The Jews of Częstochowa: The Life and Death of a Community, a Concise History 9783110770230, 9783110769944

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Mark W. Kiel The Jews of Częstochowa

Czestochowa, pen and ink drawing by Nota Kozlowski. Czenstochowa New Supplement.

Mark W. Kiel

The Jews of Częstochowa The Life and Death of a Community, a Concise History

ISBN 978-3-11-076994-4 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-077023-0 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-077034-6 Library of Congress Control Number: 2022933778 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2023 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Cover image: Czenstochower Yizkerbukh by Chonon Kiel: An Illuminated Manuscript. Typesetting: Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck www.degruyter.com

Contents Acknowledgements Foreword Preface

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The Polish Background

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Table of Population and Percentage of Jews Introduction: The Pulse of the City

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Part One: Origins to World War I 13 Earliest Record 13 The Gmina 14 The Ghetto 18 Assimilation and Acculturation 20 Brotherhood and Enlightenment 22 Henryk Markusfeld 26 Kheyder and the Cycle of Poverty 27 Vocational Training and Philanthropy 31 Religious Innovations 34 High Culture: Lira and the Jewish Literary Society Industry and Commerce 40 The Pogrom of 1902 46 The Labor Movement, Part 1 49

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Part Two: The German Occupation and Political “Democratization” Part Three: The Second Polish Republic and “Democratization” Municipal Councils 59 The Pogrom of 1919 62 The Labor Movement, Part 2 63

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Part Four: Culture 69 The Press 69 Libraries 72 Sports 73 Theater 76 Modern Education 77 TOZ 81 Political Legitimacy 81 Part Five: Jewish Political Parties 83 The Center 84 General Zionism 84 Folkism 87 Labor Zionism – Right and Left 89 The Right 92 Mizrachi 92 Agudas yisroel 93 Zionist Revisionism 98 Assimilationism 99 The Left 101 Territorialism 101 The Bund and Communism 104 The Common Culture of the Left 109 Hashomer hatzair 112 Part Six: Recovery and Economic Assault Industry, Commerce, and Antisemitism The Pogrom of 1937 121 On the Eve of War 122 Part Seven: 1939–1946 127 The Occupation and the Judenrat 127 The Big Ghetto 136 The Small Ghetto 148 The Revolt in Treblinka 153 The Rebellion in Częstochowa 153 Möbellager 157 HASAG 158

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Part Eight: Aftermath 165 Fear of Return 165 Displaced Persons Camps in Germany Part Nine: Rescuing Memory Bibliography Abbreviations Index

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To my grandchildren Indy Colette, Wyatt Bowie, and Sophia Liza for the joy you give me.

And I still remember, the Czenstochover echo of a great city’s roaring waves of embracing masses, ebbing and flowing, inspiring, and stretching, stretching, as far as the physical and spiritual eye can see. –Leibush Lehrer Czenstochov made a great impression on me. Above all I liked the main street, broad and long, reminiscent of the Marszalkowska in Warsaw. The din was half business and half-holiday. Something about this street looked like . . . the holidays. [. . .] Young men from all the different movements and of all kinds of parties, with all kinds of solutions and their flaming eyes, all met, greeted each other, stopped for a while and conversed. All the while the police looked on, frustrated. –Avrom Reyzen

Acknowledgements This monograph was originally intended for the general reader as an introduction to a Częstochowa Yizkor book. It was supposed to be a short synthetic essay of the readily available secondary sources supplemented by oral accounts I heard growing up in a community of Częstochowa survivors. I quickly realized that I could not treat the story adequately without turning it into a separate, independent, short-book-length narrative work. Consequently, I did not to return to the beginning to annotate my historical material and I continued with the project in the same vein as I had started. Scholars will justifiably see this as a shortcoming of the book. I do, however, indicate the sources of quotations. I have also provided a bibliography on which this book is mostly based. As such, I hoped that with few footnotes the flow of the narrative would not be interrupted, nor would it intimidate nonacademics. Nevertheless, I hope the book will be useful for professional historians as well. As I was finishing the book, I discovered two other important books on the history of Częstochowa Jewry, one in Hebrew, another in Polish. The former is Villa Orbach’s Toldot Yehudey Czesentochow (The History of the Jews in Częstochowa). To my surprise, Ms. Orbach’s book, published in 2000, was written with similar intentions, that is, as a popular book for interested general readers. Our books cover much the same ground but are nevertheless different in their approach, scope, and analysis. I have greatly benefited from her book. The Polish book, Żydzi w Samorządzie Miasta Częstochowy w latach 1927–1939 (Jews in Local Government in the City of Częstochowa 1927–1939) by Magdalena Mizgalska-Osowiecka was published in 2017. Her study covers narrower ground in depth. I thank her for sharing the earlier manuscript of the book with me. I owe my interest in Częstochowa primarily to my parents, Chonon and Liza Kiel, and to my sister Ruth. The three were natives of the town. My mother survived in Częstochowa enduring the seven circles of hell in a labor camp, while my father was languishing in the Gulag and Ruth was hidden in a convent. Ruth’s mother, Liza’s sister and Chonon Kiel’s first wife, Sarka Kutner was murdered in Auschwitz. My sister made a life for herself in Israel with her family, but we all remained very close. Although my parents lived most of their lives in New York, memories of their early years lived on in our home. Growing up, I listened attentively to their stories and reminiscences, as well as to those of their fellow townspeople with whom they socialized. Sometimes I felt that I was there with them and my large family that went up in smoke. I perused the Częstochowa Yizkor books, in my father’s library, where I found pictures of my paternal grandparents. In one of those books, I found a picture of myself as a little boy saying the Passover Kiddush at one of the Czestochowa landsmanshaft’s annual, secular “Third Seder.” https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110770230-203

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In the spring of 2004, I was invited by the philanthropist Sigmund Rolat to speak at an academic conference of Częstochowa Poles and Polish Jews and their descendants. Rolat, a child survivor in Częstochowa, has made it his mission to rekindle the memory of Częstochowa Jewry that had been almost entirely extinguished and erased over the course of decades since the war’s end. I listened carefully to his moving stories as well. With his passion for the town, he inspired me to write this book and answered my many questions on different aspects of our history. I have to thank Alan Silberstein, my oldest childhood friend, and Rolat’s cousin. He helped me work through some difficult issues and share with me the knowledge of the town, particularly of the war years, that was handed down to him by his parents. Piotr Pagan, who lives in Częstochowa and, although not Jewish, reads Hebrew and Yiddish and considers himself the “unofficial historian” of Jewish Częstochowa. He found a passing reference to my great grandfather in the Yiddish Czenstochower Yidn Yizkor book, and provided me with the names and places of people and institutions. Alon Goldman provided me with facts and figures and names related to the Holocaust in Czestochowa that were key to book. Jack Jacobs shared with me his knowledge of the Jewish Labor Bund and interwar Jewish politics. Samuel D. Kassow helped me understand Ber Borokhov. My close friend Steve Fischler was my advisor throughout the writing of this book. Steve, along with Shammai Engelmayer and Clark Borntree, were my loyal webmasters and got me through all the many computer problems that were too complicated for me to negotiate. Muriel Jorgensen edited an earlier version of this book. The final version was edited by Nick Underwood. Special thanks to Eli Lederhendler who read an earlier portion of the book and advised me accordingly. Henry Feingold, my friend and teacher read the entire final manuscript and gave me suggestions and words of encouragement. In expressing my gratitude to those who have helped me along the way, I reserve a special place for Antony Polonsky. Over the years I have pestered him with dozens of questions all of which he took the time to answer and to provide me with bibliographical information. Ina Cohen was my lifeline to the library at the Jewish Theological Seminary. With her tireless help, she gave me access to all the materials I needed to write this book, when, because of the pandemic, I was unable to go into the city. My wife Ora and our two sons, David and Joshua, have been to Częstochowa with me, and they have been eager to read about what they saw in a wider historical context. I hope they find some measure of satisfaction in what I wrote. They will, after all, have to pass on the bittersweet legacy to the next generation. Ora, my wife of fifty years, devoted much of her time to reading and rereading my

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work and making many useful suggestions. I am thankful to her far more than words can express. I offer my gratitude to Dr. Julia Brauch and Verena Deutsch of De Gruyter Press for their interest in publishing my book. It goes without saying that any errors of fact or interpretation are mine alone and, for which, I bear full responsibility.

Foreword This book is an account of the rise, flourishing, and destruction of a major Jewish community. Jews first established themselves in Częstochowa at the beginning of the eighteenth century, although, at the time the town, the site of a major Polish religious site, legally excluded them on the basis of the privilege that it enjoyed of barring Jewish settlement. In 1765, there were seventy-five Jews in the town. Perhaps its most famous Jewish inhabitant at this time was Jacob Frank, the messianic pretender and founder of the Frankist movement who had been found guilty of blasphemy by a rabbinic court and had been held for thirteen years by the secular authorities in a prison in the town, where he had a number of supporters. In 1793, after the third partition of Poland, Częstochowa was incorporated into Prussia whose government permitted in 1798 the functioning of a Jewish communal administration. It continued to exist after the town became part of the Napoleonic Duchy of Warsaw and was subsequently transformed in 1822 into a Synagogue Supervisory Board (gmina) in the reform of Jewish communal structures introduced in the Kingdom of Poland. In 1827, the Jewish population of the town was 1,141, 18.5 percent of the total of 6,200. Because of its strategic location on the road from Kraków to Wielkopolska and Silesia, the town became an important trading center and its Jewish population grew with the immigration of artisans and merchants from Silesia. As a result, in spite of the strength of hasidism in the region (described below), the town became a center for those Jews who wished to transform Jewish life in accordance with the principles of the Haskalah (the Jewish Enlightenment). In 1818, a group of them informed the town’s authorities that they were prepared to dress in a more “European” fashion and to send their children to modern schools. This proposal bore fruit as a result of the activities of Herc Kon, chairman of the gmina from the 1830s, who succeeded in setting up a private modern Jewish school, whose principal was a leading Jewish reformer, Daniel Neufeld. From 1838, Neufeld had run a Jewish elementary school in his native Praszka, in Prussian Poland, a center of the Haskalah, which taught foreign languages, the sciences and was imbued with the spirit of progressive Judaism. In 1840 Neufeld created a similar boarding school in Częstochowa and was active in the gmina. Neufeld’s support for Jewish integration, which he expressed in the journal Jutrzenka (Dawn) in the early 1860s, obtained some support in enlightened Jewish circles in the town and in September 1862 led to a demonstration by both Poles and Jews calling for radical reforms in the Kingdom of Poland. Neufeld’s protest against its suppression caused the closing of his

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school and his expulsion from the town. He was subsequently exiled to Siberia and eventually settled in Warsaw. The 1863 Uprising which followed, failed to achieve its objective of an independent Poland, but the legal equality of the Jewish population of the Congress Kingdom, established by the Viceroy Alexander Wielopolski in June 1862, was not done away with. Nor was the ending in 1858 of the tariff barrier between the Kingdom and the rest of the Tsarist Empire. These years saw the beginnings of an industrial revolution in Congress Poland and one of its centers was Częstochowa, which was aided by the presence of coal, zinc, and iron ore deposits in the region. Well situated as it was on the Warta river and on the railway link between Vienna and Warsaw that was completed in 1846, it experienced dramatic growth. So much so that by 1914 its population had risen to nearly 93,000, up from 9,000 in 1862. By then it was the fourth-largest urban center of Congress Poland, after Warsaw, Lublin and Kalisz. Jews played an important role in the industrial development of the town. The largest factory in the town was the Huta Częstochowa iron foundry built by Bernard Hantke, the Warsaw-based Jewish entrepreneur. Hantke’s family had come from Prussian Poland and he was raised in a polonized environment. He initially made his money in agriculture, but subsequently moved into metallurgy, taking advantage of the needs of the burgeoning railway industry in the Tsarist Empire. Originally active in Warsaw, in 1897 he established an iron manufacturing plant in Częstochowa to take advantage of the iron ore in the region. At his death in 1900, his company owned the factory in Częstochowa, four additional metal factories, and eight iron ore mines. Much of the remaining industry in the town was also Jewish-owned, including several flour, textile and paper mills, and cellulose and glass factories. Of the twenty factories established between 1870 and 1895, fourteen were set up by Jews. This growth continued in to the interwar years, despite the severe impact of the Great Depression. By 1939, with its population of nearly 137,000, it was the eighth largest town in Poland. In these circumstances, the Jewish community thrived, growing by 1914 to 29,000. Between 1899 and 1909, a modern “New Synagogue” was established in the town, whose services stressed decorum, with sermons preached in Polish and a male choir led by the noted cantor Abraham Ber Birnboim. Birnboim, who was born the city of Pułtusk, north of Warsaw had worked as a cantor in Hungary and Moravia, before taking this position in Częstochowa. He was not only an accomplished performer but also a composer and a writer on Jewish music and folklore. The services at the “New Synagogue” were notable for the way Birnboim worked with his well-trained choir, which enabled him to combine traditional melodies with modern harmonies. The synagogue was partly financed by Henryk Markusfeld, an industrialist originally from Prussian Poland and the owner of an

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upholstery factory, a printing works, and a cap factory, and subsequently an electrical power plant, who was chairman of the gmina and a major philanthropist. As Kiel writes: [a]side from his involvement in Polish civic life, electrifying the city around 1906 – causing a great popular stir of amazement – and funding the Fire Brigade, Markusfeld was present at every major social, economic, political, and cultural turn in the larger Polish context and in the Jewish community.

All the major Jewish parties in Poland established themselves in the town, and the community supported an active religious and cultural life, which is extensively described in this book and which continued until 1939. Among the Jewish journals published in the town were dailies, such as Czenstochover tsaytung (until 1939), Undzer vort (until 1919), Dos naye vort (until 1925), Arbeter tsaytung (1923–1928); and weeklies including Dos lebn (1926–1927), Di tsayt (1927–1938) and Undzer veg (1930–1939). The Jewish community was severely affected by the 1929 economic crisis and by its worsening relations with its neighbors. These were generally peaceful, but inter-ethnic violence did sometimes break out, partly the result of the fact that the town was the center of a major Roman Catholic shrine. The fortified Pauline monastery situated on the Jasna Góra hill overlooking the town houses the icon of the Black Madonna – the miraculous image of the Virgin Mary, which was deposited here in 1384, two years after the founding of the monastery. In August 1902, a skirmish in the market between a Jew and a Pole, led to anti-Russian rioting and attacks on Jewish property. In the ensuing suppression of anti-Russian demonstrations, Markusfeld himself was beaten by Cossacks. On 27 May 1919, there was an anti-Jewish riot in the town, in which at least five Jews died and thirty-two were injured. In 19 June 1937, attacks on Jewish property led to at least twenty injuries but apparently no deaths. One result of the worsening situation of the Jews was substantial Jewish emigration from the town. By 1939, the Jewish population was slightly less than it had been in 1914 and the Jewish percentage of the town’s inhabitants had fallen from 31 percent to 20.5 percent. Almost the entire Jewish population of the town, 28,500 in 1939, perished in the Holocaust and it was not possible after the war to re-establish a viable Jewish community. In June 1946, the town had around 2,000 Jewish inhabitants, but the Kielce pogrom (4 July 1946) led most of them to migrate. Jewish life continued on a small scale under communist control, but the “anti-Zionist” campaign of 1967 caused a further wave of emigration. Since the end of communism in Poland in 1989, a branch of the Social and Cultural Association of Jews (Towarzystwo Społeczno-Kulturalne Żydów) has been reopened in Częstochowa

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and major efforts have been made in the town, which has a socialist mayor, to memorialize its Jewish past. Częstochowa can thus be seen as a microcosm of Jewish life in Poland, and, in particular, in the former Congress Kingdom. I thus welcome the appearance of this clear, well-written, and well researched monograph by Mark W. Kiel, whose parents came from the town. It gives a comprehensive account of its modern history, the evolution of its Jewish community and its important contribution to its development. It also provides a detailed description of the community’s tragic fate during the Second World War. What emerges is a moving account of the complex nature of Jewish life here and what the Jews were able to achieve in difficult conditions. Antony Polansky October 2021

Preface Immigrants from Poland, survivors of the Holocaust, tend to look upon their earlier, pre-Holocaust lives, in the full flower of their youth, ambivalently, as a nostalgic ideal, “a Golden Age,” on the one hand, and a time of persecution and pogroms, on the other. For the Jews, the places left behind are a mix of the good and the bad. Postwar testimonies by Częstochowa Jews tend to display a sentimental yearning for the “good old days” of family, social intimacy, and community. They also confront the past with a hard sense of realism. Survivors are quick to say that Częstochowa was an antisemitic town. Polish-Jewish relations have grown increasingly strained since World War II. Jews blame Poles for participating in the murder of Jews during and after the Holocaust, and there are Poles who have been quick to deny both, except where the evidence is incontrovertible as in the case of the Kielce massacre in 1946. Poles have argued that Poland was the only country in Europe that did not collaborate with the Germans. In fact, they say that Poles did whatever was possible to give aid, comfort and protection to the Jews. This, they say, is attested by the large number of Righteous Gentiles remembered at Yad Vashem, who — at risk of their and their families’ lives — helped save Jewish lives. Jews agree that there certainly were righteous Poles, many more than are acknowledged in Yad Vashem, but they were a distinct minority of the population. Among those who aided and saved Jews there were citizens of Częstochowa; we only know a few of their names. There certainly were more. The truth, however, is more nuanced. Polish antisemitism was systemic, and some would justifiably argue that it still is. The present government has made it a crime to tell the truth that would put Poles in a bad light. Yet the signs of mutual respect are springing up everywhere. The liberalprogressive element of Polish society now engages in an honest soul searching. In this respect the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw is symbolic of a great sea change in the way many Poles regard Jews, and Jews are quick to recognize and value these new developments. The inspiring reality of Polish-Jewish relations is growing steadily and is a joint effort by Poles and Jews. This is not the place to review this new chapter in Polish Jewish history. Out of this common effort comes a new way of evaluating our mutual relations. What is important and must be underscored here is that engaging in stereotyping the “other” is insidious and does nothing to shed light on the complex and emotionally laden truth. Liberal minded Poles have taken on the difficult task of uprooting the hateful way Poles look at Jews. And Jews are coming to the realization that there were, and still are, decent Poles who went, against the grain, before, during and after the Holocaust. Jews prospered in adversity, in Częstochowa, as we shall see, in communal and economic https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110770230-205

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life, and they were able to do so because Poland was their home. Drawing a balance sheet on Polish-Jewish relations, Ezra Mendelsohn writes: Above all, we owe a debt of gratitude to Polish freedom, which allowed the Jews in the 1920s and 1930s to participate in politics, open schools and write as they pleased. In interwar Poland the Gerer Hasidim could remain Gerer Hasidim, and the pioneers could organize vocational training in anticipation of aliya to Palestine. Polish freedom, allied with Polish anti-semitism and Jewish modernization made possible the emergence and popularization of the new Jewish politics, which, among other things helped to build the state of Israel. . .We owe a debt of gratitude to the interwar Polish state for offering its Jewish citizens a model of heroic, and successful, national struggle, which inspired young Jewish members of the Bund, of Hashomer ha-tsair and of Betar. Interwar Poland was a relatively free country, a highly nationalistic country, and an anti-Jewish country. The experience of Polish Jews between the wars was a combination of suffering, some of which was caused by anti-semitism, and of achievement, made possible by Polish freedom, pluralism and tolerance. Modern Polish nationalism led, inevitably, to anti-semitism, but it also inspired Polish Jewish youth to raise the banner of Jewish nationalism. . . Interwar Poland was good for the Jews because, among other things it provided an environment in which forces were unleashed in which many Jews regarded then, and today as extremely positive.1

With great courage, Jews in pre-Holocaust times did not make fear of antisemitism their driving force nor for that matter did it always keep them from having Polish friends and living in amicable coexistence. The two groups were not surgically separated on all levels of society. Nevertheless, even as Jews took great pride in their representatives for denouncing antisemitism from the highest parliamentary forum of the land, they were mostly busy getting on with their lives, creating in Częstochowa, under the greatest of adversity – of poverty, antisemitism, class divides, intra-mural partisan rivalries, and religious differences – one of the most beautiful chapters in Jewish history.

1 Ezra Mendelsohn, “Interwar Poland: Good for the Jews or Bad for the Jews?”, in The Jews in Poland Chimen Abramsky, eds. Maciej Jachimczyk and Antony Polonsky, (Oxford/New York: Basil Blackwell, 1988), 138–39.

The Polish Background The Commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania ceased to exist at the end of the eighteenth century when Russia, Prussia, and Austria, carved up the country in three partitions (in 1772, 1793, and 1795). The Prussian territory later came under Napoleonic rule and was called the Duchy of Warsaw, lasting from 1807 to 1815. In 1809, some of the territories annexed by Austria (Galicia) were added to the Duchy. At the Congress of Vienna most of the conquered land was ceded to Russia. Part of it was set up as the Kingdom of Poland (also sometimes referred to as Congress Poland) a semi-autonomous state in dynastic union with the Romanov rulers of Russia and included among its major cities Warsaw, Łódź, and Częstochowa. Areas to the east of the Kingdom were incorporated directly into the Tsarist Empire. After the Polish uprising of 1830 to 1832, Russia largely abolished the semi-autonomous status of the Kingdom of Poland. Galicia fell under Austrian control, while Prussia took over the north-western portion of former Poland. Most Polish territory remained under Russia’s brutal control, suffering national humiliation until 1915 when the Imperial German Army conquered Congress Poland during the First World War. Under German rule, Congress Poland was given semi-parliamentary autonomy. With Germany’s defeat in 1918, Poland declared itself an independent country and was formally recognized as such by the Versailles treaty a year later. During the war, the allies had dealt with the pro-Russian right-wing and rabid antisemitic leader of the fascist National Democrats, (Narodowa Demokracja or Endecja, its members were called Endecy), Roman Dmowski (1864–1939). In exchange for his military assistance against the Central powers, Russia promised the Polish National Committee he had created that it would establish a Polish state within the Tsarist Empire. When in 1917 Russia ceased to play an active role in the war, Dmowski moved his Committee to the West, with offices first in Paris then in London, hoping the Western powers would halt Germany’s Drang nach Osten. Dmowski envisaged a homogeneous Polish Catholic state. He and the renowned pianist and composer Ignacy Jan Paderewski signed the Paris Accords, which promised full protection and a guarantee of minority rights to the peoples within its borders. It was a guarantee signed in bad faith and without any intention by the National Democrats of honoring its pledge of equal protection for Poland’s national minorities. Dmowski’s arch rival in politics was the former socialist Józef Piłsudski (1867–1935), a charismatic leader and fierce opponent of Russia. For his participation in a plot to assassinate Alexander II, he was exiled to Siberia for five years. To win independence for a united Poland, Piłsudski decided to take matters into his own hands and create an army that would fight the Russians alongside https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110770230-206

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Germany or the Austro-Hungarian powers in a future European war. In 1908, he had already participated in an attempt to create an armed force, and by 1914 had some 7,000 Polish Legionnaires at his disposal. After the German offensive led to the Russian retreat from Congress Poland, he attempted to cooperate with the Central Powers. In 1917, he backed the Germans who assured him they would grant Poland independence. When Piłsudski realized that their promises were empty he ordered his men not to swear allegiance to the Kaiser. This landed him in a German prison for the duration of the war. He emerged as an uncompromising hero to the Polish people. Piłsudski became both head of state and commander in chief of the armed forces. Between 1918 and 1921, Poland fought six simultaneous wars to establish its frontiers. The most serious of these was with the new Bolshevik state. Lenin hoped to expand westward and precipitate a communist revolution in Germany. Piłsudski decided to preempt this and take advantage of the weakness of the Soviets in order to expand Poland’s eastern borders, including parts of Ukraine and Belarus. This resulted in a near catastrophe, as the National Democrats had warned. However, in the “miracle on the Vistula” in August 1920, Piłsudski defeated the invading Soviet forces in the Battle of Warsaw and was elevated to the rank of Marshal, supreme leader of the military. Lenin sued for peace, ceding significant areas of Belarus and Ukraine to the new Republic. Both Germany and Russia were resentful of Poland’s expansion and the West offered little encouragement to the newly created state’s feeling of security. Under Piłsudski’s leadership Poland between 1918 and 1921, the attempt was made to create in Poland a liberal, parliamentary democracy, with universal suffrage, an eight-hour workday, free education, a secret ballot, proportional representation and national rights for its minority populations: Ukrainians, Jews, Belarusians, Germans, and Lithuanians. Together these comprised a third of the Polish state. Piłsudski had hoped in his war with the Soviets to establish independent Ukrainian and Belarusian states which would be linked with Poland in a multi-national federation with Poles primus inter pares. Instead, Poland became a middle-sized state with large dissatisfied minority populations. In 1921, Poland adopted a new constitution modeled on that of the Third French Republic; the first elections were held in November 1922. In the bicameral government, power rested in the lower house of parliament, the Sejm. The upper house, the Senate, served pro forma, and was headed by a figurehead presidency. It was not a position that interested Piłsudski. He also now renounced his position as head of the army and withdrew from political life, establishing himself in internal exile at his country house in Sulejówek. Implementing the democratic constitutional advances in Polish life against a background of political instability, economic chaos, and divisions in the ranks of

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the military proved nearly impossible. Between November 1918 until Piłsudski’s coup, there were fourteen different regimes. In 1926 there were ninety-two parties, thirty-two of which were represented in the Sejm. The need to integrate the different areas held by the German, Austrian, and Russian empires, with different political, cultural, and religious, traditions, different languages and currencies, proved to be a huge and protracted effort, which was met with mixed success. Akin to the situation in Germany, Poland suffered runaway inflation (one dollar was worth 2,300,000 marks). The peasantry and agrarian workers that made up 74 percent of the population was mostly illiterate. Poland suffered a severely war-torn, depleted heavy industry (largely requisitioned by Germany and Russia), infrastructure, and a housing crisis. Whichever government was in power lacked the means to take control of the country. Violent counter measures taken to deal with riots and strike waves that immobilized the cities and countryside accentuated the class struggle. In its twenty-year history, the Second Republic never enjoyed a measure of serenity, although the Jews felt more secure and protected by Piłsudski who kept a check on antisemitism, as did the man he appointed Prime Minister after the May coup, Kazimierz Bartel. Piłsudski was considered a friend of the Jews, though he could not, in all cases, prevent open manifestations of antisemitism. His passing was deeply mourned by the Jews. In Częstochowa the Jewish honored his memory through the Jewish National Fund by planting a forest in his name and calling a street Częstochowa Avenue. With the exception of Roman Dmowski, and his Conservative supporters in the bourgeoise, the Church and the landed aristocracy, Piłsudski was held in the highest esteem by the populace and the left and center left parties. But because of the weakness of the office of president, Piłsudski turned it down. His real power lay in the military. In the chaotic and bitter election campaign of 1922, mandated by the constitution in 1921, the presidency was given by the center-left to Gabriel Narutowicz who was blamed by the right of being a “Jew lover” and a puppet of the minorities. He was assassinated five days after taking office by a right-wing fanatic, Eligiusz Niewiadomski, who became a martyr to the right and left the country, once again, on the verge of civil war. The crisis was averted by a non-parliamentary council called by General Władislaw Sikorski. Efforts at conciliation in May 1925 through the coalition of the Piast Peasant Party with the National Democrats failed. Its promise of land reform, did not materialize, nor was inflation curbed. Until the crisis was settled by compromise, workers’ discontent increased and with the involvement of the Polish Socialist Party, (Polska Partia Socjalistyczna, or PPS, founded in 1892) they seized Kraków. The extra parliamentary government of Władysław Grabski, who was granted special powers by the Sejm in 1925, tried coming to terms with the Jews (in an agreement called the Ugoda-compromise), by eliminating anti-Jewish discrimination that

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violated their minority rights. These included prohibition of using Hebrew and Yiddish as official languages, restrictions on Jewish employment, the interdiction against holding municipal posts, buying peasant land, prohibiting Jews from being guardians of Christians, etc. Not all these rules, handed down from tsarist times, were enforced. However, Grabski’s government collapsed in less than a year. His government was replaced by a broad coalition spanning the right and left, which would ultimately lose the support of the Socialists because of its deflationary policy. Violence ensued. Meanwhile, in return for Jewish allegiance to the Polish government, as negotiated with Poland’s minister of education and religious affairs, Aleksander Skrzynski, restrictions on minority rights, guaranteed by the Versailles treaty, and upheld by Poland’s 1922 government, would be lifted. It also expressed support for the creation of a Jewish national center in Palestine. Once in power, the government reneged on most of its agreements. The efforts to form a center-right government outraged Piłsudski. With his increasing prestige in the army, and support of the PPS, Piłsudski quelled the armed resistance against him and was ready, but reluctant, to heed the call of the people. His coup on 12 to 14 May aimed at cleaning up the corruption and incompetence of the postwar parties and bringing stability to the government and the country. His party was called Sanacja (cleansing party) over which he ruled until his death in May 1935. Although Piłsudski thought of himself a democrat, and nominally a socialist, he was in effect dictator of Poland, and regarded his position as unchallengeable, a position contested by his erstwhile supporters the PPS, which wanted new free elections and greater reforms. He had no particular program but was opposed to authoritarianism, allowing for limited personal freedom, freedom of the press, while permitting political parties to function and maintaining the Sejm. Attempting to establish a broad coalition of support, the Marshal formed a Non-Party Bloc for Cooperation with the government, BBWR (Bezpartyjny Blok dia Współpracy Rządem). With its help, Piłsudski was victorious in the election of March 1928. The Agudos yisroel, the party of the Orthodox Jews, took part in the election on the pro-government side (see below). On 2 October, 1926, Minister of the Interior Kazimierz Młodzianowski restated Skrzynski’s promises and renounced Polish demands that minorities assimilate in order to be legal citizens. That year, the government of Felicjan Sławoj Składkowski issued a decree lifting some administrative restrictions and showed support for Jewish trade. A year later he promised to extend Jewish rights and took firm action stopping anti-Jewish violence. In 1927, minister of religious affairs Gustav Dobrucki declared the numerus clausus illegal. Most promises were empty and remained on paper.

The Polish Background

XXV

In 1929, revelations that the government had used official funds to finance the campaign of the Non-party Bloc for the Support of the government (BBWR) in the 1928 elections, rocked Piłsudski’s government and threatened to bring it down. Soon thereafter, in 1930, the Christian Democrats, the National Workers’ Party (and the three peasant parties – Piast, Liberation, and the Peasant Party – called for new free elections and reforms, hoping to remove Piłsudski from power. Piłsudski responded by arresting the leading opponents of his regime and confining them in the military prison at Brześć-nad-Bugiem, thus winning the election handily. Nevertheless, he was still against disbanding the Sejm or creating a totalitarian state, though he limited personal freedoms, a free press and the functioning political powers. While the Sejm continued to meet after Piłsudski’s death until the German invasion of September 1939, it was a sham democracy. Piłsudski chose to work behind the scenes, focusing his energy on foreign policy leaving his cabinet advisors, his army comrades, the so-called Colonels to handle domestic affairs, but to little affect. Although he was twice prime minister, as was his appointed surrogate Bartel, Piłsudski always had the final say. Under his rule, the economy had periods of upswings. He won favor with the Ukrainians and the Jews, and although he seemed to have eased Polish-German relations, he was blind to the real perils Hitler posed to the country. He, like his successors in the post-Piłsudski era between 1935 and September 1939, deluded himself into believing that Hitler had designs, not on Poland, but rather on Austria, Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union. With high hopes, Piłsudski signed a non-aggression pact with Germany in 1934, ostensibly to balance the similar pact signed with Russia in 1932. However, although Poland considered itself a major power, its military preparedness “based to a considerable extent on bluff,”1 was quite inadequate. The rule of law weakened still further after Piłsudski’s death in May 1935, which also brought Piłsudski’s right-wing subordinates, the Colonels, to power. Under the Colonels’ influence, violence against Jews increased and paved the way for the subsequent dictatorial governments (“a dictatorship without a dictator,” as they were called). Prime Ministers Marian Żyndram-Kościałkowski (13 October 1935–30 September 1936) and Sławoj Składkowski (15 May 1936–September 1939) were exceptions among Poland’s top leadership in showing any positive concern for the Jews amid a frenzy of nationwide violent antisemitism. Składkowski had imprisoned instigators and participants in anti-Jewish violence, albeit for shorter

1 Antony Polonsky, The Little Dictators: The History of Eastern Europe since 1918 (London: Routledge. & Kegan, 1975), 49.

XXVI

The Polish Background

terms than required by law. However, some 1,500 Jews who protested the lenient sentences were given much longer sentences for “insulting the Polish nation.” The ministers’ moderate position vis-à-vis the Jews did not reverse the antisemitic trajectory of the country. The catastrophic impact of the Great Depression was especially severe in an already impoverished country and further exacerbated political divisions while Piłsudski’s deflationary policy prolonged it until 1936. (The average life expectancy was forty-nine years of age.) And yet, over the years, government efforts to lower the illiteracy rate in the country, creation of free public schools enjoyed significant success. Establishment of a government and training individual for civil service, benefitting from the opening of a port in Gdynia in the 1920s, as world markets expanded, and the creation of a single railway system in the 1930s brought a measure of relief. Short lived periods in the 1920s and ‘30s saw an improved economy through the establishment of a national bank (Bank Polski), tax reform, foreign loans, investment in public works and rural improvements. All aspects of cultural life, in the arts and literature were equal to that of any advanced country. Jewish culture experienced one of its richest periods in the arts and Yiddish letters. At the same time, the economic situation of the Jews was severely undermined by the Great Depression. By 1939, out of three million Jews, one million lived off relief organizations based home and in the United States. From the start, Jews participated in all aspects of national and municipal electoral politics, but influence dwindled in the post-Piłsudski Sejm elections. There was one minor exception, in 1938, when the government wanted to draw the support of the democratic opposition. Nevertheless, the Jewish position in Poland remained precarious at best. As a matter of policy, the Algemeyner yidisher arbeter bund in lite, poyln, un rusland (The General Union of Jewish Workers in Lithuania, Poland, and Russia), commonly called the Bund, and the other socialist parties boycotted unfair elections, whether in the gmine (the state-approved semiautonomous governing board of the organized Jewish community, also called by its Hebrew name, Kehilla), municipal councils, or the Sejm, unless their participation was crucial. In the 1938 elections to the Sejm, the Bund running as the sole Jewish party overall won 9.5 percent of the votes. Piłsudski, who, as stated, was chiefly concerned with foreign policy rather than domestic matters, was considered a friend of the Jews. He forbade open manifestations of antisemitism; his passing was deeply mourned by them. The Jewish community in Częstochowa honored his memory through the Jewish National Fund by planting a forest in Palestine in his honor and naming a street there Częstochowa Avenue. The Sanacja government after Piłsudski’s death included people who wished to restore constitutional government, but also younger supporters of his arch-

The Polish Background

XXVII

enemy, Roman Dmowski, who had been kept in check under the Marshal’s mild dictatorship. The Jews were justifiably worried about the recrudescence of antisemitism in the wake of Piłsudski’s death and the threat it posed to the BBWR. Upon Piłsudski’s passing, the Colonels, belonging to the right wing of the Sanacja, consolidated their power, and in cahoots with National Democrats and rightwing fringe parties, turned overtly and increasingly fascistic and antisemitic. As the economy began its decline in the postwar years, inter-party discord became shrill and, intensified the Jews’ sense of being embattled against antisemitism in the street and in high places. Antisemitism was a constant, planned and played out on the political level with Church encouragement by street thugs belonging to the Endecja and Christian Democrats, the Chadecja. In the new state, the persecution of Jews was officially outlawed by the Treaty of Versailles, but practiced as freely, as in tsarist days, and often with outright government sanction and the encouragement of the Church. Typically, the Church spoke out of both sides of its mouth, preaching against violence and “love thy neighbor” on one side, and on the other, in not too subtle, coded messages, to fight the Jews, “the Kingdom of Satan.” Emanating from August Cardinal Hlond, the Primate of Poland, and reaching down the hierarchy to local parish priests, Poles were obligated to “defend” themselves against supposed Jewish promulgation of anti-Christian values: their cutthroat economic competition and the moral corruption manifest in Jewish-Communist atheism, the purveying of pornography and in fostering white slavery. In the mid 1920s, Father Maksymilian Kolbe (now St. Maksymilian Kolbe) actively spread the message of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and attacked their “tool,” the Free Masons. In 1937, until the start of World War II, under its political front, the Party of National Unity, or OZON (Oboz Zjednoczenia Narodwego, 1937–1939), antisemitism reached a boiling point. Even after the Holocaust, Hlond refused to denounce antisemitic atrocities against Jews that were motivated by the blood libel. In so far as the Church preached the sole salvation of the Jews through conversion, they were technically not racist antisemites, just old-fashioned Jew haters. State policy and popular sentiments were geared towards isolating the Jews socially and economically, making their lives in Poland untenable and forcing them to emigrate, even though there was no safe haven for them anywhere. Immigration had been restricted in America since 1924, and the English 1939 White Paper limited immigration to Palestine to 75,000 Jews over the next five years. Amid an uptick of anti-Jewish violence, the National Democrats petitioned the Sejm to deny Jews all political rights and establish legal numerus clausus in the universities, which in practice already existed in some form since tsarist days.

XXVIII

The Polish Background

The government, while under Piłsudski’s leadership, was hostile to antisemitism. In March 1932, the Sejm Education Committee directed by Józef Stypiński rejected the Endecja petition. Opposition to the numerus clausus had already been expressed earlier by the minister of religious affairs, Gustav Dobrucki, in 1925 and again in 1927. Although Piłsudski supported national minority rights as provided by the Versailles treaty, and the abrogation of all legislation against Jewish interests, he was silent on the numerus clausus, not wanting to be accused of philosemitism. Despite government opposition, at the instigation of the National Democrats, violent actions against Jewish students were taken anyway, especially in 1937; the numbers of Jewish enrollment declined precipitously. The only law that was actually passed was the ban on the kosher slaughtering of meat in 1936. Before he died, Piłsudski’s mild dictatorship had become more autocratic and introduced measures to strengthen the role of the president and supreme leader. The parties that had opposed the new electoral law before Piłsudski’s death, boycotted the elections of 1935 and 1938. Piłsudski’s chosen successor, Walery Sławek, one of the Colonels, was not up to the task, and conflict broke out between those who wanted a return to the authority of the Sejm led by Ignacy Mościcki, and followers of Edward Rydz-Śmigły, who wanted a totalitarian state. As of September, 1939, the conflict remained unresolved. The more liberal elements of the National Democrats and of the center-left formed a democratic Polish government in exile. Their political differences became increasingly bitter upon Sikorski’s death in July 1943. The emigre government in London maintained contact with the underground forces of the Armia Krajowa (AK) throughout the war. Moscow acted behind the scenes of the Armia Ludowa (AL), the People’s Army, until the complete communist takeover of Poland in 1945.

Table of Population and Percentage of Jews Częstochowa Population Table1 Year

Total population

Jewish population



% of Jews





,



.



,

,

.



,

,

.



,

,

.



,

,

.



,

,

.



,

,

.



, 

, 

.



,

,





,

,





,

,

.



,

,

.



,

,

.



,

,

.



,–,





.

1 Figures provided by Jerzy Mizgalski, “The Political Identity of Jews in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries as Reflected in the History, Heritage, and Cultural Identity of Częstochowa Jews,” www.aapjstudies.org/index.php?id-228: 12–13. For a fuller statistical account for the interwar years, see Adam Rosol, “Zydzi w handlu I rzemiosle ne terenie miast Czestochowy w latach 1918–1939,” in Z dziejow Zydow w Czestochowie, Zbigniew Jakubowski and Stanislaw Podobinski, eds. (Czestochowa: Wydawnictwo WSP w Czestochowa, 2002), 39. “Sources: Czenstochowa,” in The Encyclopedia of Jewish Life Before and During the Holocaust, vol. 1 S. Spector and G. Widoger, eds. (New York: New York University Press, 2001), 285–88; also, Google Czestrochowa, Virtual Shtetl under demography; Częstochowa, Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd ed., vol. 5, 1212; “Częstochowa,” Polin. Dziedzictwo polskich Żydów, www.polin.org.pl/cities/147/info/, accessed 07.03.2013. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110770230-207

Introduction: The Pulse of the City Lying on the banks of the Warta River, 124 miles southwest of Warsaw, the medieval city of Częstochowa (pronounced “Czenstochov” in Yiddish1) has long been famous throughout Poland and the Catholic world as the home of the Matka Boska, the shrine of the Black Madonna. The ikon sits in the Pauline monastery, atop the mountain fortress of the Jasna Góra (Bright Mountain). Over the centuries, the Matka Boska, reputedly painted by Saint Luke, acquired a black coloration from its exposure to the vapors of votive candles and the soot of incense placed on the ikon’s altar. To this day, both personal and national miracles are attributed to the Holy Mother. Most significantly, she is credited with having saved Poland through her divine intervention in 1665 when a large Swedish army was held at bay by only a small number of Polish soldiers and monks. A year later, King Jan Kazimierz crowned her “Queen Protector of Poland.” Ever since, both pious and nationalistic secular Poles have venerated the Madonna. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the pilgrimages undertaken by millions of Catholic pilgrims to the holy site were an economic boon for both Poles and Jews engaged in commerce on both sides of the streets of Częstochowa’s main boulevard, and most fashionable part of town, the Aleja Najświętszej Marii Panny, the Street of the Most Exalted Lady Mary (or the Al. NMP, Aleja for short). Its streets and driveways, today as then, were separated by a long chestnut tree-lined walkway. The trees provided shade for the pedestrians taking their time to sit on the public benches. The boulevard was often the scene of military parades and religious and political processions and demonstrations, both Jewish and Christian. In addition to being a religious center, Częstochowa, because of its proximity to Germany, was an important transit point for Jews and Poles entering or leaving Poland, legally or illegally, and also for smuggling contraband into the country. It was also a location of strategic importance with its own garrison. In 1939, Częstochowa was the eighth-largest city in the country. According to the 1931 census it had the eighth largest Jewish community in Poland. On average, Jews in Częstochowa made up a quarter to a third of the population, proportions they maintained until 1940. When the Nazis deported Jews to Częstochowa from all over the Reich, Częstochowa’s Jewish population exceeded 50,000. (See population table.) The population of all Poland was approximately 35.1 million people, of whom the Jews constituted 10 percent and lived mostly 1 Also spelled variously as Czenstochow and Tchenstochowa. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110770230-001

2

Introduction: The Pulse of the City

in the cities. In the small townlets, shtetls (shtetlekh in Yiddish) and the larger towns, the Jews were often a majority of the population. Some of the shtetls, such as the suburbs of Częstochowa, were almost entirely Jewish. The majority of the Poles were peasants and the country’s culture was generally agrarian. Another third of the population consisted of, in order of size, Ukrainians, Jews, Byelorussians, Germans and Lithuanians. The Polish population multiplied faster than that of the Jews’ and was becoming increasingly urbanized. Jews had a lower birthrate and many emigrated to America before its anti-immigration quota became law in 1924; a smaller number left for Palestine. Over the years, efforts to place Jews into a ghetto had proceeded in fits and starts. Most Jews congregated together in their own neighborhoods, far from the Jasna Góra, near the Warta and around the Stary Rynek, Old Market (figure 1). Rights for Jews to enter the city from the suburbs were curtailed, but did not do much to stem the flow from the suburbs. Because Jews paid heavy taxes, and contributed to the economic development of the town, proposals to expel them were rejected. Since the time of the Duchy, there was more talk than action of what to do with the Jews to keep them apart from the Christians in the quickly developing city. In 1822, four streets were formally designated as the ghetto, but this proved to be unrealistic. No walls surrounded the Jewish quarter nor were curfews imposed on Jews who worked outside the ghetto. Discounting the vast number of paupers, Jews were divided into a lower middle class, a small middle class, and a wealthy elite. By order of Nicholas I in 1848, no restrictions were placed on where Jews could reside if they were wealthy, “civilized,” that is, spoke Polish, German, or Russian, wore western clothes, and sent their children to public schools. In June 1862, under the decree of the Viceroy Alexander Wielopolski, long a supporter of Jewish emancipation, the ghetto was officially abolished. In 1868, the tsarist lifting of restrictions on Jewish settlement in Congress Poland brought in a large number of the so-called Litvaks (Lithuanian and Russian Jews), who took advantage of the new economic opportunities the town provided them. Yiddish was the lingua franca of the overwhelming majority of Jews. It was spoken in either the Lithuanian or Polish dialect, or, in time, a mixture of the two. According to the government census of 1931, 93 percent of the Jews in Częstochowa registered Yiddish as their mother tongue, although the younger generation increasingly spoke Polish. Whether Hebrew or Yiddish was the authentic national language of the Jews was a hotly debated issue in the Jewish political-culture wars of the late nineteenth and first half of twentieth century. A smaller minority in this multicultural city spoke German or Russian. During

Introduction: The Pulse of the City

3

the era of the republic, both languages were associated with the enemies of Poland. Yiddish was reviled by educated Poles and westernized Jews. The Al. NMP and the markets were the three main hubs of a bustling Jewish commerce from the late nineteenth century until the German invasion in 1939. The boulevard stretches due west for about a mile and a half, unobstructed, toward the Jasna Góra from the New Market (Nowy Rynek, on the Plac Daszyńskiego) and just behind it, the Old Market Square (Stary Rynek), once the heart of the old Jewish quarter. Both were open-air markets, half-encircled by buildings. The street around the Old Market is called Stare Rynek; the street around the is called Plac Daszyńskiego, and Nowy Rynek is a its nickname. Pious Jews walking through a narrow street from the Old Market to the New, looked down to the ground to avert seeing St. Zygmunt’s Church, which, like all churches, was called in Yiddish a “timme,” an abomination. Not far off was the smaller Warsaw Market, the Ryneczek Warszawski (Now Plac Bohaterów Getta, Ghetto Fighters Plaza). Smaller markets stores were also found throughout the Jewish neighborhoods. Business was brisk, though closed on Saturdays because of the Jewish Sabbath, and on Sundays, because of the Polish blue law. On Fridays the markets and stores closed early because Jews were busy preparing for the Sabbath. The importance of the Sabbath and Holy Days, for Jews throughout the ages, observant or secular (something the socialist Bund never fully grasped), cannot be overestimated. Ahad Ha’am, the father of “spiritual Zionism,” proclaimed that “more than the Jew has kept the Shabbat, the Shabbat has kept the Jew.” Even the poorest of the poor sacrificed their meager weekday comforts, scrimped and saved, or received help from the community’s charitable funds for the Friday evening or holiday meals, held after the husbands and children returned from the synagogue. The weekday burdens of life and the tyranny of material things were set aside for the celebration of holiness in time. Even Jews who had left their religious life nostalgically recalled the beauty of their parents’ and grandparents’ celebration of Shabbes and Yontif (holiday). The modern secular Jewish movements had their own Sabbath and holiday programming. On one side of the city, life took place in the shadow of the Jasna Góra; on the other side, near the Warta, the skies were dominated by the smokestacks and high chimneys of the large factories that spilled their dirty smoke into the air. While the church peals summoned parishioners to worship, the 4:30 a.m. factory whistles called workers to be at their stations by five o’clock until the factory sirens sounded again twelve or thirteen hours later, when the night shift took over after the bells announced vespers. Day workers were given a half-hour break at 8:00 a.m. and an hour at noon; night workers took a half-hour break at midnight. Jewish factory owners that employed Jews, allowed them a short break in the

4

Introduction: The Pulse of the City

long workday for Mincha-Maariv, the late afternoon and evening prayers. Jewish owners of the largest factories in town did not generally hire Jews. On market days, Tuesdays and Fridays, and for periodic fairs, the peasants came down from the countryside dressed in their colorful folk costumes, bringing their horse- and cattle-drawn wagons to the Jewish stalls, pushing their way past throngs of pushcarts to barter and sell livestock and produce, depending on the season, in return for dry goods, cash, or works by the town’s artisans. Business was conducted in Polish and Yiddish. A Pole and a Jew knew enough of each other’s language to engage in a lively give-and-take. Commerce also took place with greater regularity in the market fairs of surrounding villages and shtetls, including, among others, Krzepice, Kłobuck, Janów, Przyrów, Żarki. By city ordinance, Polish vendors took up a separate designated space in the market, so that, ostensibly, they could enjoy favorable patronage from shoppers. But Polish customers, looking for “Jewish bargains,” voluntarily ignored the restriction, to the consternation of antisemitic Poles trying to maintain a boycott against Jewish merchants. Just before the Second World War, when the country was enjoying a brief period of economic recovery, Polish merchants petitioned the government to rescind the ordinance so that customers did not need to walk past the Jewish stalls in order to reach Polish vendors. The fascist Endek Party slogans Swoj zrobił swego i po swojemu i Kupuj u swego – “To each his own” and “buy from your own” – accompanied all of their boycott demands, before and throughout the interwar period. When Jews urged a boycott in turn against Polish businesses, the right was aghast. In times of boycotts and pogroms, the Endeks required Jews to put their names on the storefronts and Poles to put Christian signs in their window displays in order to spare Poles from violence and to alert them where not to shop and where to shop instead. Another popular slogan was Żydzi do Palestyny ale zostaj Żydówki tutaj – “Jews, go to Palestine but leave your women here.” Poles would taunt Jews in the street by calling them “Beilis.” Mendl Beilis a simple Jew was accused of killing a child for ritual purposes. In an internationally infamous trial that took place in Kiev in 1911, Beilis was acquitted after the star witness for the prosecution, a so-called Jewish expert, showed his ignorance and made a fool of himself in the cross examination. Although Beilis was freed, that did not stop Poles from calling Jews by his name. Jews retorted in rhyme Bejlis zyje Macoch gnie, “Beilis lives, Macoch rots.” Damazy Macoch, a monk at the Jasna Góra monastery, was imprisoned in 1910 for murder and the theft of crowns and other valuables adorning the Black Madonna. He died in prison in 1916. The peasants’ attitudes toward market Jews, going back generations, were ambivalent. On the one hand, they came away feeling suspicious of having been shortchanged by rigged weights and a new metric system they did not

Introduction: The Pulse of the City

5

understand. They also did not understand the concept of a “middleman,” other than as an exploiter. Steeped in their folk beliefs, they fundamentally distrusted merchants who sold products that they didn’t produce with their own hands. Thus, they were political proponents of consumer and credit cooperatives. During the last years before the war, government-sponsored consumer cooperatives were designed to help the peasants, a policy that negatively impacted the already decimated Jewish economy. On the other hand, a kind of friendly familiarity existed between them that generally kept the peasants impervious to antisemitic agitation. Their positive interaction, is evident, for example, in the mutual influences of their folklore, especially folksongs. Although the Church and some of the peasant political parties tried to inculcate a political animus toward Jews, they did not entirely succeed. Even when peasants joined antisemitic parties, they were not committed to an ideology, which reflected negligible reality in their lives. During the Great Peasant Strike of 1937, the Jews were not subjected to any molestation or harm. Under a sea of fluttering tent tops at the New Market, the peasants came to the Jewish stalls to bid for and haggle over the latest household utensils in exchange for poultry and livestock that then had to be properly slaughtered to make them kosher. The stalls were densely occupied. At the corner of the New Market (figure 2) and Ogrodowa street, broad-shouldered water carriers and haulers, with their buggies and thick heavy ropes, stood ready, at a moment’s notice, to be called out on a job. Freshly baked breads, rolls and pastries were available at the markets. Fish, especially herring from the Warta, was a major commodity, as were nuts, kasha, spices, wine, and sour pickles bought by women preparing for the Sabbath. Unless Jewish women baked their own, they could buy Challah bread, too. Poorer women came Friday mornings with their baskets to buy herring to be served up with onion, vinegar, and milk. Pleasing aromas whetted the appetites of those strolling through the market streets. Every sort of item and service was available: shoes, glassware, baked goods, a pharmacy – run by a non-Jew – a confectionary, and haberdashery. People took a break to scarf down a marinated herring with a glass of beer or shot of whiskey or kvass. Street vendors selling drinks carried heavy kegs on their backs. The bookseller was very popular, too; people sought out his seforim (holy books); mostly his business was selling pulp fiction in addition to serious literature. As in America, the low-class, trashy novelettes by Shomer (Nokhum Meyer Sheikevitsh), Sholem Aleichem’s nemesis, enjoyed great popularity. Jews avidly read and shared the Yiddish newspapers, periodicals, and the Polishlanguage Jewish daily Ekspres częstochowski. There were butcher shops nearby the markets on Targowa street, that the Jews called the Jatka-gas street (“butcher’s street”).

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Introduction: The Pulse of the City

During election seasons, broadsides posted by the entire spectrum of Jewish political parties appeared on the walls and windows of shop owners sympathetic to one side or the other, while in the streets, men argued boisterously over the fine points of their opposing Jewish political ideologies and drew a curious crowd around them, some bystanders jumping into the fray. A steady stream of Hasidim entered or left their shtieblekh (prayer rooms) while others went off to the market streets’ two outstanding Talmudic academies, the Ksav Torah, run by the Radomsker Hasidim, and the Beys Yoysef Musar Yeshiva. Two renowned rabbis of the Torah world, Rubele Rekhtman and Michal Shvartsboim, headed Ksav Torah. The abundance of lesser yeshivas and shtieblekh were either self-supporting, though most of their worshippers were poor, or they were subsidized by wealthy donors. Licensed and illicit shtieblekh (sometimes discovered by the police through denunciations), a major religious institution found in all Ashkenazi communities, multiplied as the population grew in numbers. Families and worker guilds, like the shochtim (ritual slaughterers), had their own, special shtieblekh. Notwithstanding the nature of their work, shochtim had the reputation of being Torah scholars. Jews felt safe in the company of this physically powerful class of men. With time, the guilds acquired class consciousness and became increasingly radicalized. The landsmanshaftn, the various mutual-aid organizations of immigrant communities abroad, also created their own shtieblekh or synagogues. The Czensthover-khevre kadishe (burial society) merged with the Chasam Soifer shul in the late 1800s on Clinton Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. It is one of the oldest synagogues in New York, renovated and still open for worshippers.) Goods were also available in the many poorer neighborhood stores and bakeries, and there were no shortages of taverns, either. Oddly dressed characters on street corners eked out a living selling tea or lemonade or ice cream, while other performed amusing monologues to attract passersby. Sports clubs were active, and amateur theatrical performances were presented in the Old Market. Wet nurses were not an uncommon sight, to the dismay of modern Jews and antisemites. Prosperous ladies came to the Aleja and New Market, as much to be seen as to shop. Bedecked in their diamonds and pearls and with their servants in tow, they bought schmaltz herring with roe. On the day before Yom Kippur the zogerins (“reciters”) walked through the crowd and recited the penitential prayers on behalf of the illiterate. The market streets were cleaned for the High Holy Days, but the acrid smells of the meats and rotten foods lingered. The New Market also had a kindly mohel (one who performs circumcisions) who provided his services gratis and, in addition, gave the new mother a ruble. Felczers (barber surgeons) were also available. Haggling with merchants was de rigueur in the marketplaces and on the Aleja. Lottery stands sold hope.

Introduction: The Pulse of the City

Figure 1: Old Marketplace. Czestochowa Jewish Museum.

Figure 2: New Marketplace. Czestochowa Jewish Museum.

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Figure 3: Jewish Soap Stall, Market, WW1 ZIH-I-300, Jewish Historical Institute, Warsaw.

In the mid-1830s, the stalls (figure 3) were removed from the Old and New Markets. Whether this was a deliberate measure to harm the Jewish economy, or to clear the densely crowded area that blocked access to the NMP and other surrounding streets is not clear; perhaps it was a combination of both. Some merchants were placed in the neighboring non-Jewish Zawodzie market, where Jewish passersby were often attacked by Polish hooligans. On Sabbath afternoons, hardworking Jews took a respite from their dusty sweatshops and dirty factories and went for a “shpatsir,” a stroll through the Aleja, enjoying the urban landscape and grabbing a breath of badly needed fresh air. Children played in the courtyards and gathered at their grandparents’ homes to enjoy the custom of eating “Sabbath Fruits” (Shabbes orbst). One could see boys and girls flirtatiously promenading up and down on opposite sides of the Al. NMP. By 1901, new winds blew in from the west. Men in their foppish or Germanstyle suits and women in their latest Parisian and German couture, shorter dresses, and high-button shoes mixed in the streets with poor religious Jews in their long black kapotes (caftans) and Yidishe hitelekh distinctive “Jewish hats.” Prosperous Hasidim wore their shtreimls (fancy fur hats reserved for Sabbaths and holidays).

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Not all religious Jews wore traditional outerwear. Class differences, tax brackets, and status could be inferred from the way one dressed. Since emancipation, the Al. NMP came to be divided into three sections. The Jews occupied the neighborhood of the First Aleja up until the middle of the Second Aleja on the viaduct over the railroad station that opened in Częstochowa in 1848 as part of the Vienna–Warsaw line. From the second half of this Aleja through the Third Aleja, business was in Polish hands. The division, however, was not exclusively restricted by ethnic boundaries; some Polish shops on the Jewish side and some Jewish ones on the Polish sides, coexisted, but not entirely without friction. Pilgrims arriving by train or on foot began their march to the Jasna Góra monastery at the Second Aleja, but they had ample time to shop at the numerous and wide variety of Jewish stores on both sides of the Jewish main street. With the abolition of the ghetto, the Aleja underwent a building boom as Jews of means moved into spacious apartments, some in multistory buildings, in the fashionable neighborhood. New residents, however, could not entirely escape the poor who made a place for themselves in the nooks and crannies and courtyards of the Aleja, just as they had in the basements, attics, and annexes on the narrow walkways of tenement houses on Kozia, Garncarska, and other narrow streets. It was not unusual for whole families to live there in one dark room. Despite their freedom of movement, most Jews continued to live in the area of the former ghetto. The more prosperous lived west of Warszawska and Krakowska Streets. During the First World War, merchants had to cope with war profiteers and shady characters worming their way into Jewish business life. From the turn of the century until 1939, the Jewish markets suffered intermittently from Churchinspired boycotts of Jewish shops and also from the uneven, but generally steady, economic decline that began prior to World War I and then grew worse because of the Depression. In the late 1930s, after Marshal Piłsudski’s death in May 1935, the government engaged in policies that amounted to severe economic antisemitism, taxing Jews at onerous rates by targeting middle-class businesses in which they predominated. Police were a daily nuisance, regulating work hours on the Aleja in order to restrict Jews from doing business, and driving them out of their stores. Nevertheless, while there was a frequent turnover in business ownership in the deteriorating economy before the Second World War, commerce on the boulevard persisted. In the face of their common plight, merchants, normally distant religious and secular Jews, developed camaraderie, helping each other in whatever ways possible, extending credit to customers and bartering their wares. Retailers had their own mutual-aid business association.

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In hard times the shop owners on the Aleja showed great resilience and put on a good face. Compared to the merchants and customers of the poorer Old and New Markets, the Aleja catered to an upscale clientele and fashionable boulevardiers. The Aleja boasted places of amusement and shops providing household necessities as well as luxury items: restaurants, cafes, tobacconists, high-end clothiers and haberdasheries, stores selling, toys, porcelains goods, hardware and so on. Rufers (“hawkers”) stood in front of clothing stores calling out to shoppers to come inside and try on a new suit. The dazzling presence in the marketplaces of fiddlers, organ grinders, clowns, fortune-tellers, jugglers, and musicians, all looking for a handout, along with the “village idiots,” was taken for granted as the normal state of affairs. Pickpockets, extortionists, and convicts released from the Piotrków prison roamed among the pedestrian shoppers and vendors looking for a mark. Sports clubs held their matches in the Old Market, and were pelted with rocks by Polish hooligans. The elegantly attired Moishe Kokl, the Jewish Godfather, was observed with mixed feelings. Behind the prosperous shops on the Al. NMP, poorer merchants and peddlers filled the entranceways of the courtyards, selling their wares at cheaper prices. They also planted themselves outside private homes on the upper floors, as well as by offices, social and political clubs, banquet halls, theaters, and other public places. The din of discounted commerce echoed into the streets. Shnorers (“beggars”) were ubiquitous; fulfilling a religious obligation, even the poorest gave at least some token of charity. Part of the poor area was so densely populated and noisy, busy and bustling with commerce and life, that just before the First World War, it acquired the name “Peking.” To paraphrase the observation of one witness: “Whether it beat, stronger or weaker, the pulse of Jewish economic life in town – depending on the general economic situation – was the Aleja [. . .] the people’s determination and instinctual resolve to work and achieve were constant.”2 The popular press, sophisticated literature, and technical reading material (both in translation and in the original languages), libraries, theaters, cinema, and sports clubs, gave Jews in Częstochowa a variety of cultural choices to suit their politics, artistic taste, and modes of leisure. Before a Jewish press emerged in the town in 1912, news of the day’s burning issues, like the Dreyfus affair in the 1890s, arrived from Warsaw. By the time of the Beilis Affair, Częstochowa Jews could follow developments in their own press. In between, the most

2 Wolf Glicksman, “Czenstochower gasn,” in Czenstochow: A New Supplement to the Volume Czenstochower yidn (New York: United Czenstochover Relief Committee, 1958), 28.

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talked-about figure in Jewish life was Theodor Herzl. One could buy a newspaper at a kiosk or “from a grizzled old man or a dirty kid with a runny nose.”3 A vibrant nightlife brought Jews out to political gatherings and union meetings to strategize and socialize and to attend popular adult education evening classes for folks to “improve” themselves. For pure enjoyment Jews sought out smokefilled cabarets and taverns, theater performances, as well as movie houses showing Yiddish films and the latest European and Hollywood productions. They hit the nightspots where one could do the tango, Charleston, or foxtrot and went to the theater together, even if, for some, the shows were regarded as beneath their station. Jews eagerly attended musicals and declamations by great actors, writers, or political figures, from home or imported from Warsaw and New York, while young people were attracted to sporting events. Only the poorest or most snobbish were sidelined from the common culture. Still, it would have been hard to avoid the catchiest tunes of the popular operettas by the grandfather of the Yiddish theater, Avrom Goldfaden’s The Sorcerers or The Two Kuni Lemls, or the folksongs that were in the air and sung by everyone. Labor folksongs, created by the New York sweatshop poets around the turn of the century, like Morris Rosenfeld, Dovid Edelshtat, and others, were especially popular among the seamstresses, dressmakers, and tailors, though their authorship was generally unknown. If Warsaw considered itself the Paris of Eastern Europe, Częstochowa could compete with that claim. Its municipal leaders were concerned with public works, creating a sewer system, reliable bus schedules, keeping the city attractive, and its appearance up to date. This was one area where all parties agreed. Aside from its main boulevard showing a touch of Paris, Częstochowa was a relatively modern city with 6,100 buildings and lush parks and grassy area in front of the Town Hall on the border of the second and third Aleja. By 1939, 80 percent of the buildings were made of brick and 70 percent had gas, heat, electricity, and plumbing. Relative to its mostly working-class population, Częstochowa also had a culturally European class of citizens with a municipal library of some 60,000 books, art interests, sport clubs, and publishing houses. Members of the free professions attended to the needs of its mainly Polish Christian population. In all these areas the Jews had their own parallel institutions, cultured elites and members of the free professions. In proportion to its population, it exceeded the percentage of Polish urban professionals.

3 Eddy Portnoy, Bad Rabbi: and Other Strange But True Stories from the Yiddish Press (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2017), 3. I found it apt to use Portnoy’s words, which he uses in a different context.

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Jews everywhere considered Częstochowa an Ir voem beyisroel (“A City and Mother of Israel”: 2 Samuel 20:19), a vibrant, multi-faceted, Jewish metropolis and a major center of culture, religious life, commerce, industry, and politics. The uniquely intimate Jazz Age beat of the town was captured by the Yiddish vaudevillian Jack Rechtseit’s 1925 song “Mayn Shtetele Czenstochov” (Czenstochov, My Little Town – available on YouTube). Relative to Warsaw, Częstochowa had a larger proportion of Europeanized Jews. High, low, and middlebrow culture were the hallmarks of public life that transformed a largely factory town, and the most Catholic of Polish cities, into one of the most colorful and celebrated Jewish communities in the country until the Second World War.

Part One: Origins to World War I Earliest Record The earliest record of a Jewish communal presence in Częstochowa dates from the eighteenth century and is related to the sect of the notorious “false messiah”: Jacob Frank and his minions. Claiming to be the reincarnation of Shabbatai Zvi, his anti-Talmudic teachings were regarded as heretical and his practices licentious. After being excommunicated by the rabbis and converting along with his flock to Christianity, his heterodox views inevitably brought him into loggerheads with the Church. In 1760, Frank was arrested and imprisoned in the Jasna Góra Monastery. After thirteen years, he was freed by Russian forces and left town, taking his people with him. Those who remained in Częstochowa intermarried and assimilated into Polish society. In different forms, remnants of Frankism lasted beyond the fringe of mainstream Judaism. There still are Poles who claim Frankist ancestry. Rare archival references confirm the presence of individual or small groups of Jews in Częstochowa, not necessarily as residents, in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and early nineteenth centuries. We have a record from 1705 of a Jew named Mosiek, who was allowed to live in town for as long as it took the city to repay his loan (the city needed to settle a debt it owed to Sweden). The Polish Geographic Society contains reports of a Jewish community in Częstochowa in 1700 that comprised mostly of weavers and artisans, (occupations Jews continued until 1939). The rapid growth of the Jewish population in the town by 1760 is evident from a complaint brought by the Polish guild of bakers against the unfair competition created by increasing numbers of Jewish bakers. By 1765, the Jewish community counted fifty-one families. Archival findings show that a request for a synagogue was submitted to the Prussian authorities in 1787. What came of it is unknown. Prussian records from 1793 speak of several Jewish farmers working the land, a privilege that may hearken back to the last days of the Polish Kingdom at the end of eighteenth century and extended to, at least, 1799. Jewish beggars tied to other groups unable to support themselves wandered the land and sometimes turned to banditry. One such group, with a considerable number of Jews, operated around Częstochowa. As late as the early 1800s, in what was ultimately a futile effort to maintain the feudal privilege of non-tolerandis Judaeis, the burghers, the aristocrats, and the Church opposed giving Jews the right to domicile in the cities of Poland. History was not on their side. In Częstochowa, progressive forces laid the groundwork for https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110770230-002

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new economic opportunities in the nascent industrial metropolis that overcame the resistance of Poland’s old regime. In 1821, the Polish writer-traveler Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz reported that he found three thousand Jews in town and that they owned all but three of the houses in the Old Market. Niemcewicz was given to exaggeration, and the number of Jews may be inaccurate, but we can take him at his word that of the shopkeepers, merchants, and manufacturers of linen and wool almost all were entirely in Jewish hands.

The Gmina In 1798, under Prussian rule, the Częstochowa gmina began the process of establishing its official independence from the religious-administrative authority of neighboring Janów by building a mikveh (ritual bath), creating a new burial society (Khevre kadisha) that would serve its own needs, and, in 1799, purchasing grounds for a cemetery (Beys oylim) that was first used in 1800 (other sources indicate that the land was bought and used in 1804). The community in Częstochowa felt that they were unfairly taxed, overcharged, and mistreated by the Janów burial society. The roads were also difficult to traverse, especially in winter. A strange incident occurred that hastened efforts to free themselves from the Janów community. According to a member of the Częstochowa Khevre kadisha: One of the bodies was strapped to the wagon on which it was carried to ensure its safe transport to Janów for burial. The Khevre kadisha carelessly failed to place the strap ends inside the wagon. During the journey it got entangled around one of the wheels, pulling up the corpse inside the wagon in what looked like a seating position. The escorts fled in shock but continued on their way once they recovered.1

In 1803, the mikveh finally opened and immediately created friction between Hasidim and their opponents over access rights. In 1808, now part of the Napoleonic Duchy of Warsaw, with a population of 495 Jews or 14.8 percent of the population, the Częstochowa gmina was granted official recognition, which included administrative responsibility for the surrounding shtetls. In 1808, responsibility for the suburban villages and shtetls fell to the Częstochowa gmina. These included:

1 M. Kh. Tiberg, “Khevre kadisha,” in Sefer Tshenstochov, vol. I (Jerusalem: Encyclopedia of the Diaspora, 1967), 137.

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Działoszyn, Krzepice, Mstów, Cynków, Kuźnica, Kłobuck, Obodno, Miedzno, and Opatów. Under the Prussians, and then under the Duchy of Warsaw, the small community prospered through trade in handicrafts, liquor, and goods for all aspects of the town’s needs, including military provisions for the soldiers garrisoned in town to protect the Jasna Góra Monastery from foreign invasion. Jews also purveyed labor for the construction of its fortifications. In the period of the Duchy, Jews bought up empty lots in the area of the Old Market that were left by fires set by the Austrian army, as well as expensive properties, at reduced prices, from impoverished Polish aristocrats. The proximity of Częstochowa to the German frontier was also economically advantageous. As Jews settled in the town accompanied by their families and entourages, they reinforced the stereotype that Jews were rich and motivated by greed. In addition to the cemetery on Złota Street, a burial society, and a mikveh, the gmina helped lay the foundations of the community, turning its attention to establishing a synagogue, as well as a kheyder (a Jewish school, in the one room home of the Melamid, also called rebbe, [a boy’s teacher]) or a Talmud Torah, both traditional Jewish elementary schools. In time, most elementary school teachers opened their own private khedorim (plural for kheyder). The cemetery remained subject to government oversight and often furnished the authorities with occasions for harassing and extorting the gmina. Historically, the primary task of the gmina was the collecting of taxes from its numerous jurisdictions on behalf of the government, to attend to its community’s needs, and maintain its institutions, one of which was the “Old Synagogue,” di alte shul (figure 6). Located at 32 Nadreczna and Mirowska, in the poorest section of the Old City, the Old Synagogue may have been erected in 1765, if not earlier. Its origins are obscure; other dates cited for its founding are 1801 and 1810. Under the loving care of the gmina, the alte shul never lost its preeminence in the community and was an enduring monument to Jewish cohesion, piety, and resilience. It was expanded in 1872, and later, in 1928 to 1929, at the behest of Chief Rabbi Nokhum Asz (1858–1936), the gmina commissioned Perec Wilenberg (1874–1947), Częstochowa’s pre-eminent artist, to renovate the Old Synagogue and paint its interior murals. When festivities were held at night, on the eve of holidays, a hundred candles lit up the synagogue bestowing it with an aura of sanctity. A small Beys medrish (study house), where Jews prayed in winter (because the synagogue was much too cold), opened in 1815, which was when the town became part of the Kingdom of Poland. It was now dynastically linked with the Tsarist Empire as established at the Congress of Vienna. On 1 January 1822, the gmina, as the main Jewish communal body, which had been the subject of several hostile government investigations and a significant degree of criticism from Jews themselves,

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was abolished. Its functions were taken over in each town by a Synagogue Supervisory Board (dozór bóżniczy), which had been established on 20 March 1821. These were headed by a state-sanctioned community rabbi and three elected deacons (parneysim), who rotated monthly in their esteemed position. To serve as head of the community court, the Beys din (rabbinic court), the gmina in Częstochowa first hired a layman, Reb Yakov ben Eliezer Halevi. The Chief Rabbi, in addition to his ritual and educational duties, was compelled to keep an account of the gmina’s tax-collected income and expenditures. Together with the gmina, he had to collect the vital statistics, from cradle to grave, of all Jews inside and those entering the community. Distrusting authority, or to avoid taxes, many Jews stayed under the radar and were unregistered. Added to the rabbi and gmina’s tasks, from 1821 they had to register all the new surnames that were imposed on Jews by the Russian authorities. Unscrupulous officials squeezed the gmina for protection money. Who the community’s first Chief Rabbis were and when they were appointed was shrouded in obscurity until the middle of the nineteenth century with the appointment of Yitzhak Rabinowicz. Until then, the list of Chief Rabbis boasted few well-known scholars or men of distinguished Hasidic pedigrees. Asz’s contemporary, the beloved Rebbe Avigdorel Szapiro (1885–1937) – fatherin-law of Joel Teitelboim, rebbe of the Satmar Hasidim – was an exception. He was the great-grandson of Dov Lelever who, it was said, brought Hasidism to Poland. In addition to its rabbinic functionaries, the gmina employed eight kosher meat slaughterers, from whom it drew a hefty tax. In the absence of a Chief Rabbi, the Av beys-din, a scholarly layman, served as head of its rabbinical court, attended to the community’s private needs, and adjudicated disputed claims by aggrieved parties on the basis of rabbinic law. Difficult questions were referred to the Chief Rabbi of nearby Piotrków. The enforced addition of surnames to the Jews’ conventional patronymics at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries did not, as such, impinge on their religious lives. This was not the case with the infringement by the authorities on Jewish practice by demanding that in order for them to mix with Christians outside the ghetto area, Jews had to become “civilized,” meaning they had to send their children to Polish public schools, give up Yiddish in favor of Polish, and exchange their distinctive dress for European-style clothing. In addition, men had to shave their beards and women had to grow their hair and keep their heads uncovered. Although Jews were sometimes subject to pressure to adopt these practices, they were not successfully coerced into violating their religious laws and customs. As the century wore on, many women shed their wigs and black clothes and dressed fashionably modern.

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From 1853, the government warned Chief Rabbis of severe penalties, including incarceration for ten to twelve years, for not enforcing the rule regarding shaving. However, given the unwillingness of the gmina to implement this, the law remained on the books, unenforced. Instances of the police cutting off the beards and side locks of Jews and tearing off the wigs of Jewish women were rare. Once the ghetto was abolished and its restrictions abrogated, there were no longer any legal dress codes. Nevertheless, the stigma attached by modern Jews and Poles to Jews wearing old-fashioned clothing continued. In any event, Jews could not move out of the ghetto district, the so-called Gezwenice, unless they adopted European styles of dress and could afford to do so; most could not.2 The new gmina also took on the responsibility for the numerous small surrounding villages or shtetls that fell under its jurisdiction, among them Działoszyn, Krezice, Amstow, Kejnckow, Kuźnica, Kłobuck Łobodno, and Mierzyce. Jews knew each of these villages by their Yiddish names. The same held true for towns and cities. Hence, place-names helped to create a spiritual and linguistic intimacy between the Jews separate from their lives among the Poles. In other words, while Polish Częstochowa was the geographic location where Jews and Poles lived together, Yiddish Czenstochov was where the Jews felt at home. Gminy were plutocracies, comprised of two groups: a much-maligned wealthy class of Jews composed of members of the business elite, some of whom supported an assimilationist and secular agenda of emancipation and integration, if not outright conversion. A majority of ultra-Orthodox, with a substantial but not prosperous base, were concerned with preserving the status quo. If the Orthodox leaders did not exercise power commensurate with their numbers, it was because their electorate was limited to Jews who could afford the gmina tax. However, the reason the moneyed elite did not control the gmina was threefold: first, the gmina was a state-sanctioned religious body and had to take into account government policy; second, the secular elite did not want to create unrest among the populace that would cause the government to intrude on Jewish self-autonomy; and third, this group, out of a sense of civic virtue, were not so hard-hearted as to deprive the religious majority of the funds they required for their institutional, religious, and social well-being.

2 In German lands and France in the Revolutionary era, the Jews faced a similar predicament. On the one hand, Jews had to demonstrate that they were worthy of being emancipated and living outside the ghetto, by becoming “civilized.” On the other hand, proponents of emancipation argued that only in civilized surroundings and benefiting from living in a free society, outside the ghetto, could Jews assimilate.

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Aside from interceding with the government on civil matters, the gmina supervised its multi-branched communal functions and extensive social services, tasks that lasted until the end of the Second Republic. Although the gmina maintained a united front when dealing with the authorities, the two incompatible parties of which it was comprised did not inspire much confidence in their ability to accomplish their tasks. Yet, for all of their differences, the two worked remarkably well together. The gmina, for all its faults, ruled more by right of law than by popular assent, and by the end of the nineteenth century it became an exhausted mode of Jewish governance. Much of the gmina’s difficulties were simply structural. From the beginning, it was too top heavy, unwieldy, and out of touch with the general population. While compliant with the civil law, the gmina’s most urgent tasks were not easily realized. In the last decade of the nineteenth century, through the First World War and beyond, its authority waned, as new competing political forces wrested authority from both sides of the gmina. A significant infusion of Orthodox power came from the phenomenal growth of Hasidic sects, which provided a major obstacle to the political inroads of the modernizers. For the Hasidim, even the Agudos yisroel Party of the Orthodox Jews – founded in the early twentieth – was not sufficiently punctilious in its observance of Jewish law. In 1841, there were only twenty-five Hasidic families registered in the town; by the end of the century the numerous Hasidic sects, each with its own shtiebl, had become an iconic presence on the Jewish landscape (outsiders were always welcome to pray along with the regular worshippers of the shtiebl). Nadreczna Street came to be called Królestwo chasydzkie, “the Kingdom of Hasidic Jews.” The sects included, among others: Gerer, Radomsker, Sokhotshover, Alexander, Ostrovitzer, Skernivitzer, Grudshinsker, Piltzer, Belzer, Rupshitzer, Amshinover, Novoradumsker, Trisker, and Bratzlaver. Most sects had their own rebbes, Hassidic masters, located out of town, and their followers went on pilgrimage to visit them in their courts, especially before the holidays. There were also were smaller sects with their homegrown Częstochowa rebbes. Followers of the Gerer Rebbe, Avrum Mordkhe Alter, were part of the largest Hasidic sect in Poland and had four shtiblekh in Częstochowa.

The Ghetto As much by choice and custom than by law, Jews lived in a ghetto without walls, a crowded and restricted area near the Warta, under the most wretched conditions. The affluent were given broader rights of domicile. The poorest,

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aside from the homeless, usually lived in one-room, ramshackle homes with two beds, two chairs, and a slop bucket. Having mostly dirt floors, the rooms were perpetually soaked in mud. Men fished, women washed their laundry, and collected water for boiling tea in the crystalline water of the Warta. When the river overflowed, property was destroyed, disease and death were ubiquitous in the ghetto, and an awful stench wafted across town. The dirty, vermininfested straw beds on which the poor slept meant that fires quickly became major conflagrations and also bred pestilence. With a spate of deadly fires devastating the Jewish neighborhoods, and grinding poverty reaching dire levels from 1871 until the 1890s, the people’s superstitious fears were heightened. Children died in the streets, their bodies buried in the snow only to be discovered when the ice thawed. Gradually the gmina coordinated community resources to provide food and fuel for the desperately needy. While the Poles attributed disasters that befell them to the fault of vampires, superstitious Jews put the blame on evil spirits and dybbuks. During the cholera epidemic of 1894, members of the khevre kadishe found a way to fight back. Wearing shrouds, they rode out into the streets on white horses, waving their swords high and yelling, “malekh hamoves, Angel of Death, be gone, get ye out of the city.” Deeds of repentance such as carrying out the commandment of marrying off a couple were seen as necessary to stave off disease. People’s tsitsis, prayer shawl “fringes,” were carefully inspected to ensure the proper numbers of strings were correctly tied together in knots. Similarly, the scrolls in the tefillin (phylactery boxes) had to be impeccably inscribed to ensure the well-being of the community. Subsequently, the community was alerted to modern methods of dealing with disease: doctors were brought in from outside and the police disinfected the streets. The sick were urged to drink only boiled water and tea. Still a problem through to the end of the twentieth century, the writer Y. L Peretz wrote a pamphlet on how to prevent cholera through careful hygiene. The abolition of the ghetto did little to change the miserable conditions for most Jews. Even those who could afford to live in better neighborhoods remained inside the ghetto area. This was the sad reality for most Jews, lasting for generations, right up to 1939. Throughout the nineteenth century, regardless of which government was in power, the gmina tried functioning as it had in the past, except that changing political tides, beginning at the end of the nineteenth century, eventually brought new and unexpected challenges that made the squabbles with the wealthy elite look like child’s play. These included the emergence in the midcentury of a modern vision of traditional Judaism, and later in the century,

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Jewish nationalism, the labor movement, and the strong popular desire to displace the gmina with a democratically elected representative body. Industrialization, commerce, and secularization of fin de siècle Częstochowa infused urban life with a sense of optimism, a passion for the new in aesthetics and politics, encompassing new fashions for men and women, social movements, music, literature, art, a popular press, and sports.

Assimilation and Acculturation With emancipation, Jews were formally granted the right to own farmland and urban properties. All special Jewish taxes, including the tax on kosher meat were abolished and Jewish Congregational Boards were authorized to levy a communal tax. All restrictions on residence and movement were abolished. Jews were permitted to serve as witnesses for a notarization and their testimony was given equal status in court proceedings. The required legal oath was modified to make it more acceptable to Jews. Hebrew and Yiddish continued to be barred from all legal transactions. The abolition of these restrictions did not make assimilation or social integration inevitable, but it did make it at least conceivable, if not possible, for Jews who did not resist the blandishments of Polonization. Indeed, in some cases, particularly among the upper echelons of Jewish society, Jews, to whatever degree, did attain acceptance into Polish society. Such Jews had to change the traditional definition of Judaism as the religion of the Jewish folk, or nation, and, on the German model, redefined themselves as selfavowed, non-observant, patriotic “Poles of the Mosaic persuasion” (Żydzi wyznania mojżeszowego). Their aim was to acquire equal rights as Polish citizens and full integration into Polish society. These Jews were self-consciously and ideologically assimilationist as opposed to Jews becoming modern and naturally assimilating to their surroundings by osmosis. Jews who aspired to assimilate, proudly bore the designation “assimilationist.” The pro-assimilation Jews of the “Mosaic persuasion” had their own political parties and took part in gmina politics in Częstochowa, which was a measure, however thin, of belonging to the Jewish community. While assimilation can simply be a non-judgmental sociological term for the process of entering into the majority culture, most Jews frequently used it as a term of opprobrium, and an insult. It became a label for the disloyalty of Polonized Jews who held themselves aloof from the community out of a sense of superiority or did not really care much about being Jewish, or who went so far as to convert simply as an expeditious way of becoming an integral part of

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Polish society. Although it was not necessarily a disconnect from identifying as Jews, many took not knowing Yiddish, or pretending not to know it, as a badge of pride. Indeed, throughout the nineteenth century, Częstochowa produced so many converts that it gained the reputation of being a hotbed for apostasy, giving rise to the derogatory byword “Czenstochover shmadnikes” (apostates). Among the Jews, apostates were generally reviled because, as often occurred, they fell into antisemitic circles and spewed hatred of their former coreligionists. Sometimes, however, converts – including some of the wealthiest bankers and industrialists in Poland like Leopold Kronenberg and Jan Bloch – identified as Jews (just as Heinrich Heine did in Germany) and acted on their people’s behalf more successfully than if they had remained unconverted. At times, Jews recalled and folklorized the deeds of their benefactors’ Jewish origins proudly, or at least with ambivalence. In retrospect, we can better understand certain kinds of assimilation as acculturation. As sociological terms, the border between “assimilated” and “acculturated” is not easily distinguishable. The two concepts represent different degrees of where the individual stood, existentially and socially, in relation to Polish society. Jews putting on modern dress, speaking Polish, and giving up old-fashioned ways in order to fit in with the surrounding society, yet retaining a Jewish identity and involvement in Jewish life, are best considered acculturated rather than assimilated. For example, the small group of Polonized Jews who considered themselves religious Jews, were regarded as assimilated by the Orthodox but were actually acculturated, striving to feel Polish in pre-nationalistic Jewish culture. Whether they were comfortable in Polish society was another matter. In the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, secular, nationalistic Jews, proudly steeped in Jewish culture, were becoming increasingly numerous. Young Jews, certainly by the interwar years, were increasingly speaking Yiddish at home and Polish in the streets, with their friends, teachers, and acquaintances. The Warsaw-based journal Izraelita (1866–1915) was another example of this process of acculturation, advocating religious reform and Polonization, but not conversion. The same was true of the Warsaw-based Hebrew newspaper Hatsefira (The Epoch, 1864–1931). When the Jewish thinker Nahum Sokolow became its editor, the progressive journal assumed a nationalistic orientation. Sokolow succeeded Chaim Selig Slonimski as its editor. Both saw their role as encouraging traditional Jews eager to become modern, that is, acculturated. As a result, the paper emphasized modern science and mathematics along with current issues. Slonimski went on to become principal of the state-sponsored modern rabbinical seminary in Zhitomir, considered anathema to the Orthodox, while Sokolow made Hatsefira a nationalistic Zionist paper.

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Westernized leaders of the Orthodox, Agudos yisroel Party (although not the rank and file), with their modern clothes and some with doctorates, were just as acculturated (rather than unqualifiedly assimilated) as the wealthy members of the gmina, like the financier-philanthropist, Henryk Markusfeld (1853–1921). Notwithstanding Agude’s wide number of publications in Polish, no one spoke of them as proponents of assimilation, except perhaps for the most unassimilable Hasidic parties to the far right of Rabbi Asz. The pre–World War I Lira organization (discussed below) was a stellar example of acculturation. Converted Jews who were genuinely accepted and integrated into Polish society, and disappeared from the Jewish scene – or thought they had disappeared – over a generation or so, belonged to the unambiguous variety of assimilated Jews.

Brotherhood and Enlightenment The brief period around the time of the January Uprising against Russia in 1863 was, ostensibly, particularly conducive to Jewish assimilation and acculturation into Polish life. For the first time, Poles in the ranks of the national Polish movement looked to Jews as potential compatriots, with a “sense of brotherhood.” In their shared struggle against foreign tyranny, Jews and Poles fought and died on the same battlefields, marched side by side in street demonstrations, and carried out numerous, celebrated acts of kindness toward one another. The Jews of Częstochowa were struck by the sincerity of Poles when rabbis and priests joined arms in fighting the great conflagration in the poor Jewish section and giving alms to the helpless victims. That four Jews were invited to join the Municipal Council was unprecedented. The period was unique in Polish-Jewish relations. Young men returning to Częstochowa from Germany, and also autodidacts (“half-intelectuals”) from town and the surrounding shtetls, added to the voices of change, disseminating their new religiously enlightened ideas. The institutional address for reformed Judaism in Poland was the state-sponsored Rabbinical-Theological Seminary of Warsaw, which functioned from 1826 to 1863 and was attended by acculturated Jews, some from Częstochowa. Leading by example, they worked as private teachers of children of the rich, instructing them in Torah and Talmud, and the Hebrew and Polish languages. With the backing of Herc Kon, president of the gmina in the late 1820s and 1830s, enlightened Jews, led by Jacob Bursztynski, Częstochowa correspondent for the Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums in 1841, proposed sending children of the poor in Częstochowa to modern Jewish schools. Traditionalists and Polish authorities wanted Bursztynski expelled from Częstochowa, but he died there of cholera before his modern ideas could get off the ground.

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From the vantage point of those who championed a modern, enlightened Judaism, the period held promise for a combined Jewish and Polish identity. One of the outstanding proponents of this cause was the visionary Daniel Neufeld (1814–1874), brought to Częstochowa by Bursztynski. With the approbation of the Polish Jewish hero of the Uprising of 1830, the reform-minded Chief Rabbi of Warsaw, Dov Ber Meisels, Neufeld, an Orthodox observant Jew, became the founding editor of the Warsaw-based, Polish language, Jutrzenka (The Dawn) in 1861. A Jewish journal, and advocate of reform, it intended, on the one hand, to bring Poles closer to Jews and, on the other, to promote dialogue between proponents of assimilation into Polish society and those struggling to reconcile their traditional Judaism with their newfound Polish identity. Neufeld was a prototype for intellectually talented Jews who, writing in Yiddish, Hebrew, and Polish, found careers as rabbis, teachers, scholars, writers, critics, and novelists. Supported by like-minded friends, and the conditional openness of Polish society, Neufeld pioneered a radically new style of Jewish education in Poland, one, however, that would take more than half a century to be fully realized. In 1851, with the approval of the local authorities and the enlightened members of the gmina, Neufeld founded, in Częstochowa, a private, self-supporting, modern Jewish school with Polish as the language of instruction. With its excellent academic reputation, many well-to-do families who supported the school sent their sons there from other parts of Poland to study alongside local boys from Częstochowa. Neufeld’s elementary school had an enrollment of more than a hundred students and provided a dormitory for those far from home. At the inauguration ceremonies, Chief Rabbi Rabinowicz (who served from 1850 to 1868) delivered an inspiring sermon to an appreciative mixed audience of young Jews and Christians who came with their parents. He spoke on the virtues of a loving coexistence among young people. The one specific reform that he instituted was using Polish as the language of instruction in the Talmud Torahs. How long that lasted and to what extent is unclear. Rabinowicz was lauded for his progressive thinking. His correspondence with some of the leading lights of modern Jewish scholarship, including Chaim Selig Slonimski in Warsaw or Leopold Zunz and Michael Sachs in Germany was frowned upon by the more Orthodox Jews in Częstochowa. Neufeld was a close friend of Rabinowicz, and Rabinowicz was precisely the kind of role model he needed. The Jutrzenka praised Christian support for expanding the legal confines of the Jewish quarter to the Aleja and New Market, in a plea favoring abolishing the ghetto. It was an uphill struggle. Polish authorities and the Orthodox objected to a separate Jewish school and Neufeld’s intention to prepare its students for the Gimnazjum (academic high school). Nevertheless, the school functioned successfully

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until 1860, graduating students that would go on to become distinguished members of the community. Unfortunately, Neufeld possessed no administrative skills and his mismanagement resulted in the demise of the school. Other attempts to restart a Jewish school were thwarted by local Polish authorities and Orthodox leaders tied to the kheyder. In 1862, Neufeld drew police attention to himself when he delivered a patriotic speech in Częstochowa to an ethnically mixed demonstration, denouncing a Russian-instigated pogrom in the Jewish quarter (or the pogrom may have followed the patriotic demonstration). A year later, the authorities shut down his prestigious journal, to the chagrin of his readers who saw in it a herald of mutual respect and freedom of thought. Neufeld was charged with disloyalty to Russia by promoting Polish-Jewish relations and was deported to Siberia for two years. Upon his return, he tried to restart his literary career, but exhausted, his vigor diminished. Another member of Neufeld’s inner circle of Częstochowa rebels, and a veteran of the rebellion, Szymon Dankowicz, took a different tack. A man of many contradictions, he proved his bona fides on the battlefield where he was wounded. Polish comrades saved his life. Notwithstanding his intimate bond with Poles, he did not become a Polish nationalist. One of the early readers in Poland of Moses Hess’s Rome and Jerusalem, Dankowicz, who earned his living as a Hebrew tutor and was also a medical student, became an early proponent of Jewish nationalism and a pioneer of comparative Yiddish-Polish folklore studies. The implications of his subject were considered subversive. Since Jewish folklore implied the existence of a Jewish folk – an ethnicity with national characteristics – the promotion of Jewish folklore conflicted with the reform-Jewish and Polish concept that Jews only constituted a religion. With the exception of Neufeld, the enlightened assimilationists roundly vilified Dankowicz’s subject. Later, another twist in his strange career brought him to Bulgaria where he became the country’s Chief Rabbi. The suppression of the 1863 Uprising gave rise to an intellectual trend called Positivism, a liberal, philosophical, and literary movement that espoused national regeneration through “organic work,” meaning grassroots enlightenment, economic growth, and social reform. It also entailed support for the acceptance of assimilated Jews as brothers in a mutually beneficial, democratic society. Positivist ideals were widely propagated by Poles and Jews including the liberal clergy on both sides. In that vein, the great author and leading exponent of Positivism, Bolesław Prus, wrote the following: “In this land, only Jews create an industrial and commercial movement, and therefore their economic victory is a pure benefit for our country.”3

3 Quoted in Yakov Shatzky, Geshikhte fun yidn in varshe, vol. 3 (New York: YIVO, 1953), 27.

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Not unlike Jewish assimilationists and some Maskilim, Polish Positivists wanted Jews to assimilate by doing away with all outward signs of their differences in all matters but religion. While they expressed admiration for the high rate of Jewish literacy and Jewish industriousness, the Positivists, like the Maskilim, attacked and mocked the kheyder and Talmud Torah as seedbeds of superstition and separatism. Thus, they envisaged and championed traditional schools being replaced with modern Polish-Jewish schools. The Positivists regarded assimilation as a civic duty that the Jews owed Poland in return for being welcomed as equals into a free society. Yet even Positivist writers like, most famously, Eliza Orzeszkowa, who was much admired by Jewish readers for her ardent philosemitism, also incorporated into their works negative stereotypes of unenlightened Jews that served as foils for ideal Polonized Jews. The Positivist program was essentially the same as had already been proffered earlier by Maskilim who internalized antiJewish stereotypes.4 Previously, however, the blandishments of assimilation were offered in a semi-feudal context, whereas under Positivism they were to be realized in a secular, democratic, and capitalist state. The dwindling Positivist movement lasted into the early twentieth century but it never achieved its stated goals and, in those years, relations between Poles and Jews deteriorated. In Częstochowa, Positivism played less of a role than elsewhere in Poland because of the conservative influence of the Church. As Positivism gave way to neoromanticism, Polish admiration for Jewish success in industry and commerce, which by World War II constituted 40 percent of those businesses, turned into jealousy and antisemitism. Although exact numbers are not yet available, the same held true for Częstochowa, where Jews conspicuously dominated both areas of business.

4 Internalizing anti-Jewish stereotypes and simultaneously defending Jews points to different degrees and kinds of anti-Jewish thinking. The Positivists and Maskilim wanted to rid Jews of their stereotypical image through benign persuasion. During the Holocaust, prelates who preached Jew hatred also risked their own lives protecting Jews. “An especially unusual case was the 1942 protest of Zofia Kossak-Szczucka, a well-known novelist and a founder of the underground [Jewish] rescue group Zegota [. . .] [Her] views represented a mix of extreme nationalism and Roman Catholicism but she called for the rescue of Jews, even while seeing in them a deleterious social element that under normal circumstances (i.e., in a free Poland) should be combated.” Laurence Weinbaum, “Penitence and Prejudice: The Roman Catholic Church and Jedwabne,” Jewish Political Studies Review 14, 3–4 (Fall 2002): 12.

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Henryk Markusfeld If one name stood out in the history of Częstochowa Jewry, it was Henryk Markusfeld (1853–1921), the proud “heart of Jewish Czenstochov,” as he was endearingly known. Born into wealth and raised amid a strong family spirit of philanthropy and public service, Markusfeld increased his fortune many fold and gave much of it away. His life reads like a biography of Częstochowa in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. President of the gmina, he was a financier, owned numerous enterprises, and sat on many Jewish and Polish boards. Aside from his involvement in Polish civic life, electrifying the city around 1906 – causing a great popular stir of amazement – and funding the Fire Brigade, Markusfeld was present at every major social, economic, political, and cultural turn in the larger Polish context and in the Jewish community. Of course, he didn’t operate alone; on the contrary, winning their trust, he rallied people around him from all walks of life. He enlisted their help to realize his vision of cooperation and peaceful coexistence between civilian and military, business and labor, finance and philanthropy, Jews and Poles. Markusfeld relied on the help of his colleague Leopold Werde, and other men of good standing in the gmina, to put its affairs on a sound business footing. It may, then, not be all that remarkable that most of the gmina’s accomplishments under Markusfeld’s direction were completed on, or near, schedule, notwithstanding its characteristically dysfunctional administration and its perpetual shortage of funds. Gmina leaders like Markusfeld exhibited endless patience rooted in a genuine concern for the Jewish people. When Markusfeld and Werde found the gmina not entirely dependable, they took their projects into their own hands. Unlike other Jews of their class, Werde and Markusfeld were followers of the Haskalah, but not as committed to undoing the existing social order so much as to promoting a modern, wide-reaching culture, both secular and religious. It was very important to them that acculturating Jews retain a strong Jewish identity grounded in religion, even if it were liberally, or not actually, observed in practice. Because Werde himself was not a “shul goer,” smaller minds derided him for it. Whether Markusfeld was a “shul goer,” we don’t know, although he probably attended services at the new synagogue he helped build. Markusfeld, Werde, and others in their class shared the same worldview, which included a strong desire to integrate the masses of poor Jews into society, make them productive, teach them to read beyond the kheyder level, become more physically fit and athletic, and raise their standard of living. According to the census of 1921, 2,110,000 people, or 7.8 percent of the population, gave their nationality as Jewish, which meant that 25 percent of those of “Mosaic persuasion” gave their

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nationality as Polish. This could be taken as an index of the degree of acculturation but was more likely a reflection of a desire to please the census takers. It also reflected the situation in Galicia where, before 1914, the existence of a separate Jewish nationality had not been recognised and Jews had for the most part given their nationality as “Polish.” The census of 1931 gives a more satisfactory indication of the extent of Jewish acculturation. Of the 3,114,000 Jews, 2,488,000 (79.9 per cent) named Yiddish as their mother tongue, 244,000 (7.8 per cent) Hebrew, and 372,000 (11.9 per cent) Polish. People like Markus and his class of philanthropists identified as Jews by religion and more broadly as Polish-Jews by nationality. Maskilic and Reform advocates might have preferred Jews to register themselves solely as a religion, but by then the idea of the Jews constituting a nation was a core belief, ideologically inculcated into the Jewish consciousness by the national movement and its political parties. Except for Bundists and Communists, many of whom came either from wealthy or from ultra-Orthodox homes, atheism, unlike in the Western Enlightenment, was not part of the modernizer’s national programs. While many young Czestochowers traveled to Germany where they encountered modern Jewish ideas, specifically in Breslau and Königsberg, others stayed closer to home, at the Rabbinical School in Warsaw. The government closed the school during the Polish Uprising of 1863, taking precautions against supposed Jewish subversive activities. If the regime had in mind the ultimate Russification and conversion of the Jews through its reconstituted liberal rabbis and teachers, it did not succeed. The seminary did not ordain any rabbis, but it did graduate future community leaders who were converted to the Haskalah and brought their ideas and know-how back to Częstochowa, where they found favor with Markusfeld and his circle.

Kheyder and the Cycle of Poverty With their roots in the Middle Ages, the khedorim and Talmud Torahs in Częstochowa, as elsewhere in Poland, made their initial appearance in the late eighteenth-century or early nineteenth-century Poland, as fledgling gminy were taking shape. However, given the dearth of statistics for elementary school education for the nineteenth century, our knowledge of attendance in this period is sparse. There is an indication that around 1888 the Czestochowa gmina supported some forty or fifty impoverished boys attending kheyder. From 1868 until 1887 we hear nothing of a Chief Rabbi, probably because no one could fill Rabinowicz’s shoes.

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However, from 1887 until 1894, Gershon ben Yosef Rovinson served as Chief Rabbi. During his tenure, 125 new Talmud Torah students attended school at the gmina’s expense. Unfortunately, we know little about Rovinson except that he was strictly observant, well respected, enlightened, wrote articles for maskilic papers, then moved to Cleveland where he died in 1908. He was followed in the Chief Rabbinate by the renowned “Gaon” (a label connoting superlative wisdom and authority), Nokhum Asz. During the tenure of the three rabbis, the numbers of khedorim and Talmud Torahs increased rapidly as the Jewish population multiplied. In 1888, Jews were approximately a third of the town’s population. The census of 1905 lists 4,000 pupils attending fifty khedorim, not counting the unregistered khedorim. By contrast, in 1932 there were only thirty-two registered khedorim in Częstochowa. Some khedorim were unregistered and had to forgo financial aid from the gmina because the melamdim could not pass a licensing test showing proficiency, in Russian under the tsar, and later, at the beginning of second republic, in Polish. This was required by the Compulsory Education Act of 1919. The law also required sanitary and safety standards. Licenses were revoked and khedorim, presumably, were shut down when they did not meet these standards. The curriculum of the two types of elementary schools was practically the same and the names were frequently used interchangeably. The kheyder, like the Talmud Torah (the name was taken from the centuries-old societies, the Chevros Talmud Torah – “Societies of Talmud Study”), relied on subsidies from the gmina, a meager tuition fee, and whatever extra contributions the families of the pupils provided. At times, the melamed had to supplement his income with other jobs, usually menial labor. Competition for pupils was rough. Sometimes, in order to bring down competition, melamdim denounced each other to government inspectors and municipal authorities for infractions of the law or brought their disputes to be settled by the Beys din. The Talmud Torah held classes in separate quarters and specialized in paying close attention to students who showed promise in Talmudic studies and were therefore likely candidates for higher education in a yeshiva. An unusually good student from the kheyder could also attend the yeshiva and, like the Talmud Torah student, go on to become a rabbi, a melamed, or a rabbinic functionary – all positions of limited supply – or continue with a secular, or practical, education and find work outside of the religious world. Elementary schools sprang up quickly, reaching out to all boys in every community and instructing them in the basics of Judaism: reading and writing, Chumash and Rashi (Pentateuch and commentary), the siddur (prayer book), Halakha (the fundamentals of Jewish law and practice), and some Talmud.

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In class, Hebrew texts were translated orally into rote, singsong Yiddish, which was the language of instruction. Nothing practical was taught. The melamed and his students rarely knew any Polish. Making up for a shortage of books, children studied in groups, sitting around a table reading out loud, each learning to read the text from his angle so that the student sitting opposite the main reader learned to read upside down. The kheyder and Talmud Torah were responsible for the near universal, albeit basic, reading literacy among males. A good number of Jews acquired fluency in Hebrew as autodidacts or through advanced study in the Beys medrish, yeshiva, and Zionist youth movements. They joined a class of enlightened intellectuals, Maskilim, became writers and avid readers of Hebrew fiction, nonfiction, and journalism. As a rule, Yiddish writers all knew how to read and write in Hebrew, but they found larger audiences when they wrote in Yiddish. Girls learned to read at home or in special classes arranged for them. Hasidic girls were taught to speak correct Polish. A shortage of books was not the only pressing problem. Unless the gmina provided them with their ration of coal, the schools were at times closed for the winter. Even the heads of the Polish municipality, the Town Fathers, were moved to help the children. An oft-recounted tale told of the time when the Municipal Council (c. 1899) stepped in to help the gmina rescue the Jewish children from the brutal winter frost. The Town Fathers sent shoemakers into the poorer neighborhoods and outfitted the children with boots and even gave out candy to sweeten the gift. Boys attended kheyder from age three to age thirteen, while the Talmud Torah students were, on average, between seven and fourteen years of age. Classes were held from seven in the morning until five or six o’clock at night, from sunrise to sunset, six days a week, and half a day on Fridays (Erev Shabbes). Without any regard for pedagogical or hygienic standards, the kheyder was typically filthy, airless, dark, and dank, and had a dirt floor. In some cases, schools could have either a handful pupils or too many to be accommodated in the small room. Some children recalled the melamed as brutal or even sadistic, slapping and humiliating the children in front of their classmates. The boys had derisive monikers for their disliked teachers. If the watchword of the postwar secular schools was “love,” love for the children and for yidishkeyt (newly defined as a synonym for Jewish culture), the kheyder seemed devoted to inculcating students with blind obedience to the teacher and to Jewish law. The boys’ only role models were usually ill tempered, barely educated older men, trying to eke out a living. If the Talmud Torah or kheyder students didn’t make the grade, not least because the teachers were uninspiring, they were forced to find some kind of menial labor, like learning to sew by finding an apprenticeship, if they were lucky. Failing that, they were fated to become

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shnorers and to join the vast army of the unemployed. Vocational training was not available until the end of the century, largely through the efforts of Markusfeld, although there is a record of an artisan having been founded in 1897. There is no record, however, of its lasting beyond that year. To be sure, not all khedorim were squalid; there were exceptions, where better care was taken of the school quarters and where children were treated with love and kindness. Sentimental folklore rituals marked a boy’s introduction to the study of Torah at the age of three. In the company of the boy’s family and a few guests, the boy was placed in the melamed’s lap and presented with a platter of letters smeared with honey, which the boy was told to lick, so that the words of Torah would taste sweet in his mouth. The kheyder also had the great virtue of being universally attended and thus provided, the way no other institution could, an invaluable national service, as the poet Chaim Nachman Bialik said, of giving Jews a common vocabulary and cohesive identity. On his tour through Poland in the 1930s, Bialik visited Częstochowa where his presence was greeted with great fanfare. Khedorim were also a kind of daycare center for boys who came to school hungry, looking to warm themselves near the little coal stove, the pripetshik. On bitter cold days, the teacher’s assistants and older boys (belfers) would carry the younger barefoot children on their backs and bring them to school. For lunch the pupils brought their paltry lunch with them or the belfers carried them home and back during lunch break. Such heartwarming images, taken out of context, may turn into the stuff of Broadway plays or the subject of nostalgia-tinged photographs. In the realism of Yiddish and Hebrew and Polish literature, written by those who observed or experienced the kheyder firsthand, a very different kind of portrait is painted. The question of Jewish pedagogics and their relation to the problem of massive unemployment become a cause for alarm when the ideas of the Maskilim took root, and the students of the Rabbinical Seminary in Warsaw raised their voices in concern, as did the Yiddish press in the years leading up to World War II. With more than the occasional threat of government scrutiny, the Maskilim barraged the kheyder with withering and satirical criticism. Yet, whatever attempts were made in the nineteenth century to reform the traditional Jewish school, such as Neufeld’s, were stymied either by the authorities or by the Orthodox leaders. A ruinous cycle existed between the kheyder and Jewish poverty. The kheyder produced generations of unskilled, unemployed Jews, while the Jewish economy, mired in poverty, could not conceive, much less afford, any educational system that was an improvement on the kheyder. A new paradigm was needed that would relieve poverty in Częstochowa, while steering a middle

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course between the universal pull of modernity and the inner, normative demands of traditional life. The Rabbinical Seminary in Warsaw and Neufeld’s school in Częstochowa in the 1860s were the only models in Poland at the time. In any event, neither choice was acceptable to the Orthodox; a third, not yet attainable model was required that would accommodate the two unrelenting sides in a new synthesis. The implications of the maskilic criticism assumed that in Częstochowa there was an element of society that could reach the masses of Jews, turn them into a respectable working or middle class, and raise their standard of living. Optimistically, the likes of Asz, Markusfeld, and Werde envisaged the kind of religious and educational reform that would include vocational training in order to acculturate Jews in an overall sluggish economy – a tall order.

Vocational Training and Philanthropy In a poor country, under no circumstances could work, much less decent work, be available for everyone, even in an expanding economy that could accommodate a skilled or professional middle class. In the depression years of the 1930s, many highly educated people were unemployed. In the meantime, ameliorative care came to the rescue from the upper class, those who benefited directly from Częstochowa’s industrial and commercial revolution, the tycoons like Markusfeld and Werde. They used their growing fortunes for charitable work but, more importantly, in the long run, for public works and vocational training. Where best to begin their attack on the status quo was the strategic question around which all of the other problems revolved. To face the economy as a whole was beyond the purview of the Maskilim, just as their accultural-assimilationist aspirations were losing ground. However, by the turn of the century their message was getting out, filtered through the radical movements and Jewish nationalists rather than the bourgeois Maskilim or the culturally assimilated elites. A nationally minded Jewish labor movement, Zionism, and other forms of diaspora nationalism, took upon themselves the task of radically changing kheyder culture and its economic stagnation, broadening and transforming the notion of yidishkeyt. The creation of vocational schools, to supplement elementary schools and eventually replace them, was the favored solution. This bold step was never conceived as a panacea, nor was the end of the grinding poverty of the religious masses foreseen as entirely possible, but it was a rational beginning. In that vein, in 1898 Markusfeld founded the first Jewish Artisan School, in memory of his parents, with the assistance of the Jewish Colonization Association (JCA) and a token amount collected from a number of students. It was the first

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vocational school of its kind in Poland, other than the one in 1897. Strategically linked to a Talmud Torah, the school instilled values in the students that contradicted the traditional religious culture and that, self-servingly, denigrated labor as a waste of time, better spent studying Torah. Young men in the Artisan Schools were trained to become carpenters, mechanics (who were taught mechanical drawing by Wilenberg), locksmiths, electricians, upholsterers, salespersons, office clerks, shippers, marketing managers, factory workers, foreman, and so on (although the assumption that factory owners would actually employ Jews could not be taken for granted). Instructors taught their students using the latest techniques, and courses were taught in Russian or Polish, and in Hebrew. Vocational schools quickly grew from a handful of students into major institutions with a reputation for excellence, one that soon spread around the Jewish world. Notwithstanding the school’s original affiliation with a Talmud Torah, even some well-to-do nonreligious parents were encouraged to send their children there if it meant learning a trade. Vocational training took small, but conspicuous steps that revealed the benefits of modern education and enlightenment. Markusfeld’s public works cut a wide swath across Jewish life, imprinting his name on almost everything with which Częstochowa came to be identified and inspiring the community with self-confidence and pride. Another major undertaking, which likewise added to Częstochowa’s reputation, was its agricultural and farming program intended to make Jews “productive” and refute the stereotype that Jews are all middlemen alienated from the soil and incapable of “real work.” This program, essentially for the purpose of creating a Jewish peasantry, and a diversified “normal” economy, was started by Markusfeld along with Werde and the JCA and also operated out of a Talmud Torah. It garnered a reputation as an award-winning horticultural training program with significant agricultural productivity. Markusfeld bought the seventeen-acre land in 1897 on which Jews would learn agriculture. Called Di ferme (the farm), it was later acquired by Hashomer hatzair, the Zionist youth movement that prepared comrades for kibbutz life in Palestine between the wars. The program, Hakhshara, trained young Jews in “productive” physical labor, mainly agriculture, or construction work, in order to meet British requirements for settling in Palestine. Around the turn of the twentieth century (exact dates differ), Markusfeld and Werde helped create the Jewish Benevolent Society, the Dobroczynność (one was already active in Łódź), which in its scope was unprecedented and was one of the most important institutions of Jewish life in Częstochowa. The Dobroczynność created jobs for Jews and Poles, built an old-age home, an orphanage, and, in 1913, a fifty-bed state-of-the-art (non-denominational) “Jewish hospital” on Mirowska Street, not far from the city jail. It provided

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urgent care, surgery, convalescence, a home for desperately poor children or poor pregnant women, care for the mentally ill, and even a chapel for nonJewish patients. Jewish doctors and nurses were always on hand. The old-age home (figure 4) and orphanage on Spadzista Street were underwritten by Werde and named after his deceased and only child, Mina Werde. The hospital was a source of immense pride for Jews and held in the highest esteem by Poles, some of whom lent their efforts to making the hospital a reality. The town, the wealthy, and a universal tax supported the hospital. Funds were also coming in from the Landsmanshafta broad.

Figure 4: Old Age Home. Czenstochov: Our Legacy.

Another great, if controversial, and one long overdue accomplishment was Werde’s four elementary schools, two each for boys and girls. Far exceeding initial expectations, by 1910, these schools were attended by over three hundred students. Nominally supported by the gmina, in fact Werde himself was the sustaining force behind the schools, just as he was the major contributor to three Talmud Torahs that combined training in the crafts with the traditional Torah curriculum. In the early twentieth century, and continuing after World War I, notwithstanding its limited means, Częstochowa possessed a comprehensive array of social services, admired everywhere in Jewish Poland, to meet the desperate needs of a starving, impoverished, and mostly uneducated society. These were funded privately or by the gmina and were based on traditional religious values, as indicated by their names. Free loans were made available through their Gemilas chesed fund; there were two charitable societies for helping women in childbirth (Ezras noshim and Ezra); an association for “dowering the bride” (Hakhnoses kalo), two for caring for the sick (Linas hatsedek and Linas kholim), one for providing a twenty-bed guesthouse for transients and those staying in town over the Sabbath (Hakhnoses orkhim), as well as a food kitchen (Beys lekhem) and a charity clothing fund

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“Clothing the Naked” (Malbish arumim), which helped the indigent get clean and pressed clothing. For those without food for the Sabbath, the “Good Sabbath Jews” (Gut shabos yidn), an institution that was unique to Częstochowa, sent its representatives into the Jewish courtyards on the Aleja where they would call up to the apartments for Jews to throw down the extra loaves of challah the women baked especially for the occasion and whatever else they could spare. The men would collect all the food and distribute it to the hungry, to Jewish prisoners, and to the sick. Support for the Poor (Tomchei aniim) provided food for forty war widows.

Religious Innovations The approbations of Rabbi Rabinowicz Rovinson, and later Rabbi Nokhum Asz (figure 5), were crucial to the efforts made to modernize the kheyder and Talmud Torah. Their support for modern education and of “Torah and work study programs” (Tora ve-avoda) leading to gainful employment was unacceptable to the most inward-looking Orthodox Jews. The two rabbis were socially progressive but strictly observant and had no tolerance for unnecessary changes in Jewish religious practice as such. Asz’s reputation as a formidable Talmudic scholar and person of distinguished rabbinic lineage (yikhus) preceded his arrival in Częstochowa in 1889, at age thirty-one, and laid the grounds for his appointment as Chief Rabbi five years later, an honored if unenviable position that required endless patience and shrewd diplomatic skills. He served until his death in 1936. (Rabbi Benjamin Zev Reuven succeeded Asz. Little is known about his career, but it is hard to imagine that he could have measured up to Asz’s preeminence.) Asz’s religious-progressive Judaism was a scandal to the ultra-Orthodox, the Hasidim, and later the Agudos yisroel. Despite his prodigious learning and strict observance of Jewish law, his liberal leanings, and his lenient rulings, his advocacy of secular education and active “heretical” Zionism often put him beyond the pale of ultra-Orthodoxy. During the famine that plagued the city under German occupation in the First World War, for example, Asz permitted Jews to purchase potatoes on the Sabbath, the only day that the Germans made them available. He ruled, according to Jewish law, that saving a life supersedes observance of the Sabbath. His opponents on the religious right were outraged; his close friend Rabbi Avigdorel never spoke to him again. Nevertheless, the Hasidim and Agude generally respected his position in the community, placed themselves under his authority, and accepted his compromises. Asz’s erudition along with his personal kindness and charisma won him warm support among the religious and the nonreligious Jewish public alike. As an

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orator and emissary on behalf of the Jews, he won the respect of Poles, participating in all patriotic events – not pro forma, but out of conviction, gratitude, and recognition for the need to demonstrate and foster positive coexistence. When Poland became independent, Asz took the post as a chaplain for the garrison that was stationed in town. In 1930, a huge crowd of Jews turned out to watch Asz welcome the president of Poland, Ignacy Mościcki, to Częstochowa.

Figure 5: Chief Rabbi Nokhum Asz. Leib Kushnir.

His close relationship with the local bishop, Teodor Kubina (1880–1951) and the public display of their mutual respect was very much appreciated by the Jews. Kubina, a champion of social justice with a background in organizing Polish workers’ unions – for which he was admonished by Church hierarchy – condemned communism, fascism, racism, and rapacious capitalism as unchristian. After the Second World War, the Holocaust survivor community greatly esteemed Kubina for his exceptional efforts to avert the pogrom that was looming

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in Częstochowa in 1946 in the wake of that in Kielce, a position for which he was admonished by the hierarchy. Working closely with Markusfeld, Asz (figure 5) played an important role in all major aspects of religious life, whether it was the construction of the beautiful new “hygienic” mikveh on Garibaldi Street at the turn of the century (which he renovated in 1929) or the new Jewish hospital. Asz was an ardent supporter of Mizrachi, the religious Zionist movement started in 1902; he was committed to its cause and raised money for the Jewish National Fund. A year before his death, after a tenure in Częstochowa of forty-seven years, Asz became a hero of Polish Jewry, nationwide, for his widely disseminated treatise defending shekhita, kosher slaughtered meat, which, in the late 1930s, Poland’s increasingly right-wing regime moved to abolish on the ostensible grounds that kosher slaughter was inhumane. The message Asz’s treatise sent to the government fell on deaf ears. While Markusfeld’s accomplishments were ameliorative in nature, his crowning, “permanent” achievement was called the Der nayer shul (The New Synagogue [figure 7]), also known as Dr daytshe shul (The German-style Synagogue; “German” connoting modern or progressive), which opened in 1893. The towering edifice stood proudly on 16 Wilsona Street, formerly Aleksandrovska. A veritable neoclassical temple in appearance, it also featured some sharp departures from traditional Orthodox synagogues in its mode of worship. Although many of the Orthodox suspected it of being a source of heresy, nonetheless Rabbi Asz attended opening festivities at the New Synagogue (though it is unlikely he would have participated in its prayer services there, presumably preferring to pray at the Old Synagogue or at one of three boteyi medroshim, [study houses]). What made the synagogue progressive was not mixed seating (indeed the New Synagogue had a traditional women’s gallery) but rather its insistence on decorum, sermons preached in the Polish language, and a male choir led by the renowned cantor Abraham Ber Birnboim. The synagogue modeled itself on the Tłomackie Street synagogue in Warsaw, which in retrospect has been characterized as a traditional Conservative synagogue. It remained Częstochowa’s most prominent symbol of Jewish vitality until its destruction on Christmas Day, 1939. Next to the Tlomackie Synagogue in Warsaw, and the modern synagogue in Łódź on Spacerowa (now Kościuzko street), Częstochowa’s New Synagogue was arguably one of the most beautiful in Poland and an image often reproduced and disseminated on popular picture postcards. In the course of constructing the New Synagogue, Markusfeld wooed the renowned Birnboim to become Chief Chazzan (cantor) and funded his secularoriented cantorial school, the first of its kind. Birnboim also started a professional cantors’ union, the first of its kind. Enjoying the highest esteem, its members found employment all over the Ashkenazic world.

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The New Synagogue also possessed a unique historical relic that was symbolic of the best hopes for Polish-Jewish coexistence in Częstochowa. Nearly half a century after it had been given into the care of the Old Synagogue (figure 6), the banner of the national Polish regiment that retreated together with Napoleon’s army in 1813 became the New Synagogue’s parokhet (Torah ark curtain). It was a remarkable and unique display of Jewish patriotism. Both synagogues commemorated Polish historical events in a secular manner, as did the community at large. In the 1960s, a philharmonic hall was built on the site of the destroyed New Synagogue (figure 7), on what is now Wilsona Street. The concert hall was recently named after the great violinist and founder of the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra, (formerly the Palestine Symphony Orchestra) Bronisław Huberman, a native of Częstochowa.

Figure 6: Old Synagogue. Czenstochowa Yidn.

Genuine secular Jewish schools, offering a liberal education, with or without vocational training, emerged only during World War I, when Częstochowa Jewry was finally freeing itself from the gmina’s grip on the traditional school curriculum. The transformation was inevitable. By 1912, the number of Jews in the city had grown significantly, from 11,764 or about 30 percent of a total population of 39,863 in 1897, to 23,790 or nearly 32 percent of a total population of 74,855. The politically active Jewish community had reached a critical mass and was ready to overthrow the old regime, namely the gmina, both the rabbis and the rich, and replace them with a democratic leadership that reflected the

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Figure 7: New Synagogue. Czestochowa Jewish Museum.

composition of the entire community and its broad spectrum of ideas. But that change would have to wait for quasi democratically tolerated elections, during the German occupation that began on 3 August 1914. Even then, it would not be an easily acquired or entirely successful change.

High Culture: Lira and the Jewish Literary Society Markusfeld helped found Lira, the independent Jewish dramatic and musical society, in 1908, around the same time that its fraternal rival, the Częstochowa branch of the St. Petersburg Jewish Literary Society (JLS), came into being, located on the First Aleja number 8. Lira was located on the corner of Dojazd and Staszica Streets, off the First Aleja. Lira, the smaller of the two associations, was Polish speaking but Zionist in its political orientation; it did not, however, entirely exclude Yiddish in their cultural programs. The Jewish Literary Society, highly critical of what they took as Lira’s upper-crust pro-assimilationism, conducted all of its affairs in Yiddish

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and was labor oriented. Consequently, it attracted a democratically inclined intelligentsia and many more spirited young people than Lira. Both the JLS and Lira raised funds from enthusiastic audiences attending their cultural events promoting Jewish culture in the form of concerts, choral presentations, dramatic productions, and literary evenings held at various venues. Members of the two societies attended each other’s lectures on historical, folksong, literary, and contemporary themes, and at times repeated each other’s programs on their own premises. Although Lira had 225 seats on its quarters, when the two societies held their common public programs, they often required a more spacious venue to accommodate their large audiences. Lira and JLS members congregated in the convivial atmosphere of their own library tearooms to read the journals available on hand and to discuss books and the latest news. Secular Friday evenings and Sabbath day celebrations were geared to adult interests and special programming arranged for children, with recitations of the latest Yiddish poetry. At one point, JLS members thought of publishing their own literary journal, Di fakl (The Torch), but succeeded in putting out only one issue. Both societies engaged a distinguished roster of speakers and performers coming from all over the country, as well as from abroad. Among them, H. D. Nomberg, Sholem Aleichem, Hillel Zeitlin, and head of the General Zionists in Poland, the charismatic Yitzhak Grünbaum. When the JLS was shut down in 1911 by government order, after much debate it merged with Lira. The JLS brought Lira its considerable library, hitherto only the legal library in the town. Agreeing to become a trilingual Hebrew, Polish, and Yiddish organization, it promoted a broad view of Jewish culture, including the idea, first propagated by Lira, of involving Jews in sports. The new members of Lira included parties of all hues on the political spectrum, from the left to the right: Territorialists, General Zionists, self-avowed assimilationist, Labor Zionists, Bundists, and others. Comprised mainly of young people and forming an umbrella organization of proletarian, Yiddishist groups, they wrestled with each other and with Lira’s conservative members on all aspects of Jewish culture. Unlike the plutocratic gmina, the merger reflected the diversity of Częstochowa Jewry. The most intellectually appealing personality, especially for the youth, was Y. L. Peretz, who made three appearances in Częstochowa, the first two in 1912, the third a year later, in 1913. For the first, Lira prepared an extravagant champagne banquet in Peretz’s honor. His three standing-room-only lectures raised considerable funds for the organization. On the occasion of Peretz’s second lecture, the new library was officially dedicated with a book cabinet festooned with blue-and-white ribbons, in honor of its patron and honorary president, Markusfeld. Before it merged with Lira, the JLS library boasted a clientele of

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around forty to fifty readers a day. The Jewish Literary Society’s library was the first to be authorized by the Russian government and consisted of over 2,000 Yiddish volumes and more than 600 in Hebrew. An avid bibliophile himself, Markusfeld contributed many book collections to various schools and institutions such as the Jewish Artisan School and to the agricultural schools he had already founded. Most of the books in the combined Lira-JLS collection were original Yiddish works. The library included Hebrew books and translations of the leading modern writers (among them Knut Hamsun, Emil Zola, and Victor Hugo) into Yiddish and Polish. Scientific books were very popular among young people at the time, as the town was becoming modernized. In his second landmark speech, “We are not guests in Poland,” Peretz defiantly responded to the fascist Endecja campaign, which labeled the Jews as “unwelcome aliens.” The Catholic right consistently promoted the ideal of an exclusive and homogeneous Poland based on a single race, language, and religion, backed up by the threat or use of violence and boycotts. Peretz articulated a point of view not always clearly voiced by the national Jewish parties, except for the Bund. Of all Markusfeld’s projects, Lira was closest to his heart. Indeed, the two societies were the jewels in the crown of Jewish culture prior to World War I. For his third lecture, Peretz read from his translation into Yiddish of the Song of Songs, proving that Yiddish, contrary popular belief, could indeed express erotic love. His modernist Jewish audience was greatly, and gratefully, impressed with his achievement, giving Yiddish a place on par with world literature. When Lira was dissolved after 1915 under the German occupation, its library was redistributed among a number of Zionist groups and the Leather Workers Union. Union libraries and libraries affiliated with political groups were not unusual, nor were mergers among the various library collections. Some union libraries accumulated over a thousand books, mostly in Yiddish but also in Polish and Hebrew, depending on the bent of the party membership. Books donated to such libraries were intended to appeal, among others, to the interests of women and students in vocational schools. The libraries designed secular Friday evening and Sabbath day literary programs for adults and children.

Industry and Commerce During the Prussian and later the Napoleonic era, wealthy and young Jewish intellectuals adopted German as their spoken language. German remained in use as the language of high commerce into the 1860s and was then replaced by

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Polish. Nevertheless, Germany was still the desired destination for those seeking to learn a trade or a profession or to acquire an enlightened education, well into the period of Polish independence. Given Germany’s proximity to Częstochowa, Jews had first access to German enlightened and subversive literature, thanks to Jewish smugglers who brought them across the Prussian border several dozen kilometers away. At the time, importing literature brought Częstochowa a deserved reputation for being the most progressive Jewish city in Poland. Jewish smugglers also ran clandestine operations secreting arms into Poland for the uprisings of 1831 and January 1863. The Częstochowa station on the Vienna–Warsaw railroad was not only useful for trade and commerce, but also as an important rendezvous point for Jewish revolutionaries smuggled into and out of Russia and other parts of Poland. More importantly, the new railway line played a key role in developing Jewish and Polish industry and commerce. Hitherto, roads were virtually impassable, and markets abroad were inaccessible. With peasants comprising a majority of its population (nearly 65 percent in 1900), Poland was a very poor country. After 1856, the railroad lines fell under management of Jewish converts, including Jan Bloch who, in 1865, extended the railway to Łódź. He was singularly responsible for making Łódź the largest industrialized city in the country. Bloch and Leopold Kronenberg, the J. P. Morgan of diversified finance and industrial production in Poland, laid down a thousand miles of tracks throughout the country. The question arises: Why, for all the industrial growth and financial fortunes accumulating in the hands of a select class composed mainly of Germans and Jews, did the Poles lag behind in creating a significant entrepreneurial class in their own country during the latter half of the nineteenth century? The blame lies primarily in the feudal, agricultural culture of Poland and the disdain of both the large noble estate and the Church for industrial development, favoring instead preserving the status quo. In their view industrialization and commerce, as all agents of change, polluted the purity of their old way of life. Thus, the great benefits of industrialization, and with-it commerce, education, and employment, largely bypassed most Poles, well into the 1930s. In the mid-1820s, the Polish government began to welcome foreign investment and admitted a force of skilled labor from Silesia that included Jews, some of them culturally assimilated. An influx of Protestants from Bohemia and Moravia, and from Austria, each with their own language or dialects, customs and tradition, contributed to the industrial growth of the city. An ambitious elite of Jews from Częstochowa, along with young Poles, attended German universities and vocational schools, studying the ideas of the Enlightenment, medicine, machine and textile manufacturing, engineering, and other trades and professions. Returning home, they brought their skills and entrepreneurial

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drive with them, building the earliest factories and specialized shops, selling their wares in town and abroad, and finding jobs as “modern” teachers to the children of the wealthy Jewish middle class. Together they took an important place in Jewish communal life, building the town’s economy and promoting secular education. Germans, Poles, and Jews with technical skills and business acumen kick-started a modest-sized town into Poland’s largest center of industry and commerce, until it was surpassed by Łódź. Real estate, coal, and building materials such timber from the nearby forests, stone, and lime, as well as a steady supply of unskilled labor flowing in from the small and impoverished suburban villages were all relatively cheap, adding to the attraction Częstochowa had over other towns. As the land was built up with roads, houses, factory real estate values skyrocketed. As the mid-nineteenth century wore on, many young men and women seeking employment entered Częstochowa illegally and were derisively called “foreigners.” They lived in constant fear of being discovered and expelled; they frequently had to pay off officials to look the other way. Textiles, tailoring, and shoemaking, the iconic Jewish professions, began to operate in Częstochowa between 1808 and 1827, when the Jewish population increased from 495 to 1,141 families, or from 14.8 percent of Jews to 18.5 percent of the total population. With the unification of New and Old Częstochowa in 1826 and the opening of the new railway station in 1848, the flour, textile, metal, and paper businesses took off, turning Częstochowa into the fastest-growing industrial city in Poland. Beginning in the middle of the nineteenth century, textiles and tailoring became the most prolific Jewish industries in Częstochowa. The shmate (rag) business initiated an industrial revolution of equal importance to Jews and Poles, making textile products the leading exports of the country. Russia was the largest market for all of the goods produced in Częstochowa – until the revolution in 1917 – followed by China, Japan, and the Baltic and Balkan states. Most so-called factories, however, were in fact no more than mom-and-pop operations, working out of their bedrooms in cramped, dusty, and ill-ventilated, stifling quarters, with the assistance of their children, and perhaps a few employees, mainly girls. Debilitating lung conditions, particularly tuberculosis, were not uncommon. (The same conditions prevailed in the New York sweatshops.) Cottage industries, stretching from the employer’s home to the homes of his employees (called chalupnikes) doing piecework, made it possible to get around the blue laws by working unlicensed, on Sundays. Shops were able to acquire cheap labor, due to low overhead and massive unemployment, undersell competitors, and even provide custom-made clothing to individual buyers. However, living conditions for the “bosses” were often no better than for his employees. Nevertheless, starting in the late nineteenth and early

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twentieth centuries, the labor movement pressed for a shorter, eight-hour workday for industrial and sweatshop workers. By 1870, most of the factories in town – including textiles, the steam-powered flour mill, printing, lithography, religious Catholic souvenirs, toys, and the extraction from fossil deposits of minerals coal, zinc and iron ore from the banks of the Warta – were Jewish-owned. Of the twenty factories established between 1870 and 1895, fourteen were Jewish-owned. Referring specifically to the Industrial Revolution throughout Poland, but applicable in particular to Częstochowa, the historian Joseph Marcus wrote that “the four decades prior to the First World War will go down in history as the Golden age of Polish Jewry.”5 According to Marcus, this prosperity produced a trickle-down effect, which gave some relief to the poor. The needle trades were the main source of income for Jews in Poland and Russia, and from there, the industry traveled to the sweatshops of the Lower East Side. Living in miserable poverty, Jews had to be grateful to be employed at all. Overall, Jews were locked out of Jewish-owned businesses. The major Jewish-owned factories employed thousands of Poles but few, if any, Jews. The jute and linen factory, Stradom, employed around 2,000 workers before the First World War and by 1939 the number increased to 3,600, but not one Jew was hired. Some of these factories were massive modern structures. Hasidicowned businesses employed only Hasidim and no women. To what extent Markusfeld employed Jewish workers is not clear. Werde, however, employed Jews and exhorted fellow industrialists to do the same. A guilty conscience led some of the gmina members, who did not hire Jews, to become more philanthropic. Not having the opportunity to go shopping at Jewish stores or in the marketplaces, the peasants resented the restrictive Sunday laws. (Sometimes tailors rode to the surrounding villages to sell their “ready-mades” to the peasants.) Sabbathobserving Jews could give their employers only a five- rather than a six-day workweek. Poles were more desirable employees than Jews because they worked on Saturdays. Moreover, Poles didn’t want to work alongside Jews, for that matter, they preferred to not work for Jews. In the 1930s the situation changed drastically with the inroads made by the Polish socialists and Church-sponsored unions, mobilizing their workers to vent their grievences against their Jewish bosses. The system of discrimination against Jewish labor was a major cause of large-scale Jewish unemployment and consequently a major concern for the Jewish labor movement. In the Jewish-owned sweatshops, Jews made up a majority of the workers. They were employed as tailors, seamstresses, cobblers, hatters, and furriers. Often

5 Joseph Marcus, Social and Political History of the Jews in Poland, 1919–1939 (New York: Mouton, 1983), 94.

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the skill was passed down through the generations. By the turn of the century males wanting to learn all aspects of the industry, including linen, cotton, and wool spinning, could also attend one of the Talmud Torahs with a vocational school. Having acquired the necessary skills, in whatever profession they worked, many Jews set out on their own and started manufacturing and commercial companies, with the help of one of the five Jewish-owned banks that extended discounted credit to them that they couldn’t obtain elsewhere. The Credit Society (Towarzysto Kredytowa) was a mortgage bank that served Jews and Poles without any discrimination under the direction of Dr. Martuszewski, the liberal mayor of Częstochowa, until the fascist right removed him from his position in 1938. Owners of sweatshops employed young boys and girls who toiled six days a week, from eleven and a half to fifteen hours a day. Women and children, some as young as ten years old, received less pay, or none at all, for two years if they were apprentices. Women were less frequently employed than males, except in the garment trade, and earned less than adult males who were paid four or five rubles a week. Girls were given eighty kopeks to three-quarters of a ruble, in some rare cases three rubles. Children’s work conditions were as deplorable in the postwar years as under tsarist rule. When a Russian or Polish government inspector arrived at a workshop, the practice was to lock the children in some dirty closet and keep them out of sight. Neither were the children spared the rod for the slightest reason that irritated their bosses. It was not unusual for children and young men to go to work straight out of the Talmud Torahs and yeshivas, still wearing their religious gabardines. Many proved to be highly skilled artisans, known abroad for the high quality of their goods. Their innovative production techniques were copied throughout Europe. In industrial production, Częstochowa was second only to Łódź. Firms in Western Europe copied many of the techniques first used in factories in Częstochowa. At the same time, advanced techniques in Europe, particularly in Germany, were observed by emissaries of Jewish firms in Częstochowa who, though often untrained mechanics and engineers, were quick to learn how machines operated. Oppressive conditions in the workplace, however, made the workers of the garment industry and other concerns susceptible to politicization and responsive to the union movement. The 1897 census in Poland indicated that in Częstochowa, out of a population of 11,764 Jews or 29.5 percent of the general population, 2,155 made their living from industry and trade, 801 from tailoring, and 208 from shoemaking; the rest worked in small workshops and factories, where women and children occupied the bulk of the workforce. Just a few years later the growth in industry enriched and accelerated by metallurgical manufacturing was extraordinary. The Jewish-owned factories, large and small, produced a vast variety of goods encompassing, among many others, textile factories, iron foundries –

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which produced heavy machine parts for other factories – steel mills, iron foundries, metal- and brickworks, and paper mills that were particularly noted for their colored paper and wallpaper. Watch manufacturers sold their patents to Swiss companies and received royalties from them. Other companies produced chemicals, lithographs, fountain pens, needles, cuff links, buttons, rag dolls, umbrellas, skates, gold products and jewelry, candy, soap, leather glue (the first factory of its kind in Russia -Poland), book binding, locks, celluloid (and celluloidderived articles), limestone, bricks, tombstones, jute and line, bicycles, prams, mirrors, wigs, hosiery, dyes (which competed with IG Farben), beer, furniture, harmonicas, agricultural tools, and household products such as candles, soap, stoves, irons, and pots and pans. This list covers pre– and post–World War I, but is not exhaustive. One available statistic lists forty-one large- and small-scale factories that operated until the Holocaust. By 1925 there were 136 factories including seventeen major textile plants, most were owned by Jews. The hand manufacture of toys and haberdashery, cuff links, and buttons, textiles, wallpaper were particularly prominent and produced by a number of factories; competition between factories producing the same goods was fierce. The toy industry, which grew out of the ban on Jews manufacturing religious articles and souvenirs, had fifteen factories, two motorized, employing altogether five hundred workers, 80 percent of whom, in this case, were Jewish. Except for tailoring in the sweatshops, and as store clerks, women made up only a small percentage of the workforce. From the middle of the nineteenth century on, Częstochowa (and Congress Poland) emerged from its feudal past, making room for a variety of large- and small-scale commercial ventures, a wide variety of stores, and big warehouses that conveniently sprang up around the bigger factories. Some businesses supplied factories with resources and then bought and sold the final products at home and abroad. Częstochowa entrepreneurs organized a formidable shipping industry that exported goods all over the world. Finance and banking likewise grew alongside the expanding economy. Jews showed grit if not audacity, carving out its singular place in the local economy, manufacturing and selling highly popular and collectable wooden souvenir medals of the Matka Boska to eager pilgrims at the Jasna Góra in the 1860s. In that period, when Polish–Jewish relations enjoyed a temporary respite of hostilities, Jewish printers and goldsmiths were given the contract to publish Catholic prayer books and to produce other Church-related objects, such as votive candles, and frames for ikons. By 1912, however, the Church joined with Dmowski’s National Democrats in organizing a national boycott of Jewish businesses and banning them from producing Church-related objects. Losing no time or money, Jewish entrepreneurs switched to the equally successful business of

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handcrafting wooden and metal toys. For its phenomenal success, Częstochowa was dubbed the “Jewish Nürnberg,” after the leading German city of toy manufacturing. And, despite Church interdictions, Jews continued to hawk souvenirs in proximity of the Jasna Góra into the 1930s. In general, Jewish commerce and industry were not significantly harmed by the boycott, but it poisoned the air. The Jewish Council caucus in the municipality urged the public not to spend their money frivolously and to contribute what they could to help provide for the merchants who did suffer from the boycott. Peasants simply would not be deterred from shopping where they pleased. In fact, Polish customers were quite satisfied with the merchandise and ignored the Church’s intermittent prohibitions. But there were consistent signs of class warfare that lasted from the beginning of the twentieth century up until World War I and afterward during the interbellum period. After the First World War, to no avail, the government and the right-wing parties railed against the concentration of industry in Jewish hands, which they believed stood in the way of Polish economic development. Anti-Jewish rhetoric, lasting throughout the period of the republic, and growing most intense after 1935, framed the growth of the economy as a competition in a “winner take all,” zerosum game. Doing business with Jews, shopping in their stores, working in their factories, and hating them were not mutually exclusive. Oblivious to Jewish poverty and piety of the masses, the bigotry inherent in the religious basis of traditional Jewhatred was further inflamed by the resentment and jealousy Poles felt toward perceived Jewish success, on the one hand, and their participation in secular, revolutionary, atheistic movements, on the other. In other words, either the Jews were all rich or they were Communists. Either way, the Jews were enemies of Poland, as the Church and the fascist right never ceased to remind the public. With its hateful rhetoric, and teaching of contempt for Jews, the Church incited Poles to violence, through its two populist political arms, the Endecja and the Chadecja. While the Church officially renounced violence against Jews, prevaricating, they claimed to “understand” it as a means of Poles defending themselves, their religion, and the honor of their country. Although classconscious Poles resisted the anti-Jewish propaganda that was everywhere, Częstochowa was a tinderbox ready to explode at the slightest provocation.

The Pogrom of 1902 On Monday, 11 August 1902, the eve of Tisha b’Av on the Jewish calendar, a Polish mob smashed the windows of the Old Synagogue, while, ironically, Jews were

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sitting inside on the floor, fasting and chanting Lamentations, commemorating the destruction of the two Temples in Jerusalem. Three days earlier there had been a public procession in honor of the opening of a new church, which together with the instigation by the Endecja acted as a catalyst to stir up the anti-Jewish passions of the crowd. Police warned Jews to stay off the streets because an orchestrated pogrom, or Rabunek (a “plunder”), would soon break out all through the Jewish quarter and wherever Jews lived and did business.6 The immediate cause was an altercation in the Old Market between thieves, a Polish woman, a Mrs. Teofil, and a number of Jews (another version of the story says it began as fight between a Polish woman and a Jewish shopkeeper). The woman was rumored to have died and violence ensued, shattering the peaceful but delicate coexistence between Poles and Jews. The mob included factory workers, who at the lunch break and later, at the end of the workday, joined in the mayhem, rampaging through the Jewish streets, overturning stands at the Old Market, beating Jews, destroying shops, looting wares, breaking into people’s homes, wrecking their furniture, and, what has become a classic symbol of a pogrom, tearing open their bedding, letting feathers fly through the air. One Jew who brandished his pistol managed to protect his property. Other Jews tried defending themselves, but they were overwhelmed. Only the “Jewish tough guys,” the butchers, from the Jatke gas, fisherman and draymen, “gave as good as they got.” Shops with signs or crosses in the windows, identifying themselves as Catholic-owned, were spared. The mob turned the attack on Jews into a festive patriotic day of protest against the Russian tsar, while the slow response by the authorities in coming to the aid of the Jewish residents was seen by the Jews as an intentional strategy to divide them from the Poles. Appealing to higher officials to intervene, the gmina succeeded in having some troops come to restore order in the more prosperous parts of town. As the soldiers withdrew to another part of town, the mob pelted them with stones. Finally, after the continued pleading of the gmina, Russian troops and a contingent of Cossacks arrived and dispersed the mob. The pogrom lasted until eleven o’clock the next night, by which time almost all the damage was done. Many small-scale merchants were ruined, two Jews were killed (other sources say fourteen), and many more were wounded. Poles blamed the Jews for instigating the bloody riot. Częstochowa Jews, on the one hand, remembered the event with a sense of foreboding. It was not the first pogrom and it would not be the last. On the other hand, the pogrom emboldened antisemites to continue their

6 The events are described in different versions. The following is based on the version in Czenstochover yidn, 166–70. Cf. 45–46.

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incitement against Jews. Two private Polish Gimnazja stopped admitting Jews; anti-Jewish propaganda, including the blood libel that had been handed down from one generation to the next, spread throughout the streets. In the face of their disappointed hopes for reconciliation between Poles and Jews, assimilated Jews became more receptive to the idea of Jewish nationalism, which was then in its springtime throughout Poland. Only the PPS issued a condemnation of the pogrom. The PPS, which included Jews among its ranks, stood firmly with the Jewish Socialist Bund (Der Algemeyner Yidisher Arbeter Bund in Lite, Poyln, un Rusland, the General Jewish Workers’ Union of Poland, Russia, and Lithuania, which was founded in 1897) against antisemitism, despite their serious differences over largely theoretical questions concerning Jewish nationalism. Before Poland became an independent state, the Bund rejected the socialist Polish nationalism of the PPS, wanting instead Poland to be an autonomous part of a confederated Russian state. The events were recorded, and remembered in a popular Yiddish song7: Listen people to what has happened, What occurred to us in our town: A tragedy befell us Jews: Burned, beaten, and robbed. A lament as never before In Czenstochov occurred In the month of Ellul [sic8], on the 9th day, The tragedy befell us. Nine in the morning A Christian girl approached, Ordered plums. All of a sudden, she screams: Zhid, They are no good, Give me back my money. Mail went out like telegrams Into the factories: As soon as the whistle blows twelve, Go out into the streets, And at twelve when it whistled They charged out of the factories With a great hue and cry, and racket,

7 Czenstochower yidn, 46. 8 The month in the song differs from the historical date.

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In the market and streets Beating, breaking, Becoming wilder and wilder, Goods sprawled, tashevanyes[stalls?] overturned, Tore into poor homes. The hooligan’s hands Ignited fires, burned Bedding plucked and torn apart.

The Labor Movement, Part 1 Along with the tremendous growth in industry in Częstochowa came an active Jewish labor movement. In 1892, Jewish factory workers from Częstochowa petitioned the government to mandate a living wage and institute an eight-hour workday. The demands were swept aside, but before the nineteenth century was out, the exploitation of workers, the deplorable, crowded, dangerous, and unhygienic conditions in the workplace – whether in factories, workshops, or in stores – the routine verbal and physical abuse of workers by management and bosses had already reached a boiling point. Beginning in the mid-1880s in Poland – particularly in Warsaw – and in major Russian cities, workers in the larger factories had already embarked on a revolutionary path to bring their grievances to light by expressing their discontent and rage. With the added burden of inflation running high, the plight of labor took an urgent turn for the worse and brought on a wave of protest demonstrations, public rallies, and strikes, especially by textile workers, that spread to other professions. By the time the labor parties stepped into the fray, the organization of labor-conscious committees came from the workers themselves, including sick funds and insurance for families. Witnessing the beginnings of a labor movement and a wave of union fever sweeping across the professions, like the PPS, the SDKPiL (Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania – Socjal Demockacja Królestwa Polskiego i Litwy, the forerunner of the Polish Communist Party), founded in 1898, did not stand idly by and watch the drama unfold without their active participation and guidance. Both the PPS and the SDKPiL had Jewish members whom they used as conduits for disseminating their socialist ideals and ideas among Jews, which they could only do, reluctantly, in Yiddish. With the legalization of Jewish political parties after the war, except for the Communist Party, which was declared illegal in 1919, labor agitation and rivalry among the Jewish parties – the Territorialists, the Bund; and the radical wing of the Labor Zionists (Po‘ale Tsiyon) – grew more intense. Although the

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Communists were declared illegal and when apprehended served long term prison sentences, they nevertheless joined the competition for power and influence among the workers. They quickly took control of the tailors, leather workers, and painters unions and participated in all aspects of the labor movement. Soon the Jewish parties and Communists took the movement in a variety of ideologically Jewish directions, each stepping in to help and to lead the workers’ cause and transform it into their own conception of a labor movement. A seminal moment in prewar labor history was the fire that broke out in August 1905 in Jerzy Landau’s celluloid factory. Five girls and two men were killed in the conflagration; others were badly burned. The mass outrage galvanized the workers’ movement. Since Landau switched from employing a few Jews to hiring Polish workers exclusively, the victims may have all been Poles. Nevertheless, the Labor Zionists, the Territorialists, and the Bund sprang into action and called for a three-day general strike. Territorialism in Eastern Europe was a revolutionary socialist organization known by its Russian initials S. S, for “Socialist-Zionism.” (It underwent several changes of names; here we refer to all of them as Territorialism [see below]). Six thousand people packed the balconies and rooftops of their homes and leaned out their windows to hear speeches expressing the public grief and revolutionary fervor. For a brief moment in time the proletarian parties acted as one, akin to what occurred on a much larger scale in New York several years later, in response to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911. That latter tragedy, however, led to immediate changes in labor laws in America, while in Russia and Poland, government repression intensified and party membership declined. Labor was unable to sustain its brief momentum, After the forcible dissolution of the Russian State Duma (parliament) in July 1906, the entire proletarian movement went almost altogether dormant. The Bund, however, continued its subversive operations. Many comrades, however, fled abroad, some joining the Labor Movement in New York City. Of necessity, inexperienced young kheyder graduates took part in the leadership of the movement and quickly learned the ropes. Activists who stayed home continued to propagandize and organize illegal unions and strikes; despite being harassed by the special police department, the Okhrana, they were not very intimidated. Shrewdly, in order to encourage fashionable women sales clerks on the boulevard, who generally did not understand Yiddish, to go on strike, the proletarian parties designated young handsome men to attract their attention. The year 1913 marked the organization of Jewish wood workers into the first legal union. The Jewish press reflected the jubilant response of professional workers to this milestone, which brought on the unionization of other trades, including bakers, box makers, and celluloid workers.

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Around a year earlier, another important progressive group, the Jewish Artisan Association, was organized; its chairman was Henryk Markusfeld. Although it later found representation in the gmina, and in 1924 the Municipal Council, the Jewish Cooperative Bank, and other Jewish organizations, like the Bundist-led Culture Office after the war, the Artisan Club was really less a political group than an adjunct to the labor movement and more of a self-help social club where members had their own library, enjoyed evening concerts, and gathered to drink a glass of tea, play a game of chess, talk about their own created sports club, and so forth. During the war they ran a soup kitchen supported by the Dobroczynność. Right after the war, and with the help of the landsmanshaft in New York, the club organized a fund for widows and orphans. The club attracted members from the surrounding shtetls and by 1919 had 530 members. By 1928, the Artisan Association numbered 1,200 members. Many party members were arrested for agitating workers and disseminating propaganda, but in most cases, they received light sentences; few were exiled to Siberia. Efforts to suppress the triumphant fervor of 1905 by terrorizing the revolutionaries were, on the whole unsuccessful. Activists took cover, but the cycle of protest and incarceration continued. Right up to the First World War, numerous strikes broke out, especially among textile workers, bakers, shoemakers, and celluloid workers. The union movement received a shot in the arm following a government decree in 1913 that allowed large factories to establish sick funds for the workers and officially granted workers the right to organize and elect representatives. The government’s ruse was to create legal and patriotic alternatives to the subversive Jewish unions, a tactic first employed earlier in the century by the notorious agent-provocateur Sergei Zubatov. In fact, the 1913 ruse backfired. In Częstochowa, as elsewhere, the moment proved opportune for the Jewish unions to achieve legal status, without conforming to the government’s political agenda. On May Day 1913, Częstochowa witnessed major labor unrest and strikes. Against the background of red banners in the streets, demonstrators were arrested and interrogated by the police and agents of the Okhrana. The eruption of popular protest was a delayed response to an event that occurred a year earlier, when several Częstochowa families, voting with their feet, had left for Galveston, Texas. This pioneering group had fallen under the influence of the leading radical political party in town at the time, the Territorialists. Its platform claimed that Zion was found in whatever hospitable land Jews, as a compact national entity, could find sanctuary. The practical impact of their emigration was a vindication of Territorialism as a viable labor organization, and not just, as it might have seemed, a vague theoretical program without substance. Nevertheless, its vision of forming a compact Yiddish-speaking minority in some foreign land was a pipe dream.

Part Two: The German Occupation and Political “Democratization” During World War I, Jewish politics in Poland emerged from hiding in the shadows since the end of the liberal period and the dissolution of the Duma in 1906. Under the tsar, comrades were rounded up at demonstrations, rousted from their dens, arrested, and locked up. Following the tsarist protocol, the government meted out short sentences, but the punishments was harsh. Guards and their overseers brutalized inmates, making them live in squalor in order to break their spirits. The great sea change occurred in the summer of 1915, when the Germans conquered Congress Poland. Jewish political behavior in interbellum Poland, its social and cultural ramifications, was forged in the crucible of the First World War. For all their passionately held differences, and despite their appearance on a common electoral stage as bitter adversaries, Jews of all political persuasions had much in common. In ways they probably did not see at the time, politics was the glue that held the fractious communal life of Czestochower Jewry together. Beginning in 1915, the process of “democratization” – the calling cry of the new politics – shifted the center of gravity in Jewish life from the gmina to a new semiautonomous, multiparty system, each with its own political culture. This volatile admixture engendered new ideological turmoil and, with it, a sense of excitement and enthusiasm, if not frustration, that had never existed before. The occupation marked a transition, in the broadest terms, between life under tsarist autocracy and democracy within the limits of imperial rule in wartime. In 1916, the Germans de facto legitimized Jewish political parties, giving all literate, tax-paying males over the age of twenty-five the right to vote in their town gmina and Municipal Council elections. The full panoply of Jewish political parties became openly active, forming a blueprint for the politics to come in independent Poland. Recognition of the political parties spelled incipient Jewish self-determination and gave hope for the implementation of national cultural minority rights. Wartime politics was a hothouse of political, cultural, social, as well as conspiratorial ferment that typified Jewish life in the Second Republic. Participatory democracy was a turning point in Jewish politics. Hitherto restricted to shtatlonus, the diplomatic, conciliatory interaction between the gmina elites and the government, now found the Jewish parties contending with each other in a new political arena. The long-awaited emergence of a political base was a https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110770230-003

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mixed blessing whose divisive and chaotic outcome could have been predicted. The same question Częstochowa’s folk asked about religion applied to Jewish politics: “Why is it that a hundred thousand Christians manage with eight or nine churches, whereas thirty thousand Jews require hundreds of synagogues and shtiblekh?” The putative answer was the well-known mantra that explained the source of all Jewish problems: “The Jews lacked unity.” But the deeper question is, “Why did the Jews lack unity?” Ezra Mendelsohn writes that despite having a homogenous middle-class social structure, unlike the Poles, who had a majority peasantry and landed aristocracy, the Jews were deeply divided. Jewish ideology questioned whether the Jewish problem would be solved in Poland or Eretz Israel, as a secular or religious society, and what would be the Jews’ national language, Yiddish or Hebrew? “Finally,” Mendelsohn writes, “since the Jews enjoyed no political power, there was little incentive to prevent political factionalism. The absence of real rewards for sticking together meant that ideological differences led almost inevitably to organizational splits.”1 By the time of the German occupation of Poland in 1915, the Jews of Częstochowa numbered 28,075 out of a general population of 92,075, represented by seven parties, and growing. The same problems of multiple parties, splits, and fractures also plagued Polish politics. By comparison, Polish political instability was worse: between November 1918 and May 1926 – when Piłsudski seized the reins of power – there were fourteen different cabinets. Between the attainment of independence and the beginning of September 1939, Poland suffered through thirty-one governments. Despite “the real rewards for sticking together . . . ideological differences led almost inevitably to organizational splits.” In September 1916, the first political manifestation in Poland since 1861 took place in the election of the quasi-democratic Warsaw Municipal Council, whose unfair curiae system of voting rights, whereby, in effect, class and status divided separate election rights equal to the majority of the electorate, brought on a mass protest of the leftist parties. The campaigning and election results were highly contentious. Putting aside their profound differences, the Zionist, Orthodox, and Assimilationist parties came together in a coalition called the United Jewish Elections Committee, the UJEC, which to the outrage of the Jewish socialists and Folkists, entered into a secret pact with a broad coalition of Polish parties, with the

1 Ezra Mendelsohn, The Jews of East Central Europe Between the World Wars (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983), 47.

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aim of bypassing the elections. The Polish parties promised the UJEC fifteen out of ninety seats in the Warsaw council. The socialist parties refused to join in on class grounds and ran separately, while the Jewish Folks-partey found the nature of the UJEC demeaning. Nevertheless, in the elections that took place, nineteen Jewish councilors were elected, including four seats won by the Folkists, a reasonable success proportionate to their numbers in the region. Surprisingly, in the UJEC, the greatest number of votes went to the Jewish neo-Assimilationists with seven mandates, while the Zionists and Orthodox each took three seats. This was a motley crew of parties, committed to temporarily suspending their differences and bitter rhetoric in favor of creating a united front, even to the point of not demanding nationalist rights on their common platform. The remaining votes went to the coalition of the Bundists, Territorialists, and Labor Zionists. The seven votes for the neo-Assimilationists obviously did not reflect the politics of the masses but of selective voter turnout. At the time, the Folkists, with their undiluted nationalist platform, were more popular than the Zionists. The German occupation of Congress Poland in 1915 brought in its wake ruin and devastation for Poles and Jews alike. In Częstochowa, as elsewhere, mass arrests, street brutalities, forced conscription of laborers, famine, epidemics, and pauperization crippled the city. The Germans requisitioned all machinery, furniture, foodstuffs, and necessary goods for their use on the home front, including forced labor. Yet despite runaway inflation, the wealthy and middle class were better able to weather the crisis than the masses because they could afford to offer a bribe or pay exorbitant prices on the black market. Others, jobless and hungry, went voluntarily to Germany in order to find work. Petty merchants and manufacturers, peddlers and professionals, saw their businesses destroyed as German, Austro-Hungarian, and Russian markets evaporated. For Poland, the war was the greatest economic cataclysm until the Depression. Still, compared to the dislocation and murder caused by the Russian forces of hundreds of thousands of Jews living on the eastern side of the front lines, the Germans were received as liberators. Most important, the Germans nullified the oppressive laws under which Jews had suffered for over a century. Instances where the Germans replaced Jewish factory workers with Poles – as in the metal production – and the closing of factories exacerbated Jewish poverty. Nevertheless, relatively speaking, the Germans also behaved with a degree of civility to the local population and particularly to the Jews. German policy toward Jews, however, was not altogether altruistic. Implemented inconsistently, it was designed to lure Jews into their camp even though Germans, like the Russians and Poles, were already suspicious of them, accusing them of disloyalty. However, owing to their importance in commerce and industry,

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and also the ease of communicating with Jews because Yiddish and German were related languages, the Germans recognized Yiddish as an official language of East European Jews and Jewish political parties as their legitimate representatives. For Jewish nationalists this was a great prize, a long-anticipated dream come true. For the Germans, giving the Jews a legal means to express themselves politically was a strategic move, a potential vehicle for their Drang nach Osten and Germanization program. No less a figure than Erich Ludendorff issued a proclamation, An meine libe Jiden in Polin, promising the Jews freedom and equality.2 To ease friendly communication with the Jews, the conquering forces distributed German-Yiddish dictionaries to its soldiers. In response to the human catastrophe, Jews of all stripes, and stations, separately and together, young and old, set up general emergency aid facilities for the homeless and hungry, beyond their efforts in prewar times when more funds were available to help the destitute. During the war, the three radical parties put aside their otherwise irreconcilable differences and collaborated on meeting the urgent needs of the Jewish population in Częstochowa and the surrounding shtetls, with newly formed consumer co-ops, tearooms, and soup kitchens. All the Jewish parties also engaged in relief work for the Jews who were victims of Ukrainian massacres (1918–1921). The shipment, from Częstochowa, of great quantities of flour to Germany caused bakeries to close and created long bread lines for the hungry and exhausted public. In response to the crisis, the not-for-profit “Popular Bakery” distributed bread to union stores set up by the radical labor parties. Opening in different neighborhoods, they delivered bread, by horse and buggy, early in the morning, to spare people from having to wait in long lines throughout the night or paying elevated prices on the black market. At the Popular Bakery, people could buy bread at reasonable prices. Party members also provided health care and, where possible, a living wage for their own workers. After the war the Labor Zionists continued to operate production and consumer cooperatives, and pricestabilized bakeries. Through labor agitation, the left-wing Labor Zionists won over the leather workers, bakers, and tailor’s unions that competed with the Bund for members. The Popular Bakery filled the most basic need of the war victims, but it was just a part of a whole program of assistance created by the Territorialist, the Labor Zionists, and the Bund with the help of the Joint Distribution Committee. The sums of money collected for public aid came from diverse sources, including the unstinting generosity of the well-to-do and the goodwill of the

2 Ismar Elbogen, A Century of Jewish Life (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1944), 463.

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Czenstochover Relief and Ladies Auxiliary Landsmanshaft in New York. The proceeds of a benefit performance of Di mishpokhe (“The Family”) by H. D. Nomberg helped defray some of the costs of relief work and also offered people some distraction from their own misery. Not surprisingly, Rabbi Asz and Markusfeld helped organize the great charitable enterprises that were an extension of the social welfare programs that were in place before 1914.

Part Three: The Second Polish Republic and “Democratization” At the postwar Paris Peace Conference of 1919, held in Versailles, recognition of Poland, which declared itself an independent state a year earlier, was contingent upon it signing the Minorities Treaty. Poland incorporated the treaty in its founding constitution, and again in 1921. England, France, and the United States compelled Poland, under threat of sanction, to protect Jews as individuals and grant them national autonomous rights and citizenship. Despite the categorization of Jews as a religious entity, in practice most Jews regarded themselves as a national minority, even though they lacked a compact territory. Only the Agude and the self-identified Assimilationists adhered to the preferred state definition of the Jews as a religious-ethnic group. In 1919, by state decree, the Jews were given the right to incorporate themselves as a religious community represented by the gmina. The Poles and Orthodox Jews, as earlier the Germans, preferred that the gmina constitute itself as an exclusively religious body and the sole representative of the Jews in all matters dealing with internally Jewish and state affairs. It was a proposition steadfastly and vociferously challenged, though with moderate success, by all of the secular parties. In May 1923, the Department of Religious Affairs issued a memorandum for provincial governors in the various regions to prevent chaos in the gmina’s administrative, economic, and cultural matters. Its ultimate purpose was to keep order and prevent radical elements from taking charge. For the following two years, the Agude vehemently protested the government’s funding of Yiddishist schools. Of the three arenas of electoral politics – four counting the Senate – the gmina was home turf, and here the Jewish parties and trade unions were at each other’s throats. Wrangling over everything from the number of seats on the administrative boards, procedural matters, taxes (which came mainly from the tax on shekhita, kosher slaughtered meat), income allocation, and debt, took up all of the gmina’s time. It wasn’t until 1928 that the government recognized the gmina’s responsibility to attend to the secular cultural educational affairs of the community, though not entirely without government oversight. In the early years of the republic, the Częstochowa gmina was dominated by a Zionist-Mizrachi coalition followed in the 1930s by a coalition of the Agude, Zionists, Folkists, and other secular groups. Under both administrations the gmina’s budget reflected its position as a religious institution. Thus, the gmina remained an essentially conservative body. Although Jews may have

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given a plurality to the Agude in the gmina, nothing stopped them from voting for other parties in the Municipal and Sejm elections. The partisan combatants on the gmina may have gone after each other’s arsenal of ideas but debating the merits of their ideologies was of secondary importance. True, the tenor of gmina meetings was not particularly unique; it was the usual shrill fare of disruptive parliamentary discourse everywhere. The proletarian parties protested, frequently and openly, that the Orthodox-dominated gmina withheld funds from them. Remarkably, except occasionally for the Bund, the gmina parties did not hold up their hands in despair. They were driven by more than just a piece of the pie. Party representatives of the gmina and other governing bodies were acutely aware that they were standing on the threshold of a new era in Jewish history, each fighting tooth and nail to have their own ideology define the future of the Jewish people. The Autonomist national parties’ program of minority rights included shaping their own national lives through political, cultural, and religious institutions. They hoped for government support for Jewish schools and recognition of Yiddish as the official national language of the Jews and as a primary language of instruction in elementary schools. Only in matters regarding the state would Polish supersede Yiddish. The Folkists far exceeded their otherwise reasonable program of autonomous rights, wanting the right not only to relate to the government in Yiddish but that the government also respond to them in Yiddish. After the early liberal period came to an end, the Polish government withheld almost all funding for Jewish schools. However, Jews were to be accorded the right to observe the Sabbath without government interference. In 1920, the League of Nations took responsibility, in name only, for enforcing the treaty of minority rights. For Poland, all of these begrudged manifestations of minority rights were a sop to the framers of the Versailles treaty, coming from a government that was, since the Piłsudski coup, democratic in name only. With Piłsudski’s coup, Poland was, at first, a benevolent dictatorship, loosely run by its marshal, but in the long term, nationalist and antisemitic views came to dominate the domestic political scene. The Jews were constantly reminded that they were strangers in their ancestral home and treated like pariahs. They were demeaned and derided, shamelessly belittled, insulted, and murdered. Yet, remarkably, the Jewish spirit was indomitable. Jews responded to their enemies with restraint and comported themselves with dignity, participating, with certain exceptions, in all electoral politics, despite the fierce opposition from the ruling Right. They propagated a value system of decency and fought for their principles, even in the last years of the republic, when all optimism was fading.

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Municipal Councils In all, there were five elections for the Municipal Council in Częstochowa, in 1919, 1925, 1927, 1933, and 1939, with the last just five months prior to the German invasion. In these, a coalition of Polish right-wing parties won all but one, the 1927 election, when a slim victory went to the PPS, which at this time was hoping to reach an understanding with the Piłsudski regime. The splintered Jewish parties collectively won seats in proportion to their percentage of the population, at around 28 percent, except for 1933 and 1939, when they underperformed and the Council was dominated by the fascist, antisemitic right.1 Two things are important to note, first the Polish parties were even more divided than the Jews, and second, that elections were held at all. This demonstrates that Poland was never a totalitarian state, but rather a severely marred, if not, in the end, a sham, democracy. The government, at times, interfered when the deliberations grew unmanageable, just as the municipality intervened when the gmina could not come to order. By the last Council, the Jews had no say. In in order to win a Jewish plurality at the polls and gain clout in the ruling municipal government, as during the German occupation, the Czestochower parties that were bitter rivals made for strange bedfellows. To name a few: the Zionists and Folkists, the Folkists and the Agude, Agude with the Zionist Revisionist and Assimilationists. Only the Bund stood on principle, never entering into a coalition with the bourgeois parties, no matter how advantageous it would have been. It either boycotted elections or partnered with the Territorialists, which at one point divided its votes between the Bund, the left-wing of the Labor Zionists, i.e. the Po‘ale Tsiyon-smol (henceforward Po‘ale Tsiyon-left [Poale Zion Left]), and the PPS. Basically, the center right-wing Jewish middle-class parties – Agude, Mizrachi, and the Folks-partey – were allied in a Jewish Election Committee and were supported by the gmina. The Jewish Election Committee fielded candidates that were well known and liked by the community at large. Rabbi Asz, for example, was one of the candidates, representing Mizrachi, although he quit his position after the election committee won the majority of the Jewish votes and another party member took his place.

1 Here a note is in order. In his article for Sefer Tshenstokhov, the memoir by Yisroel Bakhman on the City Council, of 1935, he notes that the authorities gerrymandered the concentrated Jewish streets into electoral, neighboring, mainly Polish district of Zawodzie in order to neutralize the Jewish vote. (As there were no Municipal Council elections that year, he perhaps meant 1933.) He also writes that in the same year, Jews had to enter the voting area through the crowded exit door rather than the wide entrance door. The demand that the elections be voided was turned down. Sefer Tshzenstochov vol. 1 (Jerusalem: Encyclopedia of the Diaspora, 1967–1968) 148–9.

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Piłsudski’s executive decree, in 1919, incorporating the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles into Poland’s democratic constitution and reaffirmed in 1921, had a very brief life span. Poland gave only lip service to the Minority Treaty’s stipulations, taking them as an affront to its sovereignty. It had no intention of honoring all of its obligations, most hurtfully with regard to adequately funding Jewish schools and preventing violence against Jews. Still, wherever one stood along the great political divide, and for all of the pervasive antisemitism and notwithstanding all the strife and turmoil it engendered, Jews took an abundance of pride in their city and in calling themselves “Czenstochover.” It was a love of the town that was ultimately and blatantly unrequited. In the increasingly authoritarian conditions which followed the May coup, the Jews were squeezed economically and subjected to increased violence. Jewish politics on the local and national level were intended to improve the lives of Jews, to actively fight antisemitism, and to define itself either as a national, or, in the case of the Agude and Assimilationists, as a religious community. None of the parties were entirely, if at all, successful in the political realm as the government became openly hostile to Jewish political and social interests. Together, the Jewish parties in 1919 won twelve seats, the highest number in the interwar year period, most of the votes going to the Orthodox-dominated Jewish Election Committee, which won the majority of Jewish votes in all five elections. The Bund, Labor Zionists, and Territorialist went to the elections on their own tickets. In 1925, aside from the Jewish Craftsmen’s Association, there were three Jewish parties in the left coalition: the Territorialists, who gave their votes to the Bund, and the Po‘ale Tsiyon-left. Altogether the Jews won nine of the fortythree seats on the council. In 1930, the Municipal Council was dissolved because of its opposition to the regime and its authority was given to a government appointed mayor. Before the coup of May 1926, Jews were able, temporarily, to push through some legislation in their own interests: increased funding for the Peretz and other Jewish secular schools – for which allocations were withheld by the gmina a year later – and allowing for Yiddish as their national language. Before the fourth election in 1933, all individuals aged twenty-one and over could vote, while elected officials had to be at least twenty-five years old. After 1933, the voting age was raised to twenty-four years of age and elected officials had to be thirty years old or over. The change placed the leftist parties at a disadvantage because their constituency, in addition to working-class Jews, was made up of younger men and women. The other party candidates tended to be in their sixties or seventies. The Jewish parties and PPS made a strong showing locally and nationally in 1919 and 1923 in the two Council and Sejm elections. The 1919 election

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carried over the curiae system left behind by the Germans, but within their limitations the Jewish parties campaigned vigorously. The 1927 election was the only one that was genuinely democratic, which may account for the PPS victory. In 1927, a member of the PPS headed the local governing body. In this period the Council helped fund the Ferme, TOZ (see below) and other Jewish secular and religious institutions including Jewish schools with Yiddish as the language of instruction, and the right to use Yiddish and Polish together as an official language in public matters. The Council also employed ten Jews. The Bund and the PPS served on various administrative committees from where they lambasted Endek corruption and mismanagement. On questions relating to the civic improvement and practical management of the town, all of the parties across the board voted in unison. After the coup, the government interfered in the municipal affairs, again replacing the elected executive head of the council, in 1933, with a government-appointed mayor. Nazi policy towards Jews resonated among antisemites predominating in the 1933 Municipal Council as it did in the Sejm. Although opposed by Polish liberals and Jewish parties, policies of the Municipal Council gave legitimacy to the persecutions of Jews aimed at expelling them from the holy city and its environs in order to create a homogenous Polish Catholic state, in concurrence with the Sejm. (The poisonous atmosphere in the country is discussed below in the chapter on “Industry, Commerce, and Antisemitism”). The Jewish council members were often reelected and some served on all the five councils and in numerous important city committees, including the executive committee. All of Jewish parties’ gains were lost by the third election, and they became functionally impotent. Remarkably, the Jews carried on an active campaign, and turned out for their lost cause in the overtly antisemitic Council of 1939. Nevertheless, the Jews were infused with a strong sense of class consciousness and civic responsibility. Their bitterly divided political life and its contentious discourse, which was the backbone of the multifaceted Jewish life in the interwar period, suffered from what Ezra Mendelsohn called a “yo-yo,” manicdepressive disorder; high in the 1920s on its ideas being concretized in political parties participating in a democratic Poland, and low in the 1930s because of its disillusionment with finding a respectable place in Polish society under the undemocratic governance of the state.2

2 Ezra Mendelsohn, “Jewish Politics in Interwar Poland: An Overview,” in The Jews of Poland Between the Two World Wars, eds. Yisrael Gutman, Ezra Mendelsohn, Jehuda Reinharz, Chone Shmeruk (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1989), 11–12.

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The Pogrom of 1919 The rebirth of the Polish state was followed by widespread anti-Jewish violence. No sooner did Poland proclaim its statehood on Armistice Day, 11 November 1918, than pogroms broke out in major cities across the country, including Vilna, Lvov, Siedlce, Białystok, and others places, among them, Częstochowa. Estimates are that in all 350 to 500 Jews were killed. Anti-Jewish disturbances occurred five days after the Germans departed from Czestochowa on 15 November 1918. A year later on May 27, 1919, on the eve of Ascension Day, an incident occurred that, with the incitement of the local Polish press, set the mob into full throttle for the next twenty-four hours until the police stepped in to halt the rioters. The Jews were accused of having shot a legionnaire in General Jósef Haller’s “heroic” International Brigade and collectively siding with the Bolsheviks (Jew-Communists, “Żydo-komuna,” in the common parlance) in the Polish-Soviet war of 1919 to 1921 and of being Bolshevik spies. Haller’s forces included a contingent of Polish-American volunteers from Chicago that attacked and murdered Jews in Częstochowa and other towns, with impunity. Poles from all walks of life – workers, men and women, students, children, old and young – participated in the pogrom, with the authorities either turning a blind eye or themselves participating in the carnage. The anger and hatred of the snowballing mob was let loose on the Jews, plundering their homes, breaking shop windows, and looting inventory. Five Jews were hacked to death, disemboweled, and dragged through the streets, with children stomping on their viscera. At least nine (others say seven) Jews were beaten to death and scores badly injured, according to police reports. In the welter of rioting and killing, Majer Bałaban, the preeminent historian of Polish Jewry, stood out as a heroic figure. At the time, when he was headmaster of the Jewish Gimnazjum, a garrison of Hallerczyks was poised to attack the school. The soldiers accused the students of throwing rocks at them from their building. Bałaban went out and, standing next the mounted commandant, pleaded for the children even at the risk of putting himself in harm’s way. So doing, he averted a catastrophe. The antisemites in the Sejm called the pogrom a “fiction,” while the Częstochowa Municipal Council attributed the pogrom to Bolshevik provocateurs. Despite the demands of official Jewish representatives and councilmen of the PPS, the authorities refused to deal with the emergency. Delegates from the United States, England, and France, in consultation with Jewish notables including the Zionist Sejm deputies Yehoshua Thon and Apolinary Hartglas, conducted a full investigation of the pogroms in Poland. Rabbi Asz and co-workers carried out the only unbiased investigation of the pogrom in Częstochowa.

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Although Jews everywhere celebrated Polish independence, especially in synagogues, and openly demonstrated their patriotism, the pogrom in Częstochowa was yet another indication that Jews were generally regarded as a disloyal, foreign element. From Warsaw, a Hebrew newspaper reported: “In this hour, the hour of the rebirth and reunification of Poland, the hour of Poland’s victory over her enemies [. . .] in this hour we Jews sit and mourn for our victims of the terrible pogroms, the slaughtered and murdered.”3 At that time, inciting posters filled the streets of Częstochowa displaying stereotypical Jews with big noses, enjoying the Bolsheviks and Cossacks beating up innocent pious Poles. Seared into the minds of Jews was how Poland celebrated its independence by continuing a tradition of hate from which it could not liberate itself. The West became outraged over Poland’s brutal mistreatment of the Jews but did nothing. The Jewish body politic was rendered helpless because the Second Republic of Poland was, with noble exceptions, an antisemitic country that from the beginning of its statehood wanted, above all, to get rid of its Jews, either by squeezing them dry economically, or by subjecting them to direct violence, or both. This was the abiding theme of Polish–Jewish relations and there was almost nothing Jewish politicians could have done to change the situation. All through the 1920 and 1930s a pogrom atmosphere, with the blood libel taking prominence, seethed just below the surface of a tenuous coexistence, often erupting into relatively small-scale violence in between major pogroms. Anything Jewish party members did to win some modification of Polish policy in their favor was no more than a stopgap measure. Nevertheless, politics was the heartbeat, animating Jewish Częstochowa, the pride and bane of the Jewish community. For individuals, failure at the polls led in three directions: seeking a new party to support, becoming indifferent to politics, or giving up and leaving for America (until 1924) or Palestine (where, however, immigration was restricted after the Passfield White Paper of 1930).

The Labor Movement, Part 2 The liberation of Jewish political parties during the first German occupation created new opportunities and setbacks for the labor movement in the interwar years. It was also an area where Jews and a limited number of Poles cooperated, although this cooperation was not always successful.

3 Quoted in Mendelsohn, Jewish Politics in Interwar Poland, 40.

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Unions were either self-organized or founded and taken over by one of the prewar radical labor parties on the Jewish street. It was not unusual for individual workers in the same profession to join different party-affiliated unions, causing divisions in the ranks. Sometimes unions were strong enough to represent themselves. For example, in the Częstochowa gmina, the Small Business, Trade, and Artisan Association, under the able leadership of Jacob Rosenberg, and supported by workers and Folkists, played the leading role from 1936 until the onset of the war. A day before Częstochowa was liberated from the Germans, 9 November 1918, followed by a mass workers’ demonstration two weeks later, Jewish and Polish parties on the left planned to organize joint, democratically elected workers’ committees in factories, as part of a nationwide movement. In Częstochowa 10,500 workers organized a Workers’ Council, out of which, 1,786 were Jews. Most of the votes were garnered by the PPS, followed by, in order of representation: the Territorialists, the most popular Jewish leftist party in the early years of the republic, with nineteen seats; six each for the Communists and Labor Zionists; and five for the Bundists. On 15 January 1919, municipal elections were held, bringing 210 members into office, among them thirty Jews, four seats were taken by the Territorialists. The Labor Zionists took two seats, the Bund, one. Forthwith, the parties set about organizing a militia to distribute food, prevent price gouging, and defend workers and Jews against violence and pogroms. The parties demanded from the government full employment and aid to the destitute. The militia punished the Jewish traitors and gangsters who worked with the police. New professional unions were organized of mostly unemployed workers that, by 1920, joined a central council under the leadership of Rafal Federman. At the time he was a member of the Territorialists and was mainly involved in providing for sick employees through contributions collected from the separate unions. In 1922, the PPS and Jewish labor parties tried bringing Jewish and Polish unions together into one labor association. Such a union did not materialize because it was of less interest to Poles than to Jews, Yet on May Day 1922, 8,000 progressive Poles and Jews – mostly Jews – belonging to the leftist parties began a tradition of marching together, celebrating the workers’ holiday and demonstrating their strength in numbers. On 22 July 1922, seventy Poles and Jews carried out one of the major strikes against the enterprise of Horowic & Grosman, demanding a 30 to 40 percent increase in wages. A year later, in June 1923, tailors went on strike demanding a 60 percent increase in wages. Strikes, large and small, and protest demonstrations against antisemitism continued throughout the interwar years. In June and July of 1934, the bakers’ union struck for several weeks to improve working conditions.

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Poles and Jews supported each other’s strikes and attended labor conventions together. However, in general, the union of Poles and Jews was more formal than interpersonal. Although often fraught with tension over their differences, labor leaders continued their dialogue with high hopes. Their noble intentions of achieving unity met with little success; the rank and file continued to work in their separate spheres. Polish–Jewish labor relations were at best tenuous, each side looking out for its own interests. To that end, in 1923 the United Jewish Culture Office (kultur amt), generally referred to as the Culture Council (kultur rat) led by Federman – who had joined the Bund a year earlier – was organized in Częstochowa, in order to centralize the various Jewish unions under one umbrella drawn from textile trades, metal workers, transport workers, chemical factories, food industries, carpenters, butchers, barbers/hairdressers, and others. Altogether, by 1924, the Culture Council had eleven unions under its wing with a membership of some 1,182 laborers, most of them textile workers. More unions joined later, including those run by the Communists, undercover, who led the shopkeepers’ union with its 496 members. They had been operating independently of the Culture Council, however, they – along with Territorialists and Labor Zionists – joined the Culture Council in 1925. In the council elections held in 1926, the Bund was far and away in the majority, with seventeen representatives, followed by the Communists with seven representatives, and the Labor Zionists with one. Other manufacturing and trade unions included, in descending number of workers: metal shop workers, transportation, leather tanning, tailoring, chemical production, food, supplies, wood, brushes, butchers, and hair barbers/hair dressers. Not all workers in the various trades were union members. The impetus of the different leftist parties to organize workers in every which way possible, whether culturally or practically, derived from the deteriorating economic conditions of the day and the ideological prisms through which they were seen. The Bund saw its major obstacle as overcoming the divided party loyalties within each of the trades and the situation of workers belonging to more than one party. The Culture Council was more of a benevolent society than an active labor force, and it was more successful, as its name indicated, on the cultural front – intended for the workers’ intellectual edification and raising their class consciousness, inculcating in them a sense of pride and self-confidence. With the help of modest contributions from union members and the landsmanshaft in New York, the Culture Office provided practical help to sick, hungry, widowed, and unemployed workers. The independent union of artisans, with its 1,200 members, organized in 1921, gave the Culture Council some stiff competition in the 1927 municipal elections. A year later it had twelve branches. In the wake of the toughest years of

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the Great Depression (1929–1933), unions were revitalized. At the same time, government increased police actions against Bundist and, in particular, Communist agitation, throwing many into jails and sentencing them to serve time in prison. In the municipalities dominated by the right, as in Częstochowa, the powerful Endecja party clamored for the dissolution of workers’ committees. On the other hand, the government welcomed both religious and secular Zionists, so long as they limited their activity to promoting Jewish settlement in Palestine and professed their loyalty to the government. Right-wing Jewish nationalism was no bother for the government. Thus, we hear of no opposition to Vladimir Jabotinsky’s anti-labor Revisionist Zionism, or the highly respected Khaluts bal melokhe, the Pioneer Artisan Union. Both appeared in Częstochowa around the same time. The latter was a small organization with 200 comrades founded in Vilna in 1933 and a year later in Częstochowa. Its agenda was cultural but also provided practical training. Some of its comrades were also members of the Artisan Club. As in 1913, when Jewish unions were legalized thanks to the government’s attempt to preempt them, in 1927, another government scheme backfired when it tried limiting the number of Jews entering the various trades by enacting a law that would revive the exclusive, old-fashioned guilds. That is, as in the past, only guild members would be recognized as legitimate professional workers. Thirteen Jewish unions simply declared themselves to be guilds, each with its own flag, and distributed certificates recognizing its members as master craftsmen. Of 1,160 certified guild members, 583 were Jewish. In the mid-1930s the government and church set up competing Christian unions to combat the left’s union movement. With the government’s encouragement, Jewish employers hired strikebreakers to intimidate workers from joining their own independent unions and fired “troublemakers.” In one dramatic incident relating to the bakers, one of these bullies was shot, resulting in the arrest of the workers’ ringleaders; though hardly putting a dent into the labor movement’s resolve to carry on with the struggle. The labor movement continued to advance its political and cultural programs, undaunted. Major Jewish and non-Jewish factories employed up to 2,000 workers, but the factory owners and management were not always intimidated by the workers’ unions, sitting out their strikes and firing employees. Some strikes ended disastrously – the ninety-seven-day work stoppage against the fancy haberdashery factory Szaja & Frank in 1938 resulted in lost wages and the firing of ten workers. Children employed and exploited in the chemical and metal factories formed unions affiliated with the youth branch of the Culture Council in 1925. They agitated for reforms, including collective bargaining, higher wages, and sanitary conditions. The owners responded brutally, firing workers and using Endek scabs to

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strong-arm Jewish workers into submission. The Endeks showed no appreciation for the Jewish bosses that gave them employment opportunities; when the workday was over, they poured out into the streets shouting: Żydzi muszą być w Palestynie bo to są zdrajcy i świnie [Jews belong in Palestine because they are traitors and swine.]

The percentage of the workforce comprised of children at any given time is uncertain. Like the conditions in the kheyder, until the labor movement made it a major issue, the question of child labor protections was unheard of. There is nothing to suggest that the gmina did anything to protect the children. Unions, getting around the municipality’s policy of not hiring Jews, were able to find jobs in public works for 120 unemployed Jewish seasonal workers. A strike by registered Jewish craftsmen made up more than half of the city’s Jewish population; 40 percent of them were unionized. Other unions included over 3,000 tailors (underwear and hosiery manufacturers), 600 merchants, over 60 barbers/hair dressers, office workers, 240 porters and pushcart vendors, 180 carpenters, bakers, butchers, painters, and sausage makers. The merchants’ union, formed soon after the war, looked after the well-being of its members, providing cheap credit, a sports club, a library, and a chess club. By 1924, the union had 740 members. A labor dispute of a different sort took place just before Passover 1934, when the Bakers’ Union butted heads with the gmina over an injunction issued against five Jewish bakeries. The gmina and rabbinate forbade the Jewish public from purchasing matsah from these bakeries or to bring their pots of stew (cholent) to be warmed in the bakery ovens overnight, ready to be eaten on the Sabbath. That year, Passover fell over two Sabbaths, which made the matter more difficult. The ostensible and implausible reason for the ban was that the bakeries were not made kosher for Passover. The baker’s guild’s efforts to have the ban lifted met with no success. However, a breakaway group for the guild negotiated a separate compromise with the gmina; in return for stipulating the kashrut (kosher state) of their ovens, they would increase the price of the matsah from 1 to 1.10 zloty a kilo, increasing thereby the payoff to the gmina. Meanwhile, the gmina ordered Passover matsah for their own use from another town, for almost half the price. The whole affair smacked of corruption within the gmina; the public outcry was of no avail. The interdiction was not a clear case of class struggle, since it involved denying income for the bosses and workers alike. The reason for the interdiction is unclear except that it had been

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part of an ongoing controversy. A protest registered in the local press read: “What kind of lawlessness prevails in our city that a few individuals, by their tactics, could make it impossible for hundreds of poor Jews to earn a few zloty?” The writer went on to say, “Notes in the form of newspaper announcements and flyers have been exchanged between the two parties as if they were enemies during wartime.”4 By 1939, the numbers of Culture Office members had declined to seven unions with a membership of 1,052 workers. However, in the desperate times just before the German invasion, the numbers of union members as a whole grew substantially, to around 5,000 laborers. Store clerks and sales personnel were, the last to be unionized by the Bund, resulting in a strike it organized in 1938.

4 Quoted in Zachary Baker’s report, “The ‘Matzah Dispute’ of 1934,” in Częstochowa: The Tale of a Stray Document from YIVO’s Vilna Archives (New York: YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, 1996), 3.

Part Four: Culture The Press Until Częstochowa acquired its own press, Jews first relied on the Hebrew journals Hameylitz (1860–1904) and the Yiddish Der fraynd (1903–1908), which reached subscribers, from St. Petersburg; the Hebrew Hatzefira (1862–1874) arrived from Warsaw. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Częstochowa Jews read the news from the two established Yiddish dailies that were delivered from Warsaw: Haynt, founded in 1908, and Moment in 1910. Neither newspaper had correspondents in Częstochowa, relying instead on what news was brought to them in Warsaw. The absence of real coverage in Haynt and Moment of local news in the smaller towns and provinces, was the impetus in Czestochowa for creating its own press. The Yiddish press in Częstochowa emerged in 1912 (figure 8) with the Czenstochover reklameblat (Częstochowa Advertising Paper). Printing only nine issues, the paper ran for a few months, carrying advertisements, and commercial news for local businesses, as well as local and international news. Beginning during the First World War the press in Częstochowa grew in full vigor despite the financial, logistical, and political problems attendant upon running publishing businesses. Yet in the lively, politically charged, and poor urban setting, Jewish newspapers, dailies, weeklies, magazine and journals lasted, though most had limited runs, until September 1939. The appearance of a sizable Yiddish press, more than any in the region, was an impressive achievement. Readership exceeded the numbers of publications because they circulated widely. The exact number of Yiddish papers is not clear, nor are all the dates – which differ in various sources – of their duration. A few of the papers were published intermittently. A full scale inquire into the Jewish press is a desideratum. There are collections of newspapers in the Jagiellonian University library and the National Museum and Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw. The Jewish Theological Seminary in New York has microfilm copies of the National Library’s holding of the Yiddish newspapers of Częstochowa. Between 1912 and 1939, at least twenty Yiddish publications were produced by local printing houses, including three short-term dailies: the Czenstochover tageblat (Czenstochow Daily 1913–1919), Unzer czenstochover ekspres (Our Czenstochower Express (1932), and the Czenstochover yidisher kurier (Czenstochower Courier, 1933-?). The Czenstochower vokhnblat (Czenstochower weekly, 1913–1913) was published in broadsheet; all the other newspapers were weekly tabloids

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110770230-005

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Figure 8: Yiddish Press in Czestochowa. Czenstochowa Yidn.

(figure 8). Unzer tsaytung (1914-?), the Czenstochover tsaytung (Czenstochow Newspaper), which had the longest run (1918–1939) and the Arbeter tsaytung (Worker’s Newspaper (1923-? or 1928–1938), were published by Berl Bocian. Ten newspapers were party affiliated: Czenstochover tageblat began publishing right after the Reklameblat, and interrupted by the war, it reappeared until 1919. The paper had Orthodox leanings but was basically Territorialist, as were also the weekly Dos naye vort (The New Word, 1920–1925, or 1920–1921) – which won both admiration and support from their landsleit abroad – Unzer vort (Our Word, 1919), and Unzer shtime (Our Voice, 1926–1928). The Bund published both the Arbeter tsaytung and the trade unions’ Der proletaryer (The Proletarian, 1925–1926). After an extended break, the Bund published a short-run magazine, the Czenstochover veker (Awakener, 1938?). The Zionist-Orthodox coalition published the weekly

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Czenstochover tsaytung (Czenstochover newspaper), the Zionist Unzer veg (Our Path), representing the Zionist Organization, ran from 1926? or 1930 to 1939. Focused on the political and cultural advancement of Częstochowa Jewry, as did all the papers, each with its party slant, the Tribune (1934) was a Communist paper. Unzer tsaytung (1913-?) represented professional unions. The other newspapers, were independent and not beholden to any party, although they were secular Yiddishist, and ran politically reformist platforms. The Agude proscribed newspapers that were published on the Sabbath. In response to the antisemitism fomented by two Polish papers, Gazeta czestochowska (Częstochowa Gazette) and Goniec czestochowski (Częstochowa Messenger), their incitement of violence in the pogrom of 1902, their support of the Christian and National Democrats, and their call to boycott Jewish businesses, a Jewish entrepreneur took it upon himself to publish along with one short-lived Polish daily the daily Glos powszechny (General Voice, 1924–1925), renamed Czestochowski ekspres (Częstochowa Express), which had a ten-month run, up until 1939. Ironically, with each side holding their nose, Jewish businesses bought advertising space in the Polish press. The Jewish press covered local, national, and international news. Except for one Orthodox paper, the Yiddish press was militantly secular, Yiddishist, progressive, and advocated democratization of the gmina, doing away with the kheyder and instituting modern Yiddish schools and promoting sports, athletics, and summer camps in the fresh outdoors. The activist press carried social commentary and protested antisemitism, such as the boycott of Jewish businesses, the exclusion of Jewish workers from Jewish-owned factories, and mass arrests at the May Day demonstrations. Additionally, they were concerned with emigration from Poland and the significance of the Galveston project in Częstochowa politics. Foremost, they championed organizing unions. The press also encouraged art and literature appreciation, and called for the creation of sport clubs for the youth. With the exception of the onetime appearance of Bakharish, by the Shomer hatzair agricultural farm, there was no Hebrew press in Częstochowa. Nevertheless, the Yiddish papers didn’t shrink from debating the question of Hebraism versus Yiddishism. Apart from of the overtly political nature of the press, often there were no significant differences between newspapers; one picked up, where another left off. Sometimes a correspondent would write for more than one paper. The Russian Jewish intellectual and writer, S. Ansky, for example, propagated his ideas about Yiddishism in three different papers. Otherwise, each paper had its own reporters, commentators, litterateurs, and, at times, imported popular feuilleton writers.

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In addition, the press published political, religious and commercial bulletins, pamphlets, and brochures.

Libraries At all times, Jews venerated books and book cabinets were accorded all the respect due a Holy Ark. Around the turn of the century, collecting books and creating libraries became an avid pursuit for Częstochowa’s Jewry cultural circles, especially among the Bund, the Labor Zionists, and the Territorialists despite the fact that they were operating illegally. The Territorialists organized the first of these prohibited libraries. Contributions from private collections poured into the various new libraries and many books were purchased. They arrived in crates shipped from Warsaw by Jewish book dealers and distributed by party representatives to well-read factories workers. One could borrow a book for a nominal fee, after taking one’s turn on long waiting list. The Bund and the Territorialists had their own bookstores. Union locales had their own libraries too. During the First World War, the Zionist Organization accumulated a library of some 700 books in Yiddish and 289 volumes in Hebrew and 180 books in other languages. After the war, thanks to the combined efforts of the Czenstochover Landsmanshaft in New York and, in Poland, with the alliance of the Bund, leftist Zionist, and the Territorialist, in the Tsantrale yidishe shul farayn (TSYSHO, Central Yiddish School Organization) many of the dispersed labor libraries were merged into one great General Library. The former Lira library merged with the Bundist Party’s Medem Library in 1926, offering a collection exceeding a thousand Yiddish books with a smaller portion in Polish for which the Municipal Council set aside a special stipend. In general, younger readers preferred Polish to Yiddish books. Two other kinds of libraries existed in Częstochowa: the innumerable collections of sforim found in every Orthodox synagogue, yeshivas, and Beys medrish, and those in many private homes. The girls’ school, Beys Yankev, was affiliated with the Orthodox Agudos yisroel and had its own library of Yiddish, Hebrew, and Polish books. It raised money for the library of the famed Sages of Lublin yeshiva and, contrary to what we might think, for the Zionist Settlement Fund, the Keren Hayeshuv. The secular academic library created by Dr. Chaim Ze’ev Hirszberg, in his capacity as rabbi of the New Synagogue (1927–1939) and head of the modern academic Institute of Judaic Studies in Częstochowa, drew many young men. The Institute had its own research collection, made up mostly of Yiddish and

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Hebrew books, and was kept up to date. (Hirszberg later became a professor of Jewish history at Bar-Ilan University.) Interestingly, Hirszberg was also the librarian for the Jasna Góra collection of Hebrew manuscripts, a position he took over from Majer Bałaban.

Sports Although the tsarist government had turned down any proposal for a Jewish sports club, under the German occupation Lira created an active Sport and Turn (gymnastics) Union (1915–1916, Żydowskie Towarzystwo Gimnastyczne ZTYG-S), with Markusfeld as its honorary president. The sports club was incorporated into the Central Federation of Jewish Sports and Turn Unions in Łódź. No sooner was its formation announced than 500 young men and women signed on, followed shortly by more than twice that number. The Lira club also had fitness programs for seniors. Attracted by the sheer variety and vitality of the competitions, members also imbued the sports club with feelings of collective Jewish pride. Sport grew into a major social force and pastime, for both the athletes and the spectators who gathered outdoors in the city park and in makeshift or permanent indoor arenas. Pupils of the secular Jewish and public schools took an interest in physical culture as well and were recruited by teams looking for talented players. Union halls and movie theatres lent their venues to teams as well. There were essentially two sport leagues: the amateur league based on the youth movements of the Jewish national parties and the free-agent sports associations, which were semiprofessional and nonpolitical. Some of these were peripherally attached to Makkabi, the Zionist sports league. The divisions between assimilated and partisan youth over what language to use in the movements’ deliberations, Yiddish or Polish, was of less concern to the players than to the party elders. The first amateur sport groups came from middle- and working-class backgrounds. Their team names conveyed a sense of self-confidence and optimism: The Bund’s Morgenshtern (Morning Star), Po‘ale Tsiyon-left’s Shtern (Star) and Tzukunft (Future), Territorialism’s Shtral (Ray), and Po‘ale Tsiyon-right’s Hapoel (The Worker). On the far left, the Communists had a sports club Ogniwo (link), and on the far right, the Zionist Revisionists’ team was called Gwrdia (Guard). As political showpieces with mass appeal, the clubs were beholden to the party elders and the ideologies they espoused. Many members were true believers, and in their public demonstrations and outdoor rallies they were an impressive lot. Not all players, however, shared their sponsors’ ideas or values; they simply

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joined in order to play ball but had to sit through indoctrination services on Friday nights. In time, the parties hoped, players would come to recognize the higher values of sports in their national context. Sometimes party values were a direct hindrance to the players. Morgenshtern, the largest sports club, forbade boxing because it was a “blood sport.” It also frowned on team sports, particularly soccer, because, contrary to socialist principles, they elevated champions above other players. Free-agent clubs participating in “forbidden” sports attracted students from the younger grades of the Polish Gimnazja and Jewish summer camps. Under the strain of competition, independent sporting activity led to the emergence of many nonpartisan teams, most of which were too small to be selfsustaining and, like the partisan clubs, merged with other teams to stay afloat. The four major clubs were Lira’s Sports and Turn Union, Warta, Ascala, and Makkabi (figure 9). The Warta soccer team won major regional championships. Makkabi united the other teams in 1933 and became the pre-eminent Jewish sports league. Moreover, unlike the party clubs, the free agents were actively engaged in regional and statewide competitions. Częstochowa athletes, who beat contenders from Eretz Israel in sports such as boxing, became local heroes.

Figure 9: Makkabi Sports Club. Photo by Haim Ithaki, courtesy Sigmund Rolat. The Jews of Czestochowa catalogue.

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Ideology was not the only problem facing the partisan sporting groups. They proved to be short-lived for practical reasons – they were under-financed and poorly managed. Regional competition was also more limited than among the free-agent teams, which maintained close relations with Polish teams. There was even an instance, appreciated by the public, of a Jew having a leading position on the Polish cyclist team. Not having to worry about funding, the free agents had the luxury of focusing almost entirely on sports. Rich patrons, most prominently Markusfeld and other successful professionals, saw to all the players’ needs. Champion teams had considerable support from managements that looked after them, providing equipment, hard-to-find venues, mentors, Jewish and non-Jewish trainers (themselves trained by experts from Łódź and elsewhere), and medical doctors on call when necessary. Certainly, the greatest difference between the partisan clubs and the successful private teams was the latter’s greater array of sports offerings. The choice of sports engaged in by Jewish teams included football (i.e. soccer, far and away the favorite), volleyball for men and women, basketball, boxing, track and field, male and female cycling, skiing, gymnastics, light gymnastics, rhythmic gymnastics (for men and women), weight lifting, table tennis – which was introduced in Częstochowa as a competitive sport by a Jewish athlete – and chess. Much of the teams’ abilities to branch out and incorporate such a wide scope of games was due to their successful fundraising. Częstochowa residents could see the track team training late at night, running through the streets. The Zionist movement organized public demonstrations and competitions for Lag ba’omer (a Jewish outdoor holiday); they included Gimnazja, farming students and scouts. To the pride and applause of Jewish onlookers, and some Poles, young, physically fit athletes of all partisan stripes in their smart blueand-white uniforms, holding Jewish flags, marched down the main streets to the rhythms of their own forty-member brass or Polish marching bands, which demonstrated the sportsmanship between the two groups. At one time, the conductor of the police band also led the Jewish band. Hashomer hatzair marched to the music of its own fife and drums. In keeping with the secularism of the day, Jewish athletes celebrated Sabbath by attending lectures and participating in mixed choral and drama groups. Unlike the party teams, however, the free-agent teams focused on winning.

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Theater When the ban on the public use of the Yiddish language lifted in 1905, Yiddish theater rapidly emerged from its semi-clandestine existence and became one of the mainstays of Jewish culture in Poland, and a commercial boon for Częstochowa. Prior to 1905, Yiddish plays such as the Yiddish translation of Karl Gutzkow’s Uriel Acosta escaped the censor’s scrutiny by performing in Judeo-German, a Germanized Yiddish. Interestingly, the first public performance of Di tsvey Kuni Lemls was staged by kheyder boys and directed by one of the rare, progressive teachers. After a lull during the First World War, Yiddish theater flourished throughout the interwar period. Up until 1939, Częstochowa became a mecca for dozens of Yiddish amateur performers, acclaimed professional directors, actors, singers, musicians, operatic stars, comedians, theater troupes, and soloists including visiting performing artists from Hazamir, the national Choral Theater of Eretz Israel. Częstochowa audiences were drawn to the Jewish theater and performers rightly anticipated enthusiastic audiences and sold-out performances. After the First World War, the Vilna Troupe, Max Reinhardt’s company and Ester Kaminska’s troupe, among others performed in Częstochowa. With its seemingly endless supply of repertoires, taken mainly from original Yiddish plays, and from dramatizations of Yiddish literature and quality translations of European drama, these performances were assured a steady, enthusiastic, and growing public. Most of the shows were written specifically for the Yiddish theater, while classics of the European stage were performed in translation. Performers put on vaudeville, cabaret acts, one-act plays, full-length dramas, melodramas, and operettas. On the one hand, the theater offered the “trash” (shund) that appealed to popular audiences in Poland (and New York); on the other hand, theaters both before and after the war, throughout the 1930s, presented middlebrow and sophisticated literary dramas by writers like S. An-sky (The Dybbuk), Yakov Gordin (Mirele Efros) Y. L. Peretz (At Night in the Old Market), Sholem Aleichem (Agents), Sholem Asch (God of Vengeance), Peretz Hirschbein (Green Fields), and H. Leivick (The Golem). As in New York, some non-Jews were attracted to the Yiddish theater, too, and some shows were performed in Polish. Aside from the homegrown amateur performers who emerged from the trade unions and youth movements, professional actors came from all over Poland as well as from New York. Some actors, directors, and impresarios who found fame and fortune in America, such as Boris Tomashevsky, Jacob Gordin, and Maurice Schwartz, were considered purveyors of high art with mass appeal. Of the many stars who played on the stage in Częstochowa, the comedians Dzigan and Schumacher, actors such as Ida and Zygmunt Turkow (Mirele Efros), Jacob Adler (The

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Yiddish King Lear), the distinguished film star Alexander Granach (The Yellow Patch), and the artist Henryk Berlewi (Ararat) were among the best known. Given the embarrassment of theatrical riches in Częstochowa, the greatest practical problem confronting performers was finding suitable venues rather than wedding halls, fire stations, and other improvised spaces. The City Fathers in a rare display of generosity (it was, after all, a boon for the local economy) made the Municipal Theater available to the Jews. The four Jewish-owned movie theaters, the Odeon, Corso, the open-air Apollo (later called Nowości), and the Paryska (1908), offered their space for theatrical productions. They also showed Yiddish films and hits of the European and American cinema. In 1928, through Markusfeld’s efforts, an additional theater was established on a plot of land on Kiliński and Jasnagórska Streets that he had donated to the Lutnia Choral Society. To set the standards of good taste, Lira and the Jewish Literary Society hosted numerous professional theatrical troupes and featured their own working-class amateur actors. Both societies favoured high culture and repudiated shund, the melodramas produced, most lucratively, by Sholem Aleichem’s nemesis, the New York writer Shomer (Nokhum Meir Sheikevitsh). Cantor Birnboim led professional and amateur mixed choral and children’s groups in evening Hebrew, Yiddish, and Polish songfests. The lively theatrical parties celebrating secular Jewish holidays like Purim and Chanukah were models of respectable Jewish entertainment, as were the special children’s and family programming. For professional and amateur working-class actors alike, theater was entertainment, but for the intelligentsia and the labor movement it was much more than that; its stated purpose was to serve as a means of elevating the cultural standards of the masses and raising their class consciousness.

Modern Education Numerous private Jewish schools with well-rounded, age-appropriate curricula – kindergartens, elementary schools, and the prized Jewish Gimnazjum – were established during and after the war; a few acquired a stellar reputation in Częstochowa, throughout Poland and abroad. The Gimnazjum opened in 1917 with an initial enrollment of 360 pupils, boys and girls, with twenty teachers for the secular curriculum, and five for Jewish studies. Most of the students came from Orthodox homes and were well prepared for the study of traditional and modern Hebrew texts. Rabbi Asz delivered the opening address in Hebrew on the subject of studying Torah and being respectful Jews (Talmud Iora im derekh eretz). The creation the same year of the children’s orphanage and nursery, the kinderheym, and the elementary school, the Y. L. Peretz folkshul were shining lights of love and

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tenderness in the wartime darkness. The administrators and financial supporters of the secular Yiddishist schools acquired the most spacious, sunny, wellfurnished, and attractive premises they could find. Called the Beys peretz (the House of Peretz), the schools were located on 23 Krótka Street. The kinderheym took in sick, dirty, lonely and neglected children, all victims of the war, from ages four to seven. The kinderheym was started by the Territorialists and joined by the Bund and the Labor Zionists. Despite their political differences, as during the war, the three socialist Yiddishist parties worked together after 1922 for practical purposes. Their collaboration, which lasted until 1939, came at the insistence of the Czenstochover Relief Landsmanshaft in New York on whose financial aid the parties depended. The secular schools were the fulfillment of everything progressive Jews had wished, a modern system that would contrast sharply with the kheyder and Talmud Torah. Care was taken that the children were clean and well nourished, and administered a spoonful of castor oil each day. If the watchword of the traditional elementary school was obedience, for the kinderheym and folkshul the emphasis was on love. At the end of the 1939 school year, there were, aside from the Peretz School with an enrollment of fifty children, five privately run progressive (Friedrich Fröbel) Montessori-style Jewish kindergartens, Filip Axer’s Jewish Gimnazjum, and six elementary schools. By June 1939, there were 451 registered Jewish kindergarten children. Between 1922 and 1939, 507 children attended Jewish vocational schools. The children studied Polish, arithmetic, gymnastics, singing, and dancing and staged dramatic works; they learned art appreciation under the guidance of Perec Wilenberg. All the Jewish holidays were celebrated secularly, with appropriate selections of poetry composed for the occasion or taken from the repertoire of Yiddish poetry. The curriculum also included music; there was a piano on the premises of the kinderheym, and the folkshul prided itself on its mandolin orchestra, whose public concerts were a sensation. Secularly educated children played outdoors summer and winter; breathing fresh air and frolicking in the snow. The schools’ sterling reputation attracted a wide variety of distinguished progressive visitors, including a member of the English Labour Party. The first graduates of children who had spent nine years of kinderheym and folkshul took place in 1928. When all of the school’s funds from home and abroad dried up, the Polish government shut down the schools in 1938, though the schools held on until the beginning of the war. At the Jewish (or “Hebrew”) Gimnazjum, founded in 1917 (first on Jasna Street and then, a year later, at 10 Szkolna Street), except for the Jewish subjects, Bible, history, and literature, all of the secular subjects, as required by

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law, were taught in Polish, which was also the legally and administratively expected language of conversation on school grounds. With the liberation of Poland, learning the Polish language and singing patriotic songs was raised to a near-religious obligation encouraged by Asz and the Częstochowa rabbinate. It was not always easy, however, to find teachers capable of teaching in Hebrew. Yiddish was frowned upon even outside the school building, despite the fact that it was the mother tongue and language of conversation, albeit in decreasing numbers, for most children. Although children absorbed a great deal of Jewish culture, they did not generally succeed in becoming fluent in Hebrew, except perhaps children who were raised in Zionist circles and were graduates of the kheyder. Students supplemented their education in the Zionist youth movements, such as Hashomer hatzair, where, in some cases, teachers were recruited from the Jewish Gimnazjum. The school had eight grades, with girls and boys separated, increasing its enrollment a year at a time. Just as Polish Gimnazjum students wore special colored caps, students at the Jewish Gimnazjum wore blue-and-white caps. Their liberal arts program included gymnastics, art taught by Perec Wilenberg, a brass band comprised of around twenty-five boys, a 120-student choir, and regular theatrical productions in their accommodating facilities. The school had a succession of widely respected directors. Chief among them was Professor Majer Bałaban, who expanded the curriculum, broadened the Hebrew language courses, and found competent staff that could teach in both in Hebrew and Polish and settled for meager wages. Dr. Filip Axer’s private Gimnazjum, on Nowowiejski Street, with eight grades, competed with both the folkshul and the other Jewish Gimnazjum. In 1924, Axer had been one of the directors of the Jewish Gimnazjum, which he left a year later, and went on, with his wife’s assistance, to found his own school. In 1932, he also established the Berek Joselewicz Private Elementary School, with an enrollment of thirty-three students. Axer held three doctorates in such disparate fields as chemistry, philosophy, and music. In the Gimnazjum Axer taught physics, Latin, and German. At its height, the school reached an enrollment of two hundred boys and girls. The school’s curriculum was similar to that of the Jewish Gimnazjum although a little broader in its cultural scope. It did not exclude Yiddish from its repertoire of language resources. On special occasions and at graduation exercises, students declaimed and the choir sang classical pieces in French and German to the great delight of parents and guests. In no time, Axer found many supporters who took care of the schools’ financial needs, up to a point. Axer’s schools were highly respected and played a considerable role in the culture of Jewish Częstochowa. The schools were dissolved in 1939 for financial reasons.

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The main source of competition for the Jewish schools and Gimnazja came from the free Polish elementary school, public Gimnazja, Realgimnazja, and from German universities abroad. If parents of graduates from the folkshul did not want, or could not afford, to continue their child’s education in a parochial environment, there were at least three, perhaps six, Polish public schools in town that seemed to be a perfect alternative to the costly, private schools. Public schools in Jewish neighborhoods had Jewish teachers on staff and set aside periods for religious instruction. Public schools were on a state budget and tuition free, while the private schools were treading water, until the end of the thirties. The two Jewish Gimnazja’s struggle for survival was fierce, and ultimately a losing proposition, but not for any deficit in quality or spirit. On the contrary, under these competitive conditions, their longevity was remarkable and a testament to their tenacity. More importantly, the public TOZ schools gave its students the opportunity to study for the coveted Matura. The one great drawback to the Jewish Gimnazja was that the government deliberately denied their graduates the Matura, which gave them automatic entrée into a university and held out the hope for wider prospects of employment. Jews who entered the university studied law, economics, humanities, chemistry, and medicine. In public school, a class was set aside for Jewish instruction, according to a law mandated in 1927. In schools with a high number of Jewish students, the school authorities provided them with Jewish teachers. During the First World War, afternoon and evening schools for adults and children had an enrollment of 160 students, providing them with school materials gratis; all they had to do was show up. By 1918, adult education courses enrolled enough students to divide classes according to their age, gender, and academic status. Whether it was a continuation of the wartime efforts or a new start, in 1920 the Territorialists initiated another program in the field of adult education. For adults and children alike, learning to speak and write correct Yiddish was essential for the leftist parties as well as for the Folkists. Extracurricular hours were devoted to children’s education, whether as a supplement to regular schoolwork or as a substitute for those who could not afford tuition fees. Classes met on the premises of the Y.L. Peretz folkshul and the Jewish Gimnazjum. At its height the popular program had ninety students, standing room only. Shabbat fresh-air excursions for children were common fare for all of the modern institutions, as were gymnastics, choral singing, and music. Children and young men and women who attended Polish public schools acquired their Jewish education in ideologically oriented youth movements and supplementary evening schools sponsored by TSYSHO. In the 1920s, the TSYSHO system in all of Poland had 2,400 students.

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TOZ Started in 1916, and continuing after the war, TOZ was another important institution providing a sophisticated and intensive health, educational, and welfare program that became fully operational after 1923. TOZ offered classes for the illiterate and those wanting to advance their knowledge, particularly in the sciences and technology. Most importantly, TOZ provided courses in hygiene, which was crucial in the war environment. In this task, and functioning on a higher level than previously available, TOZ played a vital role. TOZ was the Polish branch (Towarzystwo Ochronny Zdrowia) of the Russian-Jewish OZE (Общество Здравоохранения Евреев) the Society for the Protection of the Health of the Jewish Population), an international organization founded in Russia in 1912. To raise funds TOZ held fundraisers such as public banquets and relied on philanthropic help. In Częstochowa, as elsewhere, TOZ provided both prophylactic care and treatment of disease, through a wide variety of programs and outreach, including psychotherapy and dental care. They were especially concerned with victims of tuberculosis and trachoma and the health of babies, children, and their mothers, significantly bringing down the infant mortality rate. Some five doctors attended to around 1,500 patients annually. In 1925, hundreds of babies and children were under the care of TOZ. By 1927, working with the Jewish Hospital, TOZ established an outpatient clinic. In the last months before World War II, TOZ turned its attention to the increasing numbers of Jews, among them refugees deported from Germany who were victims of physical assault and economic persecution. In Częstochowa, during the war, TOZ provided four kindergartens, elementary and vocational schools, food for starving children, fresh air summer camps for a thousand children, and winter frolicking in the snow.

Political Legitimacy In their visionary and futuristic orientation, political parties became dynamic movements, directed to the whole person, that is, to his and her political, social, and in the case of Agudos yisroel or Mizrachi religious affirmation. Secular Jews, in particular the youth, joined such movements in large numbers for a variety of reasons. Above all they did so in rebellion against the staid, religious, bourgeois culture of their parents, which was no different from that of their grandparents and earlier generations. For all their irreconcilable differences,

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the movements all served as agents for change in a new and exciting world of social ferment. Just as important, Jews felt that banding together was a reasonable hope for protecting themselves against the increasing fury of antisemitism. Their collective aim was to maintain their Jewish identity, nationally or religiously defined, in a just society. The old-style assimilationists of the Mosaic persuasion lost their appeal and became politically passé. New authoritative voices, worldviews, and year-round social programs replaced the restrictive boundaries of their backgrounds and actively fostered enjoyment in the company of the likeminded, who were, in effect, their new families. While struggling for their everyday existence, Jews were highly politicized, confronting each other with different shades of meaning and nuanced opinions that collided in the halls of government and on the “Jewish street.” Jewish parties were too busy fighting each other to fully grasp that the compulsion to generate more and more political organizations was not a sign of strength but more on the order of a tragicomedy. Eventually, for Poles, the political disarray found some sort of solution in the dictatorship of Piłsudski and his more authoritarian successors. With the German withdrawal from Poland in 1918, the fractured foundations of Jewish politics were set in stone and remained essentially the same throughout the interwar period and, indeed, in the post-war period among the survivors. The Folkists, who declined from the important position they seemed to have achieved at the end of the First World War, constitute something of an exception, but this was probably the result, above all, of the difficult and uncompromising personality of their leader, Noyakh Prylucki.

Part Five: Jewish Political Parties Founded before, during, and after World War l, the parties of Polish Jewry spread out across the political spectrum from the inflexible radical left to the zealously, militant right. How each of the parties fared nationally and in the Czestochower Municipal Council elections depended entirely on the alliances or blocs they forged with Jewish, Polish, and other national minorities. In the long run, however, Jewish electoral power was both a victim of withering internal strife and growing antisemitism, which, after 1927, virtually blocked Jews altogether from serving their own interests. The following are the major political parties that ran in Częstochowa. Centrist Jewish political parties were represented by: The General Zionists, the Folks-partey, and the right-wing Labor-Zionists, the Po‘ale Tsiyon yamin (Po‘ale Tsiyon-right). Actually, as a Labor party, the position of the Po‘ale Tsiyon-right is on the center-left. (Since the Po‘ale Tsiyon-right’s history is intertwined with that of the Po‘ale Tsiyon-left, the two will be discussed together.) Mizrachi bridged the center and the right. The three parties that occupied the right were: The Zionist Revisionists, Agudos yisroel (Agude), and the Assimilationist parties. The last two, though polar opposites, both affirmed being Jewish as a religion and repudiated the idea of Jews as a nation in its modern form. The Territorialists, Po‘ale Tsiyonleft, and the Bund belonged to the left side of the spectrum. The centrist parties represented middle-class interests; the left spoke for the interests of the working class. The right varied vis-à-vis the other parties as either Orthodox and anti-nationalistic or secular anti-nationalistic (Assimilationist), or hyper nationalistic (Revisionist). Not included in this study are the one-issue parties created by the different unaligned unions such as the Jewish Artisans, Small Traders Association, and Retailors Union, although they too were active in the Częstochowa gmina. The controversies and deliberations of all the national parties discussed here generally had their counterparts in the local politics of the individual towns and cities, subject to their own civic dynamics.

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110770230-006

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The Center General Zionism The General Zionists (Tziyonistim klaliim) emerged in 1897 and appeared in Częstochowa a year later, as a middle-class, and middle of the road, outreach adjunct to Theodore Herzl’s Zionist Organization, ZO (in 1960, it was renamed the World Zionist Organization), and followers of the Basle Program. Membership in the Zionist movement required the purchase of a shekel (basically a document) in order to vote in the various branches of the Zionist movement. In 1917, over 300 shekals were sold in Częstochowa; the party received its greatest confirmation the same year from the Balfour Declaration, and then from the San Remo decision of 1920 to put Palestine under the British Mandate. That year, party membership in Poland spiked to a quarter of a million, but aliya moved at a snail’s pace. In Poland the General Zionists split into three regional federations: Polish, West Galicia, and East Galicia. The Polish Federation’s leader was Yitzhak Grünbaum. The Galician Zionists were led by Itzhak Schwarzbart, Yehoshua Thon, and Leon Reich. Under Grünbaum, the General Zionists became embroiled in a highly involved, complex, and controversial scheme that drew in all the Jewish political parties and was a sensation in the local Jewish press. To counter what they considered undue influence of Polish politics to the detriment of Poland’s ethnic minorities, the General Zionists in the area of the former Congress Poland and the eastern borderlands, together with Mizrachi, Agude, and Hitachdut (the right wing of the Zionist labor socialist youth in Poland associated with the young workers in Palestine), joined the temporary Bloc of National Minorities (Blok Mniejszości Narodowych, BMN). Cofounded by Grünbaum and representatives of the small, scattered German minority, the BMN brought in the Ukrainians and Byelorussians to run together in the elections to the Second Sejm in November 1922. The Ukrainians formed the largest minority in Poland with 13.9 percent of the general population, the Jews with approximately 10 percent, and the Byelorussians with 3.1 percent. Such a sizable bloc would represent about a quarter of the population on Polish soil and would acquire sufficient clout in the Sejm to keep the Poles from enacting anti-minority legislation or coercing their assimilation into Polish society. Efforts to revive the Bloc for the elections of 1928 did not meet with the same success and fell into further decline until it was dissolved in 1930. Although Grünbaum promoted a Jewish National Council and a ministry of Jewish affairs, he refrained from pushing for separate police force or an

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independent judicial system and was careful to emphasize Jewish loyalty to the Polish state. The Poles were not placated; they saw the BMN as an attack on the integrity of their national sovereignty. The Poles uniformly aimed to create a national state, not as Grünbaum and the Bloc would have it, “a state of nations.” Unlike the Jews, who bore the brunt of Polish ire against the BMN, the Ukrainians and Byelorussians had their own territory, where they were in the majority, whereas the Jews were dispersed throughout Poland rendering them everywhere a permanent minority. The Folkists and the leftist parties as well as the Zionist parties in Galicia parted with Grünbaum, causing one of many major splits in the General Zionist movement. The Galician Zionists also ran their own tickets, believing, correctly, that Grünbaum’s approach would exacerbate Polish-Jewish tensions. The Bund opted out on class grounds, and also, like the Folkists, was disgusted with the BMN for getting in bed with Ukrainian nationalists who had Jewish blood still fresh on their hands. Grünbaum’s unbending confrontational position vis-à-vis the Poles, was rejected by the Galician Zionists, who preferred coming to terms with the Poles through a conciliatory approach. In the Sejm elections the eastern Galician Zionists won fifteen seats; West Galician Zionists won two. The Zionists in the Bloc won fifteen seats, the left and right wings of the Labor Zionists, and the Bund scored no votes at all; five went to Mizrachi, Hitachdut four, and Agude six. The Folkists gained one seat. In addition, twelve delegates of the Jewish lists, including seven Zionists, were elected senators. Electorally, 1922 was, overall, a very good year for the Jews and also the last one. The Jews would never achieve such electoral success again. That year, the impressive results of the BMN in the Sejm helped bring the liberal Gabriel Narutowicz, the first president of the new republic, to power, who was derided by the Right as the “Jewish president” and promptly assassinated. Jewish opponents of the Bloc feared a repetition of the Polish pogroms that followed the elections for the Duma in 1912, when the Right-wing nationalists accused the Jews of voting against Polish interests. Within the party of the General Zionists in the 1920s, two fundamental tendencies appeared that further splintered the movement into combative yet subtle directions that jockeyed for power internally, in the periodic Zionist Congresses. One side was called Et livnot (Time to Build), led by Louis Brandeis and Chaim Weizmann and in Poland by Rabbi Dr. Abraham Osjzasz who held a seat in the Sejm; the other, Al hamishmar (On Guard), led by Grünbaum. The driving force of the former was Herzlian, shaped by the urgent need to save European Jewry through mass colonization of the Yishuv, the Jewish settlement of Palestine, and favored cooperation with the Polish government. Such a grand project, however, required that the Zionist movement pivot away from the needs and politics of Diaspora

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Jewry, and effectively overturn the decision reached at the 1906 Zionist conference in Helsingfors, to engage in Gegenwartsarbeit, and attended to the needs of the Jews at hand, in the Diaspora. Et livnot’s was to “build the land.” For Et livnot this meant that the Zionist movement would have to place itself on a sound American business model and raise capital from whatever sources possible, including the non-Zionist philanthropic Jews, such as Louis Marshall, the head of the American Jewish Committee. This proposed pragmatic redirection was not at all what Grünbaum had in mind. The participation of non-Zionists, although they contributed to the Zionist Foundation Fund, would muddy the waters of the Zionist idea and grant them oversight of Zionist programs. What counted was quality, not quantity. Zionism had to be concerned with winning the hearts and minds of young people infused with the transformative ideals and values of the pioneering youth movements before they made aliya. Al hamishmar, would stand against efforts by economic Zionists to veer from their Ahad Haamian raison d’être to create a “spiritual canter” for world Jewry and to protect the minority rights of the Jews in Poland. It did not oppose mass immigration as such, but did not see it as a viable alternative. In turn, Et livnot argued that the so-called half-intellectual (autodidact) pioneers in Eretz Israel had to live off the charity of Jews abroad while Polish Jewry stood on the edge of destruction. If anything, the Zionist movement ought to concentrate on bringing in artisans and a middle class who would serve as the basis of building a modern democratic, capitalist homeland. Both sides were adamant and uncompromising. “Et livnot and Al hamishmar,” Ezra Mendelsohn wrote, “represented a classical division in the Zionist world – a division between those who emphasized the need to transform Palestine into a Jewish country as quickly as possible and those who emphasized the need to transform the Jewish people.”1 The Zionist rank and file found merit in both positions and did not see why the two factions could not come to terms and tone down the acrimonious rhetoric between them. Notwithstanding a weak start in the provisional Sejm election of January 1919, the General Zionists became the major representative of the Jews in local and national politics. In the Czestochowa gmina it ran neck in neck with the Agude and Mizrachi. For all its inner turmoil, the great strength of the Zionist Organization was as a default location for unaffiliated Jews, including some Hasidim, who didn’t adhere to any specific program but sympathized with the Zionists. In Poland and abroad, its ill-defined and disorganized Byzantine network of incommunicative political factions and clubs had the advantage of not serving a radical or

1 Ezra Mendelsohn, Zionism in Poland (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981), 250.

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religious ideology and therefore won a wide variety of members, each gravitating to the faction of his, or her, preference, or remaining on the sidelines. By 1929, however, its lack of a well-defined political program became a liability for Jews looking for a united front against public eruptions of antisemitism. Nevertheless, it still garnered sufficient votes to serve on the gmina up until the last election before the war. In 1931, a newly crowned World Union of General Zionists issued a statement of basic principles that held sway amid constant dissension in the ranks. The highest priority was given to fundraising for major construction projects and social programs in Palestine. The proclamation, furthermore, promoted free enterprise, social justice, and the equitable mediation of Labor-management relations in Eretz Israel and Poland. This was surely an attempt to reconcile the two major factions of the General Zionists and to clearly distinguish themselves from the socialist Labor Zionists. In 1937, WIZO, the Women’s International Zionist Organization, established a branch in Częstochowa, with its program, consistent with Al Hamishmar, of adult education public lectures, home economics, and Hachshara.

Folkism Folkism in Poland drew its inspiration from several sources including Ahad Ha’am’s notion of a spiritual Zionism, Chaim Zhitlovsky’s zealous Yiddishism, and mostly, the historian Simon Dubnow’s idea of the Jews as constituting an ethical, democratic, diaspora nation. In Russia, in 1906, Dubnow created the Folks-demokratishe partey (Jewish Democratic People’s Party); its history is separate from the party in Poland. In Warsaw, 1916, the Folks-partey consolidated its disparate groups and ran for the first municipal election in Warsaw, largely through the efforts of Noyakh Pryłucki, the lawyer-linguist, and his able assistants from the Yiddishist intelligentsia, H. D. Nomberg, Tsemakh Shabad, S. Stupnitski (the party’s ideologue), and others. Unlike the General Zionists, the Folks-partey presented the public with a firm, detailed, and lucid program and a well-publicized mass campaign for minority rights, including a Yiddish secular school system (which does not seem to have gotten off the ground, although in America its ideology was that of the Sholem Aleichem folk schools), in a liberal democratic Polish state and a robust parliamentary struggle against antisemitism. “In matters of citizenship,” Pryłucki said in the wartime Municipal Council of 1916, “we are Poles, but nationally and culturally we

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are Jews, and so we will remain.”2 A self-described Klal yisroel party, that is, ideally, a party for all Jews, in practice it competed with different interpretations of national Jewish identity in Poland, and in the end, it lost. What made the Folkism most controversial was its vehement opposition to Zionism’s disparagement of the diaspora and its rejection of Yiddish as the primary language of the Jews. Folkism rejected socialism on grounds that it was “unnatural” and “unrealistic.” Along with the Bund, Folkists were also strongly opposed to immigration as a solution to the “Jewish problem.” While not opposing the Agude per se, that is, as an organization promoting and defending the religious rights of Orthodox Jews, the Folkists decried its fanaticism and encroachment on the rights of others, especially in the gmina. Liberal rabbis and religious thinkers like Yehuda Leib Zlotnick (who was also a Mizrachist and visited Częstochowa in 1916) along with Hillel Zeitlin, identified with the Folkists. Moreover, when expedient, the Folkists joined the General Zionists and their opponents, including Agude, for votes in the Częstochowa gmina. Before the first election to the Warsaw Municipal Council, in 1916, Pryłucki had already galvanized the party with his optimistic forward-looking program of Diaspora Nationalism, and his stirring orations denouncing antisemitism. He disseminated his views in a number of papers including Moment, which Pryłucki founded in Warsaw and that circulated in Częstochowa where Folkism resonated with many Jews. Refusing to join the BMN and get into bed with the Ukrainian nationalists, Pryłucki and the Folkists ran their list as independents. As a result, Pryłucki’s fame soared, to the chagrin of the Zionists (with whom he later made political alliances). In the newly created Warsaw Municipal Council of 1916, the Folkists won four seats, and the same number in the Sejm elections in 1922, numbers proportionate to the Jewish population in the Warsaw region. After 1922, the party influence waned and was no longer a serious contender in Jewish politics. The Folkists joined with other center-right parties in the gmina and municipal elections in Częstochowa. Along with the coup, in 1926, free proportional parliamentary elections, and the secret ballet, the mainstays of the liberal state, came to an end. With that, the party became more or less defunct because of inner party conflicts, mainly splitting into pro and antiPiłsudski’s factions, although it continued to function in the Częstochowa gmina until the very end. Taking a middle-of-the-road position rendered the Folks-partey an easy mark for all the other parties. Agude rejected the Folks-partey because of its

2 Mark W. Kiel, “The Ideology of the Folks-Partey,” Soviet Jewish Affairs 5, no. 2 (1975): 89, note 47.

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Yiddishist nationalism and advocacy of a Yiddishist secular school system; the radicals rejected the party as a distraction from the class struggle, and the Zionists opposed its Diaspora nationalism.

Labor Zionism – Right and Left Like Territorialism, Po‘ale Tsiyon (Labor Zionism), founded around the turn of the century, was an international labor movement with active branches throughout Europe, Argentina, and the US: its greatest numbers were found in Poland. Also, like Territorialism, Po‘ale Tsiyon came under the influence of the Yiddishist philosopher Chaim Zhitlovsky, and Nahman Syrkin, who fused socialism, Zionism, and Territorialism. It was Ber Borokhov who, in 1906, consolidated a number of different groups into one party that called itself Po‘ale Tsiyon. Borokhov, who visited Częstochowa not long before he died in 1917 of pneumonia, applied Marxism to Zionism and produced an analysis of the class struggle in Poland showing that, of historical necessity, conditions in Poland would lead to the spontaneous (stychic) mass migrations of Jews to Eretz Israel. There they would create a proletarian binational state where Yiddish would not be sidelined. A World Union of Po‘ale Tsiyon was founded in 1907, which two years later quit the Zionist Organization. In Częstochowa, an earlier Po‘ale Tsiyon group gained a foothold in 1904 to 1905, seeing itself as the vanguard of the movement. Unlike other parties, Po‘ale Tsiyon did not have an intellectual or student leadership but was rather comprised of mostly “half-intellectuals” working-class Jews. By the time that the Revolution broke out in 1917, the World Union already began to split into right- and left-wing factions over the questions of Palestine versus Poland as the Jewish homeland for Jews; Hebrew versus Yiddish as the national language of Jews; Communism versus Jewish nationalism or some combination thereof, as the path toward the solution to the “Jewish problem.” Another vexing problem was whether Arab labor should be excluded from the Jewish workforce in Palestine, a policy that the left saw as a mistake that undermined preparations for a binational state. The right favored a liberal SocialDemocratic party that was interested in both Palestine and the diaspora, with a bias in favor of the former; the left also wanted ties to the Bolshevik Revolution, hoping for a place in its sphere of influence and party politics. The Po‘ale Tsiyon-left’s dedication to the Revolution went so far as forming a “Borokhov Brigade” (unit actually), which fought alongside the Red Army. The same held true for the Bund, which formed the Bronislaw Grosser unit, named for one of its distinguished leaders who died in 1912. Notwithstanding Trotsky’s endorsement of Jewish parties joining the Revolution, strictly as a practical matter,

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both Po‘ale Tsiyon and the Bund’s bid to maintain separate Jewish units and later join the Comintern were ultimately unsuccessful. In the first place, because Communist leaders said they were “counter-revolutionary” Jewish nationalist parties and also because Soviet authorities were convinced that their high profile would exacerbate the rampant antisemitism, and heighten the widespread pogrom fever, in the Red Army. In the Red Army’s war against the Polish-Peturia alliance, Jews fought on the Russian side. There are no statistics showing how many members of Po‘ale Tsiyon from Poland fought on the side of the Red Army. The Po‘ale Tsiyon-right in Poland, on the other hand, joined the Second Socialist International. Po‘ale Tsiyon-left’s love of Soviet Communism was unrequited; the party was liquidated in Russia in 1928 (amazingly, it survived that long!). Yet, in Poland, the left’s zeal for the Soviet Union did not abate. The left was a small but vocal organization that often piggybacked on the Bund with whom, except for its anti-Zionism, had much in common as selfavowed proletarian parties. The leadership of all the leftist parties was drawn from the lower or middle classes. If the Po‘ale Tsiyon-left drew its inspiration from the Revolution of 1917, the Po‘ale Tsiyon-right was encouraged to go its separate way by the Balfour Declaration, issued that same year. Po‘ale Tsiyon broke formally into two right- and left-wing factions, in 1920. The right moved in the direction of the General Zionists as their interests in Borokhovian Marxism waned. With the split of the party in Częstochowa, the right-wing’s place in Częstochowa politics became minor. (In Israel, the right-wing of the party was associated with Ben-Gurion and the Mapai, while the left-wing came to be associated with Mapam.) In both Palestine and America, however, the Po‘ale Tsiyon-right was stronger than its leftist counterpart and organizationally much more productive. In terms of its numbers, the left had its greatest success in the 1920s, organizing unions – tailors, bakeries, and leather workers, and so on, though the Bund predominated in the Jewish labor movement (in America its ideology was represented in the curriculum of the Workmen’s Circle afternoon school system). The right wing was anti-Bolshevik and only moderately, if at all, Marxist. It was generally uncompromisingly Hebraist in theory, though it established a small school system in Poland using Yiddish and Hebrew in its curriculum (as did the school system founded under the auspices of the Farband Labor Zionist Organization of America). The Po‘ale Tsiyon-right rejoined the Zionist Organization in 1937, to the dismay of the Po‘ale Tsiyon-left, which rigidly adhered to Borokhov’s original principals (even though he had revised them in 1917 along Social-Democratic lines) of proletarian socialism. In the 1930s, a number of issues caused the Po‘ale Tsiyon-left to despair of its old rigid pro-Soviet doctrines: the question of Birobidzhan becoming a

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Soviet Jewish republic on the far reaches of the eastern border in Asia, the illegalization of the Po‘ale Tsiyon-left, the show trials, the purges, and the Soviet support of the Arab riots in Palestine. The crisis of faith in Soviet Communism drew the left closer to right, but did not merge with it, though the party eventually rejoined in the Zionist Organization in 1937. Their numbers declined precipitously and were picked up by the Bund.

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The Right Mizrachi The distinguished Rabbi Jacob Reines founded the modern Orthodox Mizrachi in 1902, in Vilna, as the party of religious Zionism in the Zionist Organization. It arrived in Częstochowa in 1906. Agude and Hasidim regarded Mizrachi as a greater threat than the secular Zionists because it hid their heresy under a cloak of Orthodoxy. Five hundred members appeared in Mizrachi’s first open gathering of its members as a party in September 1916. The Mizrachi in fact controlled the gmina in Częstochowa for its first ten years after the war, before it was taken over and remained under the Agude’s authority, despite the fact that it never achieved a plurality of votes. In 1926, because of Agude’s anti-nationalism, Piłsudski moved to grant the Orthodox much of its prewar dominance over the gmina and have it remain a strictly religious, tax-collecting institution. One in five Orthodox Jews considered himself Mizrachi and most Mizrachi Jews came from the former Congress Poland. Although it was an international organization tied to the ZO, it declared itself an independent party in 1920, with its main base in Poland. Mizrachi’s offshoot, the Labor Poaley mizrachi (formerly Young Mizrachi) was organized in Jerusalem, in 1922, to train and meet the needs of its working-class followers arriving from Poland to “build the land.” The head of the Jerusalem-based movement was Rabbi Meir Berlin (Bar Ilan). His father, head of the Talmudic academy in Volozhin, Naftali Tzvi Hirsh Berlin (the Netziv), was a great admirer of Bialik, supported and gave credence to the essentially “Modern Orthodox” idea that one should remain strictly observant yet keep up with changing times, not the least in developing the Hebrew language into a clear, modern mode of expression. As such, Jewish youth, who were abandoning traditional Judaism in droves, could be kept in the camp of traditional observance but in the larger modern context. In this regard, Mizrachi had its own youth organization, the Tseirey mizrachi. This admixture of Zionism and Orthodoxy was rejected outright by the ultra-Orthodox as leading to assimilation and could only be countered by increased isolation of Jewish youth from the outside world. Promoting the idea of Torah and rabbinic learning as the basis for the Zionist idea, expressed in such slogans as Torah ve’avoda, “Torah and labor,” and “the Land of Israel, for the People of Israel, on the basis of the Torah,” Mizrachi, which raised money for the Jewish National Fund, nevertheless carried on a struggle in the Zionist Organization against the secularization of Jewish culture.

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Mizrachi became international in scope, particularly strong, aside from its base in Russia and Poland, in America and in Palestine. To further its goals, Mizrachi championed minority rights and set up its own Hebrew school system, Yavneh, which included an elementary and middle school and the Takhemoni rabbinical seminary in Warsaw for advanced Jewish studies. In Częstochowa, Mizrachi students attended the Artisan School and a farming school it set up in the middle of the city, both of them to prepare its students for aliya. Mizrachi schools were traditional in subject matter using modern pedagogical methods, meaning that Polish and Hebrew were the languages of instruction. In Abram Rozenblat’s elementary school on the Old Market Place, Polish was the language of instruction.3 In the kheyder of the beloved Melamid Feivel Fajwlowicz, students joyfully studied Bible, Talmud, and Jewish law in Hebrew. On the local level, the party was very active and successful in the gmina’s deliberations. Mizrachi touched the hearts of many traditionally Orthodox Jews with warm Zionist sentiments, as exemplified by those of Chief Rabbi Asz, who proudly participated in the town’s religious and secular festivities in the new synagogue, such as celebrating the opening of the Hebrew University in 1925. Asz was actually one of the first rabbis in Poland to join Mizrachi and lent his support for the Foundation Fund and the Jewish National Fund. Mizrachi’s president in Poland, Isaak Nissenbaum, was voted in as a Sejm deputy and Senator in the 1930s. Because of the party’s increasing emphasis on work in Eretz Israel, it lost much of its following in Poland, though remained a powerful force in gmina politics. Many of Mizrachi members from Czestochowa emigrated to Eretz Israel in the 1920s.

Agudas yisroel Agudas yisroel, the League of Israel, or, in short, Agude, the party of the ultraOrthodox Jews was founded in 1912, for the main purpose of combatting secular nationalism and the “Zionist heresy,” in all its forms. It specifically targeted Mizrachi because it presumed to force the “end of days” and the arrival of the Messiah, an event unknown, exclusively in God’s hands and at his own timing. “The Jewish nation,” it proclaimed, “is the party of God,” and the only party (snubbing Mizrachi) that was “Tora true [Toyre traye]”).4

3 Oral communication to author with Sigmund Rolat. Rozenblat’s grandsons Sigmund Rolat and Alan Silberstein have played a key role in creating the movement in Częstochowa and Second Generation, to retrieve the town’s Jewish history. 4 Ezra Mendelsohn, On Modern Jewish Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 23.

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The Agude established itself in Częstochowa during the First World War, as the guardian of the town’s silent majority. Agude’s unassailable strength derived from its great Torah scholars and generally its widespread religious and cultural values. Częstochowa’s yeshivas, learned rabbis, cantors, as well as its Hasidic masters were famous far and wide. On a practical level, the Agude’s strength came from its vast infrastructure, supporting and controlling its religious and social institutions, schools, as well attending to the spiritual and urgent needs of a poor and starving population. Its motto was “social justice according to the Torah.” The party was composed of impoverished and middle-class Jews, some wealthy, worldly, and well educated. It addressed the commercial needs of the middle class through its own bank (Bank kupiecki), at the same time that other banks in the hands of Jews, served a broader variety of the community’s needs. In effect, Agude inherited the mantle of leadership from the rabbis who had controlled the gmina – along with wealthy patrons – until World War I. Agude’s adoption of quiet, non-confrontational diplomacy, shatlones, in the corridors of the Municipal Councils and Sejm was reviled as obsequious by all of its partisan opponents. Until September 1939, Agude proved quite effective in negotiating the world, which, it kept at arm’s length, through its own network of services and institutions. In a way, Agude was the negative mirror image of the Zionists. The Zionists, like the other national movements, wanted the Jews to go forward into the future with a sense of self-directed purpose; Agude looked backward for redemption in the status quo ante and patiently, toward the future coming of the messiah. The Zionists were anti-Yiddish and wanted the Jews to live freely in a secular democratic homeland with Hebrew as their national language. The Agude was not ideologically Yiddishist, though Yiddish was the language of daily discourse and of instruction in Jewish subjects in their schools. Agude opposed emigration and democracy. They wanted, with government sanction, for Jews to return to a self-imposed ghetto, in Poland, and live relative to the State, under rabbinic law in conformance with the rabbinic legal principle, Dina d’malkhuta dina, “the law of the land is the law.” Not that Agude was entirely against the idea of settling in Eretz Israel. At the urging of members of its youth movement (Tseirey aguda), the Czestochower branch, made its own foray into religious Zionism, distinct from Mizrachi, by sending a delegation to Palestine to explore the possibility of creating a self-isolated, ultra-Orthodox community in the Holy Land. Although the project was unsuccessful, a number of Agude youth clamored for Hachshara. They found their place for Hachshara in Łódź and ultimately made aliya. Bowing to the demands of its constituencies, Agude formed a labor branch the Poaley agudas yisroel in 1922, which was established in Czestochowa two years later.

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The Orthodox labor party came to the aid of religious workers, protesting the abuse of workers by religious factory owners, providing them with cultural programs religious studies and a large library to suit their special interests. As an anti-nationalist, religious body, Agude was demonstrably patriotic, declaring its loyalty to whichever government assumed power whether Piłsudski’s Sanacja party or the succeeding antisemitic governments after Piłsudski’s death in 1935 This posture cost them dearly at the polls in the last years of the republic. In the general Sejm election of 1928, the Aguda, departing from the BMN, found a place for itself, along with the Union of Jewish Merchants, in the Non-party Bloc for Cooperation with the Government (Bezpartijny Blok dla Współpracy z Rządem – BBWR) taking two seats; three seats went to the revived BMN. Of all the nongovernmental parties, the Communists – working under cover with an assumed name and with the support of many Jewish voters – won 14 percent of the votes, constituting the highest number of voters. As the results of the earlier 1922 Sejm elections demonstrated, Agude’s modes of politicking paid off handsomely with six Deputies elected to the Sejm. Moreover, Agude convinced the august body to recognize those kheyder schools that incorporated secular subjects into their curriculum and that were taught in Polish, as a legitimate alternative for compulsory attendance at secular primary schools. It was one of gmina’s few victories. The Sanacja regime, gave their support to Jewish schools in 1927, and muffled antisemitism as long as Piłsudski was alive. Taking full advantage of the governments favor, the Agude’s, undemocratic values were reflected in its gmina politics, denying allocations for secular schools such as those run by TSYSHO, YIVO (The Institute for Jewish Resaerch, founded 1925 in Vilna), and Zionist organizations. Awarding all grants to itself, it also opposed giving women and men under the age of twenty-one (a carryover from the Occupation) the right to vote. What enraged the other parties most, however, was the government’s imposition, in 1931, of the notorious Paragraph 20. Incorporated into its bylaws, it permitted the gmina to expel all “non-believers.” The Territorialist Unzer shtime, speaking for the left as a whole, expressed its indignation and frustration with the right, on June 11, 1926, adding a note of irony to embarrass the Agude and Mizrachi: It’s impossible to do something together with the reactionary powers from our gmina, because they have no sense of cooperation or of the meaning of the word ‘tolerance’ [. . .]. At a time when Endek magistrates voted in favor of subsidies for the Jewish secular schools, our Agude-Zionists gmine, at their last meeting did not agree to give a penny (groszn) for the secular Jewish schools. Endek magistrates [however] voted a great sum for Jewish libraries, because they know and understand the value of culture and enlightenment.5

5 Quoted in Tsvi Cahan, Di Yidishe kehile in Czenstochow, Czenstochow, ed. Sh. Zinger (New York: The United Czenstochover Relief Committee, 1958), 17.

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What motivated the Endeks to favor the secular institutions in this case is unclear; perhaps the statement was meant to be sarcastic. As a matter of policy, however, the government’s aim was to insure the religious character of the gmina and exclude or diminish the influence of what it regarded as subversive elements. However, the government warned against the gmina’s indiscriminate use of Paragraph 20. In Częstochowa, Agude decided it would be impolitic to exercise its option and further risk alienating secular youth. It was therefore compelled, instead, to engage in the democratic process, such as it was. How often, if at all, the Częstochowa gmina and other gminas exercised “Paragraph 20” is unclear. The Bund quit the gmina over this issue but rejoined in 1936. Inter-party strife resumed and even came to blows on the gmina’s floors, bringing the government to step in and maintain order. Nationally, the gminas’ election results were overwhelmingly in favor of the Bund, and its sometime ally, the Po‘ale Tsiyon-left. Yet in Częstochowa, Agude was victorious. Agude distributed most of its allocated funds to support and run dozens of well attended khedorim and Talmud Torahs through Khoyrev, its boy’s school system, and the Beys yankiv schools for girls. After the girls graduated from their elementary schools, they were able to join the B’nos agudey Yisroel (Daughters of Agudos yisroel) youth movement. Most came from ultra-Orthodox homes, but some were also enrolled by their secular parents, no doubt to protect them from attractions of the outside world. The girls were actively engaged in the movement’s fund raising for various causes and institutions. In contrast to the prewar khedorim, and thanks to the Agude’s concerns, many teachers were inspirational and loved by their pupils and later, recalled fondly. In one kheyder in particular, Yehuda Leyb Landau taught three generations of pupils. Female volunteers provided the children with food, clothing and tenderness. Unfortunately, in those hard-economic times just prior to the war, the yeshivas had already fallen into arrears and faced foreclosure, as was the fate of the leading secular Jewish schools. In Częstochowa, Agude also provided its community with spiritual nourishment and secular amusement, though always in a religious context, through publications, evening courses in Bible and Talmud, and with a library of Yiddish, Hebrew, and Polish books. Klezmer and Cantorial music accompanied every festive occasion, whether at a wedding, the completion of a new Torah scroll, or the renovation of the hundred-year-old Beys medrish in 1934. Numerous cantors and preachers took part in the renovation’s celebration, but Asz’s brother-in-law Rabbi Moshe, Halter, a Mizrachist, stole the show with his spellbinding sermons on the pressing issues of the day, cleverly couching his words in Torah language. He and the Magid Yoysef Symon Koblenz, a founder of Mizrachi, were the great preachers in Częstochowa during the interwar period. 345 candles lit up the specially decorated House of Study. In celebrating events of importance, Agude participated with

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Mizrachi. The Hasidim, who found any excuse to indulge in alcoholic beverages, brought out the Klezmer, sang, and danced, and whipped themselves up into an ecstatic frenzy. The ceremonies culminated with everyone (to his ability) performing the charitable act of Tsidoko, giving alms to the poor. Though Agude tried getting into the good graces of the government, in the end, support for Agude waned for what it did not do, and, indeed, was powerless, to do. From the outset of the republic it could not induce the government to rescind its policies restricting business activity on Sunday or to speak out against antisemitism and the law against shekhita, the one antisemitic law actually enacted. In Sejm politics, Agude experienced a rapidly growing sense of helplessness. In 1937, Agude representative Leib Mincberg addressed the Sejm despairingly: “Truly, what sort of good does the Jewish parliamentarian have in carrying out his tragic mission, which consists in being a helpless and powerless witness to Jewish sorrows.”6 Votes that would normally have gone to Agude went to the Bund and the Zionists instead. A few towns, including Częstochowa, refrained from casting protest votes, but even many of those that did vote for the Bund, did not abandon religion. The Agude remained cohesive, never suffering from the ruinous splits typical of the other national parties. In its numbers and political power, both In New York and in Israel, Agude is nowadays a powerful political force in Jewish life. Whether the Makhzikey hadas (Defenders of the Faith) was an affiliate of the Agude is unclear; its purpose was certainly in concert with the Agude. Its organization in Częstochowa took care of around 400 boys, most from destitute homes; some came without shoes or socks. Many came from secular homes, even children of Bundists. The children were kept warm and fed. Classes were divided into two shifts to accommodate boys who attended public school in the morning or afternoon and was open for them on Sabbaths and holidays. Facilities there were modern and teachers of Hebrew and secular subjects were hired for their skill and experience, although unlike teachers attached to secular school systems, they were not unionized. Like all the Jewish educational institutions, the Makhzikey hadas barely kept financially afloat.

6 Celia Heller, On the Edge of Destruction: Jews of Poland Between the Two Wars (New York: Schocken Books, 1977), 278.

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Zionist Revisionism Although fewer in numbers than the other parties, and last on the scene in Poland, the Union of Zionist Revisionists, founded by the charismatic Vladimir Jabotinsky, withdrew from the Zionist Organization in 1925, although, at times it participated in its elections. The Revisionists, particularly their Trumpeldor youth movement, Beitar, with its 300 members, quickly became a formidable presence in Częstochowa’s political landscape. One of the founders of Beitar in Częstochowa was Poland’s first, and award winning, pilot, M. Józefowicz. In the years leading up to the war, Menachem Begin visited Częstochowa. Jabotinsky made two stopovers in Częstochowa on his travels throughout Europe, urgently warning the Jewish masses to escape the looming catastrophe, post haste. He exhorted Jews to migrate to Palestine, without any regard for its opposition by the British. He also advocated for Jewish settlement on both sides of the Jordan. In contrast to the Bund’s motto of Doikeyt (“hereness”), Revisionism proffered “Evacuation.” Overtly militaristic, studying the martial arts and learning how to shoot, they modeled themselves on Mussolini’s extreme nationalist ideology. Partly in response to the Arab pogroms in Palestine in 1929 and the rising tide of antisemitism in 1935, Jabotinsky’s great appeal among the youth reached its zenith. Jabotinsky, wanted to create a Jewish army (in Palestine they constituted the Irgun, and later the party of Herut and Likud). Beitar members thought of themselves more as solders than scouts. Wearing brown shirts, Polish-style paramilitary uniforms, marching in the streets in disciplined order, shouting slogans borrowed from Mussolini’s Fascists, they saluted Polish solders passing by as if they were comrades. When Hitler came to power they switched to Blue shirts. Because they carried out their drills on the Sabbath, Beitar provoked Agude fanatics to attack them, but these were no match for the fighting group and left licking their wounds. They also fought off Polish toughs who attacked Jewish youth groups on their outings. In his desperation for evacuation, Jabotinsky went so far as to negotiate with the Colonels who took power after Piłsudski’s death and in the late 1930s were only too eager to get rid of Poland’s Jews. In 1921, Jabotinsky had tried negotiating with Simon Petliura, under whom mass pogroms took place in the Ukraine and who until 1919 found safe haven in Częstochowa. Under Jewish pressure, the liberal Sejm expelled Petliura, and his coterie from Poland. Jabotinsky offered to organize a Jewish bodyguard to accompany Petliura on his planned invasion of the Ukraine. Jabotinsky desire for a “muscular” Judaism and having a Jewish sports club and a worker’ division (Menorah) attracted Jews of every class, secular and

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religious, vindicating Jabotinsky’s rejection of a class struggle as an authentic Jewish ideology. Although at first the Revisionist relations with the other Zionist parties were collegial, his flirtations with antisemites did not sit well with the Zionist establishment. The Territorialists and both wings of the Labor Zionists condemned the Revisionists. Already in 1933, their differences with the Po‘ale Tsiyon-left in Częstochowa were so heated that street fighting broke out between them, causing the Revisionist branch at the 18th Zionist Congress to cancel its participation in the elections. Yet a year earlier, the Częstochowa branch won the most votes in the ZO’s elections. Beitar carried on an intensive cultural program, centered about its ideology: They raised money for the Jewish National Fund and their own Tel khai fund. Through its own Hachshara and military program its members prepared for legal emigration. Beitar had its own drama club and library with books in three languages. Although Hebraist in orientation, their languages of conversation and propaganda were Yiddish and Polish, less so Hebrew. They were heavily involved in protesting the British White Paper limiting immigration to Palestine. With “Nevertheless” (veaf al pi khen) as their motto, they helped dozens of Jews of whatever political persuasion to make aliya. The movement in Częstochowa was riven by bitter internal dissension. In 1933, the movement split between the Revisionists and the Jewish State Party founded by Meir Grossman. Their differences, however, were more organizational than principled. Grossman wanted a return to the Zionist Organization. Otherwise the Jewish State Party was modeled on the Revisionist movement’s ideology. In Częstochowa, the young Grossmanites scouting group were called Barak (Lightning). While Jabotinsky’s party remained the more popular of the two in general, the “Grossmanites” enjoyed a greater success in Częstochowa, and elected a delegate to the Municipal Council. In the late 1930s, the Revisionists won 5 percent of the Jewish vote in Poland, and were, next to the Zionists, the second largest Zionist party in Poland.

Assimilationism The self-avowed Assimilationists and “neo-Assimilationists” took part in the Warsaw Municipal Council elections of 1916 as members of the Jewish Party of Civic Equality and joined in the coalition of Orthodox and Zionist groups. In the Częstochowa gmina they figured marginally. Nevertheless, they did try to make a showing in gmina politics including the one in Częstochowa. In 1919, Assimilationists

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from all parts of the country formed a Union of Poles of Mosaic Persuasion of all Polish Lands (Związek Polaków Wyznania Mojżeszowego wszystkich ziem polskich – ZPWM), comprised of professors, professionals, intellectuals and university students, and Jews of means. Their range of political and religious views, all defined what they were not: Orthodox, nationalist, or socialist. Assimilationism, as a party and as an individual choice, virtually disappeared from the political scene because of persistent and worsening antisemitism on the one hand and growing Jewish nationalism on the other. Tragically, Assimilationists desired to blend into a society that simply did not want them, even, at times, when they converted. Only the Church openly welcomed converts unreservedly, and therefore officially opposed Nazi racist policies. At the end of 1933, several other groups tried to form an Assimilationist organization, including the Association of Jewish War Veterans, hoping to ingratiate themselves with Poles in a hostile environment. Inevitably, whichever way they turned, they met with insignificant success, if not outright rejection.

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The Left Territorialism Territorialism sought to foster the emigration of Jews to a safe haven, wherever it might be, not excluding Palestine, where they could form a compact, autonomous, community with national minority rights. Its national leaders were Israel Zangwill and Nahman Syrkin. Calling itself Socialist-Zionists (S.S.), the Russian-Polish variety of Territorialism, was Yiddishist and revolutionary-socialist in character.7 The popular movement began around the turn of the century among disaffected members of the Palestine-centered Zionist Organization and quickly sprouted branches all over Europe and America. The public intellectual Yoisef Kruk, and young members of the intelligentsia, including the “halfintellectuals,” founded the Częstochowa branch in 1902, in advance of the movement constituting itself as an International Territorialist Organization (ITO) in 1905. Its ranks were augmented after the split in the Zionist Organization over the Uganda question. Apart from their advocacy of emigration, their platform in Russia and then in Poland after the dissolution of all non-Communist parties in the Soviet Union, was much the same as the Bund, with whom it had an ongoing love-hate relationship, and the left wing of the Labor Zionists, because of their focus on Poland rather than Palestine. Because of Częstochowa’s proximity to the German border it served as a natural, but illegal, transit point for the large number of Jews coming in from all over Poland and Russia on their way to America and elsewhere. A highly organized operation, the Territorialists often helped desperate Jews to acquire passports, and other needed papers, and at the same time protected them from unscrupulous smugglers. Later, the Po‘ale Tsiyon-left engaged in the same underground activities. In response to the Kishinev pogrom on Easter Suday 1903 and Bialik’s rebuke of the Jewish people for their passivity in his poem “The City of Slaughter,” the Częstochowa Territorialists, as did members of the Labor Zionists and the Bund, organized a self-defense militia, smuggled in guns and dispatched people to other 7 In 1919, the party renamed itself as Di fareynikte (United), short for Di fareynikte yidishe sotsialistishe arbiter partey and Umophengike (Independent Socialist Party) formed in 1922, as a Jewish splinter group of the PPS. During World War Two, the latest incarnation of the Territorialist movement was the Frayland lige, founded in 1941 in America. A party of nearly one, the passionate Yiddishist linguist, Mordkhe Schaechter, perpetuated its publication Afn shvel a Yiddishist journal of language and culture. After his passing in 2004, his legacy has been carried on by his family and dedicated proponents of Yiddishism.

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towns in need of assistance. Revolutionary propaganda leaflets were also smuggled into Poland through the same border. In 1905, the Territorialists began their labor agitation in Częstochowa’s Jewish factories, organizing unions, campaigning for socialism and on behalf of Yiddish. The party’s Central Committee in Vilna sent speakers to Częstochowa, among them Leibush Lehrer, to rouse the masses. Its reputation being unimpeachable, Territorialists were approached by both workers and bosses seeking fair labor arbitration. During and after the First World War, the Territorialists widened their scope of activities to encompass educational and cultural work. Contrary to the orders of the ruling postwar Polish Socialists Party, the parties on the left acquired weapons by stripping German soldiers of their guns as they were retreating from Poland. The government actively pursued confiscating weapons and made numerous arrests. Unlike the Bundists, the Territorialists showed a propensity for violence on behalf of the community, and an eagerness to settle scores, when necessary, as a matter of honor and justice. For good reason, the Territorialists were the largest group of the Jewish proletarian parties before the First World War and for a short time thereafter. The party defied police harassment and arrests by intensifying their political and labor agitation, all the while attracting greater numbers of followers. Forbidden May Day demonstrations were defiantly staged as major labor holidays. Assistance came from unexpected quarters. Cantor Birnboim provided the Territorialists with a place to hold their secret meetings in the New Synagogue. Otherwise comrades met in the woods under the open skies, or in the cemetery. At times they had joint meetings with the Bund. Mendl Asz, son of the Chief Rabbi, also joined the revolutionary ranks of the Territorialists. The pro-Soviet sympathies of the Territorialists, like the Bund in the period of revolution, blurred the line between the two parties. Under their legal cover, the Territorialists allowed the Communists to carry their own subversive work. This brought the police down equally hard on Territorialists and Communists in their locales and private homes. Although the Polish Communist Party, the KPP (Komunistyczna Partia Polski), which functioned from 1926 to 1938, was constantly under surveillance and many of its members shipped off to prison, the party continued to play a subversive role in Polish and Jewish politics and culture, through various fronts. When the Territorialist Socialist-Zionist party renamed itself in 1919 as the United Jewish Socialist Workers Party, or Di fareynikte (after its merger with SERP, the Jewish Socialist Workers party), it maintained its pro-Soviet stance in the Soviet-Polish War, and because of that it was continually harassed by the police. The ringleaders of Di fareynikte’s allies in the Polish Socialist Party were hauled off to jail.

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In the elections to the newly created Municipal Council, in 1919, the three parties (the Communists were outlawed) fielded their own candidates with four seats going the Territorialists, Po‘ale Tsiyon won two, and the Bund, one. When in 1935 a new and more restrictive electoral system was introduced, the Jews, including the Zionist parties, did not elect a single candidate. The revolutionary firebrand Rafal Federman running on the Territorial list, became a counselor in the gmina and in, 1919 was elected to the Municipal Council a position to which he was reelected in subsequent Councils. Federman left the party when it joined together with a splinter group of the PPS to form the Independent Socialist Party in 1922. Elected in 1925, and reelected in 1927, Federman served as secretary of the Council from 1927 to 1930, serving on several committees, speaking out in favor of labor and denouncing its antisemitism. Venerated by his comrades for his devotion to the cause, Federman jumped ship a number of times: from the SDKPiL to the S.S. then finally to the Bund where in Częstochowa he became its undisputed local leader. His political peregrinations were not far out of the ordinary for party activists of all stripes. As Markusfeld spoke for the upper-class and philanthropic leadership, and Rabbi Asz, represented the religious community, Federman was the voice of the Jewish proletariat. He was ubiquitous in the annals of Yiddish and labor history in Częstochowa, spanning the period of the Jewish Literary Society and Lira through the formative period of the Bund. He played a singular role in raising the class-consciousness of Częstochowa workers and intelligentsia. As a young man, he took part in the amateur dramatics, and later, in union organizing. Federman was a devoted Yiddishist, a prolific party journalist, and representative of the Jews in the local city and national Bundist councils. Dos naye vort (1921–1922) was the openly partisan organ of Di fareynikte edited by Federman, until he crossed over to the Bund, along with A. Khrobolowski. The two comrades figured in all aspects of political and cultural life on the Yiddishist left. With the help of American labor leaders, he escaped the Nazis by taking a long circuitous route through the Soviet Union. Federman left for America in 1940, where, after the Holocaust, he wrote an autobiographical novel and dedicated himself to the postwar Bund and the surviving Częstochowa community. With their most active members either emigrating, or going over to the Communist Party, the Bund, or Po‘ale Tsiyon-left, the Territorialist movement declined. In 1921 to 1922, at the time of elections to the Sejm and with Kruk as its candidate, the party changed its name, once again, to Umophengike, the Independent Socialist Party. In 1925 the party, despite government warnings, held a May Day demonstration, for which Kruk was arrested and jailed. Of the remaining Territorialists, some joined the PPS, as an independent faction, while others joined the Umophengike.

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The Bund and Communism In 1897, the Bund was founded, clandestinely, in a farmhouse attic on the remote outskirts of Vilna around the same time as the First Zionist Congress was underway in Vienna (which by contrast, was held openly and in a grand manner with top hats and tails). Thirteen young men and women (the Bund, like all but the Orthodox movements, was staunchly egalitarian), Russified Jewish intellectuals and autodidacts, belonging to the Russian Socialist, revolutionary movements, secretly gathered for the purpose of organizing Jews laboring under deplorable conditions. Together they plotted, conducted strikes and accelerated the momentum of widespread labor unrest that had begun in the previous decade. The Bund started to appear in Częstochowa right after the pogrom in 1903. In time, it controlled, among others, unions belonging to clothing workers, furniture makers, and bakers. Cantor Birnboim’s son, Shlomek held an important position in the Bund as leader of the youngsters’ group (Kleyner Bund), founded in 1904. At first, the group envisaged radicalizing Jews and integrating them into the revolutionary movement as Russian workers, not as Jews. However as almost all Jews spoke neither Russian nor Polish, the Bund, for strictly practical reasons switched to Yiddish as a means of communicating with the workers and unionizing them. It was not until 1905, the year that the Bund first established a stronghold in the workshops and factories of Częstochowa and other cities, that it acquired both a working class and a Jewish-Yiddishist identity that was strongly anti-bourgeois, vehemently anti-Zionist, anti-Hebrew, and anti-clerical. Aside from the works of Marx, Territorialists and Bund leaders, Bundists were influenced by the writings of Austro-Marxist theoreticians of national autonomy: Viktor Adler, Karl Renner and Otto Bauer (despite their opposition to the idea of a Jewish nation). Rather than Hebrew, they regarded Yiddish as the sole national language of the Jews. Their abundant labor literature was distinct from, modern Yiddish belles lettres, though not at all rejected in cultured circles. In practice, the Bund was bi-lingual with Yiddish as the national language and Polish, or Russian as the language of the land. Their intelligentsia, most of whom had a kheyder background, knew Hebrew as well. Throughout Poland the Bund produced many newspapers and other publications in their own publishing house, Kultura. The Bund advocated the notion of the Jews as an autonomous, proletarian people living in a federated socialist republic. As such they were entitled to all the benefits of national, cultural and political rights that they carried with them on their person, wherever they resided in the Russian Empire, including Poland. This was an important stipulation because the Jews, unlike the other ethnic groups did not occupy a separate territory, which, in the eyes of much of

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the left, disqualified them from being considered a nationality. Antisemitism, it believed in accordance with strict Marxism, would disappear in a classless society. Despite weakening its own political clout, the Bund’s strict adherence to their ideological principles in the interwar years kept it from entering into any political alliances with “bourgeois” parties or taking part in undemocratic elections. Consequently, though the Bund had significant success in the Municipal Councils, including that of Częstochowa, they never elected a single Deputy to the Sejm. Nevertheless, they saw itself as successful in giving the common people a sense of their own empowerment and self-esteem. On occasion it made exceptions for running together with Di fareynikte, Territorialists, and the Po‘ale Tsiyon-left, whose attenuated Zionism made it the party closest to the Bund. Throughout the interwar period the Bund occupied a large footprint in Częstochowa life: in Municipal Council deliberations, in the factories and shops, in organizing labor and carrying out major strikes against their owners, standing up to the government’s antisemitism and suffering periodic mass arrests. In 1927, the Bund called for a socialist government, which it fervently believed was the only way to solve the economic problems of Poland and promote the general welfare of all citizens. It protested low wages, called for protecting tenants from evictions, expansion of medical care, an eight-hour workday, shifting the tax burden from the poor working masses onto the wealthy, protection of children, providing them with school meals, cultural and sports programs – museums, theater, cinema – summer camps for all small children, promotion of literacy for adults; paving streets and planting trees in the poorer districts. On the Jewish cultural and educational front, the Bund insisted on implementing all the equal rights given to them de jure. With government subsidies the Bund aimed at producing well-rounded youths, emphasizing, academic subjects, sports, art, music, in a predominantly Yiddish atmosphere (its newspapers were mentioned above in the section on the press). Reaching for what would not fly, the Bund wanted Yiddish to be accepted in the Municipal Council’s affairs, including elections, and in licensing exams for artisans. The Council, strictly required that voters and candidates demonstrate proficiency in Polish. The Bund attracted children and the young people through their youth organizations, S.K.I.F. (Socialist Children Union, Sotsialistisher kinder farband) and Tzukunft (Future). Women who were fully integrated in the Bund also had a separate Organization of Female Jewish Workers (Yidishe-froyen organizatsye) addressing their special needs: home economics and childrearing, domestic relations etc. In making the transition from holding secret meetings to staging public confrontational, demonstrations, the Bund had to face the question of using

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violence. The Bund’s official position eschewing violence and terror was challenged in the aftermath of the Hersh Lekert affair of 1902. Lekert, an illiterate shoemaker from Lithuania and member of the Bund, carried out an attempted assassination of the Governor-General of Vilna in reprisal for his having flogged some twenty-six Jews and Poles who demonstrated that year on May Day. Lekert was hanged and became a labor movement martyr and folk hero of the left. Some Bundists wanted to follow in Lekert’s footsteps as a matter of policy and for the sake of Jewish honor. The matter was debated over a period of time, but in the end the Bund took a position against revenge and terror, unlike the Territorialists, in favor of labor agitation and the ballot box. Violence was acceptable only as a means of self-defense, for which purpose they created a formidable armed militia, public skepticism of its effectiveness notwithstanding. Like the Territorialists, Bundists protected Jews smuggled across the border into Germany and were instrumental in getting rid of the Jewish thugs who worked for the police, harassing Jewish radicals and extorting Jewish merchants in the marketplaces. There is no record of the Bund going as far as the Territorialists in shooting their enemies or bombing them. The Bund joined the Territorialists, Po‘ale Tsiyon and the Communists in the short-lived Workers’ Council that also included the National Workers’ Union and Christian Democrats. The latter opposed the participation of the Jewish socialists, but Joseph Aronowicz the Bund leader in Częstochowa at the time, played a leading role in getting the Council to reject the proposal of excluding Jews. The election results indicated that Territorialists were the most popular, the Communists next in line followed by the Bund and Po‘ale Tsiyon-left. The initial enthusiasm of the Jewish parties in the joint Workers’ Council was greater than that of the Poles and the Council soon collapsed. Aronowicz was elected to Częstochowa’s first Municipal Council where he came out against the Polish-Soviet war, a decidedly unpopular opinion among the Polish nationalists and for which he was arrested. Thanks to council member Rafal Federman, who played a major role in Częstochowa, at the time a Territorialist, and acting in concert with the Bund and the PPS, Aronowicz was released and returned to his seat on the Council. As a Bundist, in 1926 he was able to convince the Council to increase the city’s subsidy to Jewish secular schools from 1,500 złoty to 4,000 złoty. This proved only temporary and, in 1936, the government dissolved the TSYSHO school system in which Federman played a leading role (this was only in Częstochowa). It was reopened in Częstochowa in 1938. At the beginning of 1939, the Bund was able to open an afternoon Yiddish school at the local public school. Theoretical and physical opposition to the Bund occupied significant space in the Communist party ideology. Plekhanov famously rejected the difference

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between the Bund and the Zionist parties, calling Bundists nothing but “seasick Zionists.” The Communists attacked the Bund as a bourgeois deviation from Marxist internationalism. The PPS, and the KPP both demanded that the Jews give up Yiddish and integrate themselves into the country as Poles; for the former as Polish national proletarians, for the KPP, as transitional Poles who were members of the international proletariat. Despite the widely held canard that all Communists were Jews, Jews never constituted a majority in either party. Nevertheless, both the KPP, and the PPS, did, in fact, have a disproportionate number of Jewish comrades in its rank and file and in its leadership, relative to their percentage of the general population. Notwithstanding the bitter rivalries between the Bund, the KPP and the PPS for the allegiance of the Yiddish speaking proletariat, the two parties were reliable allies when pogroms broke out, and later, especially, during the Holocaust. In the late 1930s, the PPS, at times, joined the Bund in organizing self-defense units against assaults and antisemitic campaigns, by OZON and other postPiłsudski groups. After the infamous pogrom in Przytyk on 9 March 1936, the PPS initiated a half-day general strike on 17 March that brought economic life in Częstochowa to a standstill. Some Bundists also switched sides and joined the PPS. However, during the pogroms in the late thirties, the PPS made a major about face in the way it regarded the Bund. They came to recognize the Bund as a legitimate Jewish national party because of their internal kinship and ideological ties with the Jewish people facing a problem that could not be attributed solely to class struggle. This change was above all the result of the Bund’s affiliation with the Second International. While the Bund often insisted it was a socialist party first and a Jewish party second, in practice, its position was never so clear-cut. In Russia, as in Poland, the matter was complicated because a minority of its members became pro-Communist during and after the Revolution and, in 1922 wanted to join the Comintern, as the Kombund (The Communist Bund). In 1917, the Polish Bund split from its counterparts in Soviet Russia whose members were imprisoned and its party eventually liquidated. At the end of that year, in response to the Balfour Declaration, the Bund’s mantra became Doikeyt, “hereness,” meaning the Jews belonged “here” in Poland, their ancestral home, where they would struggle for a federated socialist country free of antisemitism. Whatever their differences on the “National Question,” the Bund, like the Territorialists, Po‘ale Tsiyon-left, KPP and the PPS were all quite active in Częstochowa, agreeing on the need to concentrate on the class struggle through agitation and propaganda, developing unions, conducting strikes, party life, and combatting antisemitism.

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Emboldened by their inroads into the Bund, the Communists, at times viciously, resorted to physical violence and mayhem against it. On several occasions, during the elections of 1922, the Communists physically attacked Bundists in Warsaw and Łódź, but PPS came to their defense and drove off the attackers. In 1931, heeding the Comintern attack on Social Democratic parties as “social fascists,” the KPP, and Kombund began a campaign of terror against the Bund, attacking union leaders breaking up their meetings, evening classes, children’s schools and vandalizing their famed Medem Sanatorium located near Warsaw. The mayhem continued in the streets, in the light of day, with KPP thugs wielding knives and brandishing guns, committing murder and wounding some fifty Bundists. There is no available record to indicate that this situation obtained in Częstochowa. Such tactics proved counter-productive; by the end of the year, only ten percent of the Kombund cast their lot with the Polish Communists, the rest rejoined the Bund. The KPP, however, still sought to persuade the Bund to give up its nationalistic position and merge, linguistically and consciously, with the indigenous population on a strictly proletarian, pro-Moscow basis. Both the KPP and the PPS, until the late 1930s, nevertheless formed occasional coalitions with the Bund and Po‘ale Tsiyon-left. Even if they each had ulterior motives, they convincingly displayed labor solidarity and their steadfast opposition to antisemitism. However, neither the KPP nor the PPS gave their full support to the Bund or to the Jews, “as Jews,” but rather as proletarians. To the Bund’s dismay, the PPS feared that if they allied too closely with Jews they would alienate their antisemitic rank and file. After considerable debate, the Bund decided, in 1930, to join the Labor and Socialist International (LSI), which included the British Labour Party and the German Social Democratic party, to avoid being isolated in their fight against class exploitation and fascism. For the Communists, fraternization with Bundists bordered on the criminal and in the 1930s the Comintern officially cut ties with the Bund. The Bund’s preeminence in party-politics came about for several reasons: Its dominant role in the Labor Movement, its promotion of Jewish secular, cultural life in Poland, its impressive youth movement and self-defense organization. By the mid-thirties, in the worst of times for Jews in Poland, Jews of all political parties, including members of Agude, came to regard the Bund as the one party that was uncompromising in speaking for the common man’s interest, and in its steadfast outspoken condemnation of antisemitism. Except for some of the small towns, the Bund led a bloc of Po‘ale Tsiyon-left and some unions, winning stunning victories at the polls in cities all over Poland in the, gmina and Municipal Council elections. Their voters’ attraction to the Bund, however, was not at all the result of an ideological commitment, but, rather a pragmatic decision. Interestingly, in Częstochowa, and some other smaller towns,

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unlike the situation in Warsaw, Łódź, and Vilna, the elections of 1938 and 1939 did not result in Bundist victories.

The Common Culture of the Left All the three parties, the Territorialists, Bund, and Po‘ale Tsiyon-left were secular Yiddishist, socialist, egalitarian and strove for minority rights, long before the German occupation in 1915. The three parties and later the Communists had access to their own press, and together they distributed and inundated the public and targeted audiences that were categorized according to their trades and professions, with copious printed information and propaganda. Disseminating thousands of leaflets, pamphlets, broadsides and campaigning in their press, the three propagated their message primarily in Yiddish, but also in Russian and Polish, staging street corner rallies and using party orators to attract and harangue the masses. As parties of “the people,” the three parties campaigned vigorously for recognizing the language of the folk as the legitimate language of communication in all party functions, in school, on the street, and in government. In the course of the Second Republic, as has been described above, the Territorialists lost influence at the expense of the two other parties. Workers were urged to join the parties, organize and coordinate manifestations of discontent and anger. Many of their members, including the Communists, came from bourgeois homes or straight out of the yeshivas still wearing their ear locks and gabardines. Down to the end of the Second Republic, the Bund, the Po‘ale Tsiyon-left, and the Communists led and carried out strike campaigns in major factories for shorter hours, improved hygienic conditions, higher wages (in some instances as high as 30 to 60 percent increases), vacations, sick funds, an eight-hour day and an end to child labor. The workers struck for these reasons and in protest of the physical attacks against them, the shootings, and killing of demonstrators by the police. Some strikes lasted for weeks or months. To the best of their abilities, and dependent on the success of their fundraising – which, could be dangerous when comrades went fund raising in the provinces where police and bandits lurked – the radical parties tried subsidizing the strikers for lost hours and provide funds for the unemployed and widows of workers. Indeed, a working-class movement, composed of factory workers, salespeople, and office workers, as well as sympathetic middle class and individuals belonging to the free professions, took root. Not admitted into Polish professional organization, or employment in hospitals, Jewish doctors and lawyers, who constituted a significant number of those pursuing these occupations were

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typically self-employed. Even if it did not capture the hearts and minds of all Czestochower Jews, and was opposed by anti-secular elements of the population, socialism did become a salient factor of town life. Some of the organized strikes were massive; involving hundreds, sometimes thousands of Jews and Poles, and, in one instance in May 1905, an angry mob of ten thousand people took part in the demonstration. The police made arrests, the courts usually banned the strikers from the city, or sentenced them to four-year terms of hard labor, and in fewer instances, exiled them to Siberia. Above all, the three also shared, along, with the KPP and PPS, a sense of proletarian solidarity that came out of a common culture of, agitation and propaganda, confrontation and its penal consequences. Those punished were hardly discouraged, or deterred, and upon release went right back to their subversive work. When forced to disband, the conspirators went underground, moving their clandestine meeting halls to private apartments, into the woods or in cemeteries. They also undertook spirited election campaigns, commemorations of international labor leaders, sloganeering and publicizing their party aims. The everyday lives of the young revolutionaries consisted of socializing with comrades attending regular meetings, plotting strikes, disseminating propaganda and fundraising. In Russia, after the all Jewish nationalist parties were declared illegal; only the Communist party received state recognition. However, in Poland, the three continued their agitprop and cultural operations. Major strikes continued up until the end of the Second Republic. Overall, it is difficult to gauge how successful striking workers were in wresting concessions from their bosses, although in some cases we know of workhours being reduced, wages increased, and work conditions improved. Ranking high on their agenda was combating clericalism, and antisemitism, in word and in deed. After the 1902 pogrom in Częstochowa and those that broke out in other towns and cities, particularly in Kishinev in 1903, and Białystok in 1906, the three parties staged mass protests and started their own armed self-defense units to fight not only the pogromczyks but also the Jewish hoodlums that extorted money from Jews and served as union busters, spies for factory bosses, and police collaborators. Men of the self-defense were armed with short, heavy wooden bars, knives and guns that were easily acquired from smugglers on the nearby Polish-Silesian border. The Territorialists and the Bund, under extreme circumstances, were not shy about using deadly force when necessary. Throwing caution in to the wind, the three defied state ordered bans on public assembly with choreographed street parades. Before and after the Revolution of 1905, each party protested and celebrated their causes in massive, attention drawing, politically charged crowds. Answering the government’s provocations with

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their own counter measures, before the Revolution the three openly celebrated the assassination of Tsar Alexander II. After the Revolution, the Po‘ale Tsiyon-left, and the Bund protested the liquidation of their parties in the Soviet Union, whose support they, along with the Di fareynikte, gave during the Revolution and civil war. (In Ukraine, during this period, the Bundists were called Kombundists, Di fareynikte were called the United Jewish Communist Party, and the Po‘ale Tsiyon, the Jewish Communist Party; together the first two were called the Communist Union, Komfarband. When street demonstrations became too dangerous, the young leftist groups gathered indoors for seminars on their leading thinkers in spite of a police presence in the corridors. With the government’s ban on celebrating the workers’ yontif (holiday) on May Day, Yung Borokhov (Borokhov Youth) planned to assemble, illegally on the tenth anniversary of its founder’s death; five hundred young people filled a large assembly hall, paying no attention to the police standing in the doorway, keeping an eye on them. On 1 May 1922, 8,000 radicals, including Communists, and PPS members marched together in the streets. The community admired them; the police watched them. Well-disciplined youths, along with the youngsters under their guidance, marched through the main streets and the Aleja, parading under their own red flags, wearing scouting uniforms (the Bund’s uniform was red and blue; the Zionists blue and white). On the eve of May Day 1907, the activist youth festooned the town with red flags and banners emblazoned with revolutionary slogans, hanging them on telegraph wires and on factory chimneys. Later the Communists engaged in the same provocative actions. Overwhelmed, the police tried frantically removing the banners. Except for the Communists, the other three parties had their separate school systems (as did the Mizrachi and Agude). In the years before the war, the revolutionary parties held regular May Day demonstrations, sometimes curbed by mounted police and the city’s restricting the streets where they could march to the Jewish part of the Aleja. Party membership was not exclusively political; movement politics engaged the whole person. The three offered their comrades a rich program of culture and entertainment with banquets, concerts, theater, and well-attended classes, highly cultured literary evenings and lectures by prominent party speakers from Częstochowa and brought in from other cities as well. For example, Emanuel Ringelblum and Raphael Mahler, among others spoke to meeting of the Po‘ale Tsiyon-left. Sometimes, speakers arriving illegally from Warsaw and elsewhere, had to be provided with papers and kept hidden from the police in a safe house or smuggled across the border. At times, a legitimate locale fronted for a safe house. The avowed intention of the Labor Movement was to raise the workers’ consciousness and “elevate” the level of their cultural tastes. Beginning around the turn of the century,

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increasing at the time of the Revolution of 1905, and just before the beginning of the First World War, workers gained a new awareness of their inherent power as strike fever swept through the factories. To engage and indoctrinate the young, the three sponsored summer camps and sports clubs, as did the Communists. Numerous romances and matches among the young people blossomed in these settings. Much as the radical Jewish parties had in common, the Territorialist, Bund and Po‘ale Tsiyon-left, and the Communists had major organizational and principled differences between them as well. What kept them apart was an oftenunbending devotion to different versions of Marxism and socialist idealism, in general, valorizing theory over their common practice. In Częstochowa all the radical parties followed different ideological versions of the same political culture, targeting the same groups of workers, applying nearly the same tactics, creating or supervising unions, and each trying to keep their unions from falling into the hands of a rival party. “Boring from within” the Communists tried to win over Territorialists, comrades of the Po‘ale Tsiyon, non-red labor unions, sports clubs, and students in Axer’s Gimnazjum. They were also active in the public high schools. The parties built their organizations on the backs of existing discontent in the factories and workshops, in massive homelessness, and the need for food and shelter for the poor and hungry. Their efforts and sense of common cause intensified during the prevailing desperate conditions of the First World War. But there was another, sadder dimension to the joy and optimism for a “better future,” communicated by the youth movements on the march. They were a “lost generation.” Observers called them “a youth without a future.” Their precipitous break with the bourgeois and religious values of their parents, their transvaluation of values, rendered them also a youth without a past, caught in a profoundly painful generation gap between the traditional and the modern. (What must Rabbi Asz have thought about his son Mendl joining the Territorialists?) In the face of massive unemployment, the numerus clausus in the universities and pervasive antisemitism, the youth movement’s radicalism was fueled by wishful thinking expressed in the enthusiasm of the moment. Below the surface, however, lay a deep sense of despair.

Hashomer hatzair In interbellum, Poland there were a large number of Zionist youth movements – He-halutz hatzair, Tzeirey tziyon, Gordonia, Tzeirey mizrachi, Beytar, the Po‘ale Tsiyon-right’s Freiheit, and other smaller groups. Young men and women came to Częstochowa from all parts of Poland to enroll in intensive Hachshara programs,

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preparing young men and women for life in Israel, and especially on the Kibbutz. The best known, which enjoyed most prestige, was the Czestochower based Hashomer hatzair, the Young Guard, which quickly became an international organization. Founded in 1915, with the merging of Hashomer and Tzeirey tziyon, Hashomer hatzair was known throughout Poland and abroad for its idealism, embracing all things Jewish, and dedication to a unique synthesis of cultural trends and politics, combining theory – studying leftist ideologies and Judaism everything from the Bible to Buber – and practice, working toward a Jewish homeland. Hashomer hatzair was modeled on the German Wandervogel and the European Scouting movement. It was founded in Częstochowa around 1916 to 1917, and took on a public martial character, with distinctive uniforms, flags and marching in tight formation, in step with its own band. Searching to define itself, the Shomrim (members of Hashomer) were pulled in different directions, from Borokhovism, to flirting with Soviet Marxism, to the spiritual writings of Rabindranath Tagore. Taking a cue from the Narodniki (the Russian populists of the 1870s who turned their attention to the peasantry), it taught tolerance for the “unenlightened,” meaning religious Jews, who had to be acknowledged for their ethical values. Hashomer also put a premium on embodying the ethical life in their interpersonal relations. As young workers, well read in numerous literatures, and fit young men and women, they self-consciously represented the “new type of Jew.” During the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and in Częstochowa, they displayed great heroism. At first, Hashomer hatzair was attached to Labor Zionism, but came to reject the idea of being an adjunct to an adult movement, in favor of a self-celebratory, independent humanist, Zionist youth movement, for members from, approximately, twelve to eighteen years old. The Shomrim provided its comrades with the opportunity to cultivate their Hebrew language skills; in practice they were trilingual. Hashomer was best known, internationally, for its seventeen-acre farm, purchased by their patron Markusfeld in 1897, and taken over by the Shomrim and renamed Shomria, in 1928. Four years later it evolved into a domestic kibbutz, to mirror life in Palestine. It became a leading center in Poland for Hachshara, sending some 130 comrades to Palestine, where they worked in agricultural labor and helped found a number of kibbutzim. Worldwide Hashomer hatzair had thousands of members. As was the case with all departures of members of the pioneer youth movements for Palestine, they were accompanied to the train station with great fanfare and fond farewells. Similarly, when dignitaries of all kinds, party leaders and literary figures arrived at the Częstochowa train station, large crowds of admirers turned out to greet and welcome them, among them Ber Borokhov, the Labor Zionists’ inspiration.

Part Six: Recovery and Economic Assault Despite mass poverty, the town grew. Civic improvements were made even as its new, democratic politics experienced fractured, and kaleidoscopic changes. The prewar gmina survived financially dependent on the limited number of the taxpayers and on the largesse of the philanthropists that sat on its board together with its traditional religious authorities. The two groups, despite their differences worked together on behalf of the town’s Jewish population which otherwise had no voice of its own. Subsequently, the calls for radical change in the organization of the gmina, which had emerged in the nineteenth century led to its democratization starting with the German-sponsored reforms of 1915. The transition from the old to the new politics came at a cost, since any semblance of stability was lost. The new politics had an entirely different agenda, which wooed the people with different, conflicting radical ideologies. During the First World War, politics took a new form setting the groundwork for a multi-layered democratic system in the interwar years. The reality proved that democracy was neither an easy enterprise, nor a panacea for what ailed Jewish society. In contrast to what Boleslaw Prus had said about recognizing Jewish involvement in business and industry as a boon for all of Poland, the Jewish economy was treated as a subversive “state within a state.” From the highest religious and governmental circles, Jews, their enemies said, acted against Poland’s best interests. The insincerity of the official prohibition of harming Jews was transparent and easily understood as a warrant for violence, whether as economic boycotts, or full-scale pogroms. In that time, Polish leaders made a sham of the Minorities Treaty, though keeping a ghost of parliamentary politics barely alive. Although public opinion clamored for antisemitic legislation, no actual antisemitic legislation apart from the restriction on shekhita was passed before 1939. Unofficially, however, sanctioning violence against Jews, some within the government saw Nazi Germany as a model to be emulated. Despite the gathering storm, Poland was slow to modernize its armed forces in preparation for war, paying, it seems, more attention to the “enemy” within rather than the true threat from without. Although Poland and Germany were historical enemies, the idea was broached that two could find common ground in their mutual Jew hatred, and a shared desire for their lands to become Judenrein. Technically, the profoundly Catholic component of the Polish mentality was not racist. In fact the Church welcomed converts, whereas for the Nazis a “pure” genealogy was key. For that reason, the Polish fascists felt closer to Mussolini,

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110770230-007

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although some of them were racists in the strict sense. On the occasion of Goebbels’s visit to Poland in 1934, Poland and Germany entered into a ten-year non-aggression pact, and formally abrogated the Minorities Treaty. In response to Hitler’s claim “that he is guided by the idea of settling the Jewish issue by emigration to a colony, in consultation with Poland, Hungary, and possibly Romania,” Józef Lipski, the Polish ambassador to Germany told Hitler, in September 1938, responded that “if he found a solution, we would install for him a beautiful monument in Warsaw.”1 Motivated by their experience with growing authoritarianism at home, some Poles and young Jewish Communists, both men and women joined the battle for freedom in Spain on the side of the loyalists in 1936. There they participated in combat with other Yiddish speaking comrades and Polish volunteers; three Jews and one Pole from Częstochowa fell in battle.

Industry, Commerce, and Antisemitism Surpassing Polish industry’s fortune by one third, Jewish owned industry – according to anecdotal estimates – by 1925 made up most of the widely diversified 136 factories in Częstochowa, including seventeen large-scale textile firms employing around 15,000 people. In Częstochowa, as in the textile city of Łódź, the huge factories used heavy machinery; for example, Szymon Neuman and Markusfeld’s Warta linen factory, which by 1929 employed 2,250 workers, used steam-driven looms. The Depression of 1929, and endemic Polish antisemitism had catastrophic effects on the economic situation. This affected the Jewish middle class, often disastrously, with many small traders and artisans going bankrupt, and unemployment rising sharply. However, the period between 1935 and 1939 spelled the beginning of a short-lived recovery, yet, under the OZON (The Council for National Unity, Oboz Zjednoczenia Narodowego) regime, beginning in 1937, it was also the Second Republic’s most intensive period of antisemitism. Poland’s benevolent dictator, Marshal Josef Piłsudski was succeeded by the reactionary Colonels, whom he had placed at the forefront of domestic politics before his death. They in turn were pushed out of government in 1937, by the much more right-wing OZON, headed by Colonel Adam Koc. That year it published its infamous thirteen theses, modeled on the Nürnberg Laws, calling for the expulsion of the Jews from Poland, and the country’s Aryanizaion. With Piłsudski’s passing,

1 Timothy Snyder, Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning (London: The Bodely Head, 2015), 362.

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all the paternal protections he had afforded the Jews came to an end. Between 1936 and 1939, until the last moment of Poland’s independence, all factions on the right were officially hostile to Germany, yet they admired what the Nazis were doing to the Jews. The influence of OZON declined as war approached. The Depression era economy was not the only cause of antisemitism. Paranoid and simpleminded, Polish Jew-hatred was hammered into the minds of humble Poles, artisans, merchants, and arrogant aristocrats, from all quarters: in sermons, the arts, the press, in books, booklets, posters and leaflets, all teaching, as for centuries past, that the curative for all of Poland’s ills lies in the persecution and expulsion of the Jews. The overall economic position of the Jews in Poland had remained essentially the same, and stable, since the last century, up until the First World War. All over the country, the Jewish population in the towns and cities was divided into four, more or less, fixed unequal parts of destitute, lower, middle, and upper middle classes. The division was true for Poles as well, but in different proportions, since small scale farming constituted the majority of the population’s livelihood. The economic problems of Poland after independence, which became more acute with the impact of the Great Depression radically destabilized this situation. In spite of Częstochowa’s accelerated pace of industrialization after 1921 through the 1930s, the desperately starving and increasing Jewish lower third lived off charity and philanthropy, from home and abroad. The middle and lowermiddle classes barely managed to stay afloat, and a significant proportion of its members sank into the lowest third. These included a large number of Jews engaged in crafts, manual labor, small-scale trade and those employed in civil service, and the teaching professions. In 1921, except for the metal, wood, tool and die, graphics and heavy industries, more Jews were hired in smaller Jewish-owned factories than Poles. In the clothing business, to cite the most glaring difference, 610 Jews were employed in 613 Jewish-owned factories whereas were only twenty-seven Poles were hired. In the rubber business, out of fourteen factories, ninety-six Jews were employed, as opposed to two Poles. The numbers of Jewish workers in Jewish-owned factories ranged from 98 percent in rubber manufacturing, followed by 95 percent in the clothing business; twenty-four Jewish-owned textile firms, large and small, employed thirty-four Jews and twenty non-Jews. In 1933, the number of Jews rose to a clear majority only in the textile business with 525 Jewish workers as opposed to 142 non-Jews. All seventy-three workers of the Metros Bicycle Parts company were Jewish. However, in other areas of manufacturing that emerged around

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1921, such as the production of baby carriages, ice-skates, the number of nonJews, in Jewish owned factories, exceeded that of Jews. Conditions changed in the late 1920s and ’30s when new Jewish factories, hiring mostly, or all Jews, were established in the manufacture of bicycles, baby carriages and ice skates. By 1933, Jewish craftsman comprised upwards of 50 percent of industry in Częstochowa, lasting until 1939. During the 1930s, Poles outnumbered Jews in all but the leather and textile industries. No Jews, or a negligible number of them, were hired to work in the iconic large-scale Polish or Jewish factories. Again it must be stressed that, although Jewish manufacturing in the clothing trade was at 58 percent, outstripping Polish manufacturing in this sector, the difference was not as great as the numbers might suggest. Jews worked in small-scale factories, which registered (and not all were) 1,358 persons made up almost entirely of small operations, sometimes a factory of one tailor sitting and sewing in his hovel alone. Of the total number of 3,983 employees in Jewish-owned factories, 229 were Jewish women, while there were only fifty-nine Polish female workers. In the various areas of Jewish manufacturing the percentage of Jews were in the high 90s down to the low 50s. The lowest figures for Jewish workers were in the metal, glass and stone business at 9.3 percent. The number of Jews in the crafts business was about 50 percent and climbing regularly until the invasion of Poland. The number of Jewish civil servants fell greatly, either because they retired, were fired or not hired by the Polish controlled municipal councils. If they could, many Jews left the country for European lands, America or Palestine (within the quotas), Canada, South America, South Africa, and Australia, where they formed a Diaspora of Częstochowa Landsmanshaftn, or joined one already in place. Some even sought suicide as a way out. Except for unregistered workers employed by the gmina, by 1936 most Jewish workers from all the main industries belonged to a union. Large, or small, business ran on credit and capital, which came from domestic and foreign sources, such as the still prospering Jewish banks, and its financiers, and organizations like the Joint Distribution Committee (JDC). These institutions literally saved many Jews from starvation. In 1938, Bank Polski, Poland’s largest commercial bank was ordered to stop lending money to Jews. An example of what was possible, albeit remotely, was the rehabilitated textile business, that was given a great infusion of capital. For small-scale business, however, credit was nearly unavailable unless one could turn, to willing family members abroad, which was more difficult during the Depression than in times of prosperity. During the boom of 1927 to 1929, the calm before the storm, Jewish firms also extended lines of credit to their customers, as it had earlier, in

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1922 to 1923. At that time, Jewish business, industrial production, and employment surged. This was to come to an end with the Depression. Small-scale manufacturers, such as the proprietors of stores on the Aleja, now either went under or were bought out. Along with the shrinking economy, there was a surplus of unemployed merchants, weighing down a failing economy, which was beyond rescue. Ironically poorer stores had a better chance of surviving than more prosperous emporiums because they carried a lower overhead. The once quality Częstochowa label, now appeared on shoddy goods, produced by factories for cheaper prices. This was actually advantageous for merchants because more people, including peasants, could afford to buy the merchandise. However, a new class of peddlers, going door-to-door, underselling the merchants’ already discounted prices, soon also undercut small-scale stores. Remarkably, the top third of Jewish society did much better in the second half of the decade relative to the other classes than Poles of the same class. Their economic condition improved alongside the recovery beginning 1935 and, in all likelihood, would have continued in that trajectory had it not been for Polish antisemitism and the war. Estimates of the number of Jewish-owned factories and workshops range between 1,300 and 1,500. While many factories and commercial enterprises owned by Jews (such as those producing tobacco, matches and alcohol), went bankrupt or were “nationalized.” The government often kept Jewish ownership temporarily in place, because it was simply irreplaceable. Eager to improve productivity, the government was forced to compromise its goal of Polonizing all commerce and industry by relying on Jewish know how and entrepreneurial skills in spite of the prevalent antisemitism. This practice was similar to Nazi policy during the early period of occupation after 1939. Remarkably, in 1941, in the ghetto, 1,100 Jews, grasping at straws, requested permission to open factories. The exceptions made for Jewish businesses that “were too big to fail,” were only temporary. From the 1920s, the government was determined to hasten the demise of Jewish commerce and industry by impoverishing all Jews and squeezing them out of the country. For this purpose, the antisemitic government cast a wider net that unintentionally affected middle class Poles as well. For Poland’s mostly Jewish middle class, the outstanding grievance related to the disproportionate and onerous taxes levied on small manufacturers and merchants. Nevertheless, in the mind of the smaller Polish middle class, the rapacious Jews were an alien body engaged in cutthroat competition, sucking Poland economy dry. Relative to the population at large, the taxes were not entirely crushing. Nevertheless, the Jewish community was understandably outraged and on the verge of rioting. In a panic, 33,500 Polish Jews left for

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Palestine in 1925 on what was derogatorily called, by Zionist working-class spokesmen, the “Grabski aliya,” after Władysław Grabski, the prime minister of Poland. Ironically, in one fell swoop, Grabski created more “Zionists” than the entire movement since its inception. While such a significant exodus undoubtedly filled Polish nationalists with schadenfreude, it may be considered that the tax on the middle class was not primarily antisemitic, although the Jews perceived it that way. It was the middle class, not the Jews per se, that was Poland’s cash cow. The few Poles who were in the same tax bracket were taxed in the same way, but were more willing to accept Grabski’s reforms as necessary to curb inflation. Another measure that struck the Jews hard, lasting from 1932 to 1937, was the creation of rural cooperatives and cartels, a long-established demand of the peasantry. Their purpose was to make prices uniform, and to undercut the already low prices charged by Jewish merchants. Jewish businesses went under as a result, and the economic policies were regarded as antisemitic. However, the same policies also hurt Polish businesses, and, were defensible on economic grounds alone. In the course of economic decline, Polish middle-class professional journals demonized the Jews. Pressure and mounting persecution of the Jewish community persisted until the very last moment of the republic. Aside for personal assaults, such as the arrest of one Shmuel Rotzstajn for not removing his hat as a Corpus Christi parade passed him by, the most hurtful issue for Jews in general were the increasing legal restrictions on the buying and selling of kosher slaughtered meat (shekhita), passed in March 1936. The government’s long-term aim was doing away with shekhita altogether by 1942, on so-called, hygienic and humanitarian grounds. The sale of kosher meat, which was also bought by nonJews, was a major industry that brought in large sums for the gmina and touched the lives of almost all Jews in Częstochowa, as everywhere; it also affected the peasant cattle industry as well. Furthermore, the restrictions jeopardized the livelihoods of hundreds of butchers as well and disturbed all the households for whom eating meat on the Sabbath was a religious duty. Jews took the news in a semi-state of mourning. This new policy was both an economic and religious attack on the Jews, and yet another indication of how far the government would go to make life intolerable for them. The participation of Rabbi Asz in the defense of shekhita was mentioned above. In the late 1930s, the government and the Church-sanctioned Endecja intensified their boycott and violence against Jews, now that they were unrestrained by Piłsudski’s disdain for antisemites. Jews were restricted from selling Christian devotional souvenirs and claimed that the Jews mocked the Catholic pilgrims coming to Częstochowa. Nevertheless, there were many Poles who

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despite the order of 1936, to display crucifixes and icons in their store windows, defied the Endecja and continued to shop at Jewish wholesalers for bargain prices. In the contest between the PPS and the Praca Polska, the Polish nationalist unions, the right won the upper hand and incited factory workers to strike against the Jewish owners. In 1936, Goniec Częstochowski, the Endek tabloid published in Częstochowa, demanded that Unions of Physicians, Lawyers, Engineers, and Journalists exclude Jews from practicing their professions. Yiddish journalists were excluded from this boycott, no doubt to further spread news of the deteriorating situation among the Jews. Various unions of government employees and free professions joined the boycott. The boycott of Jews in the economy spread to the segregation of Jews in the universities and Gimnazja. In October 1937, a ruling by the Minister of Education gave the go ahead for institutions of higher learning to enforce so-called ghetto benches, a policy that since 1935 required Jews to sit at the back of classrooms. The PPS joined with a not insignificant number of Polish intellectuals and professors to protest the antisemitic measures. A few professors and some students literally stood during class, in defiance of the law, but not enough to make a difference. Universities nationally reinstituted from Tsarist days, the numerus clausus, or numerus nullus (respectively in 1935 and 1938). Jewish students were routinely beaten up and attacked with clubs stuck with razor blades. There were a few Jewish fatalities. As it was, the number of Jewish students that attended Polish universities, declined precipitously from 24.6 percent in 1921 and 1922, to 8.2 percent in 1938 and 1939. Over the objections of the Church, which welcomed Jewish converts, anti-Jewish attitudes turned blatantly racist when professional organizations had to stipulate that their members had to be of Aryan descent. But by then things had got too far out of hand for the Church to call for a retreat from all forms of hate mongering, even if it had sincerely wanted to do so, which it did not. The general strike initiated by the PPS protesting the pogrom in Przytyk, on 9 March 1936, made little impression of note on the government or general population. Already, in May 1936, not yet the nadir of Polish-Jewish relations, a pilgrimage of some 20,000 students sent a clear and genocidal message throughout the land. Gathered on the Jasna Góra vowing, “to build a Catholic Polish nation,” they proclaimed that “we will not rest until the last Jew, alive or dead has left Polish soil.”2 In September of that year, Bishop Kubina issued a pastoral letter in

2 Joseph Marcus, Social and Political History of the Jews in Poland, 1919–1939 (New York: Mouton, 1983), 356.

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which he wrote that the world was divided into two rival forces, Christian and the Jewish Capitalist-Communist, anti-Christ, that cries: “We do not want Christ to rule over us.” To this Poles must respond, “Rule over us, Oh Christ”3 In October of that year, the Endeks submitted a proposal to the Municipal Council that “all Jews be driven out from the town and from the district near the frontier because of the religious importance of the city and because of its strategic position.”4 The mayor of Częstochowa dismissed the proposal as unconstitutional. By then, the option of conversion or assimilation disappeared in the racially charged antisemitism, inspired in part by the campaigns against the Jews in neighboring Germany. In 1937, pogroms broke out again throughout Poland under the direction of OZON. Hatred had reached a crescendo. For months the contagion of pogroms spread to the surrounding villages. One might have expected Jews to abandon their businesses and leave for more hospitable climes. Tragically, they were trapped in a vice between England’s restrictive immigration policies, culminating in the White Paper of 1939, and the quota set by the United States’ Immigration Act in 1924. The numbers of Jews who made it to Palestine fell sharply between 1930 and 1939 from 30,593 to 4,532. With no place to go, they had to make the best of a hopeless situation. Many businesses went bankrupt. The big business owners and entrepreneurs barely hung on.

The Pogrom of 1937 There were previous smaller-scale pogroms in Częstochowa in 1931, 1933, and 1935, but the one in 1937 was by far the worst. The pogrom wave that swept through Poland, hit Częstochowa hard on Saturday morning, 19 June 1937. The provocation was familiar, an altercation between a Pole and a Jew, the former, Stefan Baran, a known criminal, and a Jew, Yosl Pendrak. The Pole insisted that the Jew give him money for whisky, a fight ensued and Pendrak, who in 1922 had been a member of the Bundist self-defense militia, shot Baran dead. Taking the opportunity, the Endeks ignited a so-called spontaneous pogrom with the same modus operandi as in 1919: robbing, plundering, and cutting off the beards of Jews. One Jew was murdered. This time the Jews endured four days of sheer terror without any police intervention and hardly a word from the 3 Quoted in Ronald Modras, The Catholic Church and Antisemitism I Poland, 1933–1939 (London: Routledge, 1994), 352. 4 Joel Gang, “The Opposition Parties and their Attitude Toward the Jews and the Jewish Problem,” Jewish Social Studies 1, no. 2 (1939): 243.

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government of the Stanisław Sławoj-Skladkowski regime. The Jewish party selfdefense units put up a strong resistance, while the gmina appealed in vain to the Jewish Sejm deputies. Armed with hatchets, knives, hammers, and iron bars, reinforcements from surrounding villages heeded the call of the Endecja, filling the streets with all sorts of people: ordinary folk, street rabble, children, intelligentsia etc. Twenty large businesses and tens of Jewish stores and homes were set on fire including the renovated Beys medrish whose Torah scrolls were ripped apart. Shops owned by Poles, displaying signs, icons, or crosses in their windows, were spared the carnage. Some Polish shopkeepers guided the mob to their Jewish competitors. Adolescents aged 14 and 15-years old were sent to the Jewish children’s school and ransacked it completely. Meanwhile the pogrom spread to the outskirts of town. The Endecja press published the names and addresses of Jews that had not yet been set upon, and when the locale of the gmina was attacked, the phone company cynically refused to call the police because it was Sunday. The rampages came to an end on Tuesday when the police blocked entry into the Jewish neighborhood and Bishop Kubina called for calm in the city, though he maintained that the urge to avenge the blood of Baran was justified. Immediately after the pogroms, a number of trials were held in which of the 300 Poles arrested, sixty received light sentences. Pendrak was tried for murder, the prosecutor calling for the death penalty. He was defended by two distinguished lawyers, one a Bundist the other a Polish socialist who argued selfdefense of an honest person against a known criminal. He was released from prison September 1939. Innumerable homes and places of business, including Jewish stalls that were plundered, and demolished, further traumatized the community. The pogrom wave was cause for further depredations. On 29 September, following the pogrom, further violence ensued, and in December the Endecja proclaimed a month-long boycott of Jewish-owned businesses spreading the word through leaflets with Church approval. In retrospect the treatment of Jews in the second half of the 1930s, seems like a dress rehearsal for what would soon be German policy during the first period of the occupation in September 1939.

On the Eve of War As hard-pressed as the community in Częstochowa was, it was caught off-guard by a catastrophe that befell them of Polish and German doing. On 6 October 1938, the Poles invalidated the passports of thousands of Jews living in Germany, preventing them from ever returning to Poland. The Germans took advantage of the situation by rousting Jews from their beds, expropriating all their property, and expelling

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the now “stateless Jews” from their adopted country. In sealed horse wagons, 15,000 Jews were transported to Zbąszyn on the German Polish frontier. On the way, the streets were mobbed with people shouting the popular slogan Żydzi do Palestyny (“Jews go to Palestine”). There they were indefinitely detained and languished under miserable conditions.5 Humanitarian assistance went into operation immediately, organized by a special committee under the leadership of Emanuel Ringlblum and the Joint Distribution Committee in Warsaw. The refugees were settled in border towns, the first being Częstochowa, which warmly embraced some 130 Jews. At the end of January 1939, the deportees were allowed to return to Germany, temporarily, to settle their affairs, and liquidate their assets. The Częstochowa community was given advance notice by the community in Katowice that transports would arrive on Saturday afternoon. As in the First World War, the Jewish community in Częstochowa, now under the direction of Dr. Hirszberg, mobilized a country wide, well-coordinated aid program to find the necessary resources for the helpless, bewildered, in some instances, naked, passengers. Częstochowa Jews realized that what happened to their brothers and sisters from Germany today could happen to them tomorrow. Jews saw the sword of Damocles hanging over their heads, but if indeed war was imminent, it was uncertain. They were ambivalent. One could only intuit that the German refugee affair was a prelude of what was to come. But this time it was not just the Poles aping the Germans, but the Germans themselves who had deposited their brutalities on Polish soil. The first thing the refugees were taught was correct Yiddish, in order to quickly integrate themselves into the community. Without government assistance, and despite the sorry state of the economy, Częstochowa Jews gave the German Jews aid and comfort, feeding, clothing and setting them up with work in their own professions. The community raised large sums of money for the refugees to retrieve their possessions, where possible. On Chanukah, they celebrated together, receiving holiday presents from the community to suit the occasion. Częstochowa Jews took great pains to make the refugees feel like brothers and sisters. It was one of Czenstochov’s finest hours. The Jews in Częstochowa lived stoically with a gnawing anxiety. The Czenstochover Yidn Yizker book concludes its pre-Holocaust section with a report by the political activist, A. Khrobolowski, reprinted from the Czenstochover tzaytung.

5 One of the detained parents had a son named Herschel Grynszpan, a young man living in Paris. Upon learning of their detention, he walked into the German embassy in Paris and assassinated a minor diplomat Ernst vom Rath, on 7 November 1938. The Nazi’s used the shooting as a pretext for starting Kristallnacht two days later.

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The title of the article is “The Last Year.”6 Except for a major flood that overflowed from the Warta and Kucelinka Rivers, filling basements and spreading through several neighborhoods, the reporter’s piece is a dry chronicle of everyday events, from 17 February through 25 August 1939. One would hardly know, from the article that the sword was about to fall. The work of TOZ was especially highlighted. (He does not mention the short-lived branch of ORT (The Society for Handicrafts and Agricultural Work), which opened that year and was going to offer technical training.) To keep his piece upbeat, and convey a positive spin on the people’s mood, he mentioned various schools, their graduations, theatrical, and musical ceremonies. Dr. Axe’s graduating class put on a performance of Antigone, while Makkabi put on a selection of skits by a number of famous Yiddish writers. With the participation of Emanuel Ringlblum, the gmina proposed publishing a monograph on the history of Jewish Czenstochov. The famous actors of the New York Yiddish stage, Pesach Burshtayn and Lillian Lux, gave performances; movie houses attracted large audiences showing Yiddish films like The Dybuk and the Polish film Shadows over Europe. A guest from Eretz Israel spoke of the militant underground organization, the Irgun. Interestingly, the report hardly says a word about the chaotic preparations for the summer elections to the Municipal Council. Another entry found in the Sefer Czenstochow, however, points out that there were ten political parties and economic unions that threw their hats into the ring.7 Feeling the urgency to vote for representatives that would speak for them, the Jews of Częstochowa prepared ten lists of candidates (Zionist, Mizrachi, Agude, Folkists, Business, Petty Merchants, Craftsmen, Po‘ale Tsiyon-right, Bund, and Po‘ale Tsiyon-left). Amid all this confusion, simultaneously with the war against the Jews, and the threatened war against Poland, the government decided to call for Municipal Council elections to be held in August 1939. It would be the last time such elections were held anywhere in the country. Recognizing that such party fragmentation would render their electoral efforts useless, the parties involved settled upon two blocs: a right wing from Agude to Po‘ale Tsiyon-right, and a left wing encompassing the Bund and Po‘ale Tsiyonleft. Preparations for the elections combined enthusiasm for the political process, with a sense of despair. Yet, despite the intimidation and public violence of the Endecja and Chadecja the Jews and PPS turned out in droves, far exceeding their enemies. Jews elected ten councilors or 21 percent of the electorate, numbers 6 A. Khrobolowski, “Dos letste yor,” in Czenstochower yidn, ed. Raphael Mahler (United Czenstochower Relief Committee and Ladies Auxiliary, 1947), 183–6. 7 Dovid Kanyetspaler, “Dos yidishe czrnstochov-erev der tsvayter milkhome,” Sefer Czenstochow vol. 1 (Jerusalem: Entsiklopedia shel goluyot, 1967), 830.

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almost as high as 1927, when Jewish parties represented 24 percent of the electorate. At this time, PPS leader Zygment Zaremba made a major concession to the Bund, acknowledging that Yiddish language and culture encouraged good citizenship in Poland. The election showed that the right-wing parties did not have the votes to carry out all their anti-Jewish proposals, nor the support of Częstochowa’s mayor on constitutional grounds. For all its seeming futility, Jews were determined to have their rights recognized. Jewish representatives to the Municipal Council had to be accompanied home for safety’s sake. Yet, not surprisingly, even in these most dire of circumstances, the Jews did not vote as one bloc. In almost all the towns and cities, die-hard members of the various political parties and unions, including Agude, moved to the left, handing victories to the Bund, in municipalities, but, as stated above, not so in Częstochowa. With so many parties to choose from, the Bund-Po‘ale Tsiyon-left bloc could not achieve a plurality. The Jews won ten representatives but by then it hardly mattered. Noteworthy, however, is the fact that Jews had not lost all faith in the politics of democracy although they knew full-well how distorted it had become. As was frequently the case, the Jews countered the inclination to despair with great courage. As late as the last municipal council elections in May 1939, 98 percent of the Jewish electorate voted as against 60 percent of the Polish Christian vote. What did the Aleja look like just before the war began? Endekes picketed outside the entrances of Jewish stores, beating up Jews, shattering windows, wrecking the insides, pillaging and looting the merchandise, all to keep Christians away, and put the Jews out of business. The once beautiful boulevard was now a war zone, Jewish proprietors, their staff and customers beaten; the Aleja was no longer a place of pleasure, for strolling or stopping in for a cup of coffee or just windowshopping. Only the very wealthy, and the self-deceived would dare to return to the scene of the crime to see what could be rebuilt and redeemed. In the past, many an entrepreneur had started from scratch after his business had failed or been demolished and watched it rise, phoenix like to renewed success. But the new Polish policy of attempting to expel all Jews was not comparable to anything that came before. Fewer and fewer signs of life that had illuminated Jewish Częstochowa – the movie theaters, the banks, and meeting halls – remained. These pogroms on life and property were carefully planned; they were not spontaneous riots. In Częstochowa, in the shadow of the Jasna Góra the bestial carnage took place with the tacit approval of the powers that resided in the holiest city in Poland. In the summer of 1939, the Polish army’s general staff, recognizing the sorry state of its air force, ordered a “voluntary” tribute from the Jews of Częstochowa, which barely raised 1,700 złotys after travelling from town to town

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requesting assistance. From all accounts the air force was a fine one, but like the rest of the Polish armed forces it was underequipped and undermanned. Signs of impending war were not taken seriously. The official attitude of the government was that there would be no war. Many Jews were sanguine, too. Their experience with the Germans during the First World War made any inkling of what was to come preposterous. Others believed, according to “reliable sources,” that war was not coming. Some Jews believed war was inevitable and fled to Łódź, where they thought they would find safety in a bigger city. Absurdly, in the midst of this entire crisis, Interior Minister, Premier General Skladkowski, had nothing better to do than order the Jews to refurbish and “beautify” the exteriors of their homes. One of the reasons, stated in the Municipal Council, for expelling the Jews from the holy city was that they were “aesthetically” displeasing. On the Sabbath, a week before the war, the head of the gmina was arrested and paraded through town under heavy police guard. He was taken to the city elders to account for the shabby appearance of Jewishowned houses. Other measures were found to vex the Jews. Although Jews in Poland made up 10 percent of the population, they accounted for 35 to 40 (some say 60) percent of government revenues. More Jewish businesses were destroyed when the government declared a moratorium on all debts owed the Jews. The widely held belief that the Polish economy would benefit from a Poland free of Jews and the appropriation of Jewish assets was wrong on two counts. The decline of the Jewish economy negatively impacted the Polish economy, and the Jews had nowhere to go. As the Jews grew increasingly impoverished, one third of the entire Jewish population had to rely on charitable funding and palliative care and interest free loans from the Joint Distribution Committee. Since all Jews were rich, the Endecja argued, they could take care of all their own needs. The economic well-being of the Jews would be the least of their problems, when desperate questions of livelihood gave way to the losing struggle merely to stay alive. On, Sunday, the third day of September 1939, the sword finally fell on Jewish Czenstochov, bringing its glorious history to an end.

Part Seven: 1939–1946 The history of the Jews in wartime, and in postwar Częstochowa can be divided into five parts: The first is the period the occupation from 3 September until the establishment of the Judenrat; the second period begins with the establishment of the Big Ghetto on 9 April 1941, and lasts through October 1942; the third is the period of the Small-Ghetto, from October 1942 through 27 and 28 June 1943; the fourth is the period of enslavement in the labor camps of the munitions factory Hugo Schneider Aktiengesellschaft Metallwahrenfabrik AG (HASAG) from July 1943 until the Soviet liberation on 16 January 1945. Originating in Leipzig, in 1863, HASAG was a lamp factory and small-arms manufacturer. During the war the company cornered the munitions market and became a wealthy monopoly and the third largest company to exploit slave labor in the General Gouvernement. After the war, the company returned to lamp manufacturing. The aftermath, the period of the immediate postwar years through July 1946, is covered separately in Part Eight.

The Occupation and the Judenrat At ten in the morning, on a balmy Sunday, 3 September 1939, the third day of the war, German tanks, armored cars, and unseasoned Wehrmacht troops, “ordinary Germans,” soon to learn the art of mass murder, rolled into Częstochowa, occupying the city without opposition. Two nights earlier, on Friday, throngs of local peasants had already begun taking to the roads with their goods and livestock. Panicked Polish police fled the city, and the garrison of soldiers, made a tactical withdrawal, pushing their way through the clogged roads, even as they were strafed by low-flying German planes. On Monday morning, Germans in Częstochowa intermingled nonchalantly with the general population, even distributing cookies and chocolate. At eleven o’clock, however the Nazis’ unleashed a pogrom that became fixed in the minds of the city population, as “Bloody Monday.” The pogrom that began throughout the Jewish neighborhoods lasted for three days. The oft-repeated canards that Jews were all criminals, that they had started the war and were caching weapons, taking pot-shots at German soldiers, for which the Poles were also blamed, became the pretext for soldiers to rampage through the streets, invading and plundering homes at all hours. Night was turned into day when floodlights illuminated the streets and Jewish men and women were brutally driven from their homes, half-dressed, barefoot, or naked.

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110770230-008

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The Germans hauled men off to makeshift prisons, or forced them to do pointless, impossible work, if for no other reason than to torture and humiliate them. The old, sick, and infirm were shot. Others were beaten bloody, whipped with riding crops and had their heads bashed in with rifle butts. Full-blown chaos, mayhem, arbitrary arrests, the use of torture and the murder of prisoners became routine. Any infraction of the new rules laid down by the Germans, particularly having access to a radio or carrying a sharp instrument, like a pocketknife, or a razor, was met with summary execution. When Polish fighter planes flew over the city, the Germans fell face down on the ground for cover and ordered everyone else to do the same. After the planes departed, the Germans stood up but ordered the Jews and Poles to remain as they were, lying face down, for hours longer. Then they were ordered to stand up for more hours, with their hands up in the air, under the sun beating down on their heads. All over the city, machine guns were deployed by troops firing freely, massacring people, and spreading panic. Initially, Poles and Jews were assembled together, in open or closed designated places, such as, the Aleja, renamed Hitler Boulevard, the marketplaces, the magistrates’ court, various courtyards, and churches. From there they were thrown into makeshift prison cellars or stalls and marched off in brigades to local placuwkes, work camps, of which there were 120, to perform heavy labor in railroad stations, delousing centers, laundries, factories, barracks, water works, and also loading and unloading iron, coal and other goods, needed by the Germans. Children aged thirteen and older, together with eminent men in the community were specifically targeted for back-breaking labor. Some were just marched to the point of exhaustion. Anyone who fell was shot. Captured Jewish women and young girls trying to escape were molested. The crackling sounds of gunfire, the pungent smell of gunpowder, the cries of the injured and dying, the shouting of orders and the filthy epithets hurled against the townspeople, the plaintive prayers of Christians and Jews, were constant. The sight of Jewish homes set on fire and consuming all their inhabitants and the uncertainty of what would happen next created panic and compounded the steady sense of horror and desperation. Reports of the number of those killed on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday varied widely, from over 300 Jews and Poles, to over a 1,000 Poles, among them 150 Jews, to, plausibly, as many as 5,000 civilians. In terms of relative percentages in the general population, the ratio of Jews to Poles killed was soon to be permanently reversed. Jews and Poles were lined up to be shot, one person at a time, each falling into the mass graves they had just dug for themselves. Other means of demeaning and humiliating Jews included, in part, assigning the rich to dirty work like

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cleaning toilets or ordering people to perform impossible tasks such as filling in graves with their bare hands or pulling out nails from the beams of a destroyed bridge with their teeth. The Gestapo Chief Krieger ordered Jewish women to clean his quarters while he played piano for them. Cows and horses killed in the shootings were buried along with the Jews in the same graves. Community leaders were required to keep two open trenches in the Jewish cemetery ready at all times. With Polish and Jewish cadavers strewn across the city, Jews were forced to remove them on wooden stretchers and bring them out of sight, behind the Polish army’s barracks. After three-days of carnage, the persecution became increasingly systematized, though, simultaneously, inconsistent. The Germans tried to convey a semblance of discipline and keeping the Jews off guard, by ordering Jewish shop and factory owners to resume business so that commerce could continue. Persons of special importance to the community, such as doctors, lawyers, industrialists and teachers, were to resume their work too, albeit under adverse conditions. In actuality, the Gestapo took a preliminary inventory of the town’s assets and a record of its commercial, and political leaders. The most important and lasting means of maintaining order was through the creation of a new gmina, the Council of Jewish Elders, the Judenrat, which the Germans used as their indirect brutal rule over the Jews. “We will show you.” one officer shouted, “Don’t think we’re the same Germans that came here in 1914.”1 So that there would be no mistaking who wielded ultimate control over the city population, the Gestapo, arriving on the heels of the Wehrmacht, dropped a huge vertical “blood flag” from the third floor of a building on Kilinski street. In the wake of Bloody Monday, women, children, and the elderly stayed home, while their men were snatched off the streets (Obławowie), by the Gestapo, German and Polish police (the so-called Blue Police because of the color of their uniforms), Volksdeutsche (Poles of German lineage). Szmalcowniks (bounty hunters) and Polish street thugs. Polish children too were a danger. When they spotted a Jew in the street they pursued their helpless victim yelling, with great amusement: “Żyd, Żyd.” Kidnapping Jews from off the streets was a daily occurrence. Unless they were bribed, they preyed on Jews in hiding, whether in attics or cellars, or for not wearing the soon imposed Jewish armband, Jews were now beaten and

1 Shlomo Waga, Khurbm Częstochowa: The Destruction of Częstochowa, trans. Gloria Berkenstat Freund (New York: JewishGen, 2012), 13.

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turned over to the Gestapo. Even a bribe was no guarantee of being released. Yet, early in the war, without rhyme or reason, some survived their ordeal and were reunited with their families; some even came home after as many as three weeks. Kidnapped men were driven to work in random places, or else imprisoned in dank cellars and makeshift holding pens, or shot outright. Forced labor was required of Jews from ages fourteen to sixty. Wives were allowed to bring food to their imprisoned husbands, lighting an illusory spark of hope that not all humanity in the Germans had disappeared. Prisoners shared their bread with those for whom no one came to bring them food. Alas, many wives returned home with their packages unopened, realizing their husbands had already been killed. Randomness was a major instrument of Nazi terror. On a winter Sabbath afternoon, women pursued and snatched up by the Gestapo were ordered to remove their coats and, purposelessly, carry bricks back and forth in the town square. On the way to work Jews were forced to sing or make mooing sounds like cows, carrying bricks and rocks or digging up stones with their hands from the shores of the Warta River. During freezing winter days, laboring Jews had to work in the waterworks barely dressed, or in clothing made from paper, or even naked, a policy that remained in force throughout the war years. Even fine clothing, which some Jews wore when they were arrested, quickly became tattered. Some Poles shamelessly exhibited schadenfreude; others, however, threw bread at the always exhausted and hungry prisoners. In 1940, Jews began to be farmed out to other labor camps outside of Częstochowa, such as Czeczanow and Auschwitz before it became fully operational as a death camp; many inmates were worked to death. Some who were ransomed were able to return. However, Sabbaths and Jewish Holy Days were especially marked for mass beatings, attacks on synagogues, and heavy labor. Before the Wannsee Conference on 19 January 1942, when the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question,” was systematized, the Germans set up Councils of Jewish Elders, Judenräte, in every town and city. These Judenräte members were made up of professionals and prominent members of the community drawn from various strata of public and private life. In Częstochowa, plans for a Judenrat were initiated 16 September and officially finalized on 1 October 1939. Beginning with six men, including Moishe Asz (son of the Chief Rabbi) the Council grew to twenty-four as their tasks widened and Nazi persecution progressed. As everywhere the Germans ruled, the Judenrat in Częstochowa was a tragic, morally ambiguous institution in wartime Jewish life. One of the Councilmen, Z. Rotbart, was a former director of the Jewish Gimnazjum; another was B. Kurland, a famous athlete. The head of the Judenrat

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was Leon Kapinski a manufacturer, a former member of Lira, and a Zionist. Others included, lawyers, businessmen, political functionaries, union heads, rabbis who managed the cemetery, teachers, and engineers. Asz and a few other officials quickly quit their positions when they realized that the Judenrat was completely under the thumb of the Germans and functioned to the detriment of the Jews. Others eagerly and rapidly replaced them, although there was a steady turnover of Judenrat members. These servants of the Germans personally benefited from their position, being exempt from paying taxes and forced labor, yet their own position was tenuous. In the first place, they were not treated kindly or with respect, neither by the Germans nor by the Jews. If the Judenrat failed to procure the requisite number of Jews for labor, the Germans forced the Judenrat members to make up the difference. On 15 December 1939, the Jews of Częstochowa, fourteen years and older were ordered by the Germans, through the Judenrat, to wear armbands made to exact specifications, with a blue Mogen Dovid (Star of David) against a white background, the colors of the Zionist movement. Jewish professional offices, factories, and stores were also marked on the exterior walls or windows with a Mogen Dovid, until the time that their businesses were wholly appropriated by Aryans, Volksdeutsche, Germans or Poles. Upon Aryanizaion all non-essential Jewish workers were expelled, and, subsequently, all inventories looted. Some Jews were able to draw money or merchandise from their Aryanized businesses, when the “trustees” lacked the skills and know-how to run their newly appropriated businesses themselves. When that was the case, they kept the old owners on, but no longer than necessary. The “badge of shame,” the Judenrat, and later, on 9 April 1941, the establishment of the ghetto, all deliberately harkened back to the Middle Ages, and the pre-emancipation era as a means of isolating, subjugating and dehumanizing the Jews. Like Robert Weltsch, the editor of the Jüdischer Rundschau in Berlin, who in April 1933 famously published a headline exhorting Jews to “wear their Yellow Star as a badge of pride,” Jews in Częstochowa comforted and encouraged each other to do the same. In order to keep a tally of the Jewish population, the Germans frequently required all Jewish persons to register with the Judenrat (for food, work, and identity cards), which, in addition to providing laborers, was necessary for creating a self-supporting Jewish economy. Converts and Poles with a Jewish spouse were not spared from the official obligations and were registered accordingly. The Germans’ disregard for the actual economic state of the Jews was apparent when in November of that year the City Chief ordered the Judenrat to come up with one million złotys in ten days or else 100 Jews would be shot. After much heartache and pleading, the Jews paid the Germans a reduced

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ransom of 400,000 złotys, collected from taxes on the community. Furthermore, all precious personal possessions had to be deposited with the regime in special designated places on penalty of death. The Judenrat’s responsibilities to the community were huge, encompassing a large bureaucracy of hundreds of Jews divided into numerous departments, each with its own director. These included, healthcare, financial aid, loans, food provisions (the Judenrat distributed 5,300 meals on a daily basis), attending to the needs of orphans and elderly, legal and religious issues (settling internal disputes between Jews), technical matters, social services, job training, pedestrian traffic control, registration and statistics of available labor, now from, ages twelve to sixty, and of skilled laborers, and the community’s economic condition. Whatever good it did, and, to be sure, there were Jews who considered the department heads to be honorable individuals, the Judenrat could not shake off being viewed as a malicious force and a stooge of the Germans. Every aspect of the Judenrat’s role was ultimately geared to maintaining order so that the Germans could steal everything the Jews had of any value, and above all else to procure Jews for hard labor. At the same time, the Judenrat’s failure to dissuade the Germans from attacking the most holy symbols of Czestochower Jewry, signified its utter helplessness in the face of absolute might and the beginning of the end of the community. At the instigation of the Germans, uniformed soldiers, Volksdeutsche, street thugs and criminals, had ransacked the Old Synagogue in September 1939. It was completely destroyed with the liquidation of the Small Ghetto on 25 June 1943. In November 1939, the City Synagogue, which was built in 1855, to accommodate the increased number of Jews, was also destroyed. The City Synagogue was known for its three outstanding cantors. Ziskind Rozental served the packed Synagogue for thirtythree years. He introduced a choir for the High Holidays and was appreciated for his outstanding original, musical compositions. Rozental died at the age of seventythree and was succeeded by Yoysef Bardash who served with great success. He remained in Częstochowa for ten years until he was wooed to a position in Johannesburg. Continuing in the same traditions of his predecessor, H. Y. Khaleva, was its last cantor. On 25 December 1939, some Poles with German approval celebrated Christmas with a pogrom, blowing up the New Synagogue and setting it ablaze; afterward, its contents were pillaged. The Germans filmed the destruction of the New Synagogue for the pleasure of moviegoers back home. Similarly, when the Germans partially destroyed the Jewish Hospital, the great symbol of the community’s pride and hope, what could the Jews have felt if not despair? It was an action taken to wantonly destroy what was so precious to the Jews, though almost entirely against Germans interests. When the occupiers transferred control of the Jewish Hospital

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to the German police, they dismembered it, chopping it up into smaller parts but allowing for outpatient dispensaries in different rundown neighborhoods. The Judenrat helped keep these facilities operational under extreme conditions by providing them, to the best of their abilities, with linens and pillows, medications and hospital instruments. Sometimes medications were smuggled out of the Judenrat’s warehouse or bought from Poles. Usually doctors or nurses could do little more than apply iodine to a wound, or dispense, if they had it, aspirin and cold medications. Medical supplies were limited, but not altogether lacking. Medical facilities, including the mikveh, mostly dealt with delousing patients, and with containing typhoid, tuberculosis, and dysentery and other infectious diseases brought on by the absence of hygienic conditions, and malnutrition. These precautions were taken to keep the German from becoming infected. Throughout the war Jews lived on a starvation or subsistence level diet, which few survived. The Judenrat’s categorization of the Jews by profession, and by trade, specified their usefulness to the Nazi regime. Jews could consider themselves fortunate if, because of their skill, they were placed in a workshop or became the personal servants of Germans. Many attempted to give a more elevated account of their status – factory workers claimed they were manufacturers, ordinary needle workers, master tailors, and seamstresses and clerks, or that they were bookkeeper-statisticians. The Judenrat’s work in the areas of registration, statistics, housing, taxation, requisitioning Jewish possessions, labor, and street traffic, were subordinated to the corresponding German offices. To check for themselves, the German Labor Office seized the Judenrat’s records of all the men fit for work. While a thorough accounting of Jewish statistics and property was difficult, if not impossible, to ascertain, what was gleaned served the Germans well for their nefarious plans, and for their personal profit. The Judenrat functioned in these capacities throughout the period of the ghetto. To support the community at large and at the same time pay tribute to the Germans, the Judenrat was constantly compelled to tax all registered Jews beyond endurance. Generally, the poor paid the same amount of taxes as the better-off. In cases of extreme emergency, those with means had to pay a higher tax, which, they were often more than glad to do, although, as their fortunes dwindled, so did their voluntary contributions. Officially, Jews were not permitted to have in their possession more than 2,000 złotys, a figure later reduced to 500. Added to the unjust tax structure, the better-off, between the ages of fortyfive and sixty, could pay a ransom to the Judenrat that would then pick a substitute for them among the poor to perform hard labor. Since the substitute worker received some pay for his work, being a ransom was, relatively speaking,

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not always disagreeable. This practice came to an end in the spring of 1942, before the large-scale deportations to Treblinka began in the fall. Until this time, desperate women came to the Judenrat in droves, before and during the period of the ghetto, to plead for the return of their kidnapped husbands or sons; they were rarely successful. Class hatred was exacerbated by the visible difference in the greater, albeit still inadequate, amount of bread doled out to the better-off. Furthermore, and quite obviously if not ostentatiously, the Judenrat enjoyed a higher standard of living than the rest of the Jews. What irked the poorer class of Jews, and the leaders of the prewar leftist political movements, the Jews’ only voice, was the arrogant and utter lack of transparency of how tax money and food were distributed, and what was contained inside Judenrat warehouses. The Judenrat’s attitude was to defend its actions aggressively. As far as they were concerned, it was not the business of Jews outside the Judenrat to meddle in their affairs. When initiating projects (such as building makeshift hospitals and soup kitchens), that were dependent on seed money given to the Judenrat by the Germans, the money was quickly transferred to the camp police and to Hauptman Paul Degenhardt – who distributed the money at his own discretion. Degenhardt was the person in charge of all operations and final selections of Jews bound for death. Another reason for the Jews’ hatred of the Judenrat was the harassment they suffered at the hands of the Department of Street Traffic Inspection, Inspeckaja Ruchu Ulicznego – or IRU. The Judenrat organized the IRU as a Jewish police force on the first of May 1940. Dressed in plainclothes, but wearing a special armband, they were mainly upper-middle class, assimilated Jews, initially consisting of forty-five men and growing to eighty by the end 1940. As inspectors, they and their families were exempt from forced labor. Their duties consisted of insuring that Jews kept curfew hours (6pm, and later 8pm), that traffic moved along smoothly, that Jews did not stroll freely on the streets, especially in groups, or show off their finest clothing, so as not attract attention to themselves. Additionally, they were charged with maintaining order during the distribution of food, guarding the Judenrat’s offices, and depots, monitoring sanitary conditions and prices charged in Jewish stores. They were also forced to assist in evicting Jews from their homes. Resistance to the Judenrat took a number of different forms, requiring a highly organized political and social-cultural structure. The main force in this regard was the newly organized Workers’ Council (Arbeter-rat), formed clandestinely in early May 1940 on the foundations of the prewar political movements. Their members and activists included labor Zionists and their youth movements, and older and younger Communists, who were more experienced than the rest, in underground activism. At its height, the Workers’ Council had an astounding

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number of 5,000 members, serving the material, political, and cultural needs of its comrades. The Workers’ Council also published a popular, satirical illustrated journal called Rasta (Council) that poked fun at the Judenrat. The Workers’ Council was, in essence, a counter-cultural movement with its own kitchens, mutual aid funds, and a variety of services for those most in need. It was also involved in starting schools, soup kitchens, labor-oriented drama, recitals, and choral groups for public entertainment. The Council took shape on 12 May 1940, when mass rallies of a thousand people or more, were held, on Judenrat grounds. The crowds locked the Judenrat members into their offices and staged a sit-in, forcing them to listen to the workers grievances, and to recognize the strength of their organization. The workers threatened a hunger strike – a great sacrifice considering the workers were already starving – and a work stoppage, unless the Judenrat distribute food and wages equitably among the population at large, and support workers who were too poor to hire a working substitute. All this took place under the nose of the Germans, who either were not aware of it, or treated it as a strictly internal Jewish problem. However, knowing full well that the Judenrat would have to answer to the Germans for any disorder and diminished work capacity, it gave in to the Workers’ Council, increasing bread rations, creating kitchens, and paying wages for hard labor. These forced concessions gave the Workers’ Council a sense of empowerment and its members a sense of self-esteem. While Jewish homes were either destroyed or requisitioned from the better parts of town for German families, the Jewish population soared with the influx of Jews from the surrounding towns and abroad (possibly 10,000 from Vienna). Under the Occupation, Częstochowa was a major detention zone for Jews deported from other places. Émigrés from Płońsk, Łódź, Warsaw, Kraków, and other cities, and also including Poles, converged on Częstochowa. The wholesale massacre of almost the entire Jewish population, in the fall of 1942, did not diminish the HASAG munitions factories’ insatiable hunger for more and more slave labor. At first, many of the refugees, particularly those from Łódź, thought that by comparison to their own town, Częstochowa offered more comfortable conditions. In fact, the growing influx of Jews into Częstochowa burdened the Judenrat beyond its competence. Once they were in the city, if they were registered, they had to pay taxes that went to caring for the great numbers of the sick and the needy, including the refugees. But, whether they paid taxes or not, they were a drain on the Judenrat’s resources. Ghetto records indicate that 14,960 persons, including newcomers, requested public assistance. Officially, the food department was supposed to feed only registered Jews, although it is inconceivable that the Judenrat and other Jewish charities did not find a way around this order.

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According to German records, in 1941, unregistered Jews, amounting to 20 percent of the recorded population of 37,371 were not given food cards, although they were fed by the Judenrat’s soup kitchens, and other charities as well. From its prewar population of around 30,000, the Jewish community grew to around 40,000 at the end of 1941, and by early 1942 the figures jumped to approximately 50,000, exacerbating the problems of integrating them into an already crippled Jewish economy. (Other estimates are higher.) At the same time, the Germans, in advance of the invading Russians, increased the numbers of Jews and Poles they exported to other camps, such as Ostrów and Czeczanów (in the Lublin Region), Radomsk and Hrubiszów. Of 3,000 Poles deported from Częstochowa to Germany as forced laborers, only eighty returned. Many Jews and Poles were also brought to the nearby Olczyna forest where they were shot and buried. Using the data provided by the Judenrat, those who performed heavy labor, or were skilled artisans, master tailors, seamstresses, furriers, cobblers, upholsterers, mechanics, locksmiths, engineers, carpenters, watchmakers, painters, confectioners, and so on, were assigned to officers’ quarters to refurbish them and also to provide whatever luxuries the Germans desired, such as building a swimming pool, a cabaret, a casino, or a theater. Tailors and shoemakers were needed to fit or repair German uniforms and boots, and to give their wives or girlfriends fancy lingerie and furs. The Germans particularly prized expensive furs. Some Jews managed to sell their furs to Poles or let them have them for safekeeping; others destroyed the fur on their collars and lapels to keep from catching the attention of the Germans. In the meantime, those with special skills, along with their families, were given a sense of security. The Hotel Kopjecki on the Aleja, once its Jewish owners were removed, was transformed by Jewish craftsmen into an elegant brothel (for which German women were imported). Dr. Axer’s Gimnazjum met with the same fate. The Jewish Gimnazjum was turned into a school for German children, administrative offices, and quarters for the Polish Police collaborators. Jews who were useful to the Germans were privileged to live comparatively well in their protected shops with their families. They, however, could no longer own their own machinery. Sewing machines, carpenters’ tools and other equipment were confiscated from Jews who now used them only on behalf of the Germans.

The Big Ghetto Witnessing the growing number of Jews pouring into the densely crowded Jewish quarter, and aware of the establishment in Warsaw, Łódź and elsewhere of ghettos, Jews feared that in Częstochowa the Germans were planning to do the

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Figure 10: Map of Large and Small ghetto. Leib Kushnir.

same. Plans for a ghetto came to fruition on 23 April 1941. Before the Occupation the Jews resided in 400 streets throughout the town. That number was reduced to eighty-four streets after the Occupation, and then further to twentyeight streets, when the ghetto borders were fixed. The ghetto, approximately 400 by 400 meters, was bordered roughly, by the railway line and Wilsona on the west side, the Warta River and Nadrzeczna on the east, northeast was Kawia street, Kierdrzyńska and Jaskrowska streets, and on the south, Fabryczna, Narutowicz, and Strażacka streets. The “Big Ghetto” was given its name by the Germans and Jews after it was liquidated in 1942, and only a portion of it, designated as the “Small Ghetto,” remained in the historically poorest part of town (figure 10). Jews with means were removed from the better

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neighborhoods on the so-called Aryan side into the old Jewish district. Likewise, all Poles had to move out of the ghetto area and settle on the Aryan side. Each family was given three weeks to prepare for leaving. At the time, most Jews lived outside the ghetto. Revived under the Gestapo, the ghetto footprint was, more or less, the same as the one to which the Jews were restricted before their emancipation in the previous century. Various open places were sealed, further decreasing the size of the ghetto. The ghetto was without walls or barbed wire but heavily guarded by Jewish and Polish Police. For a while the IRU continued to function alongside, the newly created Jüdischer Ordnungsdienst, the Jewish Ghetto Police, into which it was ultimately absorbed. The function of the Jewish Police was essentially, to do the bidding of the Judenrat and maintain order. Unlike the more refined men of the IRU, the policemen were drawn from different strata, including the dregs of society. Starting with forty-five men in the IRU, the Ordnungsdienst grew into a police force of 250 mostly vicious men. Like the Judenrat, the Jewish Police had no jurisdiction over Poles or Germans, but for their efforts they were exempt from paying taxes, or being drafted into forced labor. What’s more, they were rewarded for denouncing Jews. At first, Jews did not take the Jewish Police seriously, poking fun at their putting on airs, and strutting about the streets, in their red, or blue and white, police hats, and special buttons, signifying their rank. The Jews spewed insults at the police and sometimes even attacked them. Brandishing rubber truncheons, the police came to be detested and feared for mercilessly beating Jews, including children, for dallying or congregating on the streets, or sitting alone on a bench on the Aleja.2 Consequently, when Jews were in the street, they often moved along the walls so that if spotted by a Jewish, Polish, or German policeman walking in their direction, they could make a quick exit into an alley or through an open gate. Curfew and street traffic restrictions for Poles and Jews were strictly enforced. Nevertheless, like the men of the Judenrat, there were exceptions to the rule. In rare cases, and motivated by a bribe or the persistence of a delegation of women that risked everything by going to the labor camps outside of Częstochowa, members of the Judenrat and the police reluctantly helped them secure the release of some prisoners. There were rare instances when both groups, the

2 Curiously, one memoirist, Jerzy Einhorn, speaks of the Jewish police with the highest regard. In The Maple Tree Behind the Barbed Wire: A Story of Survival From the Częstochowa Ghetto, trans. Joan Tate (New York: JewishGen, 2015), 98.

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Judenrat and police, rescued people, usually family members. In so doing they made enemies of those they were unable, or unwilling, to save. During the mass deportations to Treblinka, only fifty policemen were spared in order to extract Jews from their hiding places, rob them of their valuables (sometimes tucked away in women’s hair) and guide them to the cattle cars. A precious few helped Jews avoid being selected for deportation. In the Small Ghetto, July 1943, the remaining numbers of policemen and their families, some 300 souls, were brought to the cemetery and shot into previously prepared graves. Ultimately no Jews were safe, no matter their skills, or how “useful” they were to the Germans. By sheer luck some were kept alive a little longer than others. At first, Poles were allowed to pass through the porous ghetto borders, before curfew hours, but forbidden to dally or carry on communications or commerce with Jews. Nevertheless, Poles found opportunities to engage Jews in petty commerce and to help Jewish friends. Operating on the streets or nearly depleted shops, the petty merchants also sold clothing and electrical household items. Jewish children boldly hawked their trifles – soap, saccharin, thread – fleeing from both the Polish and Jewish Police, who often caught and severely beat them, as did the merchants with whom they competed. If one had the means, one could buy a potato, or a cigarette butt, from a Pole, who worked inside the ghetto, but lived at home. If the Poles overcharged and profited from Jews, consideration must also be given to the risk they and their families took if caught in illegal trade. The sufferings of Poles under the Nazis should not be underestimated. The Germans thought of Poles as Untermenschen. In Częstochowa, and elsewhere, there were urban and peasant Poles who risked theirs and their families’ lives, actively aiding Jews, hiding them in their homes, or smuggling them into or out of the ghetto, or camps, depending on where it was safer at the time, or to carry out a task assigned by the underground. Poles smuggled in food, cigarettes, and even medications. Indeed, there is hardly a survivor who could deny being saved by a Pole, at a critical moment. Such Poles, however, were few and far between. Soon, signs were posted in Yiddish, German, and Polish warning Jews and Poles not to move beyond the ghetto borders, under penalty of death. Polish or Jewish Police stood guard at all the entrances keeping Jews inside and Poles outside. Nevertheless, despite entry and egress for Poles being forbidden, trade could not be entirely suppressed. Poles or Jews took their lives into their hands if they wandered into forbidden zones, dangerous militarized streets, recognizable by the sounds of roaring German motorcycles and armored cars and waving blood flags. Nevertheless, German soldiers, for their amusement, strolled through the ghetto

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streets, despite its being forbidden even for them. Along with a pittance of salary paid by the Judenrat for hard labor, trade with Poles was the major, but not sole source of income for the ghettoized Jews. The most remarkable and heroic achievements of organized ghetto life were the works carried on mainly by, Dobroczynność, TOZ, the Workers’ Council and, to a lesser extent, by the Joint Distribution Committee. Their combined efforts helped thousands of Jews with their most basic physical and also cultural needs. They included running old age homes and orphanages, caring for the sick, providing numerous makeshift hospitals, distributing increased kilograms of bread, creating kitchens serving three meals for the youngsters, arranging for daycare centers, educating mothers in childrearing techniques. Needless to say, the greatest problems suffered by almost all Jews in the ghetto were gnawing hunger, and sickness, for which relief efforts could only offer palliative care. TOZ played a crucial role in giving courses on maintaining sanitary conditions. Numerous veteran and newly trained teachers regarded their work as a matter of honor, setting up schools and evening courses. Some students had to have relatively well-off parents to pay for private instruction by former Gimnazja teachers. From the very beginning of the conquest of Poland, the Germans had in mind, to stamp out all forms of Jewish culture and politics – newspapers, schools, theater, concerts etc. The only familiar newspaper to appear was the antisemitic Głos Częstochowy. As in the case of the Jewish response to the Judenrat, the eagerness and zest shown by ghetto dwellers to persevere and carry on what was officially interdicted was remarkable by any measure. Secular spiritual resistance included gatherings of groups for literary evenings, recitals, dramatic presentations and singing folksongs, with the participation of former members of TOZ. Under the not so perfect watchful eye of the Nazis, Polish couriers smuggled German and Polish newspapers and radio reports into the ghetto and later into the camps, so that Jews could keep abreast of the progress of the war. That was how, later, on July 1944, the Jews in the HASAG camps got the encouraging news of the attempt on Hitler’s life and of the approaching Red Army. Eventually the Judenrat, with the approval of the German authorities, brought TOZ under its own wing, effectively dissolving the venerable organization whose accomplishments, popularity, and independence it envied. On the cultural front, the Workers’ Council, with the guidance of former Lira members, produced staged performances of choral groups, a subversive children’s opera, serious and comic theatrical productions, by amateur and professional performers, and recitals from the works of famous Yiddish, Polish, and new ghetto writers. The Workers’ Council produced Dos groyse gevins by

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Sholem Aleichem, which was a big hit, drawing audiences of hundreds, even thousands. Ghetto dwellers came back to enjoy the performances again and again. Survivors of the Toz choir gave Jews a moment of distraction from the miserable conditions and also as fundraisers for which a modest sum supplemented the Judenrat’s Aid’s Commission’s budget. Such activities constituted a form of active resistance against the German will to destroy the Jewish spirit. In the apartment of the exceptionally courageous Rayzele Berkensztat, the Bund organized a secret cultural center and library consisting of thousands of books culled from prewar collections that functioned from February 1940 into July 1941. Until it was discovered by the Gestapo, the library drew hundreds of borrowers. Similarly, religious Jews organized mutual aid. The study of Torah and prayer in a Minyan (a quorum of ten men) was essential to religious life and convened when and where possible. The spiritual resistance of the ghetto’s Orthodox Jews was significant. Aside from assembling minyonim they founded a religious burial society, the khevre kadishe, and performed religious wedding ceremonies with or without the interference of Degenhardt. Religious defiance took many forms. Jews managed to form shtieblekh to pray and study Torah including Daf yomi, a page of Talmud study per day. (Many Jews knew much of the Talmud by heart). In April 1943, remarkably, Jews in the Braland labor camp created a kosher kitchen and baked Matzah for a Passover Seder. Perhaps in a kinder mood, ghetto guards and officers looked away. Later, defying the danger to his life, a shoemaker who was able to come and go into the camp, smuggled a shofar into a barrack into HASAG-Pelcery sometime in the autumn of 1943. He was also able to bring in a small Sefer Torah that was hidden under the floor boards in a barrack and used to celebrate Simkhas Torah. The Torah is now in B’nai Barak in Israel in safe-keeping by Gerer Hasidim. For all its logistical hardships and limited resources, the ghetto’s relief groups, with the help of Jewish and Polish couriers, mainly communist members of the Polska Partia Robotnicza, the PPR, TOZ, the PPS and the JDC, managed to send modest care packages of essential supplies and small sums of money to the surrounding shtetls and the more unfortunate Jews oppressed in the Łódź ghetto. The misery became more severe as additional numbers of Jewish families were forced to occupy single-family apartments. Jewish homes and ghetto streets became evermore densely populated. Housing officials of the Judenrat carrying out orders of the corresponding German housing commission, determined how many families were packed into their assigned, already cramped, dwellings. When Jews were reassigned places to live, the Jewish and Polish

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police looted furniture, jewelry, cutlery, and all other expensive items, left behind. Some new tenants of Jewish homes on the Aryan side tore apart their appropriated homes expecting to find hidden “Jewish gold” in the walls or under the floorboards. Meanwhile, the Judenrat was compelled to inventory the personal, valuable possessions of Jews, an assignment too big for them to carry out even under the direction of the Germans and their Jewish and Polish collaborators. Quotas of metal objects had to be given up to the German authorities, for the war effort. When the housing shortage became acute, the Judenrat resorted to using the abandoned buildings of religious and communal institutions for the decreasing numbers of homeless shelters, and dwindling food supplies. The homeless were forced to live on the streets, sometimes for days, not knowing their fate; these unfortunates were forced to sleep on the open ground or in factories on concrete floors. Only the few Jews most useful to the Germans and their families were allowed to live and work in relative comfort, on the “Aryan side,” in their shops located in a building on the First Aleja, 14 (Czternastka – dubbed “The White House”). The place also offered greater housing space for those who received special permission and those who managed to sneak inside. The First Aleja was annexed to the ghetto because it brought in business, which benefitted the Germans. Later, the artisans were moved to Aleja 12, where they lived with the Jewish Police. Numerous manufacturing and specialty shops were also set up at the warehouse that took up an entire block on Garibaldi Street, employing hundreds of Jews. The giant Möbellager, the furniture warehouse on Wilson Street gave work and protected some 450 people, including fifty children. With its entrance located on the border of the ghetto, and its exit on the Aryan side, it was a means for Jews to sneak out. It remained entirely outside the ghetto during the period of the Small Ghetto. Jews had to register, with the Judenrat, in order to make sure that everyone twelve years old and over wore the Jewish armband. Polish officials prepared the kennkarte, identity cards, with a photograph affixed and stamped with the letter J. Not all Jews registered but took their chances of remaining undetected. The dual purpose of identifying Jews was to provide the Judenrat with potential taxpayers and the Germans with a tally of candidates for forced labor and of those with professions that might prove useful for the Germans. To that end, Jews were required to have separate, red-covered square-folded cardboard working papers or meldekarte. Unregistered Jews scrambled to get forged cards. Because of the enormity of the task, supervision of registration was taken over by the Germans.

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A network of self-help groups emerged in the ghetto that acted independently and also in concert. Standing on the foundations of their prewar political and social affiliations, left-wing Zionists, Bundists and Communists and members of the right-wing Beitar provided care and nourishment for the Jews, instilling in them a sense of self-respect and a proud national consciousness. Communists and Bundists, however, were singled out for special persecution. The Gestapo put Communists on their most wanted list, threatening mass retribution unless a particular comrade in hiding was turned in or gave himself up. The Resistance agonized over such moral dilemmas. Notwithstanding the ever-decreasing personal possessions of the Jews, the Germans constantly demanded further contributions, as if drawing from a bottomless pit of wealth. Many Jews possessed something of value on their person until they were finally stripped naked and entered the gas chambers. Within the Jewish world, under the Germans, an artificial depression reigned. The Germans also paid the Judenrat some of their major expenses, knowing that it would be returned to them by the tax imposed on the Jews. After the Wannsee conference the main tasks of Judenrat were conscripting thousands of Jews into slave labor, and ultimately, more importantly meeting quotas for deportation to the death camps. Children and the elderly were taken to the Jewish cemetery and shot. Brigades of registered workers marched off from the ghetto, clomping along in the wooden clogs given to them by the Judenrat if they had no shoes of their own. Paper or cardboard clothing did them little good during the freezing winters. The slaves, forced to wear numbers sewn into their clothes, were taken out from the places where they had been assembled, to pave roads, work in factories and workshops, for twelve hours a day, from morning until night. Not all returned at night having tried to escape, or because they succumbed to the backbreaking labor, the lack of hygiene, hunger, exhaustion, dysentery, and other diseases. Lice ridden, Jews were awakened before dawn, given a good beating, a morsel of bread, and watery coffee they sipped or used to wash their faces. Before returning at night, they were sent out to work at the railway stations, in iron factories, laying bricks, laboring waste deep in the water draining swamps by hand, delivering coal, felling trees, paving roads, and moving looted property into the warehouses, or into the quarters of German officers. At first, and through the final deportation from the Big Ghetto in late September to October 1942, Jews were loath to believe the appalling rumors emanating from the Aryan side, or from Jews that had escaped from Warsaw in July and August 1942. Of the fate awaiting them, few were entirely convinced that something was awfully amiss, or that Jews should somehow prepare for impending catastrophe, this despite several signs: the arrival of the Di swzarce (so called because of the black color of

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their uniforms), they were the Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing units) drawn from the Ukrainian, and Baltic guards; the deportation of 1,000 Jews in 1940 to the Czeczanow labor camp, from which few returned; and finally the complete sealing off of the ghetto on 22 August 1941. Whether one counted assets to barter or sell, including clothes, gold left in the abandoned homes, relatively speaking, even inside the ghetto, there were always the “have and the have-nots”; conmen “fixers,” informers, swindlers, and thieves who were, in turn, themselves, shaken down by the Gestapo. The most pathetic prisoners were the hospital patients, the mentally ill and crippled who lived on the street and were summarily shot. On German orders, Jewish doctors euthanized all terminally ill and helpless patients in their beds. Wracked with guilt, the doctors were consoled knowing that a fate worse than death awaited the patients if their lives were extended. Although Jews remained cautiously incredulous, rumors finally took on a sense of reality when a member of the Communist Underground, the PPR (recreated in 1942 after the dissolution of the Polish Communist Party in 1938) delivered direct testimony in Warsaw to the Jewish Left in Częstochowa. Drawing on their experience as an illegal underground organization since the Piłsudski years, the young Jewish members of the Communist Party laid the groundwork for a Jewish armed resistance group that attracted members from the Bund and left-wing Zionists, Zionist youth groups and also non-partisan individuals. These groups worked separately and together. In short order, they were preparing explosives fashioned in their secret workshops. Their main contact outside the ghetto was with the ŻOB, the Jewish Combat Organization (Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa) in Warsaw, through the mediation of Polish Communist comrades who also sought to bring back detonators for their own homemade grenades. Advised by couriers from Warsaw to begin the insurrection, a meeting was scheduled for all the underground groups for Yom Kippur 1942. By then it was too late; preparations for the first Aktsye (selections and forced roundups of Jews to be deported to the death camps, primarily Treblinka, or shootings of individuals or masses thrown into the prepared trenches in the Jewish cemetery, or the mass grave on Kawia Street), had already begun. In the few months leading up to the end of September, the Germans played sadistic cat and mouse games with the desperate Jews. Violence against Jews increased in the form of kidnapping and beatings and fifteen minor Aktsyes, punctuated by deceptive acts of kindness. Of the fifty remaining Jewish policemen who escaped from the machinery of death or being sent to the HASAG-Pelcery labor camp, some assisted Degenhardt and the Ukrainian guards in the selections, determining who would live and who

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would die. Pelcery, a formerly Polish-French owned wool mill, became the main HASAG labor camp, renamed Apperatebau. Degenhardt came to suspect that the Jewish police were in cahoots with the Jewish underground and ordered most of them killed. Degenhardt was a sadistic degenerate (like most of the officers and German and auxiliary guards) who was the subject of a number of failed assassination attempts. He delighted in putting parents into a “Sophie’s Choice”-like position. Degenhardt took pleasure in keeping his victims off-guard, spontaneously and uncharacteristically ordering that special care be given to a select number of mothers and their newborn children at the Metalurgja, located inside the ghetto. The formerly Jewish owned metal pouring factory was transformed into a labor camp producing munitions. As it turned out, the mothers were given only a week’s reprieve. Degenhardt’s unpredictable spontaneous acts of kindness, promising that each Aktsye would be the last, gave some a small glimmer of hope that encouraged in the still living the wishful thinking that the terrible rumors were untrue or exaggerated. It was of course only a ruse to entice Jews to come out of hiding. It was the letdown that excited him. Fearful of being caught by the Germans, mothers in hiding gave their children luminal, a tranquilizer. Similarly, feigning benevolence, Degenhardt announced that Jews would be allowed to gather and observe the High Holy Days. In his 1948 chronicle, Liber Brener wrote: “On the eve of Yom Kippur, the mood was already grim. The news spread by word of mouth that an ‘Annihilation Commando’ was in town [. . .] fear mounted. At dusk, Yom Kippur candles were lit and the ghetto was transformed into one great lamentation.”3 The “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” became fully operational in Częstochowa during the fall Holy Day season and lasted two weeks. On 22 September 1942, the first of five or six Aktsyes4 took place, a day after Yom Kippur. In their drunken stupor, the murderers excused themselves claiming they were merely acting for the Führer und Vaterland. Jews, still clinging to pathetic 3 L Brener, Vidershtand un umkum in czenstochower geto (Warsaw: Jewish Historical Institute: 1948), 74. 4 A Nazi document pinpoints, to the minute, the projected schedule for six Aktsyes. See Villa Orbach, Toldot yehudey Częstochowa (Tel Aviv: Irgun yotsiey tshenstokhov vhasviva beyisroel, 2000), 121. However, Benjamin Orenstein, who survived the war in Czestochowa (Churban Czenstochow. American Zone, Germany, 1948, 101); Peninah Cypkewicz-Rosen, Flight to Survival: Wloclawek-Warszawa, Czestochowa . . . Eretz-Yisrael 1939–1945, A Personal Narrative, trans. Sarah Kopfstein et al. (League City: JewishGen, 2006), 70; and Jerzy Einhorn The Maple Tree Behind the Barbed Wire: A Story of Survival From the Czestochowa Ghetto, trans. Joan Tate (New York: JewishGen, 2015), 133, all list five Aktsyes. It may be that with the fifth Aktsye the quota had been filled, or the killing space in Treblinka had run out of room.

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hopes, brought parcels of food clothing, bedding, family photographs, or just their Taleysim and Tefillin, their prayer shawls and phylacteries. The second, Aktsye, took place the day before Succoth, on 25 September; the third, on the first day of Khol Hamoed (the intermediary day of Succoth), 28 September; the fourth Aktsye, on the last day of khol Hamoed, occurring on 1 October; the date of the fifth Aktsye was 4 October on Simkhas Torah. The last major transport from the Big Ghetto was scheduled for 7 October. Each Aktsye took place over two days. Minor Aktsyes continued for another three weeks. Jews were forced to assemble in the New Market, the Old Market, in courtyards, the Aleja, in front of the Metalurgja factory and other places. From where they were rounded up. Fearful of rioting, the Germans reassured the Jews that there was no danger ahead, calming those Jews desperate for some measure of hope. Ukrainians and also Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian Nazis, enthusiastically assisted the Germans throughout the war. The last Aktsye left in its wake a ghost town, almost entirely Judenrein, allowing only the human jackals to roam and finish up the looting of what was left behind. Aside from using brute force, the Germans deceived prisoners into assembling voluntarily in assigned places by driving through the streets, using a megaphone, reassuring them that deportees were well and happy in their new environment and would be given a kilo of bread, marmalade, a bowl of soup and a bar of soap for coming forward voluntarily. Only once, after the fourth Aktsye, did the Germans actually keep their word to those that came out of hiding, desperately hungry. Many still wanted to believe that they were too valuable to the German war machine to be deported. Some mothers whose children were lost or killed, grew despondent, went mad, or committed suicide. The scenes at the open train wagons were horrific: panic, shooting, and beating people, callously murdering the infants and the elderly. Discarded red working papers lay strewn all over the ground in puddles of blood; screaming and crying in despair filled the air, mothers throwing their babies to those that were next to mount the cars themselves. The many dead bodies were removed by the representative of the Khevre kadisha, and taken to the prepared trenches on Kawia Street. Scores were taken to the cemetery and shot. For the first Aktsye, Jews assembled at the Metalurgja. Later, others were rounded up at the Ryneczek Warszawski, and other key places. Jewish policemen and the Judenrat leaders Kapinski and Kurland were on hand to assist in the final selections: “right” to Treblinka, or “left,”5 to a temporary safe place in the Metalurgja.

5 Peninah Cypkewicz-Rosen, Flight to Survival, 70.

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Twice a day, Jews were loaded onto the ramp and entered the seventy, or so, large cattle cars – picking up Jews from other camps along the way – destined for Treblinka. After the first transport, 7,000 pairs of shoes were left behind in a macabre heap before they were taken to the warehouses. Trains were scheduled to depart at around 12:29 pm and arrive at Treblinka at 5:25 in the morning, where they remained for another five hours and then returned empty to Częstochowa. The people were stuffed into the cattle cars, where they stood immobile without food, water or sanitation. The trains left from Strazacka Street, where nearby a glass monument created by Shmuel Wilenberg (the son of Perec) now stands. After each Aktsye, the machinery of death operated with greater precision. Street by street, the Nazis “cleaned” out all the Jews they could find. A few were hiding in the makeshift bunkers, until they were discovered by brutal tracking dogs and guards that overheard the whispers and cries of babies in the eerie dark silence. Ultimately, card or no card, when the end came, it was simpler to just load up the trains, or trucks with the anonymous masses and make a clean sweep of the Jewish streets. With the exceptions of Kapinski, Kurland and other select members of the Judenrat and Jewish police force, all the rest were murdered along with their families, and almost the entire Jewish population. Estimates of the death toll of those gassed in Treblinka range from 35,000 to over 40,000. Another 10,000 died of hunger, exhaustion, disease, or were shot on the spot, leaving puddles of blood all over the streets. Trucks took many others to the Jewish cemetery where they were shot into open graves. Some 2,000 Jews were shot into readied trenches on Kawia Street to lie on top of cadavers that had already been brought there. A modest grave stone on any grass lot, enclosed by a chain linked fence, marks the spot today. In the wake of each Aktsye, the emptied apartments were left in shambles and all useable possessions were brought to giant warehouses on Garibaldi and Wilson Streets. There, the inventory, the former possessions of over 30,000 persons, was meticulously sorted and stored in different compartments consisting of separate units for furniture, men and women’s clothing, confections, machines, art works, jewelry, silverware, bedding, etc. Everything was shipped to Germany. A few hundred Jews worked in separate shops set up in various buildings of the warehouses, with their assistants, tailors, shoemakers, carpenters, locksmiths etc. Workers in the warehouses considered themselves fortunate because they were performing a “useful task” and also because they might find something precious, such as a coin, with which to purchase food from the Poles or bribe a German guard. However, if they were caught with contraband they were summarily shot. The approximately 5,000 remaining Jews were transferred to the so-called Small Ghetto from where they were sent to the various work camps producing munitions.

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The Small Ghetto The approximately 5,000 surviving Jews that, by sheer luck, managed to elude the Aktsyes because their bunkers were undetected, together with Jews imported from other camps, as well as the several hundreds of Jews that sneaked into the ghetto illegally, raised the numbers of the Jewish population to approximately 6,500. They were herded into the 1,200 small rooms, into the disaster area that became known as the “Small Ghetto.” The Germans called it a Forced Jewish Labor Camp (Judenarbeitslager, or Zwangsarbeitslager), ratcheting up the persecution appropriate to its new name. The Small Ghetto, established on the heels of the Big Ghetto’s decimation in November 1942, was enclosed by two-meter-high barbed wire fences, with the exception of the opening on Garncarska Street, the site of the former oldpeople’s home. The Small Ghetto was located near the Warta, on the northeastern, poorest, part of the former Big Ghetto. The Small Ghetto was reduced to three or four dirty, dank, streets, and three parallel alleyways, without sewers or sanitary facilities. Its parallel streets were, roughly, Nadrzeczna, Garncarska, Kozia, and Senatorska, which made up its western border. Jaskrowska Street lay to the north of the ghetto, and Mostowa Street was its southern border. Spadek Street stretched perpendicularly to the three streets to the south. Efforts were undertaken immediately to aid the surviving, starving and emaciated children. The feeding location also served as a school for 120 of them, with qualified experienced teachers; arrangements were made to bathe them. Degenhart discovered the school. Seeing pale and starving children, he, Degenhart, gave orders that they be given a daily glass of milk, and portions of eggs, butter, sugar, and honey taken from the Judenrat storehouse. His generosity lasted only so long until they too were shipped off to Treblinka. Some 3,000 workers registered with the Judenrat received a liter of coffee for breakfast, and half a liter of soup and bread for their lunch break. Unregistered inmates were out of luck and had to find someone who would share his or her pittance. Work began five in the morning until the bugle call at nine at night. Members of the Resistance busy digging bunkers and tunnels did not show up for work. Singing heard in the ghetto drowned out the crying of children smuggled into the ghetto bunkers, from the bunkers in the Möbellager outside the Small Ghetto. Food, too, was brought in the same way in potato sacks and garbage cans or stolen from the police storehouses along with Jewish possessions with which to sell to the Poles. The camp was ruled by the SS chief. Out of his perverted sense of modesty and morals, Degenhardt, as head of the camp, called himself “the father of the Jews,” and divided the ghetto housing into three parts, one for single men, one

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for single women, and a third for married couples. He also demanded to be present, if not officiate, at all marriages between couples that had lost spouses, and he furthermore required that all other married folk be remarried officially by him. It is doubtful that all these orders were carried out. (In 1940, 504 marriages took place; a number which decreased precipitously through the beginning of 1942. The birthrate dropped from forty-eight in 1940 to sixty-six in 1942.) The empty homes in the Small Ghetto were surrounded by the relics and debris of family life; baby carriages, toys and the like. Bedlam reigned in the places allocated by the Judenrat for the remaining Jews for living quarters: Six to eight persons per single rooms or three to four families per apartment. The Small Ghetto was more densely populated than its predecessor. Each Jew was required to wear a tin with a number, attached to a button on a string hanging from his or her neck, or a striped colored uniform that identified the individual as a certain kind of worker belonging to a given unit. Otherwise Jews wore the clothes in which they were first taken into the ghetto. When one person died his or her number was removed from the official list.6 The numbers of Jews in the Small Ghetto fluctuated. Smaller Aktsyes continued and selections of Jews were sent to Treblinka. En route, the trains would often stop at other camps (Radomsko, Skarżysko-Kamienna, Bliżyn) to pick up additional prisoners. Jews that managed to acquire false Aryan work papers could escape when work detachments were marched out of the ghetto to the labor camps; if caught or betrayed they faced summary execution. Random murders and savage beating of Jews in the streets, or of those emerging from bunkers, from cellars, attics, and furniture warehouses, continued unabated, bringing the number of Jews down to 4,043 registered residents. Often the evening roll call counted fewer persons than the morning one. On the other hand, the numbers rose when Jews from other camps were transferred to Częstochowa. Others came out of hiding outside the camp, whether in the woods or on the Aryan side and successfully attached themselves, unnoticed, to the work battalions returning to the ghetto where life was less precarious. Of those not deported to Treblinka, most were sent to Pelcery. Some 500 prisoners were sent to the Rakow steel mill, renamed Eisenhütte Tschenstochau, the first of the four HASAG labor camps.

6 In contrast to the KAPOS, those working to maintain discipline among the Jewish inmates, in HASAG Einhorn writes that they did not behave cruelly or lose their moral compass. Like his charitable opinion of the Jewish police in the ghetto, surviving inmates contradict Einhorn’s opinion on both counts. There were exceptions, of course.

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Polish acquaintances of Jews lined up to observe the work battalions marching to work and, as earlier, some showed sympathy; others came gloating and jeering. Others called out to the passing brigade, inquiring if so and so was still alive. If the answer was “no,” they could keep the property held in their possession for safekeeping. To stay alive, each of Kapinski’s fifty-man Jewish Police force had to find and deliver at least two hidden children a day to the Gestapo. At the same time the Judenrat organized, of its own volition, a communal kitchen for the children of doctors and policemen, in addition to a washroom, a daycare center, a school with three grades and women teachers. Food was provided for over sixty starving children, just emerging from their bunkers. At first Degenhardt contributed foodstuffs to the school, but then, turning on a dime, he had them all murdered, along with an additional sixty children. The Nazis showed no mercy to children or babies, often shooting them en masse at the Jewish cemetery or on Kawia Street, not hesitating to kill them in front of their parents. Babies were picked up by an arm, or a leg, or by the hair and shot point blank, or had their heads smashed against a wall. If they still breathed they were shot, thrown into the mass grave and smothered by the other corpses. The Jewish Police, including Kapinski, were all eventually taken from the Small Ghetto to the cemetery and shot. Kapinski’s position was taken over by Kurland for a short period of time, until he too was shot. The ghetto had various workshops located in the large warehouses, and in a laundry, organized by the Judenrat. From these places Jews could smuggle out something of value and trade in food and merchandise. Stacks of goods were sold to Poles where they secretly met with Jews at various workplaces. Money and jewelry that Jews possessed, were used, in the long run, often futilely, for bribing guards and Nazi officers. Those lucky enough to work in the Judenrat kitchens pilfered goods stolen from Jews, including whisky, sugar, herring and whatever foods they could find in the storehouses inside the ghetto or, when they snuck out, on the Aryan side. Clothing was smuggled in from what was left behind in the Big Ghetto, and the warehouses. The Jews did not suffer poverty uniformly, that is, not until the last trains departed for Treblinka where everybody disrobed before going into the gas chambers. Until then there was a division between the haves and have-nots, with the latter, at times, taking immoral advantage of the former in the lawless conditions of the ghetto. Judenrat men, for example, took married women as mistresses. Those Jews with some means turned to the black market. As in the grotesque scene portrayed in Roman Polanski’s The Pianist (2002), in Częstochowa there were Jews who, in the midst of hell, still enjoyed, for a short time, a taste

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of the good life. In the surreal atmosphere of the famous restaurant at the ghetto border in Częstochowa, comparatively well-off Jews, Jewish Police and Poles came to dine, rub elbows with the ghetto elites, conduct business, and escape from reality. Across the street was a fancy coffee house. The living were assigned work inside the ghetto or to one of the numerous labor camps, or to one of the warehouses run by the Volksdeutsche trustees for the Germans, like the Braland and Enro factories, while the Garibaldi and the Möbellager storehouses were run by Jewish managers working directly under German authority. Inmates were assigned to help transform the former Pelcery textile factory and Rakow steel mill into munitions factories, located outside the ghetto. Like the Möbellager and Garibaldi, also located in the ghetto, Metalurgja had many workshops on its premises, which kept the skilled workers busy and alive. Every day, inmates were sent off to different workplaces leaving what was left of their families uncertain if they would return alive. Whether they engaged in daily labor made little difference. Often, beautiful women and pretty girls were temporarily kept alive for obvious reasons. In the ghetto and later in the camps, officers took young girls for the night and shot them in the morning. Degenhardt also believed women were better, and more diligent workers than men. Eventually the Jews hidden in the Möbellager, along with 1,500 Jews from the Metalurgja, a few hundred from Garibaldi and smaller numbers from Enro and Braland labor camps, were transferred to Pelcery, when the camps, and warehouses, except for Garibaldi, were liquidated along with the Small Ghetto. Enro, a formerly Jewish-owned metal pouring factory, outside the ghetto area, operated under the trusteeship of a Russian Volksdeutsche who provided its workers with somewhat more humane conditions. During the Aktsyes of September 1942, Enro’s commandant Major Göpert – like Oskar Schindler, a name that was known in the camps from inmates transferred from Łódź – retrieved the whole lot, with the exception of an elderly woman and a sick child to the safety of the camp, insisting that they were needed as workers. The Jews found some space to carry on underground work making identification papers for those escaping to the Aryan side. Enro Jews were dependent on Polish prisoners who used their right to return home to bring food to the Jews, an operation that went more smoothly than at other camps. The factory came under the authority of the Gestapo when its manager was arrested for sabotage and for having good relations with the workers. In 1943, the women were sent to HASAG Pelcery. When the Small Ghetto was demolished, the remaining Jews were left in Enro until the Red Army approached the town, at which time they were transferred to Pelcery.

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Believing they would be safer, some Jews actually tried sneaking into the Braland factory, which was located on Kawia street and extended to Krotka street. The former was the northern border of the Big Ghetto, the latter was inside the Ghetto. Jews wishing to escape from the Small Ghetto, into the Aryan side, snuck in from Braland. The factory previously owned by Jews, the Landau brothers, continued to operate under Aryan trusteeship, producing aluminum cutlery, templates for cutting ice, and meat-mincing machines. Secretly, the factory produced grenades for the underground, though there was no opportunity to use them. A Polish overseer, a leftist, treated the Jews humanely. Poles met with Jews to sell foodstuffs for clothes and other valuables the Jews may have owned. In a close spirit of camaraderie, Jews in Braland organized daily prayer quorums, and, quite remarkably, with its fertile grounds, the camp was fortunate to grow its own potatoes that were cooked in a primitive oven made of a few bricks which served as a kosher kitchen. In April of 1943, the Jews in Braland baked matzah for the Seders. Religious observance of holidays was carried on clandestinely or with guards, whether out of kindness, or bribed, who looked the other way. Underground groups were established by remnants of the ŻOB, Bundists, and the largest group, the Communists. They were all teenagers and young men and women. Unaffiliated young people also participated. They gathered a small arsenal created bunkers and escape tunnels. Some unaffiliated Jews were able to tunnel their way to the Aryan side. Painfully aware of how the everyday routine of their enslavement could turn suddenly into a total liquidation of the ghetto population, the newly and quickly organized Resistance acted with a greater sense of determination and urgency. In the spring of 1943, through Polish couriers, Communists, members of the Warsaw ŻOB, the two centers of rebellion Warsaw and Częstochowa, were in contact with each other. They passed along information, letters and money from one group to another, and with other camps and partisans hiding and fighting in the forests of Koniecpol and Złoty Potok, about forty kilometers southeast of Częstochowa. Among the activists that visited Częstochowa in these times was the intrepid Vladka Meed, and Mordecai Anielewicz, the commander of the Zionist battalion in the Warsaw Ghetto revolt who died fighting at Mila 18. Beneficial mutual relations between Warsaw and Częstochowa were achieved thanks to Jewish and communist Polish couriers. Perhaps the prime purpose of the Resistance was in its struggle to convince Jews of what was happening in Treblinka and that serious measures had to be taken to counter the unrelenting catastrophe, by joining and supporting its ranks. Most important was the news brought by the few survivors of the revolt in Treblinka.

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The Revolt in Treblinka Burning with a desire for revenge, and drawing inspiration from the Warsaw Ghetto fighters, Jews in Treblinka carried out a major, though short-lived revolt that for a time caused the Germans to doubt for a moment their omnipotent control over the Jews. The heroic leaders of the ŻOB uprising in Treblinka on 2 August 1943, included 200 men and women, a number of them Czestochower. The first man to call for the uprising was the Czestochower named Langer. Soon after the revolt he was caught and tortured, hung upside down and ordered to give up the names of the co-conspirators. His last words were “Comrades, take revenge. Rebel and kill them.”7 The well-coordinated uprising lasted a few hours but in that time the fighters destroyed half the installations in the camp, killing some German and Ukrainian guards (it is generally accepted the number wasn’t large). The Jewish fighters were fully prepared to martyr themselves and die, with “honor and dignity,” which indeed, except for the few escapees, was almost entirely the case. Most combatants were shot on the spot or, escaped into the forests or to some kindly peasant’s home. Of the 300 Jews who broke through the fence, only a few survived. Before the uprising in Treblinka, a number of Jews escaped from the camp. One was the Czestochower Abraham Bomba, who had an important role playing the barber in Claude Lanzman’s film Shoah recalling his time in Treblinka, cutting the hair of the men and women about to enter the gas chambers. After he escaped he returned to the Small Ghetto in order to show others the way out. The artist Perec Willenberg’s son Samuel (who became a famous artist in Israel) and Mendele Fiselewicz who was later killed in the failed rebellion on 4 June 1943, were among the handful of fighters who escaped alive. They and Polish-communist couriers from Warsaw brought news of the revolt to Częstochowa.

The Rebellion in Częstochowa As in the Big Ghetto, the Resistance drew its members from the youth of various parties on the left, particularly Shomer hatzair (perhaps, members of Beitar), and the Communists. Despite their ideological differences, and tactical preferences,

7 Villa Orbach, Toldot yehudey Częstochowa (Tel Aviv: Irgun yotsiey tshenstokhov vhasviva beyisroel, 2000), 148.

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their common cause was paramount. From an immediate membership of seventy men and women, the Resistance grew to some 300 active participants. Women were in positions of leadership and most of the members were in their late teens and early twenties. Although, as in Treblinka, the Resistance in the Small Ghetto was convinced of Germany’s ultimate defeat, it harbored no grand illusions of prevailing over the enemy’s war machine, whether locally, in Częstochowa, or in the nearby woods where members of the Polish underground were often hostile to the Jews. Instead, through reconnaissance, small-scale operations, and sabotage they intended to hinder, waylay, assassinate informers and collaborators and kill Germans in hand-to-hand combat and firefights. Though they were inevitably defeated given the odds, Jewish partisans put up a good fight. The Jewish underground dug bunkers and tunnels though, the Nazis were usually able to discover most of them. The Resistance made their own weapons, Molotov cocktails and grenades. They also bought bullets, sticks of dynamite, and some not always reliable, pistols and automatic rifles from the Polish underground, which was not always willing to share arms with the Jews. For this purpose, they had the difficult task of raising money even to the point of starving themselves and selling what little food they had. The fighters in the TOZ units got hold of kerosene with the intention of burning down the ghetto. Smuggling guns into the ghetto from the Warsaw ŻOB, just like buying arms from the Poles, was fraught with the danger of being caught or betrayed to the Gestapo, or even killed by the sellers. The combatants also had in their possession stolen German uniforms, carbide lamps, and other necessities, including food, taken from the warehouses of the Judenrat and, somehow, from the Germans. The fighters in the workshops at Pelcery and the shops inside the ghetto, using materials taken from the camp pharmacy, manufactured their own needed material – wire cutters, pliers, and weapons, including 150 grenades and Molotov cocktails. Sometimes they shared these explosives with the Resistance in Warsaw. They had also forged special keys to derail trains but never managed to carry this out. Pursuing them relentlessly, the Germans, with the help of their Jewish informants, often discovered where the combatants were hidden, at times surprising them before they could get to their guns and grenades. The underground assassinated some of these traitors. When the partisans ran out of bullets, they picked up rocks and threw them at the enemy but were quickly overwhelmed. Few walked away alive from their skirmishes with the Germans. In March 1943, the Germans announced they would release all doctors, lawyers, and engineers and all Jews with higher degrees, and permit them to go to Palestine in exchange for German prisoners of war held in England. This was

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another sadistic ruse to facilitate collecting particular categories of Jews where they were to meet in Ryneczek Warszawski, and to entice others still in hiding to come out. Trucks brought them all to the cemetery where 147 were mown down by machine guns. At the beginning of the Aktsye on 4 January 1943, the Jews were lined up near the entrance of the Small Ghetto in Ryneczek Warszawski. Oberleutenant Rohn, assisted by Lieutenant Tsopart, lead the German troops. The events that took place on that day have been valorized in the annals of Jewish wartime resistance. One eyewitness, Jerzy Einhorn, described in detail, the tragedy that unfolded before him: It’s almost 9 o’clock. The pale sun is shining weakly on those of us still standing in the square and on the ghostly empty area inside the ghetto, when Oberleutenant Rohn with a retinue of green police and Lieutenant Tsopart beside him start walking around inspecting us [. . .] Rohn points at those he thinks are to be taken out. We are standing 4 deep in a vast long line [. . .]. He picked out a hundred Jews, men and women, clearly at random, when I hear something unusual happening. Oberleutenant Rohn is at the most 20 meters away from us when two young men leave the line, the one raises a pistol, the other, somewhat younger, is holding a long knife in his right hand, and he cries out, loud and clear, first in German and then in Yiddish [. . .] “You may no longer kill us and go unpunished, you may not.” I recognize him – it is Izio Feiner, a school friend [. . .] I don’t recognize the other man with the gun in his hand. For a second it is deathly quiet in the square and for a brief moment these two young Jews have the situation in their hands. During those seconds [. . .] suddenly feeling the cold [. . .] at first I am terrified by what is happening, then proud, but at the same time exhilarated when I see our two heroes – at last someone is defending us [. . .] But the enchantment and paralysis are shattered when the older Jew with the gun, whom we later find out is Mendele Fiszelewicz, again and again tries to fire, then shakes the gun which refuses to fire. He has got the pistol from “the other side, [Aryan]” but has not been able to try it out in our well-guarded ghetto. The hitherto self-confident Oberleutenant Rohn seems to be paralyzed when Mendele Fiszelewicz reverses the pistol and tries to hit him with the butt. Fat Lieutenant Tsopart steps forward to try to stop Mendele, and my school friend Izio Feiner thrusts his knife into Tsopart’s right forearm in an attempt to give Mendele a little more time. I just have time to see that he has made a deep cut and hear Tsopart let out a loud yell as he clutches at his bleeding arm. Suddenly shots ring out, a volley, but not from Mendele Fiszelewicz’s pistol, but from the surrounding Germans shouting and shooting wildly. I can’t see how many bullets hit our two young heroes, but it is a great many [. . .]. Over 200 Jews were killed in the Ryneczek or were taken away and shot at the cemetery [. . .]. 350 Jews were taken [. . .] to Treblinka.8

8 Jerzy Einhorn, The Maple Tree Behind the Barbed Wire: A Story of Survival from the Częstochowa Ghetto, trans. Joan Tate (New York: JewishGen, 1996), 155–6.

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From that day on, the Germans could no longer take for granted that the Jews would not resist and were put on special alert to double down and pursue the Jews in hiding and the fighters among them. A monument in the cemetery carries the names of six resistance fighters, ages eighteen to twenty-seven, who were shot on 23 March 1943. It was preserved in the postwar years and is the only one of its kind. Amid the resignation and despair of the ghetto population, the Resistance had to weigh the value of their actions against the cost of German reprisals. After profound soul searching, the partisans concluded that actions against the Germans would continue. For many, it soon became an unequivocal source of pride, and generally raised the people’s morale. Until recently a small, barely noticeable plaque marked the spot where the tragic incident took place. The square has now been renamed for the ŻOB as Plac Bohaterów Getta (Ghetto fighters’ place). At the end of June 1943, there were twenty-three partisans among the saved remnant of the Small Ghetto and they soon attracted others to join their cause. As in all cases of conspiracy, intrigue and heroism, thirty Communists played a leading role in initiating and maintaining contact with the underground in Warsaw. A number of KAPOS (Jewish concentration camp orderlies) also lent a hand in the subversive actions, by buying and distributing food especially for the sick among them. The one area where the underground excelled was in smuggling Jews into and out of the ghetto, depending on where they would be safer or able to do the most good for the underground. This work included transporting children in potato or bread sacks, adults in garbage bins, hiding them in bunkers that were located in cellars, attics, and the massive warehouses, on Garibaldi and Wilsona streets. Helpless and vulnerable children were often betrayed outside the ghetto unless they were lucky enough to have been given over to a rare dedicated protector. Better-off yet, were the children hidden in convents by righteous Christian nuns for the duration of the war. False papers were surreptitiously produced for adults, allowing Jews to pass for Germans and reach the Aryan side, provided they didn’t look conspicuously Jewish. This required wearing the right clothes, and often dying one’s hair, and sometimes undergoing an operation to restore what appeared to be a foreskin. Individuals who escaped to the Aryan side had to find someone to give them shelter or help them sneak back inside the ghetto. Others left on specific missions for the Resistance. The most ambitious task undertaken by the Resistance was the recruitment of 100 fighters working day and night shifts, who succeeded in digging two major tunnels that reached the Aryan side. The tunnels served a number of purposes: as hiding places for whole families, money, cached weapons, and bullets bought from Poles and smuggled into the ghetto. Through these tunnels the Resistance also spirited armaments and Jews

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out of the ghetto to join partisan bands in the nearby Koniecpol and Zloty Potok forests from where they conducted their surprise attacks, subversion and sabotage. Although there were significant exceptions, often the antisemitic partisan units of the AK, Armia Krajowa, the Polish nationalist Home Army, and fascist gangs murdered the Jews who came to Koniecpol and Złoty Potok to join the Poles in the fight against their common enemy. Invitations by the AK extended to the Jewish fighters most often ended in a fiasco. The AK, sometimes with the help of the Blue Police, went looking for Jews hiding in their bunkers. If the AK didn’t kill the Jews, they guided them into a trap where the Germans did their work for them. There were rare instances of Communist partisan bands – under the commands of General Korczyński and Kazimierz Sidor – also murdering Jews that came to join them. The actions of one group of AKs under the command of Leon Szatkowski, known as Orzeł, “eagle” (after the Polish coat of arms) was particularly egregious. Because of his actions against Jews and Communists or socialists, Orzel was tried by the AK and executed in 1944. In contrast to the AK and right-wing gangs, the nationalist Poles that were members of the Peasant’s Battalion, the Bataliony Chłopskie, and especially the Polish Communist fighters of the AL, the Armia Ludowa, treated the Jews as comrades. In some cases, ordinary Polish peasants betrayed Jews, but others, provided Jews with refuge in their homes or barns. The underground knew some of these righteous Gentiles, but for Jews on the run, finding them was the luck of the draw.

Möbellager The most extensive underground operation to hide and save Jews took place thanks to Herculean efforts by the foreman of the Wilson warehouse, or Möbellager (literally furniture camp, or depot), Machl Birncwajg. Together with his brother Pinches, he worked indefatigably under extremely dangerous conditions to hide hundreds of individuals, children and families in bunkers inside the labyrinth of furniture and boxes. Carpenters, locksmiths, electricians, and other workers, each in separate shops, also brought their families along with them into the warehouse. The warehouse was the one workplace that had access to the Aryan side, through which many escaped or entered. Machl’s name stands out as one of the great Jewish heroes of the occupation. His co-worker Leon Silberstein, a skilled mechanic valuable to the Germans, used his advantageous position at the warehouse to personally save the lives of fortunate men, women, and children. Under Machl’s charge, the people he protected received three meals a day, prepared in the Möbellager’s secret kitchen. The Möbellager also possessed a

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radio, which allowed its workers to disseminate the latest news. When, on a surprise inspection, Degenhardt discovered the bunkers, their combatants, ordinary folk and families, he had them all killed. Machl escaped and was hidden by a Polish family until he was hunted down and killed, as were his wife and mother before him, in early June 1943. During the final mopping up operations, a group of some twenty emaciated hungry and filthy boys were discovered hiding in a bunker, all ten to thirteen years old. Upon seeing Germans in civilian outfits, they immediately declared: “We can work!” Against Degenhardt’s wishes, the boys were not exterminated, but instead retrieved for work in Pelcery by none other than the factory’s Herr Direktor Lüth, whose authority in the camp was supreme. There were other known instances of him taking Jews out of lines leading to their being killed. He was a dyed in the wool Nazi, who for a moment, showed sympathy for a group of “cute” children. On 27–28 June, all ghettoes in the General Gouvernement of Poland, including the Small-Ghetto in Częstochowa were destroyed, on orders of Governor General Hans Frank (Figure 11). The Germans threw grenades into occupied bunkers detected by vicious tracking dogs and systematically dynamited the ghetto buildings and blasted them away with artillery. Frightened Jews who gave themselves up were summarily shot.

Figure 11: Destruction of the small ghetto. Leib Kushnir.

HASAG When the Small Ghetto was blasted into rubble an estimated 4,000 survivors were transported to HASAG – Pelcery and Rakow (Figure 12). At the end of June 1943, three quarters of the workforce, or around 3,350, were in Pelcery, while in Rakow,

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out of a total of around 3,000 inmates, 521 were Jews. Another 230 Jews were taken to a smaller camp in the Garibaldi warehouse run by the prison police (SCHUPO). Before they built their own shacks in an area surrounded by electrified barbed wire and guard towers, prisoners slept on the concrete floor in one of the factories. Due to the untrammeled sadism of the personnel, the camp was quickly transformed into a circus of horrors. Some prisoners ingratiated themselves to lowlife Germans by telling them dirty jokes. In the ramshackle barracks erected on factory grounds in Pelcery, 3,000 people lay on top of each other on three-tiered beds. Each barrack had twentythree prisoners per tier, altogether 138 men or women. A long table and bench stood in the middles of the barrack, and three bare bulbs hung from the ceiling. A trumpet sounded lights out at 9 o’clock; reveille woke up the camp’s inmates every early morning at 7. Each prisoner was given a thin blanket and a bug and lice-infested hay mattress. While prisoners were always hungry, they were not thirsty; to prevent disease from spreading, the Germans provided them with fresh water. Rakow’s Jewish inmates lived and worked on the grounds of the factory in four barracks, or marched out of town, and retuned at night. Although surrounded by barbed wire, only one watch tower guarded Rakow. There they were also given heating in the winter, hot and cold running water, and a better diet. Rakow’s commandant, Werkschutz Miloff was regarded as a man of unusual kindness, not allowing his staff to beat Jews, which they did anyway, but not in his presence. On the High Holidays he permitted public prayer. For his efforts he was sent to the eastern front and killed. Miloff was among the few who have been recorded as exhibiting sincere kindness to Jews in the ghettoes and camps. Some such Germans had been leftists before the war and had not lost their humanist values. In Pelcery, guards kept a careful watch over the twelve-hour day and night shifts. As in the ghetto, prisoners could be roused from their sleep and forced to work at useful, or useless, labor, or to take on double shifts, or even, at times, 36hour triple shifts. If Jews showed up late for the morning roll call or committed any kind of infraction of the rules, they either received twenty-five, sometimes fifty lashes, or were shot. Degenhardt lackeys frivolously sent to their deaths one who was too young or too beautiful, another not beautiful enough, one because he had a thick head of hair, another because he was balding, or wearing glasses, and certainly if one seemed weak, or just so, for no reason at all. These and many other arrested prisoners were taken to the Kolonie, the holding cells, located near the armory and the officers’ residences, until such time as they were taken out and killed. On the cellar walls of the jail, the doomed scratched out their last words of comfort and resignation to their loved ones.

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Pelcery combined aspects of both ghetto dwelling quarters and a work camp to produce munitions, mainly bullets, efficiently. The factories comprised different technical departments including ones that forged the heavy machinery that produced munitions. As in the ghettoes, Jews who had special skills, mechanics, electricians, plumbers, tailors and the like, received somewhat better treatment from the Germans. Women performed the most toxic duties cleaning spent cartridges (Rekalibrirung). Often, drunken Germans and Ukrainians shot into the women’s barracks for the fun of it. The Germans were amused by the degree of cruelty exercised by the Ukrainians against the Jews. The female guards were regarded as crueler than the men. The cries of the tortured victims could be heard throughout the camp. Inmates stood on their feet twelve hours a day at work with short breaks for barely subsistence level meals (half a liter of ersatz coffee, 200 grams of bread, and half liter of soup from dried beets). Prisoners’ clothes were regularly deloused, and exchanged for new rags and footwear, from an accessible closet when their old clothes and shoes, were worn out and could no longer be darned or mended with cardboard patches. If they had no shoes, inmates were given wooden clogs (“Holland shoes”). Newly arrived inmates were supplied with basic clothing needs and a taste of food, thanks to the organizational leadership of Kurland, one of the original members of the Judenrat. No clothing worn by inmates could disguise the skin and bones of the human skeletons. In 1944, the half hour given for inmates to eat and rest a moment was taken away. People had to eat their rationed meals while they worked. As with the outbreak of typhoid, contagious diseases, like tuberculosis were handled inhouse by Jewish medical staff so as not to alert the Germans. Obviously, the care given in the camp hospitals to an inmate was minimal, though an opportunity for minor surgery such as an appendectomy, rest and recuperation could occur. Often the quality of care depended on the medications smuggled into the camp by Poles either for profit, or in solidarity with the Resistance. Why the Germans allowed clinics at all is not clear. Perhaps they felt that patients, with minimal care, could quickly be returned to work. However, lying in a hospital bed could just as easily have been a death sentence if a guard decided the sick person was no longer capable of working. Degenhardt and Lüth disagreed about how inmates should be treated. Degenhardt believed the Poles were better workers than the Jews who should be quickly annihilated; Lüth did not want Jewish labor interrupted, and argued that Jews would perform better if they were better fed. Factory directors sold bread to the Jews at a profit, and Jews deluded themselves into thinking that they were indispensable to the German war effort. Kurland set up specialty shops, as they existed in the Small Ghetto, tailoring, shoemaking and laundering, etc.

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In truth all Jews were fair game, their murder a source of amusement. On 19 July 1943, a coterie of Degenhardt’s underlings organized a “selection” to determine who would continue working and who taken to the cemetery and shot. This selection turned out to be different from earlier ones. The prisoners who were held in the cellars of the Kolonie put up a fierce struggle but were overwhelmed and beaten with claw hammers. The influx of Jews came from various quarters and increased the camp population. Częstochowa Jews often saved portions of their food allowance to share with the famished new arrivals. In 1944, because of an influx of some 3,000 inmates from Łódź, Plaszów, Skarzysko and other camps, the Germans established two more HASAG labor camps, both linen and textile factories, to hold the Jews and increase munitions production: Warta (formerly owned by Markusfeld and Kohn) renamed Warthewerk (located inside the ghetto) and the Czestohowianka (located outside the ghetto). Altogether there were 11,000 inmates in the camps. With the increasing demand for bullets, especially after the loss of Stalingrad in 1943, HASAG cornered the market on bullet production and became a highly profitable, private monopoly that functioned up until the end of the war. In June 1942, the SS took control of all the factories from those that had been run by civilians. No doubt wanting to impress their German overlords, the Jewish appointed camp bosses competed with their oppressors in demonstrating their cruelty. The situation in Warta was somewhat better than the other camps, because of the strict hygienic measures that were taken to prevent the spread of disease. On rare occasions, brutal treatment of the inmates were eased. On Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the Jews were given days off from work. Otherwise, as elsewhere, brutality reigned. In one known case, a Jewish boss was assassinated in Buchenwald right after the war. This was a rare but not an isolated case. Thinking that the gathering of new arrivals in the camps was the prelude to a new major Aktsye increased the inmate’s sense of terror. However, not long before the liberation of HASAG, the Jews began to feel a certain sense of exhilaration, believing that the war against the Jews would soon be over. They were quickly disabused of their change in thinking by word from Warsaw that killing Jews remained the Germans’ highest priority. Word also came down of the liquidation of the Pianke and Trawniki camps, and that if there was no chance of small-scale open combat with the Germans, the Jewish underground fighters were urged to escape. Yet word from central command was equivocal. As prospects for any success in openly fighting the Germans faded, fighters were told to allow themselves to be caught rather than risk the collective punishment of inmates.

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Figure 12: HASAG. Book cover of Churban Czenstochow by B. Orenstein.

Relations were close between the ŻOB in Warsaw and Częstochowa, each exchanging intelligence and arms, until the Polish Uprising in August 1944. Contact with Warsaw was resumed later that year through the actions of a Polish courier who brought along a significant sum of money and letters of encouragement. Numbers of Jews arrived from other factories, making the total of workers, counting those that sneaked into the camp, 11,000 Jews. If Degenhardt felt the Final Solution was moving too slowly, and that he had too few Jews to annihilate, he nevertheless carried out Aktsyes on smaller portions of the population. On 19 July 1943, for example, he ordered 400 Jews killed, including the old, infirm, the young and energetic, intellectuals, the Jewish police, and their families and leaders such as Kurland. With ever-deteriorating health and morale, resistance was limited because of the congested space and human density of the camps. In the winter of 1944, resistance continued to function though in proportion to what was physically feasible.

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Thus, for example, a group of women organized a secret kitchen for the sick and for children with funds supplied by the ŻOB in Warsaw and with the help of Poles who sold clothing to the Jews taken from the Garibaldi warehouse. The underground comprised units of five persons drawn from Communists, left-Zionists, Hashomer hatzair, and the Bund. Altogether, there were thirty men and women that produced and cached explosives, insulated wire cutters, weapons, etc. Twenty-three Jewish partisans were active in the forests. The AK did not help them acquire guns. With few means at their disposal, they carried out acts of sabotage, including blowing up Rakow’s electrical circuits. Resistance also took the form of self-sacrificing acts of kindness. For example, the woman who picked up an abandoned, crying, child and walked with him and her young son to the truck that would take them to the cemetery. Degenhardt stopped her and offered to let her live if she left the children to go to their deaths alone. She refused. In another instance, an eight-year old boy urged his father not to accompany him to his death and save himself. The father did not let the boy die alone. Similar instances occurred in all the death camps, revealing a special kind of heroism, a selfless, heroism of love. While open resistance was out of the question, the underground urged Czestochower to do what was possible within its limits. HASAG workers were urged to sabotage the armaments they were making, and find the means to set the factories on fire. In the last months before the war ended in the east, the Germans, realizing that HASAG was a prime target for the quickly approaching Soviet soldiers, were gripped with fear of the inevitable retribution they knew was coming. The booming sounds of artillery and rifle shots reverberated in the camp. Soviet planes seen overhead raised the hopes of inmates that HASAG would be bombed, regardless if they would be killed in the process. The Jews were overtaken by a frenzy of excitement and bittersweet anticipation – the joy at their impending liberation, and their unfathomable agony over the loss of all their families and friends. Two days before the Soviets entered Częstochowa and liberated the camps, the unrelenting war against the Jews was still in progress. In the fall of 1944, some 12,000 Jews were left in the camps. The Germans persuaded many who were not forcibly rounded up, primarily by Lüth, with promises of escaping the Soviet bombardment of the HASAG factories. Inmates were told they would be taken to Germany, where Jews were still at work, and placed in camps where they would be treated humanely, given a change of clothing, and properly fed. Again, many did not learn from experience not to trust German promises. Before fleeing for their lives from the city, as the Soviet were at the gates, on 15–16 January 1945, the Germans managed to deport some 6,000 prisoners (that number according to Einhorn, 400 Jews, according to Liber Brenner, Benjamin Orenstein says around

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1,500), to Buchenwald, Bergen-Belsen, Gross Rosen, Ravensbrueck and other camps in the Reich. Those who left for Germany endured another four months of hell; few survived. Of those that stayed behind, many hoped to survive, others, fatalistically, resigned themselves to come what may. On 16–17 January 1945, 5,200 Jews in the HASAG camps were liberated. Of that number, 1,518 were Czestochower, 1,240 native born. Today Pelcery is an Italian-owned textile factory on what is now Filmatów Street. Two large facing memorial plaques on parallel walls greet those who go through the center walkway whether as workers, tourists or pilgrims. Pelcery’s layout, with its looming smoke stack, and disappearing railroad tracks is still recognizable for what it was. Justice was meted out to a few of the HASAG criminals. Heinrich Köstler, who was in charge of liquidating the Small Ghetto and confessed to murdering 400 Jews barehanded was executed, as were Gestapo officers Franz Fikus and Herman Szabelski. Afterward more than ten criminals were sentenced to life imprisonment in Poland and Germany. Additional charges were brought against Degenhardt’s chauffer in 1959 in Hanau Germany for murdering seven Jews. There are three version of Degenhardt’s end. The one most likely was that on 24 May 1966, Degenhardt, seventy-two years old, was sentenced to life imprisonment on 28 counts of murder in a Lüneburg court in West Germany for having shot seventy-one Jews in 1942 to 1943. Further charges against him were not brought because the court could not sentence him beyond the life term already handed out. The second: that he was assassinated, on word transmitted by the ŻOB to Greek partisans in Salonika, where he was reassigned from Częstochowa. (In yet another version it was Oberleutnant Überscheer who was killed by the Greek partisans.) The third: that a psychiatrist, who turned out to be a Nazi, diagnosed Degenhardt as deranged and not responsible for his deeds, and charges were therefore dismissed. The answers to the question, why were the hundreds and thousands of murderers complicit in the Holocaust not tried and punished, are, partly, because the legal system was, simply, ill-equipped to deal with the massive numbers of the guilty, and also because by the war’s end, the victorious allied powers were already gearing up against each other in the new Cold War.

Part Eight: Aftermath Each survivor was a monument on the cemetery of the Jewish people. –Benjamin Orenstein

Fear of Return Jews who had been hidden by righteous Poles, locally or in the countryside, or returned from Soviet exile joined the liberated Jews in Częstochowa. After the liberation of the camps in Germany and Austria, from April through June, hundreds of Displaced Persons gravitated to Częstochowa searching for what was left of their families, and to see what remained of the town beyond the rubble and ash. Between April and June 2,679 Jews returned to Poland from the liberated German camps, of these 652 were Czestochower. The relatively large numbers of Częstochowa Jews who stayed in the city immediately after their liberation was due, in part, at least, to the fact that the Nazi labor camps were located in the familiar, but now distorted, terrain where they had lived before the war. Of those 5,200 Jews who were freed from HASAG, the number fell to 3,000 by March; by May the number dropped to less than 2,000. With the return of more Jews from the camps, the numbers rose to 6,000 by July. By the end of the year, because of the increasing dangers to survivors throughout Poland, the numbers in Częstochowa dropped to around 3,000 and further still to 1,200 by March 1946. With the return of Jews from Russia to Częstochowa the numbers rose to 2,500 in May.1 The number who emigrated from Częstochowa dropped precipitously after the pogrom in Kielce on 4 July 1946; to 862 at the end of 1947; and 827 a year later on 31 May 1948. In 1955 there were 404 Jews left in Częstochowa. At the war’s end, the first concern of the Jewish world was focused on the well-being of the survivor – having to figure out where these newly displaced populations belonged, and whether they should be repatriated to their countries of origin. For the majority of Polish Jews, that latter option was roundly rejected. Jewish organizations and Jews individually, and at times with allied

1 These figures are cited by Liber Brenner in his testimony to the Central Committee of Polish Jews deposited in the archives of the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw. Quoted in Jan T. Gross, “The Wages of Fear: Confronting Stereotypes About Polish-Jewish Relations After the War,” in The Jews in Poland, II, ed., Sławomir Kapralski (Cracow: Judaica Foundation Center for Jewish Culture, 1999), 381. Orbach cites smaller numbers for the years 1945 to 1946. Cf. her chart, 154. I cite her figures for 1947, 1948 and 1955. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110770230-009

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government assistance, mobilized their vast array of resources, reaching out to survivors of the Holocaust wherever they were to be found and living in whatever conditions. Survivors fell into three groups: those that fended for themselves, alone or with remnants of families. Independently of the organized Jewish communities, or minimally attached to them, they made their way west, living and working in European cities along the way, arriving at their ultimate destinations in America or Canada, Cuba, Argentina, Australia, Sweden, or east to Palestine, where they were welcomed with open arms by the existing landsmanshaftn. A second group was taken in by the Displaced Persons camps. The third remained behind or returned to Poland to settle there. The charitable and welfare institutions that sprang into immediate action included the local communities acting under the Central Committee of Jews in Poland Jews (Centralny Komitet Żydów w Polsce, CKŻP), the Joint Distribution Committee, TOZ, ORT, the Czenstochover Relief Landsmanshaft in New York and other states, and the smaller communities around the world. Their aim was not only to provide immediate material assistance to their brothers and sisters, with schools and orphanages along with physicians and psychiatrists to treat the physical and traumatic wounds and disorders of the freed inmates. Overall their purpose was to acclimatize survivors to their new lives and to help heal their individual psyches as free independent people with a sense of self-worth. Provisions were made for more than 200 children, mostly girls, many invalids and orphans, the exhausted, and seriously ill. Polish protectors of Jewish children who were baptized were reluctant to give them up. Numbers of children who had been taken care of by some Poles were ransomed on behalf of the Jewish community. War orphans were delicately weaned from their Catholicism with tender, loving care. Some survivors went looking for their lost children among righteous Gentiles and in convents and monasteries. In Częstochowa, priests and nuns, risked their lives hiding Jewish children. A number are remembered in Yad Vashem’s memorial to the “Righteous of the Nations.” Some clergyman arranged for Jews to get Catholic birth certificates in order for them to acquire Aryan identity cards that would allow them to live outside of the ghetto. If no one came to claim these innocents, they were converted and integrated into Polish society, their memories of their Jewish origins erased. In the last 50 years some of these hidden children have discovered that they were once Jewish and given up for their protection to Gentile keepers. Many have embraced their newfound identity and play a role in the exciting contemporary Jewish revival in Poland; others are, naturally, ambivalent, others indifferent.

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The Częstochowa community of Jewish survivors was originally organized and funded by the Central Committee of the Jews, in Poland (CKŻP) first in Lublin, where it was founded in 1944, then at its headquarters a year later in Warsaw. The official governing body embraced a network of local Jewish communities in Poland, interceding for them with the Soviet government and helping with their repatriation and also emigration to Palestine then the State of Israel. The Częstochowa community received packages and money from the landsmanshaft in New York. Together with the Joint Distribution Committee, the Central Committee painstakingly collected lists of names and posted them in various central places where desperate survivors turned, hoping to find a familiar name among the living. Around 280,000 files of the sort were accumulated from all of Poland. The Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw was born on the basis of their archival collections and operated under communist auspices in the one remaining building of the former grand Tlomackie Synagogue. The Central Committee was disbanded by the Stalinist regime in 1950. Political life emerged almost immediately and played an active role participating in all aspects of relief work. As elsewhere in Poland, in Częstochowa, the community was comprised of diverse parties from the left to the right, paralleling prewar politics. Notwithstanding their differences, as during the First World War, they united in channeling institutional funds earmarked for the refugees, especially those returning from the Soviet Union. In accord with the Polish-Soviet treaty, these Jews had free passageway back to Poland. Great efforts were made to increase the sense of security of the refugees by providing them with Yiddish lessons, community housing, health care with doctors and nurses on hand, social welfare, schools, vocational training, sports activities, summer holidays, recreation for children and adults, theater and art lessons. The orphanage, established in 1945, was housed at the Beys peretz on 23 Krótka street and attended to the needs of traumatized children who had lost both or one parent or were waiting to be reunited with whatever family survived. The secular parties did not ignore the religious needs of the observant Jews, enlisting the services of a rabbi and a shochet who functioned semiindependently as part of a country wide Jewish commission. By 1949, the Communists dissolved all the other parties. Only the Cultural and Social Society of Polish Jews, (Towarzystwo Społeczno-Kulturalne Żydów/ (TSKŻ) represented the Jews in Poland. In the meantime, all the necessities of prewar Poland were available but, in miniscule form, creating both a sense of both despair and consolation in the lives of survivors. Through the Central Committee and other aid institutions Jews found work in a poor, sluggish economy. Their former position in business and industry were out of the question, but Jews made a living

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working in the mines and in government-owned factories. Producers’ cooperatives helped individuals start their own, businesses, working as tailors, barbers, painters, electricians, mechanics, tailors, cobblers, etc. The resurrected Po‘ale Tsiyon-left, Shomer hatzair, and the ŻOB were added to the list of the postwar ideologically divided parties. In this virtual kehile, the Communists took the most seats; six in number, while the Aguda and Revisionists operated illegally. Far from despairing, a vibrant political life revealed a life-affirming, however difficult, drive to recovery. With the party nearly losing its raison d’etre, the thousand or so remaining Bundists in Poland, suffered an existential crisis. Perhaps, like the Jewish Communists, the Bundists in immediate postwar Poland held out hope of sustaining themselves as part of a Soviet Federation of nationalities, despite the fact that those dreams had already been shattered in the 1930s. There were two consolations, two reasonable ways out of the Bund’s quandary: the first, to advocate the ethical teachings of Internationalism and labor values, the second to join in various social democratic labor organizations, unions and promoting Yiddishism. If staying close together was encouraging, it was ultimately a delusionary sense of empowerment. With glimmering hope for its institutional future, the party’s members made their presence known in Israel, Canada, and America, where the Bund found a home as a branch of the Workmen’s Circle In the meantime, in Częstochowa, the Bund, until its demise, created a rich social life for the amusement and edification of its members. In New York there was a branch of the Bund that published its own Yiddish journal, Unzer tsayt, and possessed an archive of invaluable books and documents. It also and housed a workers’ restaurant open to the public. Eventually the Bund in Poland was compelled to merge with the Communist, Polish United Workers Party (PZPR – Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza) in 1949. At the same time, most of the other Jewish institutions were liquidated or coopted by the Communist regime. Most Bundists refused to join the Communists, and in some places the Communists refused to accept Bundists into their ranks. For pragmatic reasons, the Communist Party in Poland allowed the highly influential Zionist movement, whose aim was sharply focused on aliya, to operate more or less freely in order to win its own sphere of influence in the Middle East. Perhaps that is why the Communist Party looked away when some Zionists kidnapped children under the care of the Committee (CKŻP) in order to send them to Palestine. In the end, whatever the “productive” or creative work in which Jews engaged, whether in Częstochowa or other towns ultimately mattered very little in the face of increasing antisemitism, and the desire to make Poland Judenrein. It began simply enough with Poles making it clear that returning Jews were not

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welcome. Few illusions persisted about reconstructing Jewish life on their native grounds. Not only were the masses of Jews gone, but those who came to see what was left, what places and what persons survived, faced the continuing threat of being murdered by Poles afraid of having their property reclaimed by their rightful owners. Returning Jews were generally treated with hostility and violence. Few Poles treated the Jews kindly when they returned to their former homes. Some Jews were allowed to shower and receive a change of clothing, but no more. Many a survivor reported being asked with disappointed and rank cynicism by former acquaintances, “Oh you survived?” Oft heard was the expression: Ach jak nam dobrze bez Żydów (How good it is for us without Jews). After the war, returning Jews had to keep a low profile. A married couple murdered in Częstochowa, foreshadowed yet greater dangers. The myth of the blood libel resurfaced in postwar Poland resulting in violence and the murder of Jews. The first such case was in Kraków, but the one that earned the greatest notoriety took place in Kielce. Just a year and a few months after the war ended, the Polish population’s pent-up hatred of Jews exploded on 4 July 1946. An eight-year boy, Henryk Blaszcyk, had disappeared from his family while going to visit friends. When he returned two days later he reported having been kidnapped by the Jews and held in the basement along with other Polish children at the Jewish shelter on Planty Street. In cahoots with his father, who took him to the police station, the child reported what seemed like an attempted ritual slaughter, a belief ingrained in the folklore of the population. Upon inspection, there turned out to be no basement or other children on the premises, but by then the mob, many in a drunken murderous stupor began the slaughter, which occurred outside and inside the building, and in the courtyard, and left forty-two Jews, men, women, and children dead, and an equal number injured, including two Poles. It all took place in the course of six hours, from nine in the morning. Whether it was orchestrated by branches of the disorganized Communist Police, or instigated by right-wing fascists, what Jews witnessed was an undifferentiated mob attack by Poles against Jews. For propagandistic reasons, Communist law enforcement agencies, which played the major role in inciting the pogrom, shifted the blame onto right-wing fascist gangs who were known for murdering Jews. There was nothing new in the whole matter; the people circulated a blood libel, which they took as a justification for killing Jews and robbing them. One year after the war, the Kielce pogrom was one of the most brutal and bestial crimes committed by Poles against Jews in the twentieth century (with the exception of the massacre of the Jews in Jedwabne on 10 July 1941, when the Polish half of the town murdered almost all of its Jewish “neighbors;” some

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340 men women and children; 300 of them were herded into a barn that was then set on fire). Complicit by their silence after the war was the reaction of the Church, which was essentially inaccessible to Jews who pleaded with August Cardinal Hlond, the primate of Poland, to speak out forcefully and directly against the bloody carnage. He refused. When asked by a Jewish delegation from America to denounce the Kielce massacre, then Bishop Stefan Wyszynski said “that the question as to whether Jews use blood for their rituals has not yet been clarified.”2 Marxist intellectuals held hostage to their ideology, also could not assess the matter directly, except as a manifestation of the class struggle. While the Polish evening newspapers were celebrating American Independence Day, not a word appeared that day about the pogrom in Kielce. No official effort was made to stop the bloodshed or investigate the charges on the spot where the pogrom took place. When reporters came the next day they found, strewn around the building, bodies of men women and children, torn apart, stomped to death, their heads bashed in, beaten by clubs and iron bars, stabbed, shot, axed, and thrown out of windows. Those who were evacuated to the filled to capacity hospital were tortured there and robbed by the attendants. The same day the murders in the street spread to the railway stations. Ultra-nationalist gangs boarded trains in the vicinity, picked out the Jewish passengers and murdered them. Shouting that Jews were killing Christian children, the gangs exhorted Polish passengers on other trains to follow suit. One of the first victims was a Jew who traveled on July 4th from Kielce to nearby Częstochowa. For months after the pogrom, Jews were yanked out of trains and killed by Poles, often in a drunken stupor. As Jan T. Gross writes, “People killed Jews with gusto. Vast numbers of Kielce residents were involved in the events, young and old, of both sexes and from all walks of life.”3 In the end, not surprisingly, Justice was not served. The trial of the pogrom participants took place with dispatch on 9 July 1946, but only scratched the surface of the crime’s enormity. The regime sought to be rid of the whole affair and the worldwide attention it attracted. Senior officers present at the pogrom were not indicted. Nine people were executed by firing squad. Others who were arrested were acquitted or sentenced to various lengths of time, including life imprisonment, punishments which were not enforced. The trial hardly put an end to the dangers Jews felt living in Poland.

2 S. L. Shneiderman. Between Fear and Hope (New York: Arco, 1947) 117. 3 Jan T. Gross, Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland After Auschwitz (New York: Random House, 2001), 159.

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As a result of the Kielce pogrom, panic ensued among Jews, followed by ongoing nationwide mass emigration, in the tens of thousands, of the saved remnant. Some fled to the big cities like Warsaw and Łódź, although in the latter there were antisemitic manifestations. Still they were safer than the smaller towns and villages (except for the pogrom that took place in Kraków in 1945); others made their way to Germany. With the aid of the Central Committee some 150,000 Polish-Jewish refugees left after the pogrom in Kielce. Refugees were allowed to be repatriated from the Soviet Union to Poland without papers. Of the 2,578 sojourning in Częstochowa some 652 were Czestochowers. Fears of a pogrom occurring in the Holy City loomed large. But, because of exceptional precautions, in Częstochowa there was no pogrom. That was the doing of one man, Bishop Teodor Kubina, Rabbi Nokhum Asz’s old friend who became a hero to the Jews. Directly and unambiguously, Kubina defied Church policy of obfuscation and prevarication, declaring, on 7 July, that: all statements about ritual murders are lies. Nobody from among the Christian population in Kielce, in Częstochowa, or anywhere else has ever been harmed by Jews for ritual and religious purposes. We do not know of a single case of a Christian child abducted by Jews. All news and stories spread on this topic are either deliberately invented by criminals or come from confused people who do not know any better, and they aim to provoke a crime [. . .]. We appeal to all [. . .] to combat with all your strength all the attempts to organize anti-Jewish excesses. We trust that responsible citizens if Częstochowa attached to principles of Christian morality will not follow criminal suggestions and will not debase themselves by raising their hands against a fellow citizen only because he is of a different nationality and denomination.4

Posters of Kubina’s statement addressed “To the Entire Community of Częstochowa,” went up all over town and was preached from the pulpits and endorsed by the city fathers. While the Church hierarchy did not approve of Kubina’s initiative, there was a feeling of relief among Jews that someone so distinguished as the Bishop of Częstochowa had spoken up for them, not only in the light of Kielce, but also because of pogrom rumblings in Częstochowa. Kubina’s intervention could not stem the rising tide of emigration. In December 1946 there were 1,235 Jews living in town. A year later that number dropped to 862 (with forty-nine in the surrounding former shtetls). By 1958 only 404 Jews remained and by 1962, the number fell to 200. The tiny community attended to its cultural needs, with the help of ORT, but for all intents and purposes, and with the collaboration of the communist government, memory of the Jewish presence was erased. Since 1950, the TSKŻ in Poland has served the modest number of Jewish residents of the city. 4 Gross, 150.

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Displaced Persons Camps in Germany In the immediate aftermath of the war, Berlin was divided into numerous zones, the four main ones being American, British, French, and Russian. Overseen by the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), and the Red Cross, each zone had its own Displaced Persons Camps. Together they took in large numbers of survivors, totaling 250,000, either directly from the Concentration Camps or local hospitals. Posted lists and radio broadcasts of survivors’ names were of crucial importance. The American zone, with the greatest number of survivors, covered the territory of Bavaria, with its center of operations in Munich. The American DP camps were the most desirable, allowing for the greatest degree of autonomy. The Russian sector was the most restrictive, eventually sending refugees carrying Russian passports back to the Soviet Union to endure the brutalities of life under Stalin. The Częstochowa Landsmanshaft in Germany was originally founded for the purpose of holding annual yortsayt memorials, which were always packed with people. The first was held in the German camp in Feledfing in 1946. The second meeting took place a year later in Landsberg. Both were in the American zone. Twelve hundred people attended, and some felt they were the last Czestochower Jews left on earth. In Poland and Germany some Czestochower Jews testified against the war criminals. Because of its restrictive White Paper policy, the British had a difficult time with the Jews demanding to make aliya and who resorted to the Bricha, the underground railroad that secretly brought Jews to Palestine. After Israeli independence, the situation changed. Until then, the Americans were the most open to Jews immigrating to Palestine, and pressured Britain to let them in. Conditions in the DP camps were abysmal at first, and Jews were made to feel like prisoners. Refugees were cut off from the outside world, surrounded by barbed wire and travel between the camps was restricted. Some, like Buchenwald (in the Russian zone) and Bergen-Belsen (in the English zone) were former concentration camps, others were German army barracks, and survivors were subjected to living in close quarters with their former oppressors. Physical and psychological conditions improved as DPs became self-governing and semiautonomous. Czestochower survivors developed their own infrastructures, which, through their own Central Committee, as in Poland, took care of the refugees, vocational and financial and cultural needs. For the sake of raising morale, Czestochowers encouraged social relations through cultural events. Orchestras and visiting Yiddish theater troupes enriched Jewish life. Sports became popular and featured in the abundance of Yiddish press that developed to keep readers abreast of what was happening in the inside and outside worlds and to

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maintain contact with other landsmanshaftn everywhere, including Poland. Many found sweethearts, married and had children. Politically active Jews divided along prewar party lines, with the Zionists, understandably, taking the leading role. Emissaries came in from Israel (including Ben Gurion), propagating their ideology, through teaching Hebrew and agriculture. Instructors also arrived from America and England to promote literacy, teach Jewish and general subjects both religious and secular, and to provide vocational training. Religious schools in Bergen Belsen, Feldafing and Förenwald and other camps contributed to the vitality of traditional life. Memorial services (hazkoros) were attended by all the Czestochowers, many of whom made the trip from their camp to other zones. The participation of Orthodox Jews gave the otherwise secular service and celebration of the holiday a religious dimension. By 1950, all the DP camps closed except for Förenwald, which was open until 1957, and the Austrian camp in Wels until 1959. Elderly first-generation survivors, their children and those belonging to the third generation, now live all over the world. The center did not hold, but the satellites of memory, the landsmanshaftn, continue to flourish and prosper. In person, or in virtual reality, Czestochover Jews and their descendants keep in touch and form a community of kinship and spirit. The Polish-Jewish survivors’ odysseys have been told in memoirs and analyzed from every angle by journalists, sociologists, psychotherapists and historians; all of whom speak with amazement of the survivors’ resilience despite their longing for what was, and the burdens of their memories. A year after the 1967 Six Day War, a vicious antisemitic campaign instigated by party strongman Władisław Gomulka, under the guise of anti-Zionism drove out what was left of the Jewish minority in Poland, particularly the intelligentsia and state bureaucracy from the country. It was the last significant exodus from Poland since 1946. Seemingly, Jewish memory in Poland came to an end.

Part Nine: Rescuing Memory Before the fall of Communism in 1989, there were a few memorial plaques in Częstochowa: one on the side of the philharmonic orchestra building, where the Great Synagogue once stood; one in the Ryneczek Warszawski for the ghetto fighters; another on the side of the building of the former Jewish Hospital, and a meager tombstone on the empty fenced-in lot on Kawia Street where 2,000 Jews lie buried anonymously. With the fall of Communism, however, hopes of restoring remembrance of the Holocaust and the history of Jews in Poland has been rekindled. After three generations since the war’s end, significant efforts and accomplishments have made memory come alive in Częstochowa; foremost through the efforts of philanthropists, Sigmund Rolat (a native of Częstochowa), Alan Silberstein, Jerzy Mizgalski, Professor of the Pedagogical Institute of the Jan Długosz University in Częstochowa and with the cooperation of the Mayor Tadeusz Wrona. With the participation of local and national government officials, several hundreds of members of the World Society of Częstochowa Jews and their Descendants and the Association of Częstochowa Jews in Israel have come to Częstochowa to attend memorial services and enjoy the ceremonies of renewal. The last burial to take place in the cemetery was in 1973. Since 2004, there have been five major reunions: the last in 2016. Israeli tour guides have accompanied these reunions and are training to serve visitors to Jewish Częstochowa. Guides are also available through the Jan Długosz University in Częstochowa. The Jewish cemetery has now become a hospitable place of pilgrimage for survivors and Hasidim who come to pray at the gravesites of their rebbes. Recognizing the progress made in creating inspiring and artistic sites of Jewish memory, the Częstochowa landsleit, worldwide, have supported further intense efforts to document and restore Jewish memory. Most efforts have been directed towards restoring the remnants of the Jewish cemetery, the third, or fourth, largest in Poland with about 15,000 graves before 1939, on around 8.5 hectares of land. After the Holocaust, the cemetery stood desolate and desecrated for decades, a place where lovers had their trysts, and others came to relieve themselves. Most of the gravestones in the cemetery, around 10,000, were destroyed or looted by the Germans to build fortifications. After the war Poles removed monuments and used them for construction work. Periodically the small Jewish community have held memorial services at the devastated cemetery, which had turned into a tangled web of, brush, bushes and trees, with a large sewage drain from a neighboring factory spilling its waste into once hallowed ground. In the 1990s, efforts to clean up the cemetery had failed. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110770230-010

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Figure 13: Hasidim praying in refurbished cemetery. Joanna Sidorowcz.

In recent years, however, the township, working diligently with young Jewish and Polish volunteers, Mayor Krzystof Matyjaszcyzk, and the Częstochowa Municipal Council restored the cemetery gates and the central memorial monument (figure 13). Thanks to the tireless efforts of Alon Goldman, Chairman of the Association of Częstochowa Jews in Israel and Vice President of The World Society of Częstochowa Jews and their Descendants, and webmaster and translator Andrew Rajcher together with the Mayor and city elders of Częstochowa, and the generous funding of Sigmund Rolat and Alan Silberstein, what was until recently only a collective wish, is becoming realized. Rajcher’s website is an outstanding achievement and resource for the story of Jewish Częstochowa, then and now. Goldman’s regular emails in Hebrew and English keeps the Association of Częstochowa Jews and the World Society, abreast of all developments pertaining to past and present Jewish life in Częstochowa. Goldman has also directed interface programs for Częstochowa, Polish and Jewish students from Israel. Thanks to Goldman, the Gidonim students, and their teachers of the Re’ut High School in Jerusalem have spent a portion of their summer vacations helping to clean up the grounds, washing and restoring inscriptions on tombstones (Figure 14). For many years, with extraordinary determination, the Polish historian Wiesław Paszkowski, together with his wife Urszula Paszkowska their son,

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and the Gidonim, have been mapping the Jewish Cemetery of Częstochowa, researching and gathering information about the deceased.1 Under Paszkowski direction, 4,500 graves had already been mapped. Paszkowski’s work is exceptional and of great historical importance since all the burial khevre kadishe lists of the deceased were destroyed during the war.

Figure 14: Gidonim project participants. Alon Goldman, top row second from left. Sigmund Rolat, front row fifth from left. Courtesy of Alon Goldman.

In restoring and creating sites of memory, what Goldman, Paszkowski, the Gidonim, and others have accomplished, will henceforth not allow our history to sink into oblivion, and augurs well for future works yet to be undertaken. Where there was nothing, now we have signs, monuments and murals, festivals, concerts, academic conferences, publications, and international reunions of Częstochowa Jews and their descendants. An award-winning core exhibition of the local Jewish Museum under the directorship of Professor Jerzy Mizgalski has traveled throughout Poland, Canada, the United States, where it also appeared under the Russell 1 He published the results of his mapping work and the fruit of his research in the book “CMENTARZ ŻYDOWSKI W CZĘSTOCHOWIE – Przewodnik tom 1” (JEWISH CEMETERY IN CZĘSTOCHÓWA – Guide Volume 1). It appeared at the of the 4th Reunion of Częstochowa Jews and Their Descendants held on October 2012 in Częstochowa.

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Senate Office Building Rotunda from 5–9 December 2006. The exhibition has now found a permanent place in our ancestral home. To be sure, memories of Jewish Częstochowa will fade along with its survivors and the passing of the “second generation,” but its history will be recorded, preserved, and recalled by caring generations to follow.

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Abbreviations Cz. Y Cz. NS Cat ZIIH MCz

Czenstochower yidn Czenstochov: A New Supplement to Cz. Y Catalogue for The Jews of Czestochowa Jewish Historical Institute Czestochowa ‘museum

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110770230-012

Index 1863 Uprising XVI, 24 academic XII, 23, 23, 72, 80, 105, 176 academies 6, 92 accultural-assimilationist 31 acculturation V, 20, 21, 21, 22, 26, 27, 31, 180 Adler, Jacob 76 Adler, Viktor 104 Africa 117 agent-provocateur 51 agrarian workers XXIII agricultural farm 71 agriculture XVI, 32, 32, 173 Agude VI, 22, 34, 57, 58, 59, 60, 71, 83, 84, 85, 86, 88, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 108, 111, 124, 125, 168, 179 Agude-Zionists 95 Agudos XXIV, 18, 22, 34, 72, 81, 83, 96 Agudos yisroel Party XXIV, 18, 22, 34, 72, 81, 83, 96 Ahad Ha’am 3 Aktiengesellschaft Metallwahrenfabrik AG 127 Aktsye (s) 144, 145, 146, 151, 155, 161, 162 Al hamishmar 85, 86, 86, 87 Al. NMP 1, 3, 8, 9, 10 alcohol 97, 118 Aleja XX, 1, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 23, 34, 38, 84, 86, 93, 94, 99, 111, 118, 119, 125, 128, 136, 138, 142, 146, 168, 172 Alexander II XXI, 111 Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums 22 aluminum 152 amateur league 73 American cinema 77 American DP camps 172 American zone 145, 172 Amstow 17 Anielewicz, Mordecai 152 anti-Bolshevik 90 anti-bourgeois 104 anti-Christian XXVII, 121 anti-clerical 104

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110770230-013

anti-Hebrew 104 anti-immigration 2 anti-Jewish discrimination (see also pogrom) XVII, XX, XXIII, XXIV, XXV, XXVII, 25, 46, 47, 48, 62, 120, 125, 171 anti-labor 66 anti-minority 84 anti-nationalism 92 anti-nationalist 83, 95 anti-Russian XVII anti-secular 110 anti-Talmudic 13 anti-Yiddish 94 anti-Zionism XVII, 90, 104, 173 antisemites XXVII, 6, 47, 61, 62, 99, 119 Antisemitism VI, XIX, XX, XXIII, XXV, XXVI, XXVII, XXVIII, 4, 59, 21, 25, 48, 58, 59, 60, 61, 63, 64, 71, 82, 83, 87, 88, 90, 95, 97, 98, 100, 103, 105, 107, 108, 110, 112, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 140, 157, 168, 170, 171, 173 179, 180, 181 Arbeter tsaytung XVII, 70 Arbeter-rat (see Workers’ Council) Argentina 89, 166, 181 Armia Krajowa XXVIII, 157 Armia Ludowa XXVIII, 157 Armistice 62 Artisan Association 51, 64 artisans XV, 4, 13, 44, 65, 83, 86, 105, 115, 116, 136, 142 artists 15, 76, 77, 153 arts XXVI, XXVI, 79, 98, 116, 181 Aryan 120, 131, 138, 142, 143, 149, 150, 151, 152, 155, 156, 157, 166 – Aryanizaion 115, 131 – Aryanized 131 Aryan side 138, 142, 143, 149, 150, 151, 152, 155, 156, 157 Asch, Sholem 76 Ashkenazi(c) 6, 36 Asia 91 Assimilation V, XXIV, 13, 17, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 31, 41, 48, 73, 84, 92, 121 134, 180, 181

186

Index

Assimilationism VI, 99, 100 assimilationist 17, 20, 24, 39, 53, 57, 59, 60, 82, 83, 99, 100 – Labor Zionists as 39 Association of Jewish War Veterans 100 Asz, Moishe 130 Asz, Nokhum 15, 16, 28, 34, 35, 36, 96, 171 At Night in the Old Market 76 atheism XXVII, 27 athletes 73, 74, 75, 130 athletics 26, 71 Auschwitz XI, 130, 170, 180 Australia 117, 166 Austria XXI, XXV, 41, 165 Austrian XXI, XXIII, 15, 173 Austro-Hungarian XXII, 54 Austro-Marxist 104 autodidacts 22, 29, 86, 104 Axer, Dr. Filip 78, 79, 112, 136 bakeries 6, 55, 67, 90 – “Popular Bakery” 55 bakers 13, 50, 51, 55, 64, 66, 67, 68, 104 – Bakers’ Union 64, 67 Balfour Declaration 84, 90, 107 bankers 21 banking 45 banks 1, 43, 44, 94, 117, 125 – Bank kupiecki 94 – Bank Polski XXVI, 117 Baran, Stefan 121, 122 Bartel, Kazimierz XXIII, XXV Bataliony Chłopskie 157 Bauer, Otto 104 Bavaria 172 BBWR (see Non-party Bloc for the Support of the government) Beilis Affair 10 Beilis, Mendl 4 Beitar (see youth movements) Belarus XXII ben Eliezer Halevim, Reb Yakov 16 ben Yosef Rovinson, Gershon 28 Ben-Gurion, David 90 Ber Birnboim, Abraham XVI, 36 Bergen-Belsen 164, 172 Berlewi, Henryk 77

Berlin IV, 92, 92, 131, 172, 179, 180 Beys din 16, 28 Beys lekhem 33 Beys medrish 15, 29, 72, 96, 122 Beys oylim 14 Beys Yoysef Musar Yeshiva 6 Białystok 62, 110 bias 89 Bible 78, 93, 96, 113 Bicycles 45, 116, 117 Big ghetto VI, 127, 136, 137, 139, 141, 143, 145, 146, 147, 148, 150, 152, 153 Birobidzhan 90 Birth & birthrate 2, 149, 166 Black Madonna (see Matka Boska) Blaszcyk, Henryk 169 Bloc of National Minorities 84 Bloch, Jan 21, 41 blood libel XXVII, 48, 63, 169 Bloody Monday 127, 129 Blue Police 129, 157 Bolesław Prus 24 Bolshevik XXII, 62, 63, 89 Bomba, Abraham 153 Borokhov, Ber XII, 89, 90, 111, 113 – “Borokhov Brigade” 89 bourgeois 31, 59, 81, 105, 107, 109, 112 bourgeoise XXIII boycotts XXVI, XXVIII, 4, 9, 40, 45, 46, 59, 71, 114, 119, 120, 122 Braland factory 141, 151, 152 bricha 172 British 32, 84, 98, 99, 108, 172 British Mandate 84 British White Paper 99 Brześć-nad-Bugiem XXV Buchenwald 161, 164, 172 Bund, the VI, XII, XX, XXVI, 3, 40, 42, 48, 49, 50, 55, 58, 59, 60, 61, 64, 65, 68, 70, 72, 78, 83, 85, 88, 89, 90, 91, 96, 97, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 124, 125, 141, 144, 163, 168, 179, 180 Bundism (incl. Bundists) 27, 39, 54, 64, 66, 72, 97, 102, 103, 104, 106, 107, 108, 109, 111, 121, 122, 143, 152, 168, 179 Byzantine 86

Index

Canada 117, 166, 168, 176 Cantor Birnboim 77, 102 cantorial music 96 cantors 36, 94, 96, 132 Capitalist-Communist 121 Catholic XVII, XXI, 1, 12, 25, 40, 43, 45, 61, 114, 119, 120, 121, 166, 181 – Catholic-owned 47 – Catholicism 25, 166 cattle 4, 119, 139, 147 cemetery 14, 15, 102, 129, 131, 139, 143, 144, 146, 147, 150, 155, 156, 161, 163, 165, 174, 175, 176 center right-wing Jewish middle-class parties 59 center-left XXIII, XXVIII, 83 center-right XXIV, 88 Central Committee of Jews in Poland 166, 167 Central Federation of Jewish Sports and Turn Unions 73 Central Powers XXI, XXII Central Yiddish School Organization (see Tsantrale yidishe shul farayn) challah 5, 34 Chanukah 77, 123 Chasam Soifer shul 6 Chief Chazzan 36 Chumash 28 children XV, 2, 3, 8, 16, 19, 22, 29, 30, 32, 33, 39, 40, 42, 44, 62, 66, 67, 78, 79, 80, 81, 96, 97, 105, 122, 128, 129, 136, 138, 139, 142, 143, 145, 146, 148, 150, 156, 157, 158, 163, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 173 – child labor 67, 109 – childbirth 33 – childrearing 105, 140 – children’s orphanage and nursery 77 Christian(s) XXV, XXVII, 1, 2, 4, 11, 16, 23, 48, 53, 66, 71, 106, 119, 121, 125, 128, 156, 170, 171 – Christian Democrats XXV, XXVII, 106 – Christianity 13 – Christmas 36, 132 churbn 181 Church Catholic 25, 121, 181

187

– Church-related 45, 45 – Church-sanctioned 119 – Church-sponsored 43 circumcisions 6 City Fathers 77, 171 class (see also upper class, middle class) XX, XXIII, 2, 6, 9, 11, 17, 26, 27, 29, 31, 41, 42, 46, 53, 54, 61, 65, 67, 77, 80, 83, 85, 86, 89, 94, 98, 99, 104, 107, 108, 109, 115, 118, 119, 120, 124, 134, 170 – class-consciousness 103 clergy 24, 166 clericalism 110 cobblers 43, 136, 168 colonization 31, 85 Comintern 90, 107, 108, 108 commercial revolution 31 Commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania, partition of XXI Communism VI, XVII, 35, 89, 90, 91, 104, 174 Communist(s) XVII, XXII, XXVIII, 27, 46, 49, 50, 64, 66, 71, 73, 90, 95, 102, 103, 106, 107, 108, 110, 111, 112, 141, 144, 152, 153, 157, 163, 167, 168, 169, 171, 180 Communist Party 49, 49, 102, 103, 106, 110, 111, 111, 144, 144, 168, 168, 180 Communist Police 169 Compulsory Education Act of 1919 28 Conditions of Small Ghetto 149, 150, 151 Congress Poland XVI, XVI, XXII, 2, 45, 52, 54, 84, 92 Coup, Piłsudski’s XXIV Cultural and Social Society of Polish Jews 167 culturally 11, 31, 41, 65, 87 Culture Council 65, 66 curriculum 28, 33, 37, 77, 78, 79, 90, 95 Cypkewicz-Rosen 145, 146, 179 Czechoslovakia XXV Czeczanow 130, 144 Czeczanów 136 Czensthover-khevre kadishe 6 Czenstochover reklameblat 69 Czenstochover Relief and Ladies Auxiliary Landsmanshaft 56 Czenstochover Relief Landsmanshaft 78, 166 Czenstochover shmadnikes 21

188

Index

Czenstochover tageblat 69, 70 Czenstochover tsaytung XVII, 70, 71 Czenstochover veker 70 Czenstochower vokhnblat 69 Czenstochover Yidn 47, 123, 180, 181 Częstochowa Avenue XXIII, XXVI Częstochowa Municipal Council 62, 175 Czestochower Municipal Council 83 Czestochowski ekspres 71 Dankowicz, Szymon 24 Death camps 143, 144, 163 Degenhardt 134, 141, 144, 145, 148, 150, 151, 158, 159, 160, 162, 163, 164 Department of Religious Affairs 57 Depression (of 1929, Great) XVI, XXVI, 9, 31, 54, 66, 115, 116, 117, 118, 143 Der nayer shul 36 Der proletaryer 70 Di fakl 39 Di fareynikte 101, 102, 103, 105, 111 Di ferme 32 Di mishpokhe 56 Diaspora 14, 31, 59, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 89, 117, 181 diaspora nationalism 31, 87, 88, 89 dictatorial governments XXV Displaced Persons VII, 165, 166, 172, 173 Displaced Persons Camps VII, 166, 172, 173 – Conditions in the DP camps 172 Dmowski, Roman XXI, XXIII, XXVII Dobroczynność 32, 51, 140 Dobrucki, Gustav XXIV, XXVIII doctors 19, 33, 75, 81, 109, 129, 133, 144, 150, 154, 167 Doikeyt 98, 107 Dos groyse gevins 140 Dos naye vort XVII, 70, 103 Dreyfus Affair 10 Duchy of Warsaw XV, XXI, 14, 15 Działoszyn 15, 17 Dzigan and Schumacher 76 Edelshtat, Dovid 11 eight-hour work day XXII, 43, 49, 105, 109 Einsatzgruppen 144

Eisenhütte Tschenstochau (f.k.a. Rakow steel mill) 149 Ekspres częstochowski 5 elections XXII, XXIV, XXV, XXVI, XXVIII, 38, 52, 53, 54, 58, 59, 60, 64, 65, 83, 84, 85, 88, 95, 98, 99, 103, 105, 108, 109, 124, 125 electoral power 83 Elementary school XV, 15, 23, 27, 77, 78, 79, 80, 93 Endecja XXI, XXVII, XXVIII, 40, 46, 47, 66, 119, 120, 122, 124, 126 Endek Party 4, 61, 66, 95, 95, 120, 126 Endeks 4, 67, 96, 121, 125 Enlightenment V, XV, 22, 23, 24, 25, 27, 32, 41, 95 Eretz Israel 53, 74, 76, 86, 87, 89, 93, 94, 124, 145 Et livnot 85, 86 European cinema 77 Ezras noshim 33 factories XVI, 3, 4, 8, 32, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 51, 54, 64, 65, 66, 71, 72, 95, 102, 104, 105, 109, 111, 112, 115, 116, 117, 118, 120, 127, 128, 131, 135, 142, 143, 151, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 168, 174 Farband Labor Zionist Organization of America 90 fascism 35, 108 fascist XXI, 4, 40, 44, 46, 59, 98, 108, 114, 157, 169 – fascist gangs 157, 169 Federman, Rafal 64, 65, 103, 106 Feldafing 172, 173 feudal 13, 41, 45 feuilleton 71 Final Solution to the Jewish Question 130, 145 First World War XXI, 9, 10, 18, 34, 43, 46, 51, 52, 69, 72, 76, 80, 82, 94, 102, 112, 114, 116, 123, 126, 167 Folkism VI, 87, 87, 88 Folkists 53, 54, 57, 58, 59, 64, 80, 82, 85, 85, 124

Index

folklore XVI, 5, 24, 30, 169 – folksongs 5, 11, 11, 39, 140 – folk rituals 30 Folks-partey (Folks-demokratishe partey) 54, 59, 83, 87, 88 folkshul 77, 78, 79, 80,179 Forced Jewish Labor Camp 148 Förenwald 173 Free Masons XXVII free-agent sports associations 73 furriers 43, 136 furs 136 Galicia XXI, XXI, 27, 84, 85 Galician 84, 85 Galician Zionists 84, 85 Gaon 28 Garibaldi 36, 142, 147, 151, 156, 159, 163 garment trade 44 Gazeta czestochowska 71 Gdynia XXVI Gegenwartsarbeit 86 Gemilas chesed 33 gender 80 Gentiles XIX, 157, 166 Gerer Hasidim XX, 141 German V, XXI, XXII, XXIII, XXV, 2, 3, 8, 15, 17, 20, 34, 36, 38, 40, 41, 46, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 59, 63, 68, 73, 79, 80, 82, 84, 101, 102, 108, 109, 113, 122, 123, 127, 129, 132, 133, 135, 136, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 151, 153, 154, 155, 156, 160, 161, 163, 165, 172 German prisoners of war 154 German-Yiddish 55 Germanization 55 Germans XIX, XXII, XXII, 2, 34, 41, 42, 52, 54, 55, 57, 61, 62, 64, 122, 123, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 148, 151, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 163, 174 Germany VII, XXII, XXIII, XXV, 1, 21, 22, 23, 27, 41, 44, 54, 55, 81, 106, 114, 115, 116, 121, 122, 123, 136, 145, 147, 163, 164, 165, 171, 172, 173, 181

189

Ghetto V, VI, 2, 3, 9, 16, 17, 18, 19, 23, 94, 113, 118, 120, 127, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 164, 166, 174, 179 Ghetto Fighters Plaza 3, 156 Gidonim 175, 176 Gidonim students 175 Gimnazjum 23, 62, 77, 78, 79, 80, 112, 130, 136 Głos Częstochowy 140 Glos powszechny 71 GmbH IV gmina V, XV, XXVI, XVII, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 22, 23, 26, 27, 28, 29, 37, 39, 43, 47, 51, 52, 57, 58, 59, 60, 64, 67, 71, 83, 86, 87, 88, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 99, 103, 108, 114, 117, 119, 122, 124, 126, 129, 179 God of Vengeance 76 Goldfaden, Avrom 11 Goldman, Alon XII, 175 goldsmiths 45 Golem 76 Goniec Częstochowski 71, 120 Governor-General of Vilna 106 Grabski, Władysław XXIII, 119 Granach, Alexander 77 Great Depression (see depression) Great Peasant 5 Green Fields 76 Gross, Jan T. 165, 170 Grossman, Meir 99 Grünbaum, Yitzhak 39, 84, 85, 86 Gut shabos yidn 34 Hakhnoses kalo 33 Hakhnoses orkhim 33 Hakhshara 32, 179 Halakha 28 half-intelectuals 22, 86, 89, 101 Hapoel 73 HASAG VI, 127, 135, 140, 145, 149, 151, 158, 159, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 180 – labor camp 145, 149, 161 – HASAG-Pelcery 141, 144

190

Index

– HASAG-Pelcery labor camp 144 Hashomer hatzair VI, 32, 71, 75, 79, 112, 113, 153, 163, 168 Hasidic 16, 18, 22, 29, 94 Hasidim XX, 6, 8, 14, 16, 18, 34, 43, 86, 92, 97, 141, 174, 175 – Satmar Hasidim 16 Haskalah XV, 26, 27 Hatsefira 21 Haynt 69 Hazamir 76 Hazkoros 173 He-halutz hatzair 112 Hebraism 71 Hebraist 90, 99 Hebrew XI, XII, XXIV, XXVI, 2, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 27, 29, 30, 32, 39, 40, 53, 63, 69, 71, 72, 73, 77, 78, 79, 89, 90, 92, 93, 94, 96, 97, 99, 104, 104, 113, 173, 175 Hersh Lekert affair 106 Herzl, Theodor 11, 84, 85 Hess, Moses 24 High Holy Days 6, 145 Hirschbein, Peretz 76 Hitler, Adolf XXV, 98, 115, 128, 140 Hlond, August Cardinal XXVII, 170 Holocaust XII, XVII, XIX, XXVII, XXIX, 25, 35, 45, 103, 107, 115, 164, 166, 174, 181 homeless 19, 55, 112, 142 Huberman, Bronisław 37 Hugo, Victor 40 Hungary XVI, 115 hunger 30, 34, 54, 55, 65, 112, 130, 135, 140, 143, 146, 147, 158, 159 immigration XV, XXVII, 63, 86, 88, 99, 121 industrial and commercial revolution 31 industrial revolution XVI, 42 industrialists 21, 43, 129 Industrialization 20, 41, 116 Inspeckaja Ruchu Ulicznego (IRU) 134 intelligentsia 39, 77, 87, 101, 103, 104, 122, 173 International Territorialist Organization 101 internationalism 107, 168 interwar XII, XVI, XX, XXIX, 4, 21, 60, 61, 63, 64, 76, 82, 96, 105, 114, 179, 180

Investment in public works XXVI Israel XI, XX, 12, 53, 74, 76, 86, 87, 89, 90, 92, 92, 93, 93, 93, 94, 97, 101, 113, 124, 141, 153, 167, 168, 173, 174, 175, 175, 179, 181 Israeli 37, 172, 174 Israeli independence 172 Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra 37 Izraelita 21 Jabotinsky, Vladimir 66, 98, 99 Janów 4, 14 January Uprising 22 Jasna Góra XVII, 1, 2, 3, 4, 9, 13, 15, 45, 46, 73, 120, 125 Jerusalem 14, 24, 47, 59, 92, 124, 175, 179, 181 Jewish Artisan School 31, 40 Jewish Colonization Association (JCA) 31, 32 Jewish Communist Party 111 Jewish community XV, XVI, XVII, XVIII, XXVI, 1, 13, 20, 26, 37, 63, 118, 119, 123, 136, 166, 174 Jewish Congregational Boards 20 Jewish consciousness by the national 27 Jewish Council 46, 61 Jewish craftsmen 67, 136 Jewish Election Committee 59, 60 Jewish emancipation 2 Jewish entrepreneurs 45 Jewish Ghetto Police 138 Jewish Gimnazjum 62, 77, 78, 79, 80, 130, 136 Jewish holidays 77, 78 Jewish kindergarten 78 Jewish Literary Society V, 38, 39, 77, 103 Jewish manufacturing 117 Jewish middle class 42, 53, 59, 84, 86, 90, 95, 109, 115 Jewish nation 93, 104 Jewish National Fund XXIII, XXVI, 36, 92, 93, 99 Jewish nationalism XX, 20, 24, 48, 66, 89, 100 Jewish patriotism 37 Jewish Police 134, 138, 139, 142, 145, 147, 149, 150, 151, 162

Index

Jewish Political Parties VI, 6, 49, 52, 55, 63, 83, 84, 86, 88, 90, 92, 94, 96, 98, 100, 102, 104, 106, 108, 110, 112 Jewish press 10, 50, 69, 71, 84 Jewish schools 22, 37, 58, 60, 61, 77, 80, 95, 96 Jewish Socialist Workers’ party (SERP) 102 Jewish State Party 99 Jewish summer camps 74 Jewish Underground 25, 145, 154, 161 Jewish vocational schools 78 Jewish-owned movie theaters 77 Jews constituting a nation 27 Jews who stayed in the city 165 Judaism XV, 13, 19, 20, 22, 23, 23, 28, 34, 92, 98, 113 Judenrat VI, 127, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 154, 160 – Judenräte 130 Judenrein 114, 146, 168 Judeo-German 76 Jüdischer Rundschau 131 Kaminska, Ester 76 Kapinski, Leon 131, 146, 147, 150 Kapinski’s 150 KAPOS 149, 156 kapotes 8 Kazimierz, King Jan XXIV, 1, 157 kehilla (See gmina) Kejnckow 17 Keren Hayeshuv 72 khedorim 15, 27, 28, 30, 96 khevre kadisha 14, 19, 141, 146, 176 kheyder V, 15, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 34, 50, 67, 71, 76, 78, 79, 93, 95, 96, 104 kheyder culture 31 Khol Hamoed 146 Khrobolowski, A. 103, 123, 124 Kielce 36, 170 (for Kielce pogrom, see pogrom) Kiev 4 kinderheym 77, 78 Kishinev 101, 110 Klal yisroel party 88

191

Klezmer 96, 97 Kłobuck Łobodno 4, 15, 17 Knut Hamsun 40 Kokl, Moishe 10 Kolbe, Father Maksymilian XXVII Kombund 107, 108, 111 Komitet 166 Komunistyczna 102 Kon, Herc XV, 22 Königsberg 27 Kraków XV, XXIII, 135, 169, 171 Kristallnacht 123 Kronenberg, Bloch and Leopold 21, 41 kultur amt 65 kultur rat 65 Kurland, B. 130, 146, 147, 150, 160, 162 Labor camps 127, 130, 138, 149, 151, 161, 165, 180 Labor movement V, 20, 31, 43, 49, 50, 51, 63, 65, 66, 67, 77, 89, 90, 106, 108, 111 Labor Movement in New York City 50 Labor-Zionists 83 Landau, Yehuda Leyb 50, 96, 152 Landed aristocracy XXIII, 53 landsmanshaft XI, 6, 33, 51, 56, 65, 72, 78, 117, 166, 167, 172, 173, 181 Lanzman, Claude 153 Leather Workers Union 40 Leipzig 127 Leivick, H. 76 Lelever, Dov 16 Lenin, Vladimir XXII Liberation XXV, 63, 79, 127, 161, 163, 165, 165 liberation of the camps 165 liberators 54 librarian 73 Libraries VI, 10, 40, 72, 95 Lieutenant Tsopart 155 Likud 98 Linas hatsedek 33 Linas kholim 33 Lipski, Józef 115 Lira V, 22, 38, 39, 40, 72, 73, 77, 103, 131, 140 Lira club 73

192

Index

Lira-JLS 40 Lithuania XXVI, 48, 49, 106 Litvaks 2 Living wage 49, 55 Lublin XVI, 72, 136, 167 Ludendorff, Erich 55 Macoch, Damazy 4 Mahler, Raphael 111, 124, 180 Makkabi 73, 74, 124 Malbish arumim 34 mandolin 78 Manhattan 6 Market Jews 4 Market places 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 41, 43, 54, 106, 128 markets XXVI, 3, 5, 8, 9, 10, 41, 54 marks XXIII, 147 Markus 27 Markusfeld, Henryk V, XVI, 22, 26, 27, 30, 31, 32, 36, 38, 39, 40, 43, 51, 73, 75, 113, 161 marmalade 146 Marshall, Louis 86 martial arts 98 Martuszewski, Dr. 44 Marx, Karl 104 Marxism 89, 90, 105, 107, 112, 113, 170 – Marxist intellectuals 170 Maskilim 25, 27, 29, 30, 31 Matka Boska (the Black Madonna) XVII, 1, 4, 45 Matura 80 Matyjaszcyzk, Mayor Krzystof 175 Matzah 68, 141, 152 May Day 51, 64, 71, 102, 103, 106, 111 Medem Library 72 Medem Sanatorium 108 Meed, Vladka 152 melamed 15, 28, 29, 30, 93 melodramas 76, 77 memorial plaques 164, 174 Mendelsohn, Ezra XX, 53, 61, 86, 93, 180 Metallwahrenfabrik 127 Metalurgja factory 145, 146, 151 Middle class 2, 9, 31, 54, 118, 119 (see also Jewish middle class)

mikveh 14, 14, 15, 36, 133 Minorities Treaty 57, 114, 115 minority rights XXI, XXIV, XXVIII, 52, 58, 86, 87, 93, 101, 109 Mirele Efros 76 Mizgalski, Jerzy XXIX, 174, 176, 180 Mizrachi VI, 36, 59, 59, 81, 83, 84, 85, 86, 88, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 111, 112, 124 Młodzianowski, Kazimierz XXIV Mniejszoci 84 mobbed 123 Möbellager VI, 142, 148, 151, 157 Mogen Dovid 131 mohel 6 Moment 70, 88 Morgenshtern 73, 74 Moscow XXVIII Municipal and Sejm elections 58 Municipal Council 22, 29, 51, 52, 53, 59, 60, 61, 62, 72, 83, 87, 88, 99, 103, 105, 106, 108, 121, 124, 125, 126, 175 Municipal elections 64, 65, 88 Municipal Theater 77 “muscular” Judaism (see Zionism) Mussolini 98, 114 Nachman Bialik, Chaim 30 Napoleon XV, XXI, 14, 37, 40 Narodniki 113 Narutowicz, Gabriel XXIII, 85 National Democrats (Narodowa Demokracja) XXI, XXII, XXIII, XXVII, XXVIII, 45, 71 national minority rights XXVIII, 101 Nazi 1, 61, 100, 103, 114, 118, 123, 127, 130, 133, 139, 140, 145, 146, 147, 150, 154, 158, 164, 165 Neufeld, Dov Ber Meisels 23, 24, 30, 31 New Market 3, 5, 6, 23, 146 New Synagogue XVI, 26, 36 37, 38, 72, 93, 102, 132 New York XI, XX, XXIX, 6, 10, 11, 24, 42, 43, 50, 51, 56, 65, 68, 69, 72, 76, 77, 78, 93, 95, 97, 120, 124, 129, 138, 145, 155, 166, 167, 168, 170, 179, 180, 181 Nicholas I 2 Niewiadomski, Eligiusz XXIII

Index

Nomberg, H. D. 39, 56, 87 Non-party Bloc XXIV, XXV, 95 Non-party Bloc for Cooperation with the Government XXIV, 95 Non-party Bloc for the Support of the government XXIV, XXV, XXVII, 95 non-Zionist 86 Nowy Ryney (see New Market) numerus clausus XXIV, XXVII, XXVIII, 112, 120 numerus nullus 120 Nürnberg 46, 115 Oberleutenant Rohn 155, 164 Old Market 2, 3, 6, 10, 14, 15, 47, 76, 93, 146 Old Synagogue 15, 36, 37, 46, 132 old-age home 32, 33 Orthodox XXIV, 17, 18, 21, 22, 23, 24, 30, 31, 34, 36, 53, 54, 57, 70, 71, 72, 77, 83, 88, 92, 93, 95, 99, 100, 104, 141, 173 Orthodox Jews XXIV, 18, 23, 34, 57, 88, 92, 93, 141, 173 Orthodox-dominated gmina 58 Orzeszkowa, Eliza 25 Osjzasz, Rabbi Dr. Abraham 85 Ostrów 136 OZON (see Party of National Unity) Paderewski, Ignacy Jan XXI Palestine XX, XXIV, XXVI, XXVII, 2, 4, 32, 37, 63, 66, 67, 84, 85, 86, 87, 89, 90, 91, 93, 94, 98, 99, 101, 113, 117, 119, 121, 123, 154, 166, 167, 168, 172 – immigrating to 172 Paris Peace Conference XXI, 57 Parliamentary democracy XXII parokhet 37 Party of National Unity, OZON (Oboz Zjednoczenia) XXVII, 107, 115, 115, 116, 121 Passover XI, 67, 67, 67, 67, 141 Paszkowska, Urszula 175 Paszkowski, Wiesław 175, 176 Pauline Monastery XVII, 1 Peasant Party XXIII, XXV peasantry XXIII, 32, 53, 113, 119, 153, 157 peasants 2, 4, 5, 41, 43, 46, 118, 127, 157

193

Pedagogical Institute of the Jan Długosz University 174 Pendrak, Yosl 121, 122 Peretz School 78 Peretz, Y. L. 19, 39, 76, 77, 78, 80, 160 Petliura, Simon 98 Philanthropy V, 26, 26, 31, 33, 116 philosemitism XXVIII, 25 Piast Peasant Party XXIII, XXV Piłsudski, Józef XXI, XXII, XXIII, XXIV, XXV, XXVI, XXVIII, 53, 58, 59, 82, 92, 95, 98, 115, 119, 144 Plac Bohaterów Getta (see Ghetto Fighters’ Plaza) Po‘ale Tsiyon 49, 83, 89, 90, 103, 106, 111, 112 Po‘ale Tsiyon-left 59, 60, 83, 90, 91, 96, 99, 101, 103, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 111, 112, 124, 168 Po‘ale Tsiyon-right 83, 83, 90, 124 Po‘ale Tsiyon-smol 59 Poaley agudas Yisroel 94 Pogrom V, V, VI, XVII, XIX, 4, 24, 35, 46, 47, 48, 62, 63 64, 71, 85, 90, 98, 101, 104, 107, 110, 114, 120, 121, 122, 125 127, 132, 165, 169, 170, 171 – Częstochowa (1902) V, 46, 47, 71, 110 – Częstochowa (1937) VI, 121 – Białystok in 1906 110 (pogrom) – Kielce XVII, XIX, 36, 166, 169, 170, 171 (pogrom) – Kishinev pogrom 101 – Rabunek 47 Poland XV, XVI, XVII, XVIII, XIX, XX, XXI, XXII, XXIII, XXIV, XXV, XXVI, XXVII, XXVII, XXVIII, 1, 2, 3, 13, 15, 16, 18, 21, 22, 23, 23, 24, 25, 27, 30, 31, 32, 33, 35, 36, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 48, 49, 50, 52, 53, 54, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 71, 72, 76, 77, 79, 80, 82, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 92, 93, 94, 97, 98, 99, 101, 101, 102, 104, 105, 107, 108, 110, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 124, 125, 126, 140, 158, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 176, 180, 181

194

Index

Poland-Lithuania XX Poles XII, XV, XIX, XXII, XXVII, 1, 2, 3, 4, 13, 17, 19, 20, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 32, 33, 35, 41, 42, 43, 44, 46, 47, 48, 50, 53, 54, 57, 62, 63, 64, 65, 75, 82, 84, 85, 87, 100, 106, 107, 110, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 121, 122, 123, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 135, 136, 138, 139, 140, 147, 148, 150, 151, 152, 154, 156, 157, 160, 163, 165, 166, 168, 169, 170, 174, 180, 181 police IX, 6, 9, 17, 19, 24, 47, 50, 51, 62, 62, 64, 66, 75, 84, 102, 106, 109, 110, 111, 121, 122, 126, 127, 129, 133, 134, 136, 138, 139, 142, 145, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 155, 157, 159, 162, 169 POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews XIX, 55 Polish V, XI, XII, XV, XVI, XVII, XIX, XX, XXI, XXII, XXIII, XXIV, XXV, XXVI, XXVII, XXVIII, 1, 2, 3, 4, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 32, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 53, 54, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 68, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 93, 95, 96, 98, 98, 99, 100, 102, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 136, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 144, 150, 151, 152, 154, 157, 158, 162, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 175, 179, 180, 181 Polish blue law 3 Polish Communist Party 49, 102, 144 Polish film Shadows over Europe 124 Polish Gimnazja 48, 74 Polish Legionnaires XXII Polish protectors of Jewish children 166 Polish Socialist Party XXIII, 102, 179 Polish society XIX, 13, 20, 21, 22, 23, 61, 84, 166 Polish United Workers’ Party (PZPR – Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza) 168 Polish Uprising of 1863 27 Polish-American 62 Polish-communist 153

Polish-Jewish XIX, XX, 22, 24, 25, 37, 85, 120, 165, 171, 173, 180 Polish-Jews 27 Polonized Jews 20, 21, 25 Polska Partia Socjalistyczna XXIII Positivism 24, 25 private Gimnazjum 79 private Jewish schools 77 pro-assimilation 20, 38 pro-Communist 107 pro-Soviet sympathies of the Territorialists 102 Protocols of the Elders of Zion XXVII Prussia XV, XXI, XXI, 13, 14, 15, 40, 41 Pryłucki, Noyakh 87, 88 Przyrów 4 public school 80, 80, 97, 106 Purim 77 Rabbi 11, 15, 16, 22, 23, 24, 27, 28, 34, 35, 36, 56, 59, 62, 72, 77, 85, 92, 93, 96, 102, 103, 112, 119, 130, 167, 171 Rabbinate 28, 67, 79 Rabbinic functionary 28 Rabbinical Seminary 21, 30, 31, 93 Rabbinical-Theological 22 Rabinowicz, Yitzhak 16, 23, 27, 34 racism 35 racist XXVII, 100, 114, 120 racists 115 railway line 41, 137 Rajcher, Andrew 175, 180 Rashi 28 Red Army 89, 90, 90, 140, 151, 179 refugees 81, 123, 135, 167, 171, 172 Reinharz, Max 61, 180 Rekhtman, Rubele 6 Reklameblat 69, 70 Renner, Karl 104 resistance XXIV, 14, 122, 134, 140, 141, 143, 144, 148, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 160, 162, 163, 179 Revisionist Zionism 66 Revolt in Treblinka VI, 152, 153 right-wing XXI, XXIII, XXV, 36, 46, 59, 66, 83, 85, 90, 115, 125, 143, 157, 169

Index

Righteous Gentiles XIX, 157, 166 Ringelblum, Emanuel 111, 123, 124 Rolat, Sigmund XII, 74, 93, 174, 175, 176 Rome and Jerusalem 24 Rosenfeld, Morris 11 Rotbart, Z. 130 Rotzstajn, Shmuel 119 Rovinson, Rabbi Rabinowicz 28, 34 Rozenblat, Abram 93 Rozental, Ziskind 132 Rural improvements XXVI Russia XXI, XXII, XXIII, XXV, XXVI, 22, 24, 41, 42, 43, 45, 48, 50, 81, 87, 90, 93, 101, 107, 110, 165, 181 Russian XXII, XXIII, 2, 13, 16, 28, 32, 40, 44, 47, 48, 49, 50, 54, 71, 90, 104, 109, 113, 151, 172, 179 Russian State Duma 50 Russification 27, 104 Rydz-Śmigły, Edward XXVIII Sabbath 3, 5, 8, 33, 34, 39, 40, 58, 67, 71, 75, 98, 119, 126, 130 Sabbath day literary programs 40 Sabbath Fruits 8 Sanacja XXIV, XXVI, XXVII, 95 scouting 99, 111, 113 Scouting uniforms 111 scouts 75, 98 SDKPiL 49, 103 seamstresses 11, 43, 133, 136 Second Aleja 9, 9 Second Republic XXIII 18, 28, 52, 63, 109, 110 Second Socialist International 90 secular Yiddishist schools 78 secularism 75 secularization 20, 92 Seders XI, 141, 152 Sefer 5, 14, 59, 124, 141, 181 Sejm XXII, XXIII, XXIV, XXV, XXVI, XXVII, XXVIII, 58, 60, 61, 62, 84, 85, 86, 88, 93, 94, 95, 97, 98, 103, 105, 122 Sejm elections XXVI, 58, 60, 85, 88, 95 Selig, Chaim 21, 23 SERP (see Jewish Socialist Workers party) Shabad, Tsemakh 87

195

Shabbatai Zvi 13 Shabbes 3, 8, 29 shekhita 36, 97, 114, 119 – tax on 57 Shlomek 104 Shnorers 10, 30 Shoah 153 shochet 6, 167 shoemakers 29, 51, 106, 136, 141, 147 shoemaking 42, 44, 160 Sholem Aleichem 39, 76, 87, 141 Sholem Aleichem folk schools 87 Shomer 5, 71, 77, 153, 168 shopkeepers 14, 47, 65, 122 shtetl XXIX, 2, 4, 14, 17, 22, 51, 55, 141, 171 shtiblekh 6, 18, 53, 141 Shtral 73 shul 6, 15, 15, 26, 36, 72 shund 76, 77 Shvartsboim, Michal 6 Siberia XVI, XXI, 24, 51, 110 siddur 28 Sigmund Rolat XII 74, 93, 174, 175, 176 Sikorski, General Władislaw XXIII Silberstein, Alan XII, 93, 157, 174, 175 Silesia XV, XV, 41 silverware 147 Six Day War 173 Składkowski, Felicjan Sławoj XXIV, XXV, 126 Składkowski, Sławoj XXIV, XXV Skrzynski, Aleksander XXIV Slonimski, Chaim Selig 21, 23 Small ghetto VI, 127, 132, 137, 139, 142, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 158, 160, 164 – Religious observance in 152 Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania 49 Social Democratic parties 108 social fascists 108 Social-Democratic 89, 90 socialism 88, 89, 90, 102, 110 socialist XVIII, XXI, XXIII, XXIV, XXVI, 3, 43 48, 49, 50, 53, 54, 74, 78, 84, 87, 90, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 112, 122, 157, 179 Socialist-Zionism 50, 101, 102

196

Index

Society for the Protection of the Health of the Jewish Population 81 Sokolow, Nahum 21 Song of Songs 40 Soviet Union XXII, XXV, 90, 101, 103, 111, 163, 167, 171, 172 spiritual canter 86 Spiritual Zionism 3, 87 sport leagues 73 Sport and Turn (gymnastics) Union (1915–1916, Żydowskie Towarzystwo Gimnastyczne ZTYG-S) 73 sports club 51, 67, 73, 74, 98 sports league 73, 74 Stalin 172 Stalingrad 161 Stalinist 167 Strike of 1937 5 Stupnitski, S. 88 Stypiński, Józef XXVIII Sulejówek XXII Sunday laws 43 survivors XI, XIX, 82, 141, 152, 158, 165, 166, 167, 172, 173, 174, 177 sweatshops 8, 11, 42, 43, 44, 45 Sweden 13, 166 Synagogue Supervisory Board XV, 16 Syrkin, Nahman 89, 101 Szapiro, Rebbe Avigdorel 16 Szatkowski, Leon 157 tailoring 42, 42, 44, 45, 65, 160 tailors 11, 43, 50, 64, 67, 90, 133, 136, 147, 160, 168 Talmud 15, 22, 23, 25, 27, 28, 29, 32, 33, 34, 44, 77, 78, 93, 96, 141 Talmud Torah 15, 25, 28, 29, 32, 34, 78 Talmudic 6, 28, 34, 92 Talmudic studies 28 Tax reform XXVI tax-collected 16 tax-collecting 92 tax-paying 52 taxation 133 taxed 14, 119 taxes 2, 15, 16, 20, 57, 118, 131, 132, 133, 135, 138

taxing 9 taxpayers 114, 142 teaching in Hebrew 79 Teitelboim, Joel 16 Teodor Kubina 35, 171 Territorialism VI, 50, 50, 51, 73, 89, 89, 89, 101, 101, 101 Territorialist(s) 39, 49, 50, 51, 54, 59, 60, 64, 65, 70, 72, 78, 80, 83, 85, 99, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 109, 110, 112 textile(s) XVI, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 49, 51, 65, 115, 116, 117, 151, 161, 164 texts 29, 77 The Council for National Unity 115 The Dybbuk 76 The Golem 76 The Jewish Theological Seminary XII, 69 The Sorcerers 11 The Two Kuni Lemls 11 theater VI, 11, 76, 77, 105, 111, 136, 140, 167, 172 theaters 10, 76, 77, 125 Third Aleja 9, 11 Third French Republic XXII Tisha b’Av 46 tobacco 118 tobacconists 10 Tomchei aniim 34 Tora ve-avoda 34 Torah 6, 15, 22, 25, 28, 29, 30, 32, 33, 34, 37, 77, 78, 92, 94, 96, 122, 141, 146 Torah ve’avoda 92 Town Fathers 29, 29 Treaty of Versailles XXVII, 60 Treblinka VI, 134, 139, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 152, 153, 154, 155 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire 50 Tribune 71 Tsantrale yidishe shul farayn (TSYSHO, Central Yiddish School Organization) 72, 80, 95, 106 Tsar Alexander II, 111 Tsarist Empire XVI, XXI, 15 Tsiyon-left 59, 60, 83, 90, 91, 96, 99, 101, 103, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 111, 112, 124, 125, 168 Tsiyon-right 83, 90, 124

Index

Tsiyon-smol 59 tuberculosis 42, 81, 133, 160 Turkow, Ida and Zygmunt 76 Tzeirey mizrachi 112 Tzeirey Tziyon 112, 113 Tzukunft 73, 105 Uganda 101 Ugoda-compromise XXIII UJEC 53, 54, 54, 54 Ukraine XXII, XXII, 98, 111 Ukrainian(s) XXII, XXV, 2, 55, 84, 85, 88, 144, 146, 153, 160 ultra-Orthodox 17, 27, 34, 92, 93, 94, 96 Umophengike 101, 103 umbrella organization of proletarian, Yiddishist groups 39 Underground groups 144, 152 union movement 44, 51, 66 Union of Poles of Mosaic Persuasion of all Polish Lands 100 unionizing 50, 67, 68, 97, 104 unions 35, 43, 50, 51, 55, 57, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 70, 71, 73, 76, 83, 90, 102, 104, 107, 108, 112, 120, 124, 125, 168 Unions of Physicians, Lawyers, Engineers, and Journalists 120 United Jewish Communist Party (see Di fareynikte) United Jewish Culture Office 65 United Jewish Elections Committee 53 United Jewish Socialist Workers Party 102 unity XXVII, 53, 53, 65, 115 Untermenschen 139 Unzer czenstochover ekspres 69 Unzer shtime 70, 95 Unzer tsaytung 70, 71 Unzer veg 71 Unzer vort 70 upper class 31, 103 Versailles Treaty XXI, XXIV, XXVII, XXVIII, 57, 58, 60 Vienna XVI, XXI, 9, 15, 41, 104, 135 Vienna–Warsaw railroad 41 Vocational training V, XX, 30, 31, 32, 33, 37, 167, 173

197

Volksdeutsche 129, 131, 132, 151, 151 Volozhin 92 Wandervogel 113 Wannsee Conference 130, 143 Warsaw IX, XV, XVI, XIX, XXI, XXII, 1, 3, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 22, 23, 27, 30, 31, 36, 41, 49, 53, 54, 63, 69, 72, 87, 88, 93, 99, 108, 109, 111, 113, 115, 123, 135, 136, 143, 144, 145, 152, 153, 154, 156, 161, 162, 163, 165, 167, 171, 179 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising 113 Warszawski, Ryneczek 3, 146, 155, 174 Warta XVI, 1, 2, 3, 5, 18, 19, 74, 115, 130, 137 – camp at (Warthewerk) 161 Warta River XVI, 1, 43, 124 130, 137, 148 watchmakers 136 Wehrmacht 127, 129 Weltsch, Robert 131 Werde, Leopold 26, 31, 32, 33, 43 Werde, Mina 33 White Paper XXVII, 63, 99, 121, 172 Wielopolski, Viceroy Alexander XVI, 2 Wilenberg, Perec 15, 32, 78, 79, 147, 153 Willenberg, Samuel 153 Women’s International Zionist Organization 87 Workers’ Council 46, 106, 134 workforce 44, 45, 67, 89, 158 workforce comprised of children 67 workhours 110 working class 11, 31, 60, 73, 77, 83, 89, 92, 104, 109, 119 working class movement 109 Workmen’s Circle 90, 168 works XVII, XXVI, 4, 11, 25, 31, 32, 40, 67, 78, 104, 128, 140, 147, 176 workshop 44, 133 workshops 44, 49, 104, 112, 118, 143, 144, 150, 151, 154 workweek 43 World Society of Częstochowa Jews 174, 175 World Union of General Zionists 87 World Union of Po‘ale Tsiyon 89 World Zionist Organization 84 Wrona, Mayor Tadeusz 174

198

Index

Y. L. Peretz folkshul 77, 80 Yeshiva 6, 28, 44, 28, 29, 72, 94, 96, 109 Yiddish XII, XXIV, XXVI, 2, 3, 4, 5, 11, 12, 16, 17, 20, 21, 23, 27 29, 30, 38, 39, 40, 48, 49, 50, 53, 55, 58, 60, 61, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 87, 88, 89, 90, 94, 96, 99, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 109, 115, 120, 123, 125, 139, 140, 155, 167, 168, 172, 179, 181 – ban on the public use of the Yiddish language 76 – culture 179 – dailies 69 – films 11, 77, 124 – language lessons 167 – literature 76 – press 11, 30, 69, 70, 71, 172 – secular school system 87 – theater 11, 76, 172 Yiddishism (Yiddishist) 39, 57, 71, 78, 87, 89, 94, 101, 103, 109, 168 – yidishkeyt 29, 31 Yidishe hitelekh 8 Yishuv 85 YIVO 24, 68, 95, 179 Yizker book IV, 123, 180 Yom Kippur 6, 144, 145, 161 yontif 3, 111 yortsayt 172 youth movements 73, 77, 81, 112, 180

– Agude 94 – Beitar 98, 99, 143, 153 – Bundist 108 – Yung Borokhov 111 – Zionist 29, 32, 79, 86, 113, 134 Zangwill, Israel 101 Żarki 4 Zeitlin, Hillel 39, 88 Zhitlovsky, Chaim 87, 89 Zionism VI, VI, 3, 31, 34, 66, 84, 86, 87, 88, 89, 94, 105, 113, 179, 180 – “muscular” Judaism 98 – Zionist VI, 21, 29, 32, 36, 38, 40, 53, 59, 62, 71, 72, 73, 75, 79, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 95, 98, 99, 101, 103, 104, 107, 112, 113, 119, 124, 131, 131, 144, 152, 168, 179 – Zionist conference 86 – Zionist Foundation Fund 86 Zionist Revisionists 73, 83, 98 Zionists 39, 49, 50, 54, 55, 57, 59, 60, 64, 65, 66, 72, 78, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 92, 94, 97, 99, 101, 101, 107, 111, 113, 119, 134, 143, 144, 168, 173 Zlotnick, Yehuda Leib 88 Zola, Emile 40 Zogerins 6 Żyndram-Kościałkowski, Marian XXV