting place for My children in their exile.” ‘That is why it is called Poland (Polin), from the Hebrew poh lin, which means: “Here shalt thou lodge” in the exile. That is why Satan has no power over us here, and

the Torah is spread broadcast over the whole country. There are synagogues and schools and Yeshivahs, God be thanked. ‘And what will happen in the great future when the Messiah will come? What are we going to do with the synagogues and the settlements which we Shall have built up in Poland?’ asked Mendel...

“How can you ask? In the great future, when the Messiah will come, God will certainly transport Poland with all its settlements, synagogues and Yeshivahs to Eretz Yisroel. How else could it be?’ Sholem Asch Kiddush ha-Shem

BLANK PAGE

STATEMENT FROM THE EDITORS

This volume of POLIN, devoted to the part played by Jews in the history of

L6dz between 1820 and 1939, appears at a time when Poland is again | engaged in an attempt to establish a properly functioning market economy and foster entrepreneurial skills. As attempts are made to revitalize Polish industry after decades of the wrong sort of investment and management, there is a certain irony in contemplating the contrast between the Lodz of today, in which, in spite of valiant efforts, economic retrogression is to be seen on all sides, and the expanding town described in these pages. There

can be no doubt that the early history of capitalism in Poland, and, in particular, its development in the ‘promised land’ of Lodz was marked by

hardship, oppression and hunger. At the same time, the success of the industrialists of the town in carving out for themselves a market in the Russian Empire and beyond cannot but arouse respect. The long list of shareholdings of the Poznanski family, listed on page 48 shows how, before

the first world war, the industrial revolution was well on the way to transforming the Tsarist Empire and provokes sad reflections on the economic consequences of seventy years of communist rule. The loss of the Russian market was painfully felt in the inter-war period, and in the Polish People’s Republic Lodz, too, did not succeed in achieving self-sustaining

growth. The problems it faces today are thus, in a way, similar to those encountered by the founders of its great industrial fortunes. We hope this volume will give a clearer understanding of the industrial elite in Lodz and the part played in it by Jews. The character of political life in the second largest city in Poland, in which three ethnic groups coexisted uneasily, has also not aroused the degree of scholarly interest which it deserves. This volume is an attempt to present in English the present state of knowledge and we hope that it will stimulate further research into this topic. We have excluded any discussion of either the holocaust or the post-1945 period of L6dz’s history. The investigation of the Jewish tragedy in Lodz during the war gives rise to very specific problems, and it is our belief that they should

2 STATEMENT FROM THE EDITORS be the subject of a separate study. There can be little question that the final word has not been said on the character of Chaim Rumkowski and of the nature of the Lédz ghetto. Although lacking the cosmic significance of the war years, the post-1945 history of the Jews in Lédz, and, in particular, of the period when Lodz was the intellectual capital of Poland, would repay study.

_A second theme is investigated in this volume alongside that of the emergence and development of Lodz as a multi-ethnic textile centre. Paradoxically, this town of workers, without a university until after the second world war, was a major centre of the modern movement in Poland. Julian Przybos, one of the principal members of the ‘First Vanguard’, the

main group of modern poets in inter-war Poland, lived in the town between 1930 and 1935, when he was a member of the group a.r. (revolutionary artists). So, too, did the painter Wladyslaw Strzeminski. More relevant to this volume, Julian Tuwim, one of the greatest Polish poets of the first half of the twentieth century and a man tormented by his attempt to reconcile his Jewish antecedents and his role as a Polish poet, always proudly described himself as a ‘son of Lodz’. The town was also the

home of the Yung Yiddish group of Jewish writers and painters and a number of other important Jewish writers, including Yeshaia Trunk, Yitshak Katzenelson and Yisrael Rabon. We hope that the accounts of these writers will stimulate demands for more of their work to be made available in English. Further research into the history of Lodz will certainly

require cooperation between scholars in Poland, Israel, Western Europe and North America. This volume is the result of a joint effort with the Historical Institute of Lodz University and has been co-edited by Prof. Wiestaw Pus of that Institute. Jews have long had a certain affection for Lodz. It was one of the towns in Poland where they felt most comfortable and where, although there was a degree of assimilation and acculturation, conversion never reached the same proportions as it did in Warsaw. The Lodzhermensh, frenetically seeking profit wherever he could find it, is probably gone forever. But it may be that, in the developing capitalism of today’s Poland, his skills will find some recognition. He was only one of the many Jewish types who populated this unique town and some of whose deeds are recorded in this volume. It is their memory that it commemorates.

JEWS IN LODZ 1820-1939

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CITY OF LODZ (1820-1939)

Wiestaw Pus |

L6dz, which was for over a century the centre of the textile industry in the

Polish lands, has provoked great interest from specialists in history, geography, economics, as well as urban design and history of art. Many studies have been devoted to the city’s origins, architectural and urban

growth, industry, political life, education and culture, but also to the development of health services, and demographic problems.’ The present paper aims to point out those factors crucial for the city’s dynamic growth, and also to consider the environment in which this took place at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Two distinct periods of development can be distinguished in the long history of the city before 1939. In the first, which lasted for four centuries — from its foundation in 1423, till 1820, when L6odz was one of the industrial

settlements designated by the government of the Polish Kingdom, Lédz was no different from many other small towns. It was a local agricultural and crafts centre. Not being an administrative centre, there was no way its development could be speeded up. In the second period, from 1821 to 1939, the city experienced years of high growth and development. In a relatively short time it became the second largest city in Poland. But it was a period which was clearly not uniform, and changing political, economic and social conditions make it possible to divide it into several, clear sub-periods. The first, from 1821 to 1865, saw the birth of industrial Lodz.? The second period, from 1866 to 1914, was one of rapid industrial growth, as well as fast, but rather chaotic,

urbanisation and a dynamic increase in the population. The third subperiod, that of the First World War, saw the city devastated, its population reduced by 40 per cent, and its industry destroyed. The fourth and final

sub-period was that of the Second Republic, when there was rapid reconstruction of industry despite the market difficulties (the loss of the

post-revolutionary Russian market to Lédz’s industry), as well as a doubling of the population.

4 POLIN At the beginning of industrialisation in Lédz, political events and the economic policy of the state authorities in the Polish Kingdom influenced the history of the city. The starting point for significant changes in the economic development of Lédz and similar towns in Mazowsze province was the decisions taken by the Congress of Vienna in 1915, decisions which

produced economic as well as political and territorial changes on Polish territory. The new division of Poland after 1815 meant that the economic regions of the former Commonwealth, each with different specialisms, were cut off from their natural economic contacts. A real shortage of textile

products, previously supplied by centres in Great Poland, which were incorporated into Prussia after 1815, was apparent in the Polish Kingdom, which had absorbed most of the former Duchy of Warsaw. Besides the division of Poland, the partitioning states (Russia, Prussia,

Austria) made wider economic co-operation between the parts of the former Commonwealth difficult by introducing customs barriers. Consequently in the 1820s the government of the Polish Kingdom promoted industrial protectionism, especially in mining, metallurgy and textiles. ‘To help industry develop free from foreign competition a tariff was introduced in 1821 on Prussian manufactured goods, and there was a simultaneous customs union with Russia in 1822. The authorities of the Polish Kingdom then started to recruit foreign industrial experts and craftsmen. They were granted far-reaching concessions, privileges and financial help. The most important privileges were life leases on land for buildings and gardens; sixyear exemption from lease payments, including public fees; the right of immigrants to import goods and stock duty free; exemption for settlers and

their sons from army service, and the right to return to their home country.”

Ld6dz was included in the group of industrial settlements set up by the

government degree of 18 September 1820, and a plan for its urban development was prepared under the president of the Commission for Mazowsze province, Rajmund Rembielinski. As a result of this, a textile settlement, Nowe Miasto, with a central square called Nowy Rynek (today’s Wolnosci Square) was established in the years 1821-23 south of the existing city. Then, in the years 1824—28, a linen settlement, Lédka, | was set up south of Nowe Miasto, to serve goods manufactured on the river

Jazien. Four other settlements emerged with it, including a settlement of flax spinners in the former village of Wolka (present-day Wolczanska Street) and the Slazaki settlement (near present-day Przybyszewskiego Street) in the Zakrz6w administrative district (wojtostwo), where a hundred

weavers’ families from Lower Silesia settled.* | We now need to ask what factors decided the siting of textile, and later linen, settlements in Lodz? The existing historical literature suggests these main causes and factors:

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CITY OF LODZ (1820-1939) 5 1 conscious efforts by the authorities of Mazowsze province to bring about the economic growth of this previously backward territory; 2 the vast, state-owned property in the Lédz district (Alucz todzkt), on the outskirts of the city, which could be used by the state authorities;

3 easy access to building materials (timber and brick) in the neighbourhooa); 4 favourable position on the new Leczyca-Piotrk6éw road, built in 1818— 1821;

5 finally, ample supplies of water from local rivers and streams.

Besides the above there was another factor, the direct involvement of R. Rembielinski in the construction of industrial settlements. After first building factories and handicraft workshops in Lodz, he was involved as an

official of Mazowsze province and was above all one of the few contemporary politicians and entrepreneurs (besides K. Drucki-Lubecki and S. Staszic) who understood the need to industrialise the Polish Kingdom.’ The importance of ample water supplies in the construction of industry

in L6dz might surprise the inhabitants of the city today. It is therefore worth quoting the favourable opinion of S. Staszic about this in 1825. In his report Staszic wrote: “The site of this place is special for many reasons; it

has extensive land around it under a large high hill, where there are numerous springs. These waters can be channelled so that practically every industrialist can have a stream for his needs almost next to his house. It is a natural place for textile factories and especially for all kinds of cotton and linen workshops.”®

Staszic’s forecasts and views were to be proved right. Lodz owes the beginnings of its stormy life as an industrial centre to the cotton industry. When most of the more important textile centres of Mazowsze province, especially Zgierz, Tomasz6w Mazowiecki, and Ozorkéw began to develop textile industries before 1831, L6dz had just over 3 per cent of the woollen industry of the region. On the other hand Lodz cotton factories produced about 70 per cent of the cotton textiles of the province. This make-up of £6dz industry accounted for the direction and fast economic growth of the city after the uprising of November 1830. The defeat of the uprising and the resulting Tsarist repression (high tariffs on Polish products exported to Russia, including cloth) led to the collapse of the production of cloth in Zgierz, Tomaszow Mazowiecki and Ozorkéw, whereas L6dz was only affected by this economic repression to a limited extent. This was because of the above make-up of industry, especially the dominance of cotton. Cotton products were cheap and could be easily sold on the domestic market in the Polish kingdom.’ In the pre-1831 period, despite the dynamic growth of population from 800 to over 4,700 inhabitants, i.e. almost sixfold, there seemed no reason to believe that L6dZ would become the centre of the textile-producing region

6 POLIN in the future. Nearby Zgierz seemed the more obvious candidate as its population grew even faster, more than thirteenfold, from 994 to 13,054 in

the years 1820-1831. It was the results of the defeat of the November uprising which changed the situation. Its cotton production allowed Lodz to develop systematically, while in the neighbouring textile-producing centres production and growth ceased, and there was serious depopulation. The fast economic growth of Lodz was a factor in attracting new settlers, especially foreign immigrants. Already in the early 1840s Lodz had outdistanced all the surrounding textile centres in population (it was now 17,000), and become the second largest city (after Warsaw) in the Polish Kingdom. It was the 1840s which saw Lédz gradually emerge as the centre of the future textile region. Among the important conditions, created in the Polish Kingdom for industrialists engaged in the textile industry, were state loans granted to the more important industrialists and merchants by the treasury and the Polish Bank. It is worth noting, that before the 1860s, 16 L6dz industrialists received state and bank loans of over 5.5 million Polish ztoty. The largest loans were raised by Ludwik Geyer, who came from Saxony and founded the first mechanised cotton factory. In 1860 Geyer owed over 4 million

Polish ztoty.® |

Besides state capital, which was the most important in the development and growth of the textile industry in Lédz, a part was also played from the mid-1860s by commercial capital lent to merchants, money-lenders and agents, who were usually of Jewish descent.’

The inhabitants of Lédz were also an important factor directly influenc- | ing the growth of the city. As in other industrial towns of the Lodz region, there was a significant influx of foreign immigrants in the 1820s and 1830s. These were mainly weavers and spinners from the German states (Saxony,

Prussia, Austria and Silesia), Great Poland, which was under Prussian control and, on a smaller scale, from the Czech lands. Despite some

controversy among historians (mainly between German and Polish ones),'° the great majority seem to have been German, then Poles from the lands occupied by Prussia, and finally Czechs. The numbers and role of the Jewish population in the growth of Lodz

up to the 1860s are interesting. It should be remembered that till 1793, when L6dz was absorbed by the Prussian state, it had belonged to the bishops of Wtoctawek. As an episcopal town, with serious limitations on the settlement of the Jews, L6dz only had 11 Jews living there. Only when the city’s legal status was changed by the Prussian authorities after 1793, i.e. when L6dz became a state town, was there a considerable influx of the neighbouring Jewish population. Jews settling the Lodz came mostly from small towns close by, such as Strykéw, Lutomiersk, Parzeczew, Zgierz and Lask. Altogether the number of Jews in Lodz grew from 11 to 262 in the years 1793-1821."

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CITY OF LODZ (1820-1939) 7

At the beginning of the 1820s, before the large growth of population accompanying industrialisation, 66 per cent of the city’s population of 767 were Poles, and 34 per cent Jews. The Poles worked in agriculture and, on a smaller scale, in handicrafts, while the Jews were almost all merchants. Over the next ten years, the extensive immigration of weavers and spinners from the German states, caused the national structure of the population of Ldédz to change visibly. In 1831 74 per cent of the city’s 4,343 inhabitants were German, 17 per cent Polish and about 9 per cent Jewish.” After the November uprising, despite the continuous influx of Germans, Jews and

Poles also started to enter in much greater numbers. Before 1865 Jews settling in L6dz came almost exclusively from the Polish Kingdom. Until the 1850s their main occupation was in trade and brokering. Then Jews increasingly started to engage in industry, at first financing primitive domestic production, and next opening workshops and textile factories (Abram Prussak, Markus Silberstein, Izrael Kalmanowicz Poznansk)). Because of the considerable influx of Poles and Jews, the number of Germans in the population of 32,427 permanent inhabitants fell to 44.5 per cent, with that of Poles and Jews rising to 34.4 per cent and 21.1 per cent respectively.” In looking at the national make-up of Lodz before the 1860s, we must keep in mind, that the dominant position of the German element was not only the effect of numbers, but above all the result of how contemporary public opinion was moulded by the press in Polish Kingdoms. Oskar Flatt, among others, in his description of Lodz, published in 1853, stated that the Germans left an ‘important impression’ on this city.'* It appears that these views on the role of Germans and the German character of the city came

mainly from the dominance of this group in L6dz’s economic life, especially in industry. As is well known, the largest industrial enterprises were owned by Germans: Ludwik Geyer, Karol Schreibler and Traugott Grohman.

In considering the predominance of the German population in the economic life of the city before the 1860s, those factors should be stressed which held back the economic activity of Poles and Jews. The Poles who migrated from towns and villages were, for the most part, workmen and

factory hands, who were looking for work in L6odz’s workshops and factories. They had no financial resources and they therefore worked exclusively as manual labourers in industry to earn enough to keep themselves. Unlike the Poles, the Jews who came to Lodz usually had at their disposal small or larger amounts of finance. But competition in Lodz

| between Jews and Germans before 1862 produced defeat for the Jews. This was because of the laws in the Polish Kingdom, which considerably restricted the political and economic rights of Jews. In many of the towns

there, including Lodz from 1825 (part of the Old Town), the Jewish population could only live and buy property in the so-called Jewish

8 POLIN district (rewir). Moreover, Jews could not fill public office and paid special taxes.”

The decision to extend the city limits was of great importance for the growth of Lodz, as well as for the development of the textile industry. In 1820, that is before the introduction of the programme for developing the industrial settlement, the old town of Lédz covered an area of 8.3 square km. It was possible to expand the city because Lodz was surrounded by the extensive land of the so-called Lédz estate. When plans were made in 1821 to establish a textile settlement, the area of the city was increased to 10.2 square km. A few years later, in 1825, the city grew even more, to 22.1 square km, the result of the founding of the linen settlement of Lodka and the simultaneous incorporation of the village of Wolka and the woyt district of Zarzew into Lédz. The last incorporation of new land in the nineteenth

century took place in 1840, when the forest district of Pabianice and Laznow was added, and the area of the city increased to 27.4 square km. This last decision, taken when most of the land incorporated into Lédz in the 1820s was still empty, allowed the city to continue to develop till the beginning of the twentieth century.'® The years 1865-1914 are the period of most dynamic growth of Lédz. Industry remained the most important factor in its development, but those trades and crafts connected with it were important. An illustration of the

extremely fast growth of Lédz in this period, is that the number of inhabitants grew more than eighteenfold (from 32,500 to 630,000). These

figures include the inhabitants of Batuty and Chojny, which, although formally outside the administrative limits of the city, were integral suburbs of it.

Other principal factors influencing the rapid growth of industry in Lodz and elsewhere in the Polish Kingdom in that period were: the effects of the emancipation of the peasants in 1864, which meant the development of the domestic market and a large supply of cheap labour in the villages of the Kingdom; the granting of equal rights to Jews in 1862, which ended all

restrictions on the right of settlement (abolition of Jewish districts), purchasing property, holding public office and special taxes; Russia’s protective tariff policy introduced in 1877 (the so-called golden duties); the construction of railways in the Polish Kingdom and Russia; the development of the final stage of the mechanical revolution in the textile industry (dominance of mechanised factories); the establishing of credit institutions

in the Polish Kingdom and in L6dz; and above all the growth of the Russian market, which till 1914 absorbed an average of 70—75 per cent of the city’s total textile production.”

The opening of a rail link between Lodz and the Warsaw-Vienna line through Loluszki, was particularly important for the growth of Lodz industry and the city itself. Almost 40 years later, in 1902, Lodz acquired another rail link, with the Warsaw-Kalisz line, and before the First World

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CITY OF LODZ (1820-1939) 9

War a line was built round the city, which linked the Lodz FabrycznaKoluszki line with the Warsaw-Kalisz one. The opening in Lodz, in 1898, of the first electric tramway in the Polish Kingdom was also significant for the city’s growth. At the beginning of the twentieth century connections were built between Lodz and its satellite towns and settlements, beginning to bring together a population of over 400,000. In 1907 a tram line was opened joining Pabianice with Zgierz, in

1909 with Aleksandréw, in 1911 with Konstantyndw and Ruda Pabianicka. The trams undoubtedly helped to speed up the formation of suburbs in these areas.”®

The development of railway and suburban communications, with the growing importance of Lédz as an industrial, trade and financial centre, led to the formation, at the beginning of the twentieth century, of a group of towns and settlements very closely linked with the ‘Polish Manchester’ (Zgierz, Aleksandrow, Konstantynéw, Pabianice, Ruda Pabianicka). In effect the process of forming the Lédz urban-industrial agglomeration had begun.”?

As has already been mentioned, it was the dynamic expanding textile industry, that had the most influence on the growth of Lodz before 1914. In the years 1870-1913 employment in the textile factories there increased over 17.5 times, from 5,380 to 94,580. In the same period the value of the output of the textile industry in Lodz grew over twentysixfold, from about 5.3 million roubles to over 251 million roubles. Lodz became the largest textile centre in the Polish Kingdom, and in the years 1870-1913 its share of those employed in the textile industry in the whole state rose from 26.7 per cent to 57.8 per cent, and of the total value of its output from 34.8 per cent to 70.3 per cent. In all branches of industry in the Polish Kingdom, at the beginning of the twentieth century, Lodz outdistanced all industrial centres, including Warsaw, in the number of those employed and the value of its production. In 1913 Lodz’s industry (all branches) employed 25

per cent of the workers of all factories, and had 30.1 per cent of the total value of industrial output in the Polish Kingdom.” In considering the role played by big industry in the city’s growth, we should add, that over 50 per cent of the largest textile factories in the Polish Kingdom were there, employing on an average over 1,000 workers each.

Companies owned by industrialists of German and Jewish descent belonged to this group (around 20 factories). The largest cotton factories in

L6dz and in Poland, and one of the largest in the Russian Empire, was a factory owned by a German family, Scheibler, which became a joint-stock company in 1880. This company by the 1870s already owned an enormous

cotton factory with 5,000 workers. At the beginning of the twentieth century the Towarzystwo Akcyjne ‘K. Scheibler’ (‘K. Scheibler’ Company) had more than 7,000 workers, and employed that number till the outbreak of the First World War, when 7,500 workers worked there. The next largest

10 POLIN cotton business, not much smaller than Scheibler’s, with origins going back to the 1850s, was that owned by Izrael Kalmanowicz Poznanski. The Jewish Poznanski family came from Kowal, a small town in Kujawy. After moving in the 1830s to Aleksandrow near Lodz, and then to Lodz itself,

they entered trade, and later on industry. I.K. Poznanski’s business developed enormously from the late 1870s and in 1898 was turned into a joint-stock company. Like K. Scheibler’s firm its cotton factor was fully mechanised. At the end of the nineteenth century the number of workers employed in the Jowarzystwo Akcyjne ‘I.K. Poznanski’ was over 6,000, and 7,000 in 1913. Besides these, largest textile industries in Lodz and the Polish Kingdom,

the following firms also played a considerable role in the development of

Lodz’s industry: L. Geyer, J. Heinel & J. Kunitzer, L. Grohman, Sz.

Rosenblatt, M. Silberstein, Allart-Rouseau & Co., M. Kon & J. Wojdystawski.! All the large Lodz industrial enterprises at the end of the nineteenth

century influenced the architectural shape of the city. Tightly-packed construction on old building sites, with tall factory buildings behind dwelling houses became characteristic. Factories grew wherever there was space free. Over the years the larger firms built houses for their workers close to the factory buildings, and the owner’s house, or mansion, was almost always found next to the factory. This type of industrial-residential complex grew up in Lodz in the years 1870-1890. The first was that of Karol Scheibler by the Wodny Rynek, which had been built even before 1870. The next, also owned by the Scheibler family, was built by the Ksiez

Mtyn and was the largest complex of this type in Lédz. The whole complex consisted of: factory buildings, 18 dwelling houses for the workers, a school for their children, and finally the industrialist’s home (K. Scheibler’s son-in-law, E. Herbst) ~ a neo-Renaissance villa situated in a park with a pond, an area for growing food and a hothouse. Before the end of the nineteenth century K. Scheibler’s business had built 65 houses for workers, and for technical and administrative. personnel. At the beginning of the twentieth century the number of its workers’ dwellings had reached

1,301, inhabited by 2,658 families of workers employed by it (in all it employed around 9,000 people). The second largest industrial-residential complex, consisting of factory buildings, family houses for workers and the industrialist’s mansion was

constructed by the firm owned by the Jewish Poznanski family on Ogrodowa and Dtuga Streets. J.K. Poznanski’s firm had built 21 apartment complexes for workers, inhabited by about 1,000 workers’ families (4,043 people altogether).

Similar industrial-residential complexes were _ constructed by J. Heinkel’s firm and by the Widzew factory, although they had much less living space for the workers. Nevertheless, the growth of L6dz’s industry,

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CITY OF LODZ (1820-1939) 11

mainly the hugh textile factories and the houses built for workers, directly influenced the architectural shape of the city. Instead of the neo-classical, stucco ‘white factories’ and one-storey houses for weavers from the first half

of the nineteenth century, the period before the First World War saw factory construction change to red-brick fortress-like ones, with huge facades (resembling towers). Together with the large grandiose neoRenaissance, or neo-Baroque mansions, and the barrack-like red-brick workers’ houses, they formed special industrial districts, characteristic of L6édz and other industrial centres in the Polish Kingdom at the end of the nineteenth century.” Besides the dwellings built by the largest industrial firms, the extremely dynamic growth of immigration, to provide manual labour for Ldodz’s factories, led to the rapid growth of rented houses. Before 1914 practically every empty site within the city’s limits was developed. Moreover, the old one-storey wooden houses were changed into several-storied, brick rented houses and extensions. This period in Lédz is characterised by houses with architecturally-interesting fronts and poor and ugly, several-storied high extensions with cavernous yards behind them. The wealthier part of the community lived in the fronts which had better facilities. The extensions were filled by the poor villagers, who had come to Lédz for work. Despite the dynamic growth of Ldédz in the period before the First World War, the building standards did not match contemporary ones in other European urban centres. The majority of buildings constructed at that time in Lodz are the ugly extensions with no facilities. They were, besides the massive factory walls and smoking chimneys, what produced the image of the city. The mixing of dwellings with factories led to increasing pollution. Thick

smoke, harmful fumes and noise had a great impact on the worsening living conditions of the inhabitants of Lodz. This city, of over half a million inhabitants, had no waterworks or sewage system before 1914.”

Among the factors leading to the growth of the city, the dynamic increase in population plays an important role. In the case of Lédz, this was the result of the demand for labour in the factories. This growth of population was a cause of the growth of the city. In the period after the emancipation of the peasants in the Polish Kingdom in 1964, Lodz, like other industrial centres, attracted many thousands of landless peasants seeking work. Population figures for Lodz in the years 1865-1914 show a very rapid increase in temporary inhabitants. In these years this part of the population grew over thirtyfour-fold, while the number of permanent inhabitants rose only seven-fold. In population terms, Lodz in this period was a European as well as Polish phenomenon. Figures for the fastest growing industrial towns in Europe in the years 1850-1900 show that the population of Birmingham grew during this whole period two-fold (242,000 to 522,000), of Glasgow almost two-fold (389,000 to 762,000), Cologne almost four-fold (118,000 to 373,000), Dusseldorf over three-fold (66,000 to

12 POLIN 214,000), Lyon over two-and-a-half times (156,000 to 418,000), Manchester

over five-and-a-half times (98,000 to 544,000), Hamburg over five-fold (132,000 to 706,000), but Lodz over twenty-fold (16,000 to 321,000).

The nationality structure changed with the growth of the population of

the city. The enormous influx of the rural population, almost entirely Polish, shifted the propostion in favour of the Poles. But there was also an

| influx of Jews, a large number in the 1890s from Lithuania and Byelorussia, the ‘Litvaks’, who settled in the Polish Kingdom including £L6dz. According to the 1897 census Poles predominated, making up 46.4

per cent of the population of Lodz, then came the Jews with 29.4 per cent, and Germans with 21.4 per cent. Russians were only a small group,

of 2.4 per cent, and other nationalities 0.4 per cent. The next census, carried out in Lodz in 1915 under German occupation, showed these trends had increased. By then the Poles visibly predominated, amounting

to 51.4 per cent of all the inhabitants. The number of Jews had also grown to 36.4 per cent, while the Germans had fallen dramatically to 11.5

per cent. Other national groups constituted a mere 0.7 per cent. The reasons for this growth of the percentage of Poles and Jews have been

explained above. However the fall in the percentage of German

inhabitants from the 1860s came from the decrease in their influx into £6dz, but also from a small amount of polonisation of some German families, mostly of the Catholic faith. It was not only the percentage of various national groups in the population which was important in the development of the city, but above all the percentage of Poles, Jews and Germans in the occupational structure. The census of 1897 allows us to estimate, that the social structure of L6dz was as follows: 72 per cent workers, 20 per cent petty bourgeoisie (crafts and small trades), 5 per cent

intelligentsia and 3 per cent bourgeoisie (industrialists, rich merchants and financiers). Because of lack of precise data, we cannot tell exactly what was the proportion of Poles, Jews and Germans in each occupational group. Yet it is possible to estimate, that the German population (descendants of the first wave of immigrants from the first half of the

nineteenth century) and Jews predominated among the owners of industry, trade and finance. At the beginning of the twentieth century the

Jewish bourgeoisie made up over 55 per cent of this group, Germans about 40 per cent, and the rest were small groups of Poles (about 2 per

cent), Austrians and Czechs.*4 ,

On the other hand Poles made up over 80 per cent of the workers. In the petty bourgeoisie (crafts and small trades) the proportions of Jews, Poles and Germans were more or less equal. Before the First World War Poles, Jews and fewer Germans made up L6dz’s intelligentsia (teachers, doctors,

lawyers, clerks, journalists, and artists).”° | The dynamic development of Lodz came to an end in 1914-1918, with the outbreak of the First World War, and the ensuing four years of German

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CITY OF LODZ (1820-1939) 13

occupation. After Lodz was captured by the German army in December 1914, factory production practically ceased. In the first months of the occupation it was lack of deliveries of coal, that was the main reason for production ceasing. Later on, the German authorities deliberately decided to bring L6dz’s industry to a halt. To destroy the output of the city the Germans used these methods to ruin local factories: (a) requisitioning materials, products and machinery; (b) enforced sales to the military authorities; (c) the enforced sale of goods to German central government agencies; (d) expropriations; (e) confiscations.

Particularly dramatic for Lodz’s industry was the breaking up of machinery to obtain non-ferrous metals, and seizure of engines, trans-

mission belts, pipes and other parts. This became intensified in the years , 1916-1917. As well as from others, most of the machinery from K. Scheibler’s and I.K. Poznanski’s factories was seized. The devastating policy of the German authorities aimed not only at acquiring essential goods and materials, but also at the deliberate destruction of the textile industry in Poland, a potential future rival to that of the Retch. Overall, the loss to Lodz’s industry from this can be assessed at the sum of 186 million roubles. Equally large losses were suffered through unfulfilled trade contracts with Russia, signed before the First World War, and from the loss of assets in Russian banks. After the war these losses were assessed at 200 million roubles. The collapse of industry resulted in massive unemployment. From the

beginning of the German occupation till May 1915 over 250,000 inhabitants of Lodz were already with no means to live. Despite the largescale organized relief for the poor and starving, the material condition of

the city’s population declined systematically in the following years. Massive emigration followed. Between 1914 and 1918, the population of

Lodz (including Batuty and Chojny incorporated in 1915) fell from 630,000 to 342,000, i.e. by over 40 per cent. Voluntary emigration to rural areas in the Polish Kingdom and forced emigration to work in Germany had most influence on this fall in population.”® The devastation of the Lodz industry and the depopulation of the city in the years 1914-1918 had a negative effect on the further development of L6dz after the end of the First World War in 1918. After Poland gained independence in 1918 the conditions for the further development of L6dz changed decidedly. The new political situation led to

the promotion of Lodz as an administrative centre for Lodz province, created in October 1919. This was of great importance for the city, which had been the second largest Polish city for decades but administratively

before the First World War, had only been the main town in a small administrative district (powat). Its administrative function was undoubtedly an important factor in the development of the city in the interwar history of Ldédz. Besides its function in provincial government, L6dz in

14 POLIN 1918-1939 had its own City Council, with an executive and governing body headed by a president.

Another important factor in the city’s development in the inter-war years was the establishment of educational and cultural institutions, which had been badly neglected before Polish independence. In 1919 only about 50 per cent of the 70,000 children of school age (7-14 years) went to any kind of school. The work of social reformers and the decisions of the City Council in 1919 led to all children being guaranteed a place at primary

school by the years 1922—3. Lodz was the first city in Poland whose municipal government decided to enforce seven-years compulsory schooling. Secondary education also showed considerable progress. ‘There were

32 gymnasia in Lodz (four run by the state, one autonomous and 27

private).”’ |

Although Lédz was not an academic centre in the inter-war years, some fruitful attempts were made to open higher-education institutions. Among those started by the municipal authorities and the community there was the foundation of the Towarzystwo Nauczycieli Szkot Srednich i Wyzszych of

the Instytut Nauczycielskt (Society of Teachers of Higher and University Education of the Teachers’ Institute), which operated in the years 1921— 28. A branch of the Warsaw Wyzsza Szkota Nauk Politycznych 1 Spotecznych

(School of Political and Social Sciences) was opened and functioned in

Lodz between 1924-1928. Another school which had a role in the development of university education in inter-war Lodz was a branch of the Warszawska Wolna Wszechnica Polska (The Warsaw Free Polish School) from 1928-1939. The gaining of independence also led to a blooming of cultural life in Lédz. Local theatres, under the direction of the leading actors and stage

directors, Aleksander Zelwerowicz, Karol Adwentowicz, and Leon Schiller, were very active. Literary life also developed; the a.r. group (artyse1 rewolucyjnt — revolutionary artists), the creation of an eminent painter and

philosopher of art, Wtadystaw Strzeminski, was particularly active. The periodical Forma, published by this group in the years 1933—1938, was one

| of the most interesting leading literary and artistic periodicals in Poland.” The considerable development of education, especially higher education, as well as the beginnings of academic education, and the impressive growth of cultural life, certainly changed the character of Lodz as a city. Education and culture became important factors in its further growth.

Nonetheless, despite the increasing role played in the city by its administrative function, its culture and education, it was industry, with its associated trade and finance, which remained the most important factor in the city’s development and growth. In the first years of independence, industry in L6dz, especially textiles, was in a very difficult position. The losses caused by the German restrictions during the First World War made it impossible to resume production

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CITY OF LODZ (1820-1939) 15

in the first months after the war. An additional barrier was the completely

changed market conditions, compared with the pre-1914 years. These were determined by the political situation: Lodz’s industry could no longer sell products in its traditional, eastern market. Despite efforts from 1921 to 1939 no satisfactory trade treaty for the export of textiles could be agreed and signed with the Soviet Union and the later USSR. The treaty signed on 19 February 1939 between the Polish Ministry of Trade and

Industry and the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Trade for the purchase of | Soviet cotton and the opening of the Russian market to the Polish textile industry, had no time to produce effects because of the outbreak of war in September 1939.” In effect, the sale of Lodz’s textiles to Russia never reached more than a few percent of the pre-1914 level. The main market for L6dz’s textiles throughout the inter-war period was the domestic market and the Balkan and Baltic states, the Middle East, and, on a small scale, Western Europe and South America.” Although war damage was heavy, Lodz industry had fully recovered by 1923. ‘The following years of prosperity were interrupted by a short crisis in

1925, but then there was a dynamic growth in industrial production in Lodz after the coup d’etat of May 1926. In 1928 the number of people | employed reached its highest inter-war level (112,400). This favourable situation was interrupted, however, by a crisis of overproduction in 1929. This continued, in some branches of industry there, till 1935. The crisis led to massive bankruptcies of textile factories and thousands of workers were

sacked. In 1931, when the slump was at its worst, the number of unemployed reached 55,000. Better conditions only developed in 1933, but the textile industry had come out of the crisis by 1936. In general, throughout the inter-war period, L6dz’s industry, like that of other parts of Poland, suffered a number of crises and slumps. They were the consequence of market difficulties as well as of shortage of credit. Many

businesses completely, or partly, disappeared. Even the largest ones in £L6dz, such as Tow. Akcyne I.K. Poznanskt, and the United Firms of K. Scheibler and L. Grohman, ran into financial problems.”? The lack of large-scale investment in textiles in Lodz in the inter-war period is evidence of the considerable difficulties suffered by this branch of

| industry. Only one large business, that of the Jewish Eitingon family, registered as Spotka Akcyjna Naum Eitingon 1 Ska (Naum Eitingon & Co.),

was formed in this period. And even this firm was set up with American capital (two New York companies participated: Eitingon Schil Co. and the Moscow Fur Trading Company), which enabled them to buy buildings and machinery from several bankrupt Lédz firms. American capital and shrewd financial decisions in the years 1925—1930, led to the Ejitingon

company becoming one of the strongest industrial-trading firms in Poland.”

16 POLIN Despite the troubles created by the unfavourable economic climate, L6dz’s textile industry was still the leading one in Poland. In the years 1921-1939, L6dz always had more than 50 per cent of the production and employment in textiles in Poland. The reconstruction, and then growth of industry, stimulated the growth

of the population. The depopulation of the city during the First World War, meant that the expansion of population was only possible through

immigration from outside. It should be stressed, that, despite the difficulties in re-establishing demolished industry, L6dz in the first years of independence once again became ‘the promised land’ for many thousands seeking work and a livelihood. The period 1918-1939 saw the population of the city almost double (from about 342,000 to 672,000). People looking for jobs in industry predominated. Using statistical investigations of 1928, it has been reckoned that 80 per cent of newcomers were potential workers.

Only 29 per cent had a professional education, while the rest had no qualifications. These were mainly landless peasants looking for work in the city.

Workers still predominated in the occupational structure of Lédz. According to the 1931 census, workers (working in industry, transport,

trade, as servants and craftsmen in garrets) were 69.7 per cent of the population. Petty merchants and craftsmen (petty bourgeois) were the second largest group — 18.6 per cent, the intelligentsia with 9.6 per cent came third, and the bourgeoisie was the smallest, only 2.1 per cent of the population of Lodz.” In considering the national make-up of the population after the First World War, we find changes favourable to the Polish element. In the 1921 census 62 per cent of those who replied declared Polish nationality, 32 per cent Jewish and only 7 per cent German. Ten years later, in 1931, when the criterion used was the mother tongue, 59 per cent stated Polish, 32 per cent Yiddish or Hebrew, and 9 per cent German. The expansion of the population, Lodz’s administrative functions as the

provincial capital, and its growing importance as an educational and cultural centre for the region, influenced the growth of the city itself. It

should, nevertheless, be remembered, that planned development of building in Lodz was stopped through lack of land. Despite the efforts of the municipal authorities, the years 1918-1939 did not see any extension in the area of the city. It stayed at 58.75 square km, unchanged since the last incorporation during the First World War, when Batuty, Widzew, Dabrowa and Chojny were merged into Lédz. In discussing buildings built in Lodz during the inter-war period, public ones should be mentioned first. These include 18 schools, 9 hospitals, among them the very modern hospital in Zagajnikowa Street and the army hospital in Zeromskiego Street), two covered markets (Niepodlegtosci Square), a cold-storage plant, the telephone exchange, the court building

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CITY OF LODZ (1820-1939) 17

| on Dabrowskiego Square, the YMCA house in Moniuszko Street, and the Polish Radio broadcasting station in Narutowicza Street. The development of municipal and suburban communications was also

an important achievement of the inter-war years. Tram lines were extended from Zgierz to Ozorkow, from Ruda Pabianicka to Tuszyn, and from Konstantynow to Lutomiersk. Moreover, Lodz acquired a new train link with Kutno through Zgierz and with the Herby Nowe-Gdynia coal freight line through Zdunska Wola Karsznice.

The start of the construction of a waterworks and sewage system, undertaken by the city in 1925, was an important investment, although until 1939 only 16 per cent of properties were connected to the water and sewage systems. In all, despite the great efforts to develop public utilities (sewage system, waterworks, gas works and electricity) Lodz was the worst of the larger Polish cities (Warsaw, Krakow, Poznan) for providing houses with various facilities.” The inter-war period brought decisive changes in the development of the city, mainly in the non-industrial sphere. While remaining the most important textile centre in Poland, L6dz became an important administra-

tive centre, a significant cultural centre and also the centre of many agencies for the world textile and cloth trade.

To recapitulate on the conditions and factors in the development of L6dz in the years 1820—1939, political and economic reasons were behind

its extremely dynamic growth. The political environment in which Lédz | developed under foreign rule and during the First World War undoubtedly prevented the growth of socio-political and cultural life there. Polish independence in 1918 brought about radical change and develop-

ment in these areas. On the other hand, the economic environment in which Lodz had developed before 1914 (economic policy, markets) was the

most favourable over the whole period under discussion. The large Russian market bought over 70 per cent of its products. In independent Poland after 1918, the economic environment for the growth of Lédz’s

industry clearly worsened, especially because of the loss of eastern markets.

Industry was the most important factor in the development of Lodz throughout the period 1820-1939. Trade and financial institutions linked

with large industry, as well as craft industries, also had considerable influence on its growth. The next, possibly the most important, factor in the development of the city, was the enterprise of individual citizens, which

was affected by national differences in the population. As mentioned before, in the years 1820—1939 Poles, Jews and Germans made up the bulk of the population, and occupation was usually connected with nationality. The part played by these national groups in various areas of economic and social life changed over the period. In the first period of L6odz’s industrial growth in the 1860s German immigrants played the most important role in —

18 POLIN the development of the textile industry. In that period Jews engaged in trade and only marginally in industry, while Poles made up most of the workers. It was only in craft industries that the proportion of Poles, Jews, and Germans was more or less the same. Among £L6dz’s intelligentsia, before 1914, Poles and Jews were the most active. ‘The inter-war period only brought about changes among the intelligentsia: Poles now decidedly took the leading role. Industry, trade and finance remained in Jewish and

German hands.

NOTES 1 Lodz, Dzweje masta, ed. R. Rosin, vol. 1 (L6dz, 1980), pp. 625-8. 2 J. Smiatowski, Od narodzin do rozkwitu Lodzi przemystowe) (L6dz, 1973). 3 G. Missalowa, Studia nad powstaniem todzkiego okregu przemystowego, vol. 1 (Przemyst, L6déZ, 1964), pp. 63-6, 73.6. 4 M. Koter, ‘Rozw6j przestrzenny i zabudowa miasta’, in Lodz, Dzteye miasta, op.cit,

pp. 155-69.

5 W. Pus, ‘Koncepcje i poglady ekonomiczne Rajmunda Rembielinskiego’, in Raymund Rembielinskt. Jego czasy 1 jego wspotczesm, ed. A. Barszczewska-Krupa (Warsaw, 1989), pp. 55-60. 6 K. Konarski, ‘Stanistaw Staszic w Lodzi w roku 1825’, Rozentk Lodzkt, vol. I (1928),

p. 195. ,

7 W. PuS, Dzteje Lodzi przemystowe) (Lodz, 1987), p. 23.

8 J. Fijatek, W. Pus, ‘Der Industriebezirk Lodz und der Anteil der deutschen Bevolkerung an seiner Entwicklung’, Geschichte Pohttk und thre Didakiuk (Paderborn, 1982), p. 120.

9 G. Missalowa, Studia nad powstaniem todzkiego okregu przemystowego, vol. 3 (Burzuasja, Lodz, 1975), pp. 41-68. 10 G. Missalowa, op.cit., vol. 1, pp. 58-85. 11 A. Alperin, ‘Zydzi w Lodzi. Poczatki gminy zydowskiej 1780-1822’, Roczntk Lodzki, vol. 1 (1928), pp. 9, 27.

12 O. Kossman, ‘Das alte deutsche Lodz auf Grund der stadtischen Seelenbucher,’ Deutsche Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift fur Polen (1936), Heft 36, p. 47. 13 J. Janczak, Ludnosé Lodzi przemystowe 1820-1914 (Lodz, 1982), p. 121. 14 O. Flatt, Opts miasta Lodz: (Warsaw, 1953), p. 119. 15 F. Friedman, Dzieje Zydow od poczgtkow osadnictwa do 1863 roku (L6dz, 1935),

pp. 45-70.

16 J. Smiatowski, ‘Cechy rozwoju Lodzi’ in Wezoraj, dzis 1 jutro Lodz, ed. W. Michowicz (L6dz, 1979), p. 52.

17 W. Pus, Dziee Lodz:... , pp. 49-51. 18 K. Badziak, ‘Geneza i rozw6j t6dzkeigo wezta komunikacyjnego (do 1914 r.)’, Rocznik Lodzkt, vol. 21 (1976), pp. 149-70. 19 W. Pus, ‘De ontwikkeling der textielagglomeretie Lodz tot 1914’, Geschiedenis van Techniek en Industriele Cultuur (Brussels, 1990), p. 16. 20 Lodz. Dzieje miasta, op.cit., pp. 261, 285. 21 W. Pus, Przemyst Krolestwa Polskiego w latach 1870-1914 (Lodz, 1984), p. 71; idem,

Dzteje Lodzt... , pp. 55-6. 22 Historia Kultury Materialne Polski, vol. 6, ed. B. Baranowski et al., Wroctaw, 1979), pp. 283-91.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CITY OF LODZ (1820-1939) 19 23 Lodz. Dzweje miasta... , op.cit., p. 346. 24 S. Pytlas, ‘Struktura t6dzkiej burzuazji przemystowej w drugiej] potowie XIX w.’, Rocznthi Dzrejow Spotecznych 1 Gospodarczych, vol. 47 (1986), pp. 133-7.

25 W. Pus, Dzteje Lodzi... , pp. 141-2. 26 Ibid., pp. 97-8. 27 A. Ginsbert, Lodz, Studium monograficzne (LOdzZ, 1962), pp. 210-13.

28 W. Pus, Dztee Lodz... , pp. 112-16. 29 H. Dzitkowska, “Zabiegi o rynek rosyjski dla todzkiego przemystu wtokienniczego w latach 1921-1922’, Roczntk Lodzkt, vol. 11 (1966), pp. 113-14. 30 B. Wachowska, S a yo -~e 8 © D ~ fit

om

Ss & ”n © wy WO

a sGaa s*¥ es = are a Sa

4 Oo ~—, O Hoe Cis aus ee ™

NATIONAL COMPOSITION OF LODZ INDUSTRIALISTS 45

Jews reached its height, there were also 18 more of them (6 per cent) among the large industrialists (201-300). Yet they never managed to dominate in the next group of larger industrialists (301—1000), even though their numbers in the group of the very large increased (see table 3). There was parity between the two nationalities among the largest industrialists in 1904—1905, and afterwards the Germans dominated by 11—16 per cent (see table 2).

There were more industrialists of German origin outside the textile | industry, in Ldédz firms of all sizes, in the second half of the nineteenth century and at the beginning of the twentieth century. This was the case despite the growth of the number of Jews in these non-textile industries. In fact, although the German industrial bourgeoisie lost its total domination

in textiles at the end of the nineteenth century, it remained more important than the Jewish bourgeoisie, both because there were more Germans in the large and larger firms and because of their position in all sections outside textiles. At the same time, the increasing role of Jewish industrialists in the textile industry was noticeable not only in Lédz, but throughout the Polish Kingdom, where by 1911 they owned 40 per cent of the factories.'®

A few of the families of the largest German and Jewish industrialists were particularly important before 1914. The Scheibler family was one of

the richest and played an important role in the socio-economic and cultural life of the city. The members of the family were: Anna Scheibler, whose husband Karol had founded the family firm and had died in 1881, and who was the richest person in L6dz before 1914 (worth about 10-12 million roubles); her son-in-law, E. Herbst, who was the most important figure in the economic life of the city and was well-known in that of the

Polish Kingdom and Russia as well; her sons, Karol junior, who had increased his share in the family business and other companies from 1886, and Emil. All of them in turn became members of the local industrial élite. In the years before World War II Leo and Karol Herbst, the grandsons of

the company’s founder, Karol Wilhelm Scheibler, were the important members of the family.

The Scheibler family were almost sole owners of the largest cotton factory in the Kingdom (and one of the largest in Russia), with capital of 9 million roubles and 7,000—7,600 workers in the years 1900-1913. They

also had 45.31 per cent of the shares in the Lodz Commercial Bank (in 1900-1913) as well as shares in numerous businesses throughout the Polish Kingdom. In 1913 these included: 2,000 shares in the Furnace and Foundry Company (Towarzystwo Wielkich Piecéw i Zakladow Hutniczych) in Ostrowiec, worth 1,070,000 roubles, 48.6 per cent of its capital; 67

per cent of the shares in the ‘Lesmierz’ Sugar Refining Company (Towarzystwo Akcyjne Cukrowni ‘Lesmierz’); shares worth 97,700 roubles in B. Becker’s Biatystok Company; 16 per cent of the shares in

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YISROEL RABON AND HIS NOVEL DI GAS 247 NOTES

1 Unless not otherwise noted, the biographical details on Yisroel Rabon are from entries on him in Z. Reyzen, Lekstkon fun der ytddisher hteratur, prese un filologye, 4 (Wilno, 1929), col.272, and also from Lekstkon fun der nayer yiddtsher literature, 8 (New

York, 1981), cols.282—3. Important biographical details may be found in articles on

Yisroel Rabon by his literary colleagues in Lodz: Yitshok Goldkorn, ‘Yisroel Rabon’, Di goldene keyt, 42 (1962) 125—9 (this article appeared in a longer version in Goldkorn’s book, Lodzsher portretn (Tel-Aviv, 1963], pp. 33-52); Yoysef Okrutny, “Tsum portret “Yisroel Rabon”’, D1 tsukunft, November 1973, pp. 409-13, and also in Okrutny’s book Eseyen fun harbstikn gemit (Tel-Aviv, 1980), pp. 72-83. See also

Kh. L. Fuks’s book, Lodzsh shel mayle (Tel-Aviv, 1982), pp. 102-6, and the translator’s afterword in: Israel Rabon, The Street, translated from the Yiddish and with an afterword by Leonard Wold (New York, 1985), pp. 185-92. At times the details given in these sources must be checked and verified (see below). Until at least 1926 he also signed his publications with his name Yisroel Rubin. He began to use the name of Rabon to distinguish between him and the educator and writer Dr Yisroel Rubin (Reyzen, pp. 268-72). In Reyzen’s entry, he still appears as Yisroel Rubin, but from 1928 all his books appeared under the pen-name Rabon. His other pennames are: Yisrolik der Kleyner, Shabse Tsiter, Yisroel Ring, Rus Vintsigster, A. Ringel, M. Botshkovski, I. Vindman (according to Goldkorn, the last pen-names were used in the journal Os), R. Izrael (?). He had other pen-names, which have not been identified (see note 18). 2 According to the Lekstkon fun der nayer yiddisher hiteratur, Vol.8 (New York, 1981),

p. 282. I have not been able to find these poems in the issues of the newspapers preserved in Jerusalem. 3 There are several versions regarding his death. In his book (p.52), Goldkorn writes that ‘it seems’ that Rabon died in the Kloog camp in Estonia. According to Z. Szeps, Antologia poezjt zydowskiey (London, 1980), p. 199, Rabon died in 1943 during the deportation from the Lédz ghetto. But the most reliable version seems to be that of Wilno residents who were witnesses to his death: ‘He was shot in Ponary, in the summer of 1941, before the Jews were forced to the ghetto’ (Di goldene keyt, 108 [1982], p. 197, in an editorial note, written by the journal’s editor

A. Sutzkever).

4 It seems that from the period before the publication of his first collection of poetry in 1928, there are many poems which were not included in his books. These are not only poems published in daily papers, which we do not have in our possession, but also poems published in literary journals. Thus, for example, he did not include in _ his books the poems which appeared in S’feld, Lodz, No.1 (December 1919), except ‘Der alter bokher mitn fidele’ which was included with small changes in the first volume under the title ‘Portret fun bukhalter B.G. vos shpilt oyfa fidl’. Likewise, he did not include other poems which appeared in S’feld, No.4 (June 1921), as well as the rhymed Hasidic humorous story in the northwestern Polish dialect of Yiddish,

“Vus de rebe r’ Mayerl ot yfgetien mit a shisyen kliskelekh mit milyekh, mayse shehoyo bekak Korev bkroynpoyln’, which was printed in the collection Shveln, Lodz, Vol.1 (January 1924). From the later period we have not found in Rabon’s books the poem ‘A mes’, Literanshe bleter, 37 (540), 14 September 1934, p. 602. And

these are only examples of poems scattered in journals which have not yet been collected and which have not been dealt with in the criticism on his works. 5 On the cover, ‘Hintern’. The book was printed in a very careless manner, with a confusion in the pagination. The pagination below is a corrected one. Except for the

248 POLIN collection Lider (see below), all of Rabon’s books were printed in a careless and faulty manner. 6 On the cover, ‘Groyer’. 7 All of Rabon’s books are very rare, and it is very difficult to obtain them. The book

Lider, printed in 250 numbered copies, is the rarest. It seems that upon its appearance, it was not put up for sale: see I. Rapoport, Tropns gloybn (Melbourne, 1948), p. 241. I wish to thank my friend, Prof. A. Eisenbach, who put at my disposal a microfilm of the preserved copy in the National Library in Warsaw. An additional copy of the collection is to be found in Mr. H. Grosbard’s library in Tel-Aviv. In this collection of 15 poems, Rabon reprinted five poems which had already appeared in

the second collection. ,

8 The second collection has only one example of this literary genre, the poem ‘Di moyd’, pp. 14—15. It seems that during the 1930s Rabon dropped this poetic genre. 9 The poem appeared in the collection Lider, pp. 15-17. After the appearance of this book it was printed together with other poems from this collection in D: tsukunft, (January 1938), pp. 72-3. In the YIVO archives in New York the manuscript of these poems which were printed in D: tsukunft is preserved, together with Rabon’s letter from August 2, 1937, to the editor, A. Lyesin, concerning the publication of the poems. The poem is printed here according to the above manuscript. See the quotation in lines 9—12 in Yiddish, spoken by non-Jews with its parallel in Di gas, p. 45.

10 Yoysef Okrutny has already pointed out the actual Polish background of the poem in his book (see note 1), pp. 82-3, where the poem is reprinted. 11 ‘A levaye’ appeared also in the second and third collections. It also appeared among the poems printed in Di tsukunft (January 1938), pp. 72-3. It was included in a sequence of poems by Rabon which were added to Goldkorn’s article in D1 goldene keyt (note 1), p. 131. The translations of ‘A levaye’ and of ‘Der soykher fun kets’ are taken from The Penguin Book of Modern Yiddish Verse, edited by Irving Howe, Ruth R.

Wisse and Khone Shmeruk. We are grateful for their permission to reprint these translations. 12 See the following stanza from his poem ‘Mayn lid’ in the first collection, p. 10: ‘Halevi grew up in silk and gold, / he travelled so he could die under the sun of Palestine. / and I will go on foot to Wilno / to kiss on Hirsh Lekert’s grave the Red Flag.’ See also the poem ‘Proletarish lid’ on pages 47—8 of the second collection, and in the third collection, pp. 38—41, the poem on the ‘Spartak-komunar’ in Berlin in

1919. In Di gas the demonstration of the striking workers is sympathetically described, and he mentions there a leaflet of the Communist party (pp.66--7). 13 The translated poem of Kasprowicz appeared in Lodzher tageblat on August 13, 1926 (this issue is missing in the National and University Library in Jerusalem — on the existence of the translation: Bibhografishe yorbtkher fun YIVO, 1 [1926], Warsaw: 1928, p. 199). The translation of Lusternik’s poem appeared in Literarishe bleter, 9 (564), February 28, 1935, p. 134. 14 Os, 6 (1937), signed Shabse Tsiter. 15 Os, 6 (1937), signed Rus Vintsigster and also in 1938, No.3, signed Y.R. 16 The translation of poems by J. Cocteau appeared in Os 1 (1936), which is probably lost, and the translation of poems by P. Valéry appeared in No.6 (1937) — all signed Rus Vintsigster. In addition, the editorial board of Os announced the publication of Francois Villon’s poems, translated by Rus Vintsigster, on page 50 of volume i (1936). The volume in which they were to be published has not reached us. 17 When the chapter ‘A geshikhte mit a ferd’ from D1 gas (see below) was published in Lodzher tageblat on March 22 and 26, 1929, the paper’s editorial board introduced it with a most significant note: ‘Yisroel Rabon iz far undzere lezer nisht keyn ponem

YISROEL RABON AND HIS NOVEL D/ GAS 249 khadoshes, hagam zayn nomen (pseydonim) iz gor veynik bakant. Unter farshidene literarishe nemen hot er oyf di shpaltn fun Lodzher tageblat gedrukt a ganise rey bilder fun yidishn noyt in Balut, vi oykh eynike gresere romanen’. (My emphasis — Ch. S.); in a

continuation of the note the success of Di gas is reported. This is the most direct,

important, and reliable evidence about the serialised novels which Rabon published in this paper. Regarding this matter, see also Fuks’s book (note 1), p. 105, where he writes that Rabon ‘was forced to write sensational novels for the papers’: ‘he published shund novels under the name of Y. Rosental and other pseudonyms in Lodzher tageblat and in Haynt [ . . . | as well as translating a number of novels from German and Polish.’ This evidence, however, is not reliable. Furthermore, it seems that, contrary to what Fuks writes, Rabon published novels in Haynt in his own name (see above). It is almost certain that the novel Dos bufet meydl (a sensatsyonelerotisher roman fun der lodzher virklekhkeyt) (‘ The Buffet Girl, a sensational-erotic novel of the reality of Lodz), which appeared in the Lédz paper Nayer folksblat from April 20 to October 21, 1932, signed by R. Izrael, was written by Rabon. The novel is mentioned by N. Mayzl, ‘Undzer tsaytungsroman’, Literarishe bleter, 38 (437), March 16, 1932, p. 660. If Izrael is indeed one of Rabon’s pennames, there are at least another ten serialised novels by Izrael in the paper Wayer folksblat between the

years 1931-1937.

18 See my essay on ‘shund’ literature in Yiddish, Tardits, 52 (1983), pp. 326-54. The findings on the penetration of canonic elements into Rabon’s serialised novels are based on Corinne Weil’s excellent seminar paper which analysed this aspect of the novel Hinter a forhang. 19 ‘“Shabes nokh mitog”: onheyb fun roman: “Di forshtot” fun Yisroel Rabon’, Lodzher tageblat, October 6, 1930. These are the first two chapters, pages 7—13 in the book,

with hardly any changes.

20 See Y. Goldkorn in his book (note 1), pp. 49-50. In contrast to him, Okrutny claims in his article in D1 tsukunft (note 1), p. 410, that the novel has no connection with Rabon’s biography. It should be noted that in the chapters published in the paper, the hero was ‘a child of nine or ten years of age’. 21 The book received a very sympathetic review from M. Grosman (Literarsshe bleter, 48 [551], November 30, 1934, p. 804). It seems that for many years the subject of Balut occupied Rabon. In the 1920s he published ‘A series of pictures’ about Balut in Lodzher tageblat.

22 These are the issues of Os which have been located until now: First year, No.1, December 1936 (only the cover with a table of contents, and pages 49-50); No.6, 1937; second year, 1938, Nos.1—3; [third] year, No.1, April 1939. See Goldkorn (note 1), p. 34, regarding Os and the number of issues which appeared. 23 Ayzik Ruskolenker, Irmtyohu hanovt: pruv fun a dramatishn ebopey in dray teyln (Jeremiah the prophet; an attempt at a dramatic epic in three parts, Warsaw, 1936).

Y. Okrutny published a sympathetic review in Os, January 1938, pp. 46-7. Ruskolenker published an article on ‘shund’ literature in Os, No.6 (1937), pp. 33— 36, entitled ‘Di inflatsye fun gasn-literatur’. I have not found his name in lexicons of _ Yiddish writers. His book on Jeremiah deserves attention. 24 See above, p. 6. 25 ‘Der bal (a kapitl fun a roman)’, Bleter 1940 (Kovno, 1940), pp. 86-99 is identical with the first chapter of Balut, pp. 17-39. 26 See the editorial comment of D1 goldene keyt, 108 (1982), p. 197. 27 ‘Fartseykhenungen fun yor 1939’, Untervegns, Almanakh far der yidisher literatur, redagirt: N. Prilutski, I.I. Trunk, Yisroel Rabon (Wilno, 1940), pp. 190-234. This collection was prepared under Lithuanian rule, but appeared after Lithuania was annexed by the USSR. Rabon’s ‘Sketches’ was reprinted in entirety in D: goldene

250 POLIN keyt, 108 (1982), pp. 164—97. In the entry on Rabon in the New York lexicon we read: ‘In 1940 edited with N. Prilutski and I.1. Trunk the almanac Untervegns (Wilno), in which he printed the novel Der veg tsu di shtern’. There is no mention of this novel by Rabon in the collection. Perhaps it was the former name of the book Di geshikhte fun a vanderung (The history of a wandering)? 28 ‘Fartseykhenung’ (sketch) is the direct translation of the Russian term ocherk which generally relates to reportage with some literary elements. 29 Cf. especially pp. 220-226 in Untervegns, and also pp. 186-91 in Di goldene keyt. See also below, in the discussion of Di gas, p. 20-1.

30 See for example Rabon’s articles on Vaysnberg and on ‘shund’ literature, mentioned above, and also I. Rapaport’s polemical article from 1938 against Rabon’s article, which has not been located: ‘A temperamentfuler ober umgelungener ongrif’, Tropns gloybn (Melbourne, 1948), pp. 234—41.

31 ‘Tsu naye sheferishe uftuen farn ufboy fun sotsyalizm (di ershte baratung fun yidishe shrayber in LSSR)’, Der emes (Kovno), No.114, 27 May 1941. This is what appears in the paper following the above quotation:

The comrades Shokhet, Zhirman, Beilis, Bielievitch and others demonstrated polemically to the speaker that such an opinion on literature constituted reactionary contraband smuggled into the young Soviet literature. For all writers it had become clear that only socialist realism gives the writer the broad possibility of free development and creative drive.

I wish to thank Dr Dov Levine for kindly supplying a photostatic copy of this extremely rare issue. On this period in Lithuania see the insightful article by Dr Levine, ‘A short respite of hope — Yiddish writers in Soviet Lithuania 1940-1941’, Kiryat Sefer 53 (1978), pp. 565—76; regarding the above meeting, see pp. 574—5. 32 Sh. Katsherginski, ‘Der haknkreyts iber Yerusholaim dlite’, Yidishe shniftn, L6dz 1946, p. 102. Also: Khurbn Vilne (New York, 1947), p. 213. 33 There is no doubt that Y. Oktruny was right in his article in Dz tsukunft (note 1), pp. 409-13, when he strongly rejected the simplistic biographical identification of the narrator in Dz gas with the book’s author. This identification was raised in the article by W. Gliksman, ‘Yisroel Rabon’, Dz tsukunft, April 1971, pp. 147-50: “We must assume that the novel’s hero is Rabon himself (p.147). Gliksman’s identification is based on the fact that, in the entry on Rabon in Reyzen’s lexicon, Rabon is said to have served in the Polish army and participated in Poland’s wars against the Bolsheviks. The fictional nature of the novel is not in doubt. But even though one cannot identify the book’s author with its narrator in D gas, there is still room to assume, that Rabon’s personal experiences during his army service found their way in one form or another into the novel and also into the narrator’s stories about the

war. See also the reviews on D1 gas by Sh. Zaromb (Literanshe bleter, No.49, December 7, 1928, p. 971); by Sh. Niger (Dz tsukunft, March 1929, pp. 210-12); the article by N. Vayning, ‘Yisroel Rabon — der dikhter fun sensatsyes’, (Oyfkum, January 1930, pp. 14-16); and the chapter on Rabon in I.I. Trunk’s book, D1 yidishe proze in Poyln in der thufe tsvishn beyde velt-milkhomes, (Buenos Aires, 1949), pp. 68-76

(Trunk’s article on Rabon in Unzer tsayt from June 1958 is identical with this chapter), and also the afterword by L. Wolf to the English translation of the book. A Polish translation, Uliczka, the work of Krysztof Modelski, appeared in 1991.

34 In this context it should be noted that in 1924 Joseph Roth’s book Hotel Savoy appeared (Berlin). Even though the city’s name is not explicitly mentioned in it, there is no doubt that it is L6dzZ, as in Rabon’s book. For this definite identification, see: David Bronson, Joseph Roth — Eine Biographie (Cologne, 1970), p. 25, and Jan

YISROEL RABON AND HIS NOVEL DI GAS 251 Koprowski, jozef Roth (Warsaw, 1980), pp. 45—6. Roth’s novel is also based on its hero’s temporary stay in Lodz (and told in the first person). The hero is a soldier who returns through Poland to the West from captivity in the East. The grotesque elements also stand out in Roth’s book. It is doubtful if Rabon knew of Roth’s book before he wrote Di gas. Nevertheless, it seems worthwhile to compare the two books which describe the same period, in the same city, through very similar heroes and with a similar literary approach. 35 In his book, p. 89, Roth writes in a parallel way about striking workers, and in this context mentions someone who wants to establish himself in the movie business during the worker’s strike: ‘In this town, nothing was missing more than a large

cinema. It is a grey town with much rain and gloomy days. The workers are striking. One has time. The whole town would sit for days on end and half the night in a cinema’ (p.117). See also Rabon’s poem ‘Kino Venus’ (Groyer fring, pp. 8-9), in which the audience visiting the movie theatre is described, and among them the unemployed workers.

36 While he was still in Poland, I. Bashevis also tended in this period, to describe alienated characters on the margins of society. In a similar context he also described

the characters of ‘White’ Russian immigrants in Warsaw. See his story ‘In altn hoyz’, Literarishe bleter, 27 (270), July 5, 1929, pp. 523-7. 37 See above, p. 6.

38 It is characteristic that when the narrator longs to read a book, he particularly remembers Hebrew characters. See Chapter 10, p. 60. The significance of this episode in the context of Dz gas will be better understood in the continuation of our discussion.

39 The numbers are according to Pinkas Hakehillot, Encyclopaedia of Jewish Communities, Poland, Volume I, The Communities of Lodz and its Regions (Hebrew), (Jerusalem, 1976), p. 17.

40 In contrast to this, the presence of traditional Jews in kaftans (in the original ‘kaftanjuden’ ) is felt in Roth’s book. Compare pp. 16, 42. 41 Boze Narodzenie, p. 173. 42 Fogelnest is also a stranger in Lodz, but we do not know if he has come from a shéeil. See Chapter 23, p. 172. It seems that the painter is also not from Lédz. 43 We should compare the alienated characters in Rabon’s Di gas with the various estranged characters who populate our literature in Hebrew and Yiddish from the beginning of the century. 44 A paper in Yiddish was mentioned on p. 3. But this refers to a reader in the shteé/ in which the narrator was born. 45 The story appeared previously under the name of ‘A heym’ in the journal S’feld, No.4 (June 1921), pp. 7-12. It was accompanied by the following note: ‘A section from “Der tumtum”, S’feld, No.3’. A copy of No.3 of this journal has not been found. The character called ‘Der harbstiker’ is also mentioned in the story, just as

he appears in the novel, p. 231. Yet in one instance, when the character is mentioned as ‘Der harbstiker’ as in Sfeld, in the novel the word ‘he’ appears. We have replaced the story’s title ‘Ahin’ in the book with ‘A heym’, according to the version in S’feld. This accords also with the story’s content and with its context in the novel. 46 For a completion of the picture, it will be noted that Russian ‘is spoken’ in the first chapter (p.12), and German in the third chapter (pp.35-36, and in Chapter 25 (p.182).

47 On the significance of this degradation, but in totally different circumstances, we can learn from the story of Der Nister, ‘Unter a ployt’. See what I have written on this story in D1 goldene keyt, 43 (1962), pp. 47-68.

252 POLIN 48 Polish-speaking characters in an environment with no Yiddish-speakers appear in the works of I.I. Singer, E. Kaganovski, Y. Perle, and others. At times the texts deal with non-Jewish characters. But it seems that this phenomenon is marginal even in Yiddish literature created in Interwar Poland. I touched this subject in a paper presented at the International Conference of Jewish-Polish Relations (Oxferd, September 1984). It appeared in Podn (Oxford), Vol.I, pp. 176-95. 49 The conflicts in Rabon’s serialised novel Hinter a forhang are also created against the background of World War I (see above, p. XV). Rabon wrote about this subject in his stories ‘Ma-yofes’ and ‘Der ring’, see above note 23. See also Rabon’s review on E.M. Remarque’s famous book in Lodzher tageblat, May 24, 1929. The great respect for that famous book on World War Lis here accompanied by serious doubts about its artistic value. It will be noted that the book was translated into Yiddish by Isaac Bachevis: Erich Maria Remarque, Oyjn mayrev-front keyn nayes (Warsaw, 1929). On

the title page: ‘Eyntsike oytorizirte iberzetsung fun daytsh I. Bashevis, under der redaktsye fun Mikhal Vaykhert’. 50 The concluding paragraph of the chapter, as quoted above, was for some reason erased from the reprint of the story in Lodzher tageblat (see note 18). This chapter of Rabon’s book became very famous, thanks to its being included in Antologye fun der yidisher proze in Poyln tsvishn beyde velt-milkhomes 1974-1939, tsunoyfgeshtelt: A.

Tseytlin, I.1. Trunk (New York, 1946), pp. 611-18. It was pointed out in all the

reviews of Di gas, and has recently been reprinted in the Warsaw weekly Folkssztyme, on March 2, 1985.

TUWIM AS HE WAS * Tamara Karren

When I received the invitation to take part in this conference, and I read that it was intended to include not only the history of the Lédz ghetto, but also the most illustrious representatives of the Jewish community in Lodz, it struck me that one could not speak about the offspring of this most peculiar city without mentioning its most famous son — Julian Tuwim. I know that he will not hold it against me — if indeed he hears me as he shines forth on some heavenly cloud — that I have called him a son of Lodz.

This is after all how he felt and how he regarded himself. In any case, where else should one speak of this great resident of Lodz, if not at the

university which awarded him an honorary doctorate? With your permission, I would like to recall some verses from his poem, ‘L6dz’;

When some day my brow attains the stars And I receive the adulation of my age When several hundred towns vie over me As over Homer When, in Poland, there are more statues of me Than mushrooms after rain And in each city is raised the cry, ‘I gave you forth, o bard!’ Let those who come after Not speculate on the “Tuwim affair’, For I myself declare: my town is Lodz. It is my childhood home.

* Lecture delivered at the conference on the history of the Jews in L6dz, October 1988.

254 POLIN Let other poets sing the praises Of Ganges, Sorrento, Crimea. Give me Lodz. Her dirt and smoke

Are happiness and joy to me. | I myself am not from Lodz. I was born and raised in Warsaw. However there are various family connections linking me to Lodz. My father came from Tomaszéw Mazowiecki and some of his family lived in Lodz. Indeed, my very earliest memory of Julian Tuwim is linked to that city. I was then about four years old. My father had to stay in Lédz for a period of several

months setting up some factory, and my mother decided to take me and my little sister to the city for a few months. We were to stay in the Tuwim’s

flat at 40 (it was then number 27) Andrzej St., since the Tuwims were moving to Warsaw for a period. When we arrived, we discovered that Stefania, Julian’s wife and our cousin, was suffering from laryngitis and could not travel. Somehow we all managed to squeeze into the flat for a stay of several weeks. Then, to make the situation even more difficult, I developed enteritis. There is no need for me to explain the effect that this has on a young child. ‘Julek’ was running from Stefa’s room to mine and spent a good deal of time with me, telling me stories — naturally, ones he

had conjured out of his own imagination — and composing rhymes. I adored it. There is only one of his tales which I remember over all these years — although the details have grown hazy — of a little boy who drowned. It frightened me so much that I started to cry. My father ran into the room, took me in his arms and was very angry with Julek for upsetting

me. This did not prevent Julek from looking in to see how I was, and I

always stroked his face with great pleasure, running my hand in fascination over the birthmark (that little mouse) on his cheek, which I regarded as his great adornment. Perhaps that is why | have loved mice all my life.

But returning to Tuwim and his relationship with Lodz — I remember that when he was already living permanently in Warsaw, he said that each return visit to L6dz carried him into the happy land of his childhood years,

and that on the awful pavements of the city, there among the dirty tenements — he returned to the winged years of youth. His lifelong attachment to Lodz and its residents was demonstrated by the care and attention he lavished upon writers from the city — often publishing their works at his own expense. He was indefatigable in helping colleagues from Lodz. For many years the T'uwim family — the parents, Julian and his younger sister, Irena — spent their holidays at the beautiful village of Inowldodz, which lies some 15 versts' from Tomaszow Mazowiecki, close to the Pilica River amidst the Spala forests. My father’s family lived in Tomaszow. His

father died young, before the first world war, and his mother died

TUWIM AS HE WAS 255 peacefully in a great mahogany bed in her own flat. His elder brother was

murdered by the Germans together with thousands of other Jews in Tomaszow Mazowiecki. The official version has it that the Tuwims (Julian and his wife) met in £,6dz while walking on Piotrkowska St. I have retained from my childhood the version that it was in fact in Tomaszow, in my grandparents’ home that Julian met his great love and future wife (‘after seven autumns’ ) with her indescribable beauty — Stefania. Tuwim recalled Inowlddz with affection, and Tomaszow too remained close to his heart. Many years later he wrote

the poem which after the war Ewa Demarczyk sang so beautifully — And could we call perhaps once more, beloved Just for a day at Tomaszow,

Perhaps it retains still

That same September calm.

Near Tomaszow, not very far from Inowldédz, we had our own property — ‘JOzefow’ — formerly the textile factory. After the First World War it had been closed down. There was a little land, a small area of woodland, and a few houses formerly occupied by the factory hands and office staff. During the interwar years, poor Jews from Tomaszow had lived there. There was a lovely villa (without electricity) with a garden and an orchard, where we

spent all our holidays. We would run down to the river (Pilica) through meadows of sweet-smelling thyme. As I recall, Julek and Stefa never visited Jozefow. I can imagine without any difficulty, though, the young Julek with his mischievous, mercurial temperament — as he described it himself ‘like a machine-gun’ — running wild in the woods of Inowlédz, in the fields, the

village inns, and at the village weddings, splashing in the River Pilica, trying to keep cool by drinking the most wonderful water in the world from the unending stream of a pulsing spring.

From his earliest childhood, Ttuwim has seemed to be almost the creation of some other world. With his beautiful bird-like head, the glowing, shining glance of his blue-gold eyes, he exercised a magnetic influence on those around him by his mere appearance. His sister Irena was not misusing words when she called him a sorcerer and a panacea for _ all the sadnesses of their fairly gloomy household. The aura of sorcery which Tuwim displayed — retained its effect throughout his life — from the woods of Inowlédz to the times when, broken by life but still a sorcerer, he lived in the beautiful villa at Anin.

Apart from this he was a normal, high-spirited boy and youth, given over to various different passions. Throughout his life he cultivated strange

and mysterious things. He set up a laboratory in the kitchen — some demijohns, retorts, test-tubes — boiling herbs and strange liquids. On one

256 POLIN occasion he all but blew up the house, and the kitchen laboratory was closed down. He was a poor pupil and received the lowest grades; his holidays were often ruined (by revision) since he had to retake his exams at the beginning of the new school year in order to move up to the next class. His hatred for, and dullness at, mathematics is beyond description. Literature (even Pushkin) was spoiled for him by the lessons in Russian literature. He was so insufferable and ‘peculiar’ that his mother was called to the school to be told that her son was not normal. It must be

said, though, that he had many other interests, to which he devoted himself with a passion. Indeed everything he did, throughout his life, he

did with passion. After his craze for chemistry, mechanics and herbs, came a mania for linguistics and antiquarian books — which remained with him for the rest of his life. I heard about these youthful adventures and passions of the poet from the family even before he began to write about them. And the passion for poetry came quickly. But this I cannot discuss in a few words.

In Warsaw we did not see each other a great deal — I discount the occasions when I may have caught sight of him at the ‘Pieterko’ the landing of the Ziemianska café, since I too used to visit that café. But symbolically — we lived on different planes. I remember in particular one

visit to the Tuwims. It was at the time when the poet was already developing agoraphobia (fear of open spaces). Julek lay on the sofa,

dressed irreproachably, and with his sparkling eyes gazing at me attentively in his usual manner. I do not remember much of the conversation — only my surprise that a healthy grown man should be afraid

to go out into the street. Today I understand it much better. Tuwim suffered from other psychosomatic illnesses — not to speak of the more than real duodenal ulcer, for which he underwent an operation. He was afflicted by periods of fear, rushes of blood to the head, hot flushes, loss of balance. During the periods when he felt well, he remained straightforward, happy, easy to get on with, and full of friendship for people (not only for mankind

in general). He had an unusual gift for listening to people, meeting them halfway and even forcing his help upon them. He had no less a gift for conversing, — often speaking in order to share whatever interested him at a given moment. He had an unusual, childlike gift for wonder. He remained boyish in this way, virtually to the end of his life. Long after he had attained

fame and importance, he still liked boyish jokes. I will never forget the scene and my embarrassment when, one day, | was sitting in the ‘Zodiak’

with my youngest sister, who had just graduated from high school. Suddenly Tuwim entered, having no doubt arranged to meet with some friends, who together would create a whole almanac of Polish poetry. Tuwim noticed us — he had not seen my sister for a long time — ran over to

us with a sparkle in his eyes, like some magical bird, kneeled before my sister, kissed her hand and said in a loud voice, ‘I see too little of you, my

TUWIM AS HE WAS 25/ pretty little cousins’ — then disappeared to those awaiting him without a

further glance in our direction. |

| It would be impossible to recreate the way in which he recited his poems. He conducted them with gestures, with the rhythm of his whole body, with the look in his eyes of someone who was no longer seeing

reality. Inspiration beat out from his ecstatic face, words took on inspiration under his magical baton. It was not always easy to sit through. There were those, even among his admirers, such as, for example, Jastrun,

who accused him of unnatural movements, of nervous delivery, of developing a growing passion, fire and then switching off after the moment of exaltation, of too violent reactions. Jastrun, a poet himself, did not sense,

in his encounters with Tuwim, that someone who was continually under the pressure of his genius — cannot always be ‘natural’, that the normal measures of behaviour cannot be applied to him. And what 1s most curious — although endowed by God with a superhuman intuition — in the matters of the real world he was helpless and lost like a child, as Wierzynski said of him. He was a poet, above all, a poet. In the 1930s when Tuwim’s greatness was not questioned, even by his

Opponents — a controversy broke out around him. The poem “To a common man’ provoked a senseless attack on the poet and he was accused

of anti-patriotic pacifism (this was not what the poet was trying to get across). A whole wave of protests and threats led eventually to calls for his books, and those of Stonimski and Wittlin, to be burned. It did not take

much to uncover that the anger was directed towards writers of Jewish origin. There were even those ‘defenders’ of Polish values and culture who demanded the gallows for these writers. ‘There were those too who spread the rumour, which was of course totally without foundation, that Tuwim wrote his verse in ‘jargon’ (i.e. in Yiddish) unlike, for example, Sienkiewicz, Prus and Reymont — whose work had to be translated into Yiddish. Tuwim defended himself with his deadly quips, with a satire that was ever ready. He once told some ONR types who were picketing him: ‘Nothing can help you — your children will learn about me in school.’ The piece that follows is well-known:

Spitting poison and froth from his mouth He snorts and splutters And writes that I am a butcher A yid and bolshevik Jewboy, bacillus A baboon and a Skamandrite? That I deform the Polish language And the Devil knows what else. And to think, that from all The fine activity

258 POLIN Of this gentleman — from the spittle Wheezing, screaming, scribbling, Spewing, kicking and wailing On which he has lost half his life From the books and articles From the words, sentences and titles From the reviews, from the sneering paragraphs In a word from that whole

Journalistic mess | Will remain ... one poem And that will be — mine, not his.

| Indeed this very poem .. . O stern revenge Inspired by a Jewish God. Here is a phrase, a few words with which I toy To immortalize my enemy.

Happily more writer-colleagues, and above all readers (for the creative artist, most important of all) realised that a genius of the highest order had appeared, I will not offend anybody here, I hope, if I say that he was on the same level as those national bards, Mickiewicz and Slowacki.

The growing campaign centred on the poet, and rising nationalism in

Poland, which Tuwim felt as a personal affront, worsened his neurasthenia and increasing fear of open spaces. For whole weeks at a time he was afraid to venture outside the house, and to cross a square of any size proved a barrier too formidable for him to overcome. Zofia Morstwinowa

once wrote that these anti-semitic sentiments, striking at Tuwim’s personal dignity were the reason for his states of fear. He was afraid to venture outside the house, wanting to avoid exposing himself to some

unpleasantness; but telephones, letters, the nationalist press did not spare him these affronts. There is no doubt that the campaign of antisemitism caused a certain distortion in his psyche, and this may later have had an influence on various statements and decisions he made after the war.

The experience of war and his enforced sojourn in exile had tragic effects. He was consumed not only by longing, nostalgia, and concern for

those closest to him (and for some who were not so close), at home in Poland. He was also struck by terror when he heard of the macabre fate of

murdered Jews. His adored mother, Adela, was ‘liquidated’ by the Germans together with the whole complement of patients suffering from nervous disorders at a hospital in Otwock. These images, these thoughts,

this despair, could not fail to unsettle a poet who was as delicate and sensitive as a seismograph. He suffered as well from the sense of ‘guilt through absence’.

TUWIM AS HE WAS 259 ..... friends Come towards us from the City of Crosses Bearing absolution in their eyes And tears of joy but not reproach. neither tears nor mercy nor greeting Will help The silence stands between us.

These feelings — together with the complexes which he bore from the

prewar campaign of hate directed at him by right-wing nationalist elements within the community — led him to look for a model to be emulated so that the new Poland could be rebuilt on the lines of justice and democracy. There is no need here to hide from ourselves how dreadfully,

how ominously he was mistaken. One of his closest friends, Kazimierz Wierzynski, said that Tuwim had a metaphysical feeling for the world, but he lacked any sense of history. His love for Russia was derived from his love for Russian literature, of the poets of Pushkin, whom he translated and felt as nobody else could. Before the war he neither wanted to hear, nor to take part in discussions criticising what was happening in the country over which the darkness of

Stalinist night had fallen. During the war, and particularly after the outbreak of the Nazi-Soviet War, his enthusiam for and uncritical faith in the role played by Soviet Russia in rebuiding a new Poland was more than incomprehensible and naive. He believed that with Russia’s help, not only in the literal sense of the word, but in a moral sense also — she would rebuild crushed ideals, introduce order, justice and democracy. Doubtless he believed in this sincerely. But how could he not have realised the true nature of Soviet Russia in 1946, when he knew about the deportations of Poles — of colleagues, friends to the Gulag, to labour camps, to death — when he must already have heard of Katyn. Blinded by the idea, whose

realization he devoutly desired, painfully remembering still the semifascism which had prevailed in Poland before September 1939, deeply wounded by his persecution at the hands of certain groups within the community, he was not able to forget that they had denied him the title of ‘Polish poet’. He believed uncritically that under Soviet Russia’s ‘protection’ such things would not be allowed to happen. Wierzynski’s comment about his lack of historical sense seems to have been a massive understatement. In contrast to his friends and colleagues then in exile, he broke with the literary journal Wiadomosct which was then being produced in London

under its former editor, Grydzewski, and directed the worst kind of invective at the authors who wrote for it, who, in his opinion, were aiming

for the rebirth of a nationalist, anti-democratic Poland. ‘What is that stupid Gryd doing with that gang?’ he wrote from New York to Stonimski.

260 POLIN He stopped contributing work to many other émigré journals, even the Servis Literackt run by Wierzynski. Happily he continued to send material to Stonimski’s Nowa Polska, which arrived in the Middle East after a delay

of several months, and we could throw ourselves impatiently at it, snatching it from each others’ hands. But this is by the way.

Tuwim returned to Poland in June 1946. We missed meeting in London, where the Tuwims stayed over on their way to Gdynia. I arrived at Liverpool by boat in August 1946 with the Polish 2nd Corps (from Italy).

Never again did I see Julek alive. During my first visits to Poland after October 1956 I used to meet the beautiful Stefa and our cousin Alicja Chmielewska. Alicja had been very close to Tuwim and in the immediate postwar years was in charge of the “Kopciuszek’ café — where writers and artists used to gather — a postwar substitute of the prewar ‘Pieterko’ in the Mala Ziemianska café on Mazowiecka St. We know that ‘Tuwim was welcomed back to Poland like a king. Early

on his experience of returning home to Poland, to his homeland, was undiluted happiness — everything was beautiful and adorable. Even the ruins of Warsaw were ‘beautiful Warsaw’. His nervous tension grew more pronounced. He was unable to sit in one place, he could not cencentrate

on what he was doing, jumped from one subject to another, from one passion to another. His face grew thinner, made more sensitive through suffering. Increasingly he resembled a being from another world. We do

not known how soon after his return, it was before he realized how mistaken his crazy dreams had been. He rejected any thought of admitting to his mistake, which, for him, would have been intolerable. During the first year following his return he threw himself into the whirl of rebuilding cultural life in Poland. Doted upon by the authorities — he was in a position to accomplish a great deal, and did so. Gradually, however, it began to dawn upon him that something was going on which he did not understand, and was afraid to understand. He choked and suffered in the growing atmosphere of mendacity. He did not know how to create in it. Divided between hundreds of commitments and interests, he saddled himself with the work of editing collections of linguistic curiosities. He was aware that it was only a form of escape, that nothing

could replace real creative activity. What is more, words of abuse occasionally came to him through the post just as they had before the war, even after the destruction of almost the whole of the Jewish community in

Poland. This hurt Tuwim even more than it had before the war (‘to 1 teraz?’ — so even now?’ ).

Unfortunately Hemar, the most severe critic and ‘judge’ of Tuwim’s attitude, was right when he wrote that ‘after his return to Poland he did not

write one poem that anybody else could not have written’. It is characteristic that the promised second part of “Kwiaty polskie’ — which, as

he said while still in New York, he could only write once he had returned

TUWIM AS HE WAS 261 _to his homeland — remained unwritten. This was perhaps the greatest and most telling disappointment that he experienced in the New Poland. Hemar, in his critical and cruel assessment of Tuwim, condemning his character and accusing him of betraying both himself and the friends of his youth, was nevertheless compelled to end with the words: ‘A great deal of time will pass before such a ravishing flower will come forth from the black earth of Polish poetry. Much water will flow in the Vistula before the light of such a great and beautiful star, and such a vivid one as this poet, will shine forth from its gloomy depths’. J6zef Wittlin said, after Tuwim’s death, that with all his faults and good features it is impossible to understand him without recognising in him the

strength of the supernatural. His poetry itself attests to following generations the truth of this — that Julian Tuwim was one of the proofs of the existence of God.

NOTES 1 A verst is a Russian measure of length equal to 1.0668 kms. 2 Skamandrites — group of young poets who formed in Poland after the First world War. On January 1920 they issued their own review called ‘Skamander’. The title referred to the river at Troy in Wyspianski’s Akropolis which ‘glittered with a Vistula wave’. (From C. Mitosz, The History of Poltsh Literature, p. 385).

DOCUMENT

LODZ MEMORIES Yehiel Yeshaia Trunk

INTRODUCTION

Yehiel Yeshaia Trunk, the author of Poyln: zikhrones un bilder, 7 volumes, (New York, 1946-1953) from which these ‘Lodz Memories’ are taken, was born in 1887, near Warsaw. On his mother’s side, he came from a family of

village Jews. His maternal grandfather had become the administrator of one of the Sapieha estates, and ultimately succeeded in purchasing an estate of his own, Osmolin, where Trunk spent much of his childhood. On his father’s side, he was descended from a long line of rabbis, and was also kin of the Pryweses, who are alluded to in the sketch ‘Yung Yiddish’. He

began to write in 1908, strongly influenced by Yitshak Lebl Peretz. His works included literary criticism, discussions of Jewish mysticism and reflections on the Bund, which he joined in 1923 and to which he remained faithful, as he describes in his sketch on Izrael Lichtensztajn, all his life. He

wrote a number of important studies on Yiddish literature, including Idealizm un naturalizm in der yidisher hteratur (1927) and three studies of Sholem Aleichem, Sholem Aleykhem (1937), Tevye der milkhiger (1939) and Tevye un Menakhem Mendl 1n yidisher velt goyrl (1944).

Trunk lived in L6dz for much of the interwar period but moved to Warsaw in the late 1930s, where he was, in 1939, President of the Jewish Pen Club. He left Poland on the outbreak of the war and, after a period in Palestine, settled in New York, where he died in 1961. His most valuable work is undoubtedly Poy/n, a seven-volume autobiography, portraying his life against the background of Jewish life in Poland. His cousin, the historian J.J. Trunk described Poyln as follows: The seven volumes of Poyln by the late I.I. Trunk are a vital literary source for becoming acquainted with Polish Jewry in the 70 years preceding its destruction by the Nazis. Trunk wrote an autobiography, but his life-story, that of a great Jewish writer, is, in fact, an artistic

LODZ MEMORIES 263 description of Polish Jewry in all its many manifestations. Thus the family chronicle of the Trunks becomes an epic of Polish Jewry, encompassing its many strata and segments. It ranges from Torah scholars to the most ignorant boor, from rich merchants and land-

owners to paupers and wandering beggars. All is there and all is described with empathy, gaiety and the benevolent smile of a great humorist.

Trunk’s Poyln is not a lachrymose picture of a world that has vanished. He lived during a period of great social change, marked by the gradual decline of the old patriarchal way of life and the rise of new trends and developments. Blessed with a phenomenal memory, he was able, for instance, to describe in great detail the apparel of his grandmother and aunts on the occasion ofa wedding in the family, the menu of the feast, the repertoire of the musicians and the wedding entertainer. The pages of Poyln are filled with striking figures: aristocrats and

simpletons, hasidic rabbis with their followers, their enlightened (maskilic) opponents, atheists and even converts, Polish peasants and

country girls, Polish gentry and their Jewish counterparts. He has resurrected a whole epoch, a whole peculiar civilization which was destroyed before our eyes.' Two volumes of Poy/n have been translated into Hebrew (Tel Aviv, 1946,

1953). The ‘L6dz Memories’ which follow, translated from Yiddish by Anna Clark, are the first extracts of this great work, as far as we have been able to ascertain, to appear in English. We hope they will be followed by . others and perhaps by a translation of the whole autobiography, or, if that is impossible, of an abridged version. Antony Polonsky YUNG YIDDISH

L6dz has ever been a city for catching falling stars and playing for big stakes. ‘The Jews of Lodz resembled the legendary Red Jews of Sholem Aleichem and insisted on choosing the most slippery paths. In the years of

tremendous opportunity after the First World War, they rolled up their sleeves and went to work with breathless haste. ‘Things were looking up in every field. he black market flourished and smugglers were getting rich in

other towns as well, but Lodz knew how to take the utmost advantage of understanding how to catch the biggest fish in the murkiest waters. Next to

it, Warsaw was beginning to look like a poor relative. | After the German occupation, Poland was bereft of raw materials. With nothing in their hands, out of sheer determination only, the Jews of Lodz set in motion the wheels and chimneys of the city’s factories. Cotton and

264 POLIN wool were created virtually out of the air. The city began to function just as though the old days had returned — those days when the Russian markets stood with their mouths open and swallowed up all that L6dz produced to

feed them. Raw materials came either through miracles worthy of the Messiah or by being smuggled. The Jews of Lodz made full use of the miracles and also benefited from the astronomic digits of the devalued Polish currency. There was no time to stop and catch a breath.

In literature, as in business, these were times of changes. The city became tired of her role as a shy and careful newcomer, and aspired to take on a leading role in Jewish culture. During the war Warsaw lost everything — her best families were ruined, and the literary family had lost its crown

head. ,

through the death of Peretz. L6dz was eager to put the crown on its own The poets led the way. They rubbed their hands and set off to make the great revolution. A call was issued for an earthquake in creativity. It was to happen right there, on the pavements of the city already overflowing with

talent and one which was used to standing everything and everybody on their heads. ‘The Jewish poets only needed their magician to cause the stars to fall from the skies. They had not long to wait. The magician came in the person of Moshe Broderson. Lédz was in the habit of drawing its wealth and its personalities from waters deep and unknown. Those who fluttered

over it and became its darlings often came from obscurity, without the burden of a past and with no continuity. Here, success came to those who pursued it. One who arrived in her streets with the ability to shine was given more shine in full measure. And so now Lédz recognized and claimed as her own the new experimental poetry in Yiddish and encouraged it in her own way, i.e. through the most daring and popular innovations. Moshe Broderson became the guru and champion of this poetry, which

was as threatening as a sudden storm. The maz/ of Lodz elevated him to the Olympic heights of poetry from the humble plains of Yiddish literature, in a manner completely in character with the accustomed ways of the city.

Before the war Broderson occupied a small and unpretentious position among the writers. The stories which he wrote for the local press were without a message, journalistic rather than literary. Just before the war he published a small volume of poetry — ‘Black Trinkets’. It evoked scant notice and no one took it seriously. In a city given to spinning wheels, he remained wingless. Then, with the sudden outbreak of the war and movements of armies, he became a refugee, then remained in Moscow. The Russian revolution encompassed all areas of life, including literature. There, too, old forms fell in the general upheaval. New and daring experiments were made in the area of spirit, just as they were made in social economy. As often before,

LODZ MEMORIES 265 the more stolid prose stayed behind whilst poetry leapt forward with fluttering banners and blaring fanfares of rebellion and protest. In the vast stretches of Russian soil every new historical event becomes a deluge in which everything becomes mixed together. Only later do gold and sand become separated. So now, the inspired leaders in poetry were followed by imitators and fakes. Moshe Broderson was in Moscow at the time of the high tide of the revolutionary waters and he saw what was done in the fields of grammar and verse. Supposing one were to carry it over, lock and stock into Yiddish poetry in Poland — then yes, the poets as well as the prose writers would be knocked over their heads. They would be overwhelmed, they would rub their eyes in amazement and think — remember Moshe Broderson who left L6dz in such a quiet, modest way. You never do know who will win the sweepstake and whose ticket the sparrows on the tree tops hold in their beaks. There is fortune in misfortune, maz/ in shhmazl, everybody needs luck, especially the learned — says the Torah. This is true everywhere and especially so in Yiddish literature. When, soon after the war, Broderson returned to Lédz, he had all the outer as well

as the inner qualities of a great, perhaps the greatest, poet writing in Yiddish. He knew well that the revolutionary times sweep away the modest and the meek. He promptly deposited his pre-war modesty in the garbage bin. He sported the costume of a darling of the Muses on the streets of Lddz. Long thick black hair and black sideburns on his long, bony face denoted

poetry. The sideburns brought Pushkin to mind. His black shirt of a member of the Russian proletariat screamed of revolution and danger in the street. Over this shirt he wore strings and strings of amber and coral — wedding presents of the infatuated Muses. These feminine ornaments only enhanced the poet’s masculinity. On his long fingers — only now did Lodz notice that Broderson had long emaciated fingers — a la Chopin — he wore carved stones and amulets. It was obvious to all, that should these fingers take up the pen they would create masterpieces. His name was on everyone’s lips and Lédz gave him the thunderous applause that has long been her hallmark.

The songs he brought from Moscow displayed fireworks of grammar and rhetoric. There was general admiration for them although behind the new forms stood old banalities. Poland had a keen ear for new gestures — hope and novelty were in the air. And also, although he claimed uniqueness, Broderson practised no isolationism. On the contrary, he was drawn to the poetic crowd where he introduced democracy and bestowed favours to the right and to the left. Even before the war Lodz was a home for poets, known and unknown both. It was easy for Broderson to gather around him all ‘bleeding hearts’

and the downtrodden with the need to be badly treated and to be

266 POLIN oppressed. Not too much talent was required. It was enough to produce a few lines with a little daring nonsense to become a ‘modern poet’. It did not matter if the verses were written without grammar. Broderson, who in his own poetry was meticulous, showed leniency towards others in this respect. But then — songs without grammar? Why, this is a free-for-all and it can be learnt in a twinkling of an eye. Lédz in a wind of poetry like a forest in a storm. The modern poets were, however, no lambs willing to live and to let live. Whilst holding a golden pen in one hand they held a spear and a poisoned arrow in the other. The herd around Broderson was engaged in a grim battle against classic poetry in Yiddish and those who, refusing the use of tricks, followed the dictates of common sense and of their own true feelings. It was the time for the overturning of gods. Broderson imported from Moscow a vocabulary of the new era which defied all authority. Warsaw shook from the stormy winds that came from Lédz. Even writers who had previously opposed Peretz were in awe of the comet from the once modest

skies of literary Lodz. | In times of peace the drama of history is obscured by a mass of unessential coincidences and events. Only the eye of a historian can discern the connecting thread. During decisive moments of history, on the other hand, events show a dramatic construction as though masterminded to meet the dialectic of the situation. Events and figures are arranged with the contrivance of the seasoned chess player.

Broderson was storming Lédz and indeed all Poland in one such a dramatic, decisive moment of history. And at the very same moment and on those same pavements of the feverish city there appeared another protagonist. He deepened and widened the battlefield to include painting. The painter’s name was Jankel Adler. Before the war his name had not been known — perhaps he had been too young. Now it burst out among the artists in Lodz like a blaze of the hidden light which we are told will shine for the pious in the future. ‘The effect was blinding, and even Itche Brojner, the greatest dreamer among the painters,

took off his cap in reverence. The turmoil that Broderson brought into poetry, Adler now brought into the visual arts. He told the artists of the developments in the arts elsewhere and woke them up from their slumbers. They realized that in spite of the grandiose plans which they carried in their waistcoat-pockets, theirs was a provincial city on the arts scene. It was simply shameful to have continued with traditional painting in ignorance of what was happening behind their backs in France and in Russia.

In the cubist and futurist schools, French and Italian painters experimented with modern revolutionary form-construction. Landscape and the human body, as well as inanimate objects, were broken up in proportions and planes different from the ones seen naturally. ‘The world-view and the assumed possibility of an optic recreation differed from the ones provided

LODZ MEMORIES 267 by nature. Yet, with all its imagery, cubism rested on the rationality of mathematics more than on the irrationality of fantasy. It could be said to be looking at the world from another geometrical standpoint and trying to demonstrate to divinity that it would indeed have been possible to create

the world in accordance with other mathematical laws and a different construct of planes. These concepts which originated in France, were transferred by the revolution on to Russian soil, where millions of Jews had lived in their shtetlakh in the traditional way.

The task of the narrator and illustrator of the Jewish shtetl in this new way was undertaken by Mark Chagall. He did so with fervour and originality. Is he a great painter? — he does not have the uniquely individual colour which marks the most important masters. He sees the world from

his own vantage point of construction and line rather than light and shadow and encompasses the whole spectrum from primitivism to the daring of the visionary. These qualities allowed him to make a new geometric formulation of the Jewish shtet/ and Jewish mores. Little houses are turned over on their heads like so many paper boxes of a magician and their insides, together with their Jews, walk about on roofs; they are only yet another geometric dimension of the Jewish world — reckoning. The fish bought for the Shabbat kiddush fly about like birds. The little lambs bleat piously in the overturned lanes like the turtle-doves in the Songs of Songs.

Jewish weddings have become exotic masque carnivals. The klezmer musicians draw their tunes from the oddest-looking instruments, dwellings look like fiddles and fiddles like fowls and vipers. In spite of its abundant imagery, though, Chagall’s world-Purim-shpil is an answer to a question posed by a musing, cool mind, an attempt to show the Rebonu Shel Olam what he, the Jewish boy of Vitebsk, would have done had he created the precious luminous world, the shéeél, its Jews, its chickens and its lambs. These then were the tidings which Adler brought to Lédz on his return. As we know, his return coincided with that of Broderson from Moscow with news in the field of poetry. Lédz was fired at on two fronts. More than that — she went into a frontal attack for new art. Adler and Broderson became blood brothers and praised one another to the skies. Adler sported Russian boots with thick soles and a white jabot a la Louis Philippe. All the painters in the city, including Itche Brojner, immediately took to wearing

jabots. Adler became the trend-setter and the recognized leader of the artists. Broderson contined to wear the garb of a poet, a mixture of proletarian revolution and Pushkin, and that, too, was universally admired. Since the beginning of the world there has never existed such a fiery union

of poetry and painting as the one now extant in turbulent Lodz. The crowds of poets united with the painters like Siamese twins. Preparations were made to overturn the world and to start a bitter struggle against all authority and old-fashioned art.

268 POLIN But to overturn the world and to start a new one the brotherhood needed a forum, a journal, a paper. As for its size, the requirements were modest. Both Broderson and Adler were of the opinion that a few printed

pages covered with songs and drawings were enough to conquer the universe. And so it was decided to publish periodically a small collection of poetry and paintings together.

Typically, the artists were off and away with their plans before an ordinary man would have had the time to turn up his sleeves for action and for money. The gods endowed the artists with all gifts but one. Adler and Broderson seemed to be able to conquer unconquerable difficulties with the greatest ease — except for the ability to find a little financing for the

paper they needed. Here it was that there appeared the Third, in the person of Max Szydlowski. Before the war, Max had been a modest bookkeeper in one of the manu-

facturing plants of Lodz. He had an interest in politics and a love for Yiddish literature. When the ‘Dramatic Arts’ society was founded he was one of its supporters. It had looked as though his life was to be spent in the grey anonymity of the ‘Polish Manchester’. Here the war interceded. The plant where he worked was in trouble and he became unemployed. Like so many others he was forced to jump into

stormy waters, to sink or find a way under the new stars. Many of the swimmers went under, unknown and unsung. Many survived and came up in the waters gone crazy. They themselves didn’t know how and why. Max was one of the ones who were lucky. The once modest bookkeeper became a newly-rich man of Lédz. He was still a bachelor. In pre-war times it had been impossible for a bookkeeper to support a family. Now that he was rich he could marry. Like others, he was looking for a bride with a name and a standing of pre-war times. He wanted to make ajump which no one before him had attempted. No more and no less but he lifted his eyes to the Prywes family in Warsaw. He knew that to become a son-in-law of that family would lift him head

and shoulders above the others and give him the lustre and the patina of old yichus (good image). The times were in his favour. The great warehouses of the Pryweses had shrunk. Their houses brought next to nothing in rent. One of the grandsons of the founder of the family, Itche Mayer, had worked in his youth in the family’s famous iron works. During the war he saw that it was not going well with the firm and with the Pryweses. He

became the first one to abandon the fattened goose, which was getting thinner and thinner. Instead, he opened his own store of iron and sheet iron. Itche went about his business quietly. Let Poland not know. Let Poland wait a little until a new Prywes comes up to the surface. He wanted to stay in Grzybow (a part of Warsaw) and so his new store was next door to the old iron works. He believed in the old Grzybéw. Quietly he smiled as

his business grew. The world had plenty of time before it found out that

LODZ MEMORIES 269 one of the Pryweses was back in the saddle and on the golden steed. In the meantime, he had a daughter to marry off. Itche had two sons and one daughter, Fela. She was small and frail, had big blueish eyes and flaxen braids like a Polish shtksa. In a home where so much energy was directed towards the making of money, she loved, of all

things, to read poetry. She attended symphony concerts and wanted to learn to play the piano. Although her father had little respect for such modern pastimes, he understood that a pretty girl of marriageable age had to join the fashion and be a bit romantic. He bought a piano and engaged a music teacher for

her, a young man with sensitive fingers who in Fela’s eyes looked like something out of a novel or a volume of poetry. Together, they watched the

moon walk over the trees in the night. Instead of showing the music teacher the door, Itche Prywes started looking around for a suitable match for his daughter. Soon the matchmakers came to the conclusion that Max Szydlowski of Lodz was the right man. The marriage was quietly arranged between the groom and the fatherin-law to be. Although Max was all set and ready to break dishes, Itche was in no hurry and did all he could to find out about the future son-in-law’s standing. At last the first visit to the family arrived and Szydlowski walked up the Pryweses’ staircase with what looked like the contents of a hothouse of the most expensive flowers. Itche Mayer received him politely but coldly, and offered him just the

tips of his fingers. His wife scrutinized Max through her lorgnette. To make things worse, when offered a cigarette from his host’s own golden cigarette case, the guest from Lodz refused. He did not realize the honour of being offered a personal cigarette, instead of one of the ones that were lying about. But, then, a simple bookkeeper from Lédz could not have been expected to know all the nuances of the Pryweses’ etiquette and distinguish between private and common cigarettes. Soon Fela came in. She wore an elegant dark dress and the blond tresses

were braided around the smail head. The huge bouquet and the big diamond pin in Max’s tie made her smile. Max turned the conversation from business to art and told of the happenings in Léodz and that his best

friends were Moshe Broderson and Jankel Adler. As soon as he was married he planned to buy a villa and there establish a literary and artistic salon.

Itche Mayer smiled and took one of his personal cigarettes from the golden case. Max continued to smoke the plebeian one from the box on

the table. Fela’s eyes sparkled. After the wedding in Warsaw Max Szydlowski kept his word. By the time he brought Fela over to Lédz he had already prepared an apartment in a one-storey house on Dtuga. The house looked like a chateau. Its windows looked out on a garden with some trees which had escaped the axe at the time of the rapid industrial expansion of

270 POLIN the city. Among the trees stood a replica of a garden alcove. After Fela came to Lodz her happiness knew no bounds. Her father’s house had neither pictures, nor secular books. Here Max brought her to an apartment with well-chosen furniture; the walls were covered with paintings and batik hangings by Adler, and the result had charm and individuality. The apartment became a retreat for the Jewish artists of Lodz, with Adler and Broderson at the helm. For the first time in her life Fela found herself in an artistic milieu. After the dark and sombre home of her parents she felt

young among the vagabonds. The artists were experts at having a good

time, particularly in the presence of such a pretty and elegant young woman as Fela. They did everything in their power to please her. Moshe Broderson improvised on the subject of her charm, Itche Brojner imitated well-known personalities and told dog stories. Jankel Adler pretended to speak Sephardic although he knew less Hebrew than a Turk. Folk songs were sung and hasidic dance followed. Gradually, matters became more serious. It was decided to publish a journal on literature and painting called Yung Yiddish [Young Yiddish], to express the revolution in Jewish poetry, with its new impetus against the old classicists. The patron of the paper was to have been Max but for the reading public it was to be Fela. She was to be the official publisher of Yung

Yiddish; her name Felicja Szydlowska in Latin letters did in fact appear black on white on the last page of the journal Yung Yiddish.

| Yung Yiddish was printed on thick wrapping paper. The proletarian touch added to the rebellious character of the journal. One knew at a glance that the Muses were angry. They were out on the battlefield with golden harps and thick swords. Moshe Broderson brought from Moscow the new spelling of Yiddish and it seems to me that he was the first one to use it in poetry on Polish soil on the pages of Yung Yiddish. The journal published many songs. In its few issues prose was a rare exception, admitted by the revolutionary poets as a poor relative from the provinces. In truth, there were a number of quite

mediocre songs published, too. Such is the wheel of the world; during revolutions quality is overlooked, the fighting spirit is what matters. The journal spoke with a new voice. People were afraid to gainsay it for fear of being considered reactionary.

THE KATZENELSONS

‘Let Thy House be Open’ and a modern salon of folkist art were both fitting descriptions for Yitshak Katzenelson’s home in Lédz. That was one way of putting it — Yitshak’s home. In fact he was one of many sons and daughters of a wonderfully generous, warm-hearted household. True, he

LODZ MEMORIES 2/1 was the family’s sun and the moon, its most precious jewel. They were all

proud of the fact that he had become a well-known writer both in the Yiddish and the Hebrew literatures when still a young boy. A talent and a

respect for writing ran in the family. His parents were descendants of rabbonim and his father a teacher and a writer-translator. Yitshak’s brothers and sisters were convinced Zionists and Hebraists. Love for Zion and for the Hebrew of the Scriptures was a given among

them. Yet they also- loved the Jewish masses and the language of their dispersion — Yiddish. Yitshak’s mother was the daughter of a rabbi. She came from Lithuania and had many of the characteristics associated with Lithuanian Jews: great wisdom and knowledge of human nature were combined with humour, and with the ability to work hard. Cooking pots never left her red hot burners, and the fire on the stove was kept on until late, late at night. The kitchen provided meals for the huge family of sons,

daughters, sons and daughters-in-law and the grandchildren, and for many others. Who in Lodz of those days did not partake of their meals? The house was full of out-of-town travellers and strangers, relatives and acquaintances of the family, whom fate had blown in from remote little towns of Lithuania. They lived, ate and slept at the Katzenelsons’ and in general behaved as though the place belonged to them. The cupboards stood open. The beds were made up for anyone in need of sleep and the pots were always full, like eternal springs. Old Mrs. K. was working hard all the long day, yet had enough time to give a wise smile through her grey eyes, to listen or to answer with a witticism. Above all, she kept her mind on Yitshak. With the full endorsement of the rest of the family she gave the darling of them all special tenderness and read his work in Yiddish. Like a

true Jewish daughter of old she knew no Hebrew, but still supported the Jewish Enlightenment movement — the Haskala. Reb Benjamin, who, like his wife, was a descendant of rabbis, could be said to have been the idler of this so busy and so energetic family. He was devoid of knowledge of how to make a living, unaware of what went on around him and only interested in verses. Hebrew verses from his pen coiled in their thousands in the beautiful language-above-all-languages and in accordance with the most merciless rules of both the Aaskala and of iambic versification.

How did Reb Benjamin ever earn money before the children grew up and prior to the opening of the school? Only birds on the roofs know the answer. It was rumoured that he worked as a teacher of Hebrew and as such was exploited in a most scholarly way. The skill used in his battles for

the ornamental language was ineffective in the field of making a living. When in a good mood, all the family and guests at the table satisfied and no pressing demands on her, Madam Katzenelson would regale us good-

humouredly with tales of what the family went through when Reb Benjamin was the bread winner. But those days were gone. The school was

272 POLIN doing well and brought in enough for them and for others. Reb Benjamin could devote his entire life to writing. And so he did. In appearance he

resembled Lithuanian maskthm of the time when the Torah and the Haskala still went hand in hand [i.e. before the younger generation of maskilim abandoned biblical Hebrew for the study of the language of the country]. A tall and thin man, he had grey hair and a high scholarly fore-

head. At the end of his long, pointed nose were fixed old broken eyeglasses with misted lenses over which he peered when not reading or writing. He was toothless and his greyish red beard seemed to have had a life of its own. It moved whenever he spoke, and Reb Benjamin did like to talk and spoke in a rather loud voice. The old scholar was never idle. Besides reading and teaching, his chosen task of translating 13 volumes of the History of the Jews by Graetz into Hebrew verse occupied every moment of his life. His style was that of

Calman Shulman and Herz Wessel on the pages of the Berlin journal Hame’assef [The Gatherer]. When the translation started and where were the first few dozens of the notebooks and of the scripts of the work neither Reb Benjamin nor anyone else in the world knew. It would have been impossible to find a way through the sea of paper strewn somewhere in the

attic or through the mountains of dust behind cupboards. Whole generations of mice fed on his verses and probably knew them by heart. He

himself had forgotten them. He had no time to remember. His life work was still at its beginning. It was no small matter this, to pour the ‘sage Graetz’ into the mould of biblical Hebrew. Years flew. Reb Benjamin became a father, and then grandfather of many grandchildren and was anxious not to spare the pen. He sat over his work by day and by

night, near a window in daytime and under a lamp at night, the halfbroken glasses on his nose. Everything around him might have been in an uproar; he wouldn’t have heard. He wrote and the verses ran quickly like chickens let loose from their coops. From time to time Reb Benjamin felt

the desire to see his work in print. After all, his son’s books had been published. Did he, perhaps, in his heart of hearts know his son to be a better poet than himself? Perhaps. Nevertheless, who could blame him for

wanting to see the light of day over his own output. ... But there was a snag. To print Reb Benjamin’s efforts would have meant turning whole Polish woods into lumber and paper and required the building of tremen-

dous printing presses. And still with the help of his children, Reb Benjamin did see a fraction of the work of his pen in print. In the days when I used to visit the Katzenelsons, a ray of sun fell on the translation of Graetz. A slim volume of about 15-20 pages came out. To make up for its shortness Reb Benjamin wrote a foreword and a ‘May his soul be bound up in the bundle of life’ epitaph for the benefit of the reader. In it he explained why it was that he, Reb Benjamin, was so miserly and

begrudged giving more of his work. Sharply and in advance he settled

£ODZ MEMORIES 273 accounts with his would-be critics. Supposing the critics did have any intentions of baring their teeth — Reb Benjamin would take a stick to them.

Those critics were referred to in biblical terms as outcasts of the human race, as those who piss on the wall as well as those who build near caved walls. All the expressions which our prophets had used to describe traitors to the God of the children of Israel were showered on the heads of the detractors of Graetz rendered in iambic verses. Although seemingly busy with other wordly affairs and unable to hurt or be hurt by a fly of this world — Reb Benjamin did have two enemies.

Yes, indeed, deadly enemies might be a better description. While he wrote, thunder and lightning could not penetrate his preoccupation. Yet were he to hear someone at a distance quietly mentioning, be it ever so quietly, the name of either of them, his beard shook in agitation and he

would scream abuse. The two names were Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Melech Ravitch. In the House of the Dead, the great Russian writer has a Jew put on éefthn [phylacteries] on a Friday night. Right up to the end his life Reb Benjamin

was unable to swallow, let alone forgive, such ignorance. Couldn’t Dostoyevsky have consulted a rabbi, looked up the Gemara or the Shulkhan Aruch before taking upon himself the description of how and when a Jew

puts on his éeftlin? With Ravitch, too, he had a bitter account to settle. Someone had once blundered and showed Reb Benjamin a poem by Ravitch, “Songs of Love and Hate of the Jewish Nation’. No more was needed. The word love was conveniently forgotten but ‘hate’ was another matter. By that word its author earned an eternal reading of the lesson of the Prophets from the translator of Graetz. The sound of Ravitch’s name caused a banging on the table and the shouting of abuse. To my association with the Bund I owed the nickname treyfene beyn. A Jew with a knowledge of Hebrew as sound as mine, one not ignorant of the Gemara and one who yet of his own free will becomes a bundist—such a Jew is just that—a filthy bone, a éreyfene beyn.

On rare occasions, when in a benevolent mood or in need of a respite, the older Katzenelson would indulge in writing in Yiddish, which he thought of as ‘jargon’. This happened once in a hot summer, when his wife was taking the mud-bath cure in Ciechocinek for her acute arthritis. We met in the hall, and he led me by the hand into a small room on the side. Carefully closing the door hehind him he said — come, let me read to you what I’ve written in jargon — and proceeded to read. The song, written in old-fashioned grammar, resembled the Song of

Songs. A shepherdess tends her sheep in the meadows of Sharon. A shepherd sits somewhere on a high hill, longs for the shepherdess and plays a pipe. Having finished, he confronted me with a question — ‘Filthy . bone, what is the meaning of the song?’. ‘The answer is as clear as daylight,’ I answered. “The shepherdess is your wife. The meadows of

274 POLIN Sharon are the mudbaths of Ciechocinek. The lonely shepherd is you, Reb Benjamin and the pipe is the song written in jargon’. The red beard was moving in visible emotion. Peering at me through

the half-broken lenses he pronounced — ‘Filthy bone, your opinion is correct.’

As well as keeping a house open to everyone who wished to come, the Katzenelsons gathered around them several ‘literary salons’. All Jewish writers in L6dz visited Yitshak. Even the Yung Yiddishists led by Broderson came to see him in the midst of their feud against the classicists. While there, temporary armistice was declared between opponents. That is, if Broderson can be said to have had opponents when at the peak of his glory. He crushed all and filled them with fear. If any there were who doubted his genius, they kept quiet like little lambs. The older Katzenelson, too, became the centre of a literary salon. Its members were of the generation of writers in Hebrew who used to write in Hamagid and Hamelits. Their names were famous once, in the days of the

Haskala. The generation of their admirers rested in the cemeteries of Poland and of Lithuania. Swift currents of changing times brought some of them to Lédz, like splinters of trees felled by an axe. Old, lonely and forgotten by all, they would go up to the Katzenelsons, to drink tea, remember the old days and the old friends, talk about fine points of grammar, about a verse in the scriptures or in the Gemara. One of those forgotten people who used to stay whole days until late into the night and who in truth became a member of the household was Meir Poner. It was as hard to guess his age

as that of a mummy. He looked a skeleton who having crept out of the grave had forgotten to return to his rest and spent his time at the Katzenelsons instead. His being was a denial of all rosy illusions about human life, a demonstration of the frailty and impermanence of existence. Sallow

skin covered his long body, a structure of bones in motion. The head looked as though dug out from the gloomy sands of the desert, the few remaining hairs only strengthening the ghost-like appearance. A thin grey beard and a sunken mouth with two solitary sharp and rotting teeth completed the picture. In contrast, Poner’s dark eyes burned with passion and

lust. Rumour had it that in his youth — it was hard to believe that his emaciated figure had ever been young — girls were unable to resist the blaze of these eyes and that Poner had broken many a heart. The hearts have long since become ashes, and trees rustle over them in the cemetery.

To a listener the stories told about his triumphs only confirmed the transient nature of humanity. Not so to Poner. His body, riven by a permanent cough, shook with glee. Nor was Poner free of ambition in the field of literature.

‘ He wrote plays, mostly on biblical themes. Although a scholar of Hebrew and of style, he wrote a wooden and unsophisticated dialogue. But he wrote constantly, from his earliest youth to the day he died. Before com-

LODZ MEMORIES 275 mitting the plays to paper he would tell us the plot and enact the scenes which were ripening in his mind. When visiting the Katzenelsons, | often observed Poner boiling over with the drama of his work. The sight of this boiling over, this débris playing theatre filled me with awe. Shaken by coughing, his long arms stretched out dramatically, he looked a spectre

from the world of chaos. |

Meir Poner thought of himself as the Hebrew Shakespeare. Every day looked as though it might be his last as he slouched, the laces of his boots trailing behind him. But he lived for the moment of recognition and spoke of the time when a ‘Poner Theatre’ will be built in Jerusalem. Then his plays would see stage light and Jews would flock to watch them. There

existed a curious relationship between the Hebrew bard and Reb Benjamin, whom Poner considered old-fashioned and said so none too subtly. Their only conversation was about the Torah and the Haskala and reached its peaks when it came to hastdim and miinagdim. Reb Meir was quite probably the last defender of mitnagdut in Poland. He looked upon the hasidic movement with the eyes of the Gaon of Wilno and of the maskiim of old. The adherents of hasidism were in his opinion either deviators from the ways of the Torah or fanatic obscurantists. On the other hand, Meir Poner, the man of modernity and revolution, was their staunch defender. At one point the older man would use his mightiest weapon and

shout ‘How can a reasonable man oppose the Gaon of Wilno?’ Whereupon a coughing Poner would splutter that the Wilno cockerel was no authority for him. That was all that was needed. The reddish beard shook as though in a stormy wind. To the accompaniment of banging fists, quotations of our sages were shot forth, only to have other quotations of our sages shot back. In the end nobody understood a word of what these two were shouting at one another. With a shrug Reb Benjamin would sit down to resume his iambs. Poner was in danger of falling to pieces in a coughing fit. A timely hot cup of tea offered by a smiling Madame Katze-

nelson would cause him to move to Yitshak’s study. | There he often met Jewish writers. Although indifferent to the songs, he liked the eccentricity and air of contrariness to everything and everybody of

Broderson and his Yung Yiddishists. Poner rarely participated in discussions, but the narrow eyes in the death-mask-like face shone when the conversation turned to old times. Coughing and wheezing he talked about girls and the broken hearts, not forgetting to add an obscene joke here and there.

Another of Reb Benjamin’s close friends who came to visit was Karlowski. He was a bed-ridden paralytic, an old bachelor. An ex-pupil of

his, Szmija Zimmerman looked after him occasionally. At such times Zimmerman dressed the sick man, took him down steps, and in a hired dorozhka the two went to visit the Katzenelsons. The day of the visit was the only happy moment in the invalid’s life, one

276 POLIN | to which he looked forward when lying between the sheets. For his host, too, it was a great joy to see an old friend of the yeshiva days, a fiery orator from Volozhin. Every visit was also a severe trial. Although his guest’s every word cut him to the quick, Reb Benjamin

was unable to yell or bang his fists. The paralytic was forbidden the slightest excitement, under doctor’s orders. He might, God forbid, breathe his last here, at the Katzenelsons and Reb Benjamin would then carry the sin of human life on his conscience. It look all his forbearance to listen, in

silence and with clenched fists, as the paralyzed talked from a chair specially made up for him. The tongue of the afflicted man seemed soaked in quotations from our sages, in the names from Tanaim and Amoraim and it dribbled poison and

curse both on the pages and on the Gemara. As soon as he uttered the name of any of the Talmudic doctors he altered it by the addition of a most

vulgar nickname. One was led to believe that the Gemara had robbed him : of his last shirt and that he hated both the books and the children of Israel.

Reb Benjamin was ready to burst, but he kept silent until the anger reached its peak, his guest’s eyes glazed over and it looked like the end. Zimmerman would then wrap him up, summer and winter alike, in a warm blanket and take him home in a dorozhka. Back in bed the invalid waited for the next visit. As for Zimmerman, he came from Krushevitz near Kutno. He received

a belly full of Talmud and codes in Polish yeshivas and came to Lédz. There he fell into the company of the most hardened heretics. He saw the true light at last. In his boyhood ascetic and devout, he now carried the fervour of both his melancholy and bleakness into heresy. As one who has

lost everything in the world, he evoked pity. His mien was that of the Rebonu Shel Olam’s enemy whose mission was to destroy God’s rule in the sinful world — tall and thin of a yellow complexion, as though from eternal fasting. The long and thin nose of his eunuch-like face seemed to sniff and

smell in the air like a beak of a predatory bird of the other world. Every

now and then he would stretch a sharp finger with a black nail on it. Whenever he did so it seemed that God’s world was to be darkened by pious and ascetic heresy. People swore that Zimmerman continued to study the Shulkhan Aruch the

better to transgress it, law by law and rule by rule. The Master of the Universe had a great deal to worry about because of him. On Shabbat and

holidays, when one is meant to be happy, very tight shoes, put on especially for the occasion, prevented the feeling of any spiritual pleasure. Since he was a descendant of priests he chose to spent nights in the forbidden grounds of the graveyard. Damaged ééilhn and taht with blemished fringes for prayer, unleavened bread for the Seder, of course. Simchat Torah was the saddest day of the year when he went about wearing socks and strewed ashes on his head.

LODZ MEMORIES 277 The recital of the Megila (the story of the joyful deliverance of Purim) followed by a feast of humentashen on Tishe B’Av, the anniversary of the destruction of the Temple, were a part of the defiance. On Rosh Hashanah he blew a splintered horn. The Ruler of the World was not to be envied with an enemy like this. But the heart of the heresy was Yom Kipur.

The Day of Atonement was the pinnacle of the year. On that day he

limped even more than on Saturdays and holidays and the red nose burned red with the fires of hell. Several of his friends — heretics — gathered

in a house in Batuty to partake of a Yom Kippur banquet. Poor and rich alike put their money together for the purchase of carefully selected nonkosher victuals for the occasion. Karlowski, too, gave generously. At twelve noon sharp Zimmerman would fetch the paralysed man, dress him, wrap him in a warm blanket, carry him down the stairs and put him into a goydriven dorozhka. Solemnly they drove through the streets of Lodz, the driver fully aware of what his passengers were up to. Every shitbl and

yeshiva of Lodz was packed. Shops along the streets were bolted and shuttered. Yom Kippur was everywhere in evidence while the two continued their parade in the dorozhka. Both were silent. In Batuty the heretics of L6dz were waiting for the guests of honour to start the meal. Karlowski was unable to eat. He sat at the head of the table on a chair made up with cushions, the paralysed tongue pouring poison and insult on Jewish sanc-

tities. The heretics consumed the non-kosher dishes and listened to his

tirade. Zimmerman gnawed the bones of a chicken not slaughtered according to ritual. When Karlowski weakened and his eyes glazed, his pupil saw him home. During the week Yitshak spent his morning at the school. He taught the children Hebrew and Scripture. In the afternoons he received guests in his study. All the modern Jewish intelligentsia of L6dzZ, representing every social stratum and trend gathered there. Writers came and felt at home, so did teachers of Hebrew and Yiddish. Burning questions of the day were discussed as well as less heated matters of eternity. No wonder that the talk

became often rather sharp, and only the arrival of Madam Katzenelson with tea calmed tempers. We were all young then. Jewish life in Poland was brimming with inner ideological strife. In Yitshak’s study, where militant Hebraists met equally

militant Yiddishists, bitter words fell. Yitshak himself wrote in both languages and loved them both. The warm compassionate smile which he inherited from his mother could be seen on his face. Sometimes he sang a folk-song to pour water on the fiery tempers. He sang sweetly and with much charm, and the stormy waters subsided.

And so the years passed in the enchanted home of the Katzenelsons. Gradually the older generation died off. The parents died and so did their friends and relatives, Karlowski and Poner among them. The younger

278 POLIN generation of writers and teachers continued to visit. The dark storm of Hitlerism was gathering over the world; in the hearts of Polish Jews the brightest hopes vied with the darkest forebodings of a coming end.

When the Germans entered Poland, Yitshak fled from Lodz to Warsaw. By then he had a wife and children. Later he took part in the heroic struggle of the ghetto. In the midst of the destruction of Polish Jewry, he wrote his strongest and his most beautiful songs, songs to Jews

who were dying on Polish soil and songs to the earth of Poland, orphaned and bereft of the beauty of its Jewish life. As his swan song he

left us a skin bottle of tears — he and his whole family died for the Sanctification of the Name.

IZRAEL LICHTENSZTAJN

During the German occupation of Lédz during the First World War, the Bund surfaced and became a great legal mass movement. The party’s vision of Jewish life in Poland answered the needs of the times. ‘There was

hope for a new life on Polish soil as part of the renewal of the whole of humanity. A renaissance seemed to be waiting just around the corner. The historic Spring after the devastation of the war was especially intense here. How beautiful, how new and how fruitful was to be the future of the Jews in Poland and indeed in the world. It 1s difficult to write these words now

without bitter irony. The fates must have smiled at the dreams of the masses, knowing that history was already preparing their destruction. But at the time the innovative idea of the Bund (unlike the Zionist solu-

tion through emigration and in distinction to the concept of moral rejuvenation or assimilation of the other parties) was the main theme in the fight for Jewish rights in every country of dispersion. For a thousand years, Poland had been the great creative centre of Jewish masses, the cradle of its language. In the course of generations Polish landscapes had grown into the consciousness and influenced the shape of thought, imagery and the colour of the language of the Jews. For world Jewry, it had become a focal point. Now Poland was becoming younger and more springlike and so it was seen as a springboard for a new chapter, as a messenger, an upward step on the great world road called the History of the Jews. The stages of that road ran along the tracks of world justice and socialism.

The personalities of a movement are a microcosmic repetition of a | macrocosm, much as a man is in relation to the world. So did the personality of one of the leaders of the Bund, whom I met and befriended in Lodz reflect the ideological genesis of his party. Izrael Lichtensztajn came out of Jewish poverty. His father was a melamed in Wtoctawek. Izrael became an orphan as a young child, had a wicked stepmother and a brood of small brothers and sisters. He became, in fact, a superfluous mouth at home. His

LODZ MEMORIES 279 bowl of porridge came with a snarl as if it was taken away from the other children. Although his father beat him regularly, Izrael loved the heder and the study of books. When he was twelve, his father gave in to the nagging of his second wife and sent Izrael away to learn a trade in a foundry. The factoryowner was an old, angry man. He, too, had a second wife and she counted each potato as she was putting it into the pot, and begrudged every morsel of food she gave even her husband. For that, she saw to it that he suffered no shortage of little children in his old age. The hot darkness of the workshop where hellfires flickered under barrels of liquid metal was filled with the noise of heavy hammering. It was also filled with the crying of children and the screaming of the second wife. She was always shouting, always in a rage and always with a baby at the breast. Lichtensztajn was supposed to train to be a metal-worker. In fact, he had to help the bad-tempered housewife, fetch and carry and clean. His food was meagre and given to him grudgingly. At night, when the voices in the room quietened, his wife and the children asleep, the old founder poured the fiery metal into vats. Standing near the hot metal in his yarmulka, he talked to himself. A hungry and sleepy Izrael stood beside the angry man in the shine of the flames and helped to blow at the metal. For the boy this was the inferno described on the pages of the books he read in the heder of his father the melamed. In the end he could stand it no more and fled home. A grim-faced stepmother assailed the boy before his father — look at this, our good-for-nothing has run away from the foundry. Soon afterwards the father gave him in apprenticeship to a baker. The bakery was in a deep cellar, several crooked steps down from the street. It was in permanent darkness. The air was nauseatingly warm, like

| newly-baked bread dough. The master and the apprentices were covered by flour and were always sleepy. The baker was a small silent man who looked as though he could fall asleep while on his feet. He sometimes did sleep while baking and never left the basement. Saturday afternoons he sat near the warm oven, read the 7se’ena Rena and drank cold water. His two helpers were tall and lean, one had inflamed eyes and the other squinted. They had very long arms and like the baker seemed able to sleep standing on their feet. ‘The baker’s wife was petite, wore a head-cover day and night and talked non-stop.

It wasn’t clear who was Izrael’s boss. He had to serve all and was

pinched by all until he cried. After the two older lads caught him one day studying a Polish language textbook, he was nicknamed professor. On that occasion he was pinched black and blue and had his face plastered with dough. His cries amused the bigger boys further and so they gave him a good kick from behind for good measure. The twelve-year-old learnt a lesson for life — not to cry when it hurts.

280 POLIN It wasn’t easy to see in what way he was taught to bake. Except that once a week at night he was given a broom and had to crawl into the innards of

the oven to sweep the ashes out. When there he felt even more unhappy than in the foundry — lost in the forsaken hot Gehenna among the sparks flying from the mountains of ashes. He remembered stories of hell of the Jewish books he read. He swept the ashes and he wept. Once when coming out of the oven he was met by his own reflection in a

| mirror. It was black as the Satan of Kav hayashar [Righteous Measure, a book of moral lectures]. The eyes were red from crying, sleeplessness and from the heat. The old baker gave him a bagel and told him to lie down on the stove to sleep. Tomorrow, God willing, they would have to get up to work at dawn. Lichtensztajn climbed up to the niche of the oven but didn’t sleep. For once the basement was quiet, a little night lamp flickered red and a cricket was chirping in the baking oven. When he fell asleep he had a most beautiful dream: he sat under a tree and a bird was singing in its branches.

In the morning, the baker sent him out to do some shopping. Izrael

drank in the fresh air in gulps. Thinking of his beautiful dream he wandered away. It was Spring. Chestnut trees were in bloom in the streets of Wloclawek. He walked among the blossoms. It became late and he was afraid to return home to the baker. His wanderings took him to the railway station. A train was standing on the sidings headed for Warsaw. He crept into one of the compartments and laid himself down under the seats, quiet and bent. As a blind passenger, he came to the capital of Poland. Young Izrael Lichtensztajn fell into Warsaw like a speck of dust into a mighty forest. He walked the streets of the city on an empty stomach, but felt no hunger. His imagination was at work. He had nobody and he was looking for no one. For the first time ever, he felt free. Free in the loneliness of the great noisy city. Out of chaos emerged points of interest — shops and shop windows. All the goods of the world were exhibited in them. Instinc-

tively he avoided food-stores so as not to think about hunger. Then he stopped in front of a bookshop. Love of books was in Izrael’s blood. He knew them to be the one great comfort in the darkness of human life. The torn books on the table of his father were like aromatic feasts during his bitter childhood years, while he was suffering from the ill-will of his stepmother. His imagination fed on blooming trees and basked in a warm light. And then there were the story

books in Yiddish, which his stepmother gave him occasionally, in rare moments of good humour. Oh, you, the little story books in Yiddish! ‘Take the story of Simche Plachta, the water carrier. A spring of roguish humour sprang from it. Good full belly-laughter would ring out in the joyless room of his father. It was a worn-out book with miniscule letters. But from these small letters, the treasures of the world poured as though dished out with a golden ladle. Long bleak deserts. Island of rare trees. Colourful birds and

LODZ MEMORIES 281 parrots. Gold and silver of royal garments shone, precious jewels and kings’ crowns, pearls, sapphires and diamonds. The most fantastic riches suddenly lit up in the melamed’s dingy room. Then the sound of bells on camels’ necks could be heard. Bedouins and Arabs in long caravans went through the hot sands of the desert. They carried the most luscious goods of the world, exactly as did their forefathers in Lichtensztajn’s Humesh

[Pentateuch]. Slowly and laboriously they went through the endless gloomy sands. Then when least expected, they were attacked by desert robbers, who like a stormy wind came riding on their fast white steeds. In the midst of the stillness of the desert, burst the flame of bloody battles with

spears and arrows. Or take another story, where on stormy seas great sailing ships are swallowed up by raving waves. Only the protagonist of the story remembers the obligation of the three Shabat meals — he alone stayed alive clinging to a board. Like a loving mother, the stormy waters carried

him along. The clouds, in their turn, part in the dark firmament to allow the sun to burst through. Slowly, the waters subside and become calm again. Our Jew floats on his board. By then the holy Shabat descends on the world. The Jew on the board, surrounded as he is by the loneliness of

eternal waters, shudders at the thought that, God forbid, he might be unable for the first time in his life to observe the good deed, the mitzva of the three Shabat meals. It goes without saying that when a Jew chooses a good deed and is ready to die for it, the Rebonu Shel Olam will not forsake him in his hour of need. The board deposits our man safely on a lovely island, in the nick of time for the meals. An island of diamonds and precious stones. On it live the goodnatured red Jews who just at that precise moment were partaking of their third meal. All is well. Our hero carries out his obligation, stays on the island, marries the princess, the king’s daughter, and becomes the king of the island himself. All as a result of his determination to observe an important milzvah. Standing now in front of the Warsaw bookstore Izrael remembered. The books in the window displayed wonderlands of happiness and of plenty. Their title pages in many languages promised delights for the imagination, to the poorest and most unhappy human being. Lichtensztajn didn’t know

when and how he opened the door to the bookstore and found himself inside gazing at the walls and at tables piled high with books. The owner of the Warsaw bookstore was an older man. He wore a tall velvet yarmulka, had wide eyebrows and a royal beard which reached his midriff, a beard straight out of story books. He now asked the boy what he wanted. Lichtensztajn was at a loss for an answer. Gradually he told his story and said that he was looking for work. If you wish, you can stay in my shop and help me with the books, the owner said. And Izrael stayed. Izrael Lichtensztajn worked in the bookshop for several years. Hired as

an errand boy he became an assistant. He read much and learnt much

282 POLIN during those years. Above all, he threw himself body and soul into the work of the Bund. Then came the days of the revolutionary upheavals of 1905. The Jewish masses were convulsed by a movement which came from their very innards. The message of the Bund reached that stratum of

the nation which up till then had stood in the background. And the Jewish nation, which had hitherto stood patiently at the periphery of the world, now became the flagbearer of the movement for happiness and liberation. The message of the Bund became for Izrael Lichtensztajn the content of his personal life. Up till then the juxtaposition of the bitter orphaned child-

hood and the glory of books hallmarked his existence. It was now symbolised and sublimated by the revolutionary outburst. He had always lived between darkness and light, dream and reality. At last his reality had been lit by a dream of revolution. He entered into the activity of the Bund with every fibre of his soul and of his body. The danger of illegal work of those days brought out the dreamlike heroism of his nature. His party pseudonym was Samuel. He was one of those who acted as liaison between the then illegal Bund and Peretz. His

belief in human goodness came from need rather than from personal experience. There was for him a point to life, only if man was good. His own struggle for a better world was a road towards the attainment of the human goodness in which he so fervently believed. His faith in man and in humanity was absolute. He trained to become a teacher for the deaf and worked in that capacity in a special school run by the Jewish Community in Warsaw. Wherever there was darkness he wanted to bring knowledge and freedom to it. Lichtensztajn and I became good friends in Lodz, where he worked in a high school. His wife Gutka was one of the pre-war members of the Bund, who had been deeply engaged in illegal activity. She had carried out many dangerous errands in Tsarist times. In L6dz, she worked as a teacher in a school for the deaf. They both worked hard for little money. Nevertheless,

their home, like that of the Katzenelsons and of Peretz before, was a gathering place for many. The door stood open and the table was laid for anyone who felt hungry. Poor relatives came for help as though to a rich man and he gave and helped all he could. He headed many branches of the battles of the party — for Jewish literature, for a Jewish school, for political rights.

| Lichtensztajn had great affection for the uneducated and he saw the highest degree of human nobility in the simplicity of Jewish folk. At the

same time he, a Bundist, loved literature and old Jewish books. A paradox? Only people unaware of the depth of the roots connecting the Bund with the continuum of Jewish history might have thought so. His fascination with old religious texts was more than the curiosity of a booklover. It came rather from the intuitive knowledge that every deed of the

LODZ MEMORIES 283 Jewish mass is a result of history and so the Bund, too, has come out of deep Jewish springs. Only the shape of the Bund was modern; its roots were in the past, and therein lay the significance of the party and of the work of its members, like Izrael Lichtensztajn.

MAURYCY PRUSSAK

The Prussaks had lived and worked in Lédz for a very long time. They started producing cloth together with the first German settlers in the city and were established in the manufacturing business even before the arrival on the scene of Poznanski and Silberstein. Perhaps they lacked fantasy or it could be that the luck of Lodz failed them — their wealth had not grown

appreciably. They remained solid middle-size manufacturers at a time when wealth came down in a downpour on the city. Perhaps because the flood of gold failed to enrich them, the Prussaks almost alone in Lédz continued in the old-fashioned ways, with the silent obstinacy of the old Germans. To the family, all the Jews of L6dz were Litvaks, foreign invaders who had come to the city with their tricks and turned it into a witches’ cauldron, unacceptable to a decent citizen. The

new impetus overpowered them and they were resigned to being left behind. But there are rules of behaviour for those who live away from the

sun. They now how to make the shade seem nice and cozy. | If L.6dz did not allow the Prussaks any room at the top, they paid the city

back in good money and refused to dance to its newfangled tune. They preferred the Lodz of the past when it was modest and knew its place. There, Jews and Germans lived side by side between Wilki and the Old City. The Germans were pious country people. The Jews of Lédz were then hard dealers, domesticated and down to earth. Those among them who slowly made their way up, separated themselves from the ne’er-dowells and spoke a German-inflected Yiddish, called daytch. And so the Prussaks continued to speak daytch even after everything around them turned on its heads and members of the intelligentsia took to speaking simple mame-loshen. The Litvaks were to be blamed for that, just as they were to be blamed for Lédz outgrowing the Prussaks. Being stiff-necked, they isolated themselves from the rapid changes that _ were taking place around them. The Prussaks saw themselves as the cream of society and it mattered to them not at all whether anybody else thought so too. The family spoke daytch, produced good-quality textiles and held to certain fixed views of the world. From the six days of creation to the end of time, Batuty was destined to be darkened by poverty and its inhabitants to sit 24 hours a day at the looms making cloth for the middle classes. The Prussaks were the greatest patriots of the bourgeoisie in L6dZ, though they

284 POLIN were not part of its highest ranks. The revolutionary workers’ movements of 1905 should be ignored. Foreign Litvaks were behind them, that was all. But one could trust in the whip of the tsar. Wait until the cossacks put the

rebels over a bench and taught them a lesson. In the meantime the Prussaks were as calm as the day was long, stayed calm, ran their factories and talked daytch to all the Jews of Lédz.

Then a housing boom started suddenly. Filled by the passion for producing cloth, the local Jews were also overcome by the desire to build. The city grew in every direction. Again the Prussaks saw the craze as a trick of the new people and, above all, of the Litvaks bent on diverting the city from its rightful course. In the most pronounced daytch, they talked among

themselves predicting that the housing boom would bring no good. But who was there to listen to them?

A scion of that family, Maurycy Prussak became my landlord. Soon after we moved into his house he opened his heart to me. His life story, his relationship with the outside world and his views on the beauty and misery

of life were related. Mainly I heard about the Piotrkowska Street and Batuty, all told in the sharp daytch of Lodz. It was not easy for Maurycy to bare his soul. Like the rest of the family, he was tight-lipped and suspected

everyone and everything under the sun. Especially during the post-war years when at a loss to understand what had hit him and the world. He had long searched for sympathetic ears he could trust and decided to confide in me. In this world gone crazy, I must have seemed to him like the one pious man who had strayed into Sodom. And that for a good reason. I came of pre-war wealth and owned a house of my own in Lédz. Also, like him, I too was a victim of inflation and of the evil decree for the protection of tenants, that murderous clamp, holding down rental income. ‘Tenants live in great prosperity in our houses. We, the owners, have to be satisfied with the few

pennies thrown to us and can do nothing. The wickedness of the new world was embodied in this decree and it was the cause for Maurycy’s dark disposition.

Day and night he had been thinking about these things and at last pounced on me as someone to talk to sincerely and have a good cry over the bitter end the world had prepared for us. Not a demonstrative man, he was on this occasion overcome by emotion and talked to me about the

tenant decree in general, and then about his own tenants, with great venom. The Prussaks were never criminals. Nevertheless he, Maurycy, would be ready right here in the middle of the courtyard to build a wood fire and burn the whole tenant-rabble to ashes. Not, God forbid, because

of the harm done only to him, but to the world in general and to the children of Israel in particular. Next came the explanation of how it came about that a Prussak became

afflicted with house-ownership and tormented with tenants in the first

£ODZ MEMORIES 285 place. His family has steadfastly kept to the production of cloth and avoided like a pestilence every new bliss that Lodz was so good at producing. Here, too, the war was to be blamed for the breach of tradition. He, Maurycy Prussak, received his punishment for contravening the last will of his father of saintly memory and for allowing himself to be led astray by a real estate agent and his false promises. The story of how this father of saintly memory expressed his last will was

told by my landlord truly like a passage of the Pentateuch. The scene described resembled that in which Jacob our patriarch gathers around his bed the twelve tribes and pronounces his last words. Maurycy achieved a truly tragic height in his account and it behoves me to tell it for the benefit of the reader. Like the patriarch, Prussak’s father also possessed a goodly number of sons. Whether as many as Jacob our father is not recorded, but certainly close to their number. All the sons gathered for the great act and stood around the deathbed in solemn silence. He had been ill for a long time, the sick-room smelled of medicine. The saintly father was no longer able to speak. ‘In his throat,’ Maurycy said with feeling, ‘a fiddle was playing.’ And then the venerable sick man moved his finger to make clear that

| he wanted to speak. All his sons bent over, eager to hear their saintly | father’s last wishes. Tears appeared in Maurycy’s eyes. His voice trembled when repeating word by word the last words of the dying Prussak. And they were — ‘let his children in God’s name stay with manufacturing and keep clear of houses and tenants.’ “These last words of my saintly father I kept in my heart like

something holy. But you know, Herr Trunk, in the dark war years one couldn’t always resist the whisperings of the devil. A real estate agent enticed me with promises of a fabulous fortune. When I forgot for a moment the biddings of my father, I fell, without knowing when and how, into the trap of house-ownership.’

The house with which Maurycy has been so severely tried had been built by an old German. It stood along two streets of Lodz, Lipowa and Pusta. Adjacent to it, on Lipowa, was a small palace which the old German

had built for his own use and which had also become the property of Prussak. With the palace came a little garden. Prussak subdivided the house into a number of apartments and occupied the ground floor of the palace himself. Between the act of purchase and the moment of payment, money had lost much of its value and so he had bought his punishment for a song. Not that this altered his views. These matters must be approached from a moral, not material point of view. Bargain or not, he felt victimised by the possession of the house, a feeling strengthened by his dread of thieves and robbers. He mistrusted everything and felt that everybody had murderous intentions towards him. In every nook and cranny there lurked evil-doers looking for an opportunity to catch him by the throat. Partly for security he

wanted the first floor in the palace, the floor over his head, rented to a

286 POLIN reliable neighbour. But how to find one? He refused all prospective tenants, suspecting them of wanting to put a foot in the door. The pros and cons against me were weighed carefully. Only my family’s reputation of

being made up of quiet citizens, and the combination of rabbonim and landowners in its ranks, tipped the scale in my favour. I was considered | to be the least evil of the ten plagues of Egypt and was permitted to move in. After a number of conversations and especially after I had listened to his account of the last hours of his father, he felt that he had made the right choice and that I meant him no harm and wanted to be a good

neighbour. |

Lodz and its postwar days had driven this ordinary man into the deep. He locked everything about himself in a silence. Just as he feared that someone might steal his property, so he was afraid that someone might come to know his feelings and passions. These, too, could be taken away. He did, however, plant a flower-bed, and watered it carefully every day in full view. Watching him I thought — this is a sentiment which cannot be hidden. The sun and people can look freely at what he does and how he feels. It turned out that I was wrong. Even his love of nature was something

to hide. |

One day, Maurycy’s trust in me went so far that he took me by the hand to show me his basement. Going down the steps I wondered what in the world could he want me to see there, yet somehow it was in keeping with

his character. His soul had some hint of a dark quiet basement, a place devoid of daylight. Following my landlord down the steps I thought of medieval cellars and dungeons I'd seen before on my travels. While underneath the floor boards shackled people suffered in darkness, upstairs balls

were held in halls lit by candles and torches, music was played, wine streamed in heavy goblets and lovers whispered of their passions in dark corners. Has Maurycy Prussak perhaps locked a part of his enemies in the basement and is he about to show them to me, I wondered. He did indeed take me down to observe life languishing in lonely cold darkness. Here were his sentiments jealously hidden from human eyes and from the light of the sun. Only the trees and the flower-bed of his garden defied his desire for secrecy. The rest of nature, which he loved with a hard silent love, was kept under the floor of his house. There were hives of bees here. Bees which did not know how to buzz in the golden light of the sun, never having seen it. The hives were silent and the bees were lying in an eternal winter-sleep. Then cages with wonderful white pigeons. These too were silent. Hares were also kept in the basement. Sad, serious hares lying - motionless and in silence. Even rare colourful birds were here, sitting lifelessly in their cages ignorant of the sunny world outside. What Maurycy Prussak was showing me here in the basement was his heart’s sole joy. He threw some seeds in to the cages of the white pigeons and of the colourful birds. He gave them water. But not one of the live

LODZ MEMORIES 287 creatures in the cellar showed the smallest sign of pleasure. When he tried to whistle or speak endearingly, all was silent.

After our return, I felt that we had spent years together in the dark. I took in full gulps of air and daylight. Then Prussak said to me with quiet pride — “Yes, you know, Herr Trunk, I’m a great nature lover. In Lédz this is most uncommon.’

NOTE 1 Letter “To whom it may concern’, New York, 8 September 1978.

REVIEW ESSAYS

SHMUEL ALMOG’S