The shtetl: myth and reality 9781874774754, 9781874774761, 9781909821682

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THE INSTITUTE FOR POLISH—-JEWISH STUDIES The Institute for Polish—Jewish Studies in Oxford and its sister organization, the American Association for Polish—Jewish Studies, which publish Polin, are learned societies which were established in 1984, following the First International Conference on Polish—Jewish Studies, held in Oxford. The Institute is an associate institute of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and

Jewish Studies, and the American Association is linked with the Department of Near , Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis University.

Both the Institute and the American Association aim to promote understanding of the Polish Jewish past. They have no building or library of their own and no paid staff; they achieve their aims by encouraging scholarly research and facilitating its publication, and by creating forums for people with a scholarly interest in Polish Jewish topics, both past and present.

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

Human Sciences in Vienna, King’s College in London, the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, the University of Lodz, University College London, and the Polish Cultural Centre and the Polish embassy in London. They have encouraged academic exchanges between Israel, Poland, the United States, and western Europe. In particular they seek to help train a new generation of scholars, in Poland and elsewhere, to study the culture and history of the Jews in Poland. Each year since 1986 the Institute has published a volume of scholarly papers in the series Pohn: Studies in Polish Jewry under the general editorship of Professor Antony Polonsky of Brandeis University. Since 1994 the series has been published on its behalf by the Littman

Library of Jewish Civilization, and since 1998 the publication has been linked with the

American Association as well. In March 2000 the entire series was honoured with a | National Jewish Book Award from the Jewish Book Council in the United States. More than twenty other works on Polish Jewish topics have also been published with the Institute’s assistance.

For further information on the Institute for Polish—Jewish Studies or the American Association for Polish—Jewish Studies, contact . For the website of the American Association for Polish--Jewish Studies, see .

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| JEWISH CIVILIZATION Dedicated to the memory of

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| The Littman Library of Jewish Civihzation ts a registered UK charity Registered charity no. 1000784

STUDIES IN POLISH JEWRY

VOLUME SEVENTEEN

~The Shtetl: Myth and Reahty Edited by

ANTONY POLONSKY

Published for

The Institute for Polish—Jewish Studies and The American Association for Polish—Jewish Studies

| Oxford - Portland, Oregon The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization

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

Managing Editor: Connie Webber , PO Box 645, Oxford OX2 oUJ, UK www.littman.co.uk

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ISSN 0268 1056 | ISBN 978-1-874774-76-1 Publishing co-ordinator: Janet Moth Copy-editing: Laurien Berkeley Proof-reading: Tamar Wang Index: Bonnie Blackburn Cover design by Pete Russell, Faringdon, Oxon.

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This book has been printed digitally and produced in a standard specification in order to ensure its continuing availabilty.

Articles appearing in this publication are abstracted and indexed in Ehstorical Abstracts and America: History and Life

Dedicated in love and appreciation to

EUGENIA SHRUT

1925-2003 a courageous and indomitable survivor of the Holocaust and resolute upholder of the heritage of Polish fewry

| This volume of POLIN benefited from grants from

oe and

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Editors and Advisers EDITORS Monika Adamczyk-Garbowska, Lublin Israel Bartal, Jerusalem

| Antony Polonsky (Chair), Waltham, Mass. Michael Steinlauf, Philadelphia Jerzy Tomaszewski, Warsaw

EDITORIAL BOARD | Chimen Abramski, London Elchanan Reiner, Jel Aviv - David Assaf, Tel Aviv Jehuda Reinharz, Waltham, Mass. Wladyslaw T. Bartoszewski, Warsaw Moshe Rosman, Te/ Aviv Glenn Dynner, Bronxville, NY | Szymon Rudnicki, Warsaw

David Engel, New York Henryk Samsonowicz, Warsaw David Fishman, New York Robert Shapiro, New York

ChaeRan Freeze, Waltham, Mass Adam Teller, Haifa | Jozef Gierowski, Krakow Daniel Tollet, Paris

| Jacob Goldberg, Ferusalem Piotr S. Wandycz, New Haven, Conn. Yisrael Gutman, Jerusalem Jonathan Webber, Birmingham, UK

Jerzy Ktoczowski, Lublin Joshua Zimmerman, New York Ezra Mendelsohn, Jerusalem Steven Zipperstein, Stanford, Calif. Joanna Michlic, Bethlehem, Pa.

ADVISORY BOARD

Wiadystaw Bartoszewski, Warsaw Lucjan Lewitter, Cambridge, Mass.

Jan Btonski, Krakow Stanistaw Litak, Lublin

Abraham Brumberg, Washington Heinz-Dietrich Lowe, Heidelberg

Andrzej Chojnowski, Warsaw Emanuel Meltzer, Tel Aviv

- Andrzej Ciechanowiecki, London , Shlomo Netzer, Tel Aviv Norman Davies, London David Patterson, Oxford Victor Erlich, New Haven, Conn. Zbigniew Petczynski, Oxford Frank Golczewski, Hamburg Alexander Schenker, New Haven, Conn.

, Olga Goldberg, ferusalem David Sorkin, Madison, Wisc. Feliks Gross, New York Edward Stankiewicz, Nem Haven, Conn.

Czestaw Hernas, Wroclaw Norman Stone, Ankara Maurycy Horn, Warsaw Shmuel Werses, Jerusalem Jerzy Jedlicki, Warsaw Jacek Wozniakowski, Lublin Andrzej Kaminski, London Piotr Wrobel, Toronto Hillel Levine, Boston

Preface THis volume of Polin is centred around a core of articles devoted to the shtetl. Many of these articles were first delivered as papers at a conference organized by the Institute of Jewish Studies at University College London on 19-21 June 2001, entitled “The Shtetl: Myth and Reality’. An introduction to this section follows. As in previous volumes of Polin, in the ‘New Views’ section substantial space is given to new research into a variety of topics in Polish Jewish studies. ‘These include an analysis by Brian Horowitz of the views of the Russian Jewish writer Lev Levanda on the Polish uprising of 1863, two accounts of the Gesiowka concentration camp set up in the ruins of the Warsaw ghetto, and a description of the Yiddish correspondence with his American relations of Wolf Lewkowicz, who lived in Konskowola and £6dz in the inter-war period. In addition, the volume contains an annotated translation of the letter written by Wtadystaw Gomutka to Stalin in December 1948. We also reprint the substance of a controversy in the pages of the Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza on the character of the anti-Jewish disturbances in Przytyk in March 1936. Polin is sponsored by the Institute of Polish—Jewish Studies, which is an associated institute of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, and by the American Association for Polish—Jewish Studies, which 1s linked with the Depart-

ment of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies, Brandeis University. As with earlier issues, this volume could not have appeared without the untiring assistance of many individuals. In particular, we should like to express our gratitude to Dr Jonathan Webber, Treasurer of the Institute for Polish—Jewish Studies, to Professor Jehuda Reinharz, President of Brandeis University, and to Mrs Irene Pipes, President of the American Association for Polish—Jewish Studies. These three institutions all made substantial contributions to the cost of producing the volume. The volume also benefited from grants from the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture and the Lucius N. Littauer Foundation. As was the case with earlier volumes, this one could not have been published without the constant assistance and supervision of Connie Webber, managing editor of the Littman Library, Janet Moth, publishing co-ordinator, and the tireless copy-editing of Laurien Berkeley, Claire Rosenson, and Phyllis Mitzman. Plans for future volumes of Polin are well advanced. Volume 18 will deal with the history of Jewish women in eastern Europe, volume 19 with Polish—Jewish

relations in the United States, and volume 20 will be devoted to recording and memorializing the Holocaust. Further volumes are planned on Jews in pre~ modern Poland—Lithuania, on 1968 in Poland, and on the history of the Jews in Krakow. We should welcome articles for these issues as well as for our ‘New Views’

Vili Preface section. We should also welcome any suggestions or criticisms. In particular, we should be very grateful for assistance in extending the geographical range of our journal to Ukraine, Belarus, and Lithuania, both in the period in which these countries were part of the Polish—Lithuanian Commonwealth and subsequently. We note with sadness the death of George Szabad, a long-standing supporter of Polish—Jewish understanding and of our yearbook; of Rafael Scharf, one of the

founders of the Institute for Polish—Jewish Studies and of this yearbook; of Eugenia Shrut, a key member of the American Association for Polish—Jewish Studies; and of Adam Penkalla, a fine scholar, a helpful colleague, and a frequent contributor to these pages.

POLIN

We did not know, but our fathers told us how the exiles of Israel came to the land of Polin (Poland).

When Israel saw how its sufferings were constantly renewed, oppressions increased, persecutions multiplied, and how the evil authorities piled decree on decree and followed expulsion with expulsion, so that there was no way to escape the enemies of Israel, they went out on the road and sought an answer from the | paths of the wide world: which is the correct road to traverse to find rest for the soul? Then a piece of paper fell from heaven, and on it the words:

| Go to Polantya (Poland). So they came to the land of Polin and they gave a mountain of gold to the king, and he received them with great honour. And God had mercy on them, so that they

found favour from the king and the nobles. And the king gave them permission to. reside in all the lands of his kingdom, to trade over its length and breadth, and to serve God according to the precepts of their religion. And the king protected them

against every foe and enemy. ,

And Israel lived in Polin in tranquillity for a long time. They devoted

themselves to trade and handicrafts. And God sent a blessing on them so that they were blessed in the land, and their name was exalted among the peoples. And they traded with the surrounding countries and they also struck coins with inscriptions in the holy language and the language of the country. These are the coins which have on them a lion rampant towards the right. And on the coins are the words ‘Mieszko, King of Poland’ or ‘Mieszko, Krol of Poland’. The Poles call their king ‘Krol’.

When they came from the land of the Franks, they found a wood in the land and on every tree, one tractate of the Talmud was incised. This is the forest of Kaweczyn, which is near Lublin. And every man said to his neighbour, ‘We have come to the land where our ancestors dwelt before the Torah and revelation were — granted.’ And those who seek for names say: “This is why it is called Polin. For thus spoke

Israel when they came to the land, “Here rest for the night [Po /in].” And this means that we shall rest here until we are all gathered into the Land of Israel.’ Since this is the tradition, we accept it as such. S. Y. AGNON, 1916

POLIN Studies in Polish fewry VOLUME 1 Poles and fews: Renewing the Dialogue (1986)

| VOLUME 2 Jems and the Emerging Polish State (1987) VOLUME 3. The Jews of Warsaw (1988)

, VOLUME 4 Poles and fews: Perceptions and Misperceptions (1989)

VOLUME 5 New Research, New Views (1990) VOLUME 6 fews in Lodz, 1820-1939 (1991)

| VOLUME 7 Jewish Life in Nazi-Occupted Warsaw (1992) , From Shtetl to Socialism (1993): selected articles from volumes 1-7 _ , VOLUME 8 Jews in Independent Poland, 1915—1939 (1994) VOLUME g Jews, Poles, Socialists: The Failure of an Ideal (1996)

| VOLUME 10 Jews in Early Modern Poland (1997) | VOLUME 11 Aspects and Experiences of Religion (1998) VOLUME 12 Galicia: Jews, Poles, and Ukrainians, 1772-1918 (1999) Index to Volumes 1-12 (2000)

VOLUME 13 The Holocaust and its Aftermath (2000) | VOLUME 14 Jems in the Polish Borderlands (2001)

VOLUME 15 Jewish Religious Life, 1500-1900 (2002) VOLUME 16 Jewish Popular Culture and its Afterlife (2003)

| VOLUME 17 The Shtetl: Myth and Reality (2004) VOLUME 18 Jewish Women in Eastern Europe (2005) VOLUME 19 Polish—Fewish Relations in North America (2007)

| , VOLUME 20 Memorializing the Holocaust (2008) VOLUME 21 1968: Forty Years After (2009)

VOLUME 22 Social and Cultural Boundaries in Pre-Modern Poland (2010) |

| VOLUME 23 Jewsin Krakow (2011)

Contents Note on Place Names XV Note on Transhteration Xvi List of Abbreviations XVii PART I

THE SHTETL: MYTH AND REALITY

Introduction. The Shtetl: Myth and Reality 3

Century 25

ANTONY POLONSKY

The Shtetl as an Arena for Polish—Jewish Integration in the Eighteenth ADAM TELLER

Inter-Religious Contacts in the Shtetl: Proposals for Future Research 41 MICHAL GALAS

The Hasidic Conquest of Small-Town Central Poland, 1754-1818 51 GLENN DYNNER

The Drama of Berdichev: Levi Yitshak and his Town 83 YOHANAN PETROVSKY-SHTERN

Polish Shtetls under Russian Rule, 1772-1914 97 JOHN KLIER

How Jewish Was the Shtetl? 109

BEN-CION PINCHUK |

First World War 119

The Changing Shtetl in the Kingdom of Poland during the KONRAD ZIELINSKI

The Shtetl: Cultural Evolution in Small Jewish Towns 133 ALINA CALA

‘Small Towns in Inter-War Poland 143 REGINA RENZ

X11 Contents

Town , 153

Jewish Patrons and Polish Clients: Patronage in a Small Galician

the Shtetl 171

- ROSA LEHMANN

Maintaining Borders, Crossing Borders: Social Relationships in ANNAMARIA ORLA-BUKOWSKA

The Soviet Shtetl in the 1920s 197 GENNADY ESTRAIKH

Shtetl and Shtot in Yiddish Haskalah Drama 213 | JOEL BERKOWITZ Kazimierz on the Vistula: Polish Literary Portrayals of the Shtetl 233

Criticism 243

EUGENIA PROKOP-JANIEC

Imagining the Image: Interpretations of the Shtetl in Yiddish Literary MIKHAIL KRUTIKOV

Shtetl Codes: Fantasy in the Fiction of Asch, Schulz, and I. B. Singer 259

KATARZYNA WIECLAWSKA |

Returning to the Shtetl: Differing Perceptions 267 SHIMON REDLICH

PART II

NEW VIEWS

A Jewish Russifier in Despair: Lev Levanda’s Polish Question 279 BRIAN HOROWITZ

Wolf Lewkowicz 299

_ Like a Voice Crying in the Wilderness: The Correspondence of MIROSLAW WOJCIK

1943-1944 | 325

Jewish Prisoner Labour in Warsaw After the Ghetto Uprising, GABRIEL N. FINDER

The Gesiéwka Story: A Little-Known Page of Jewish Resistance 353 EDWARD KOSSOY

Contents X11 PART ITI

DOCUMENTS

Gomutka Writes to Stalin in 1948 365

Introduction : 365

LECH W. GLUCHOWSKI

Document 1: Wladystaw Gomutka’s Letter to Stalin 376

Bolestaw Bierut 381

Document 2: Cryptogram from Stalin and Molotov to

| PART IV

THE SIX TY-FIFTH ANNIVERSARY OF EVENTS IN PRZYTYK: A DEBATE

If Not a Pogrom, Then What? 385 JOLANTA ZYNDUL

Pogrom? The Polish—Jewish Incidents in Przytyk, 9g March 1936 392 PIOTR GONTARCZYK

It Was No Ordinary Fight 397

JOLANTA ZYNDUL Life and History 400 RYSZARD FENIGSEN

Letter from Ryszard Fenigsen 401 Przytyk and the Market Stall 404 , KSAWERY PRUSZYNSKI | |

PART V ,

REVIEWS

Chone Shmeruk, Hakertyah lenavi: mehkeret historiyah vesifrut, edited by Israel Bartal; Chone Shmeruk, Ayarot ukerakhim: perakim

beyetstrato shel shalom aletkhem, edited by Chava Turniansky 413 DAVID ASSAF

Anna Michalowska, Miedzy demokraca a oligarchia: Wiadze gmin

Zydowskich w Poznaniut Swarzedzu 419

MAGDALENA TETER

XiV ~ Contents Magdalena Sitarz, Yiddish and Polish Proverbs: Contrastive Analysis

, Against Cultural Background 422 HENRYK DUDA

Shmuel Feiner and David Sorkin (eds.), New Perspectives on the Haskalah 427 VERENA DOHRN

, Brian Porter, When Nationalism Began to Hate: Imagining Modern

Politics in Nineteenth-Century Poland 429 SCOTT URY

Irena Janicka-Swiderska, Jerzy Jarniewicz, and Adam Sumera (eds.),

Jewish Themes in English and Polish Culture 432 MAREK PARYZ

Nancy L. Green (ed.), Jewish Workers in the Modern Diaspora 434 KONRAD ZIELINSKI

Gertrud Pickhan, ‘Gegen den Strom’. Der Allgemeine fudische Arbeiterbund

‘Bund’ in Polen, 1918-1939 438

JACK JACOBS , Anna Cichopek, Pogrom Zydéw w Krakowie, 11 sierpnia 1945 r. | 440 NATALIA ALEKSIUN

Michat Horoszewicz, ‘Przez dma millenia do rzymskie synagogt’: Szkice o

ewolucp postawy Kosciota katolickiego wobec Zydow 1 judaizmu 448 GRZEGORZ IGNATOWSKI

OBITUARIES

Rafael Scharf (1914-2003) 453 Eugenia Shrut (1925-2003) 460 ANTONY POLONSKY

RYSZARD FENIGSEN

George Szabad (1917-2002) | 462 ANTONY POLONSKY

Glossary 471 Index 475

Notes on the Contributors 465

Note on Place Names | POLITICAL connotations accrue to words, names, and spellings with an alacrity unfortunate for those who would like to maintain neutrality. It seems reasonable to honour the choices of a population on the name of its city or town, but what is one to do when the people ,

have no consensus on their name, or when the town changes its name, and the name its spelling, again and again over time? The politician may always opt for the latest version, but the hapless historian must reckon with them all. This note, then, will be our brief reckoning. The least problematic are those places that have a widely accepted English name, which we shall use by preference. Examples are Warsaw, Kiev, Moscow, St Petersburg, and Munich. As an exception, we maintain the Polish spelling of Krakéw, which in English has more often

appeared as Cracow. |

Most other place names in east central Europe can raise serious problems. The linguistic and contextual diversity encountered cannot adequately be standardized by editorial formula, and in practice the least awkward solution is often to let subject matter and perspective determine the most suitable spellings in a given article. The difficulty is well illustrated by Galicia’s most diversely named city, and one of its most important, which boasts five variants: the Polish Lwow, the German Lemberg, the Russian Lvov, the Ukrainian Lviv, and the Yiddish Lemberik. A particular difficulty is posed by Wilno/Vilne/ Vilnius/ Vilna, to all of which there are clear objections: until 1944 the majority of the population was Polish; the city is today in Lithuania; ‘Vilna’, though least problematic, is an artificial construct. Our preference will be

to use the common English form ‘Vilna’ until its first incorporation into Lithuania in

October 1939, and ‘Vilnius’ thereafter. |

In all cases where context does not strongly suggest a preference, the following guidelines will apply by default for the period up to the Second World War:

1. Towns that were clearly part of a particular state and shared the majority nationality of that state will be given in a form which reflects that situation (e.g. Breslau, Danzig, Rzeszow, Przemysl). 2. ‘Towns that were in ‘mixed’ areas will take the form in which they are known today and which reflects their present situation (e.g. Poznan, Torun, Kaunas).

Note on Transliteration

HEBREW An attempt has been made to achieve consistency in the transliteration of Hebrew words. The following are the key distinguishing features of the system that has been adopted:

I. No distinction is made between the aleph and ayin; both are represented by an apos-

- trophe, and only when they appear in an intervocalic position. 2. Veit is written v; het is written /; yod is written y when it functions as a consonant and 1 when it occurs as a vowel; khafis written kh; tsadi is written ts; kof is written k.

3. The dagesh hazak, represented in some transliteration systems by doubling the letter, is not represented, except in words that have more or less acquired normative English spellings that include doubling, such as Hallel, kabbalah, Kaddish, rabbi, Sukkot, and

~ Yom Kippur. ,

4. The sheva na is represented by an e. ,

, 5. Hebrew prefixes, prepositions, and conjunctions are not followed by hyphens when they are transliterated; thus betoledot ha’am hayehudt.

6. Capital letters are not used in the transliteration of Hebrew except for the first word in the titles of books and the names of people, places, institutions, and generally as in the

conventions of the English language. ,

7. ‘The names of individuals are transliterated following the above rules unless the individual concerned followed a different usage.

YIDDISH | Transliteration follows the standard YIVO system with the following exceptions. All proper names (including those of groups and institutions) are capitalized. In addition, occasional Hebrew titles or terms embedded in a Yiddish linguistic context have been transliterated using the YIVO system.

RUSSIAN AND UKRAINIAN The system used is that of British Standard 2979:1958, without diacritics. Except in biblio_ graphical and other strictly rendered matter, soft and hard signs are omitted and word-final -H, -HH, -bIH, -1H in names are simplified to -y.

List of Abbreviations AAN Archiwum Akt Nowych, Warsaw AGAD Archiwum Gtéwne Akt Dawnych, Warsaw

AK Armia Krajowa (Home Army) AL Armia Ludowa (Popular Army) ALBI-NY _ Archives of the Leo Baeck Institute, New York

APK Archiwum Panstwowe w Krakowie APKh Archiwum Panstwowe w Kielcach AZIH Archiwum Zydowskiego Instytutu Historycznego, Warsaw BZIH Biuletyn Zydowskiego Instytutu Historycznego CAHJP Central Archive of the History of Jewish People, Jerusalem CKZP —__ Centralny Komitet Zyd6éw w Polsce

GPU Gosudarstvennoe politicheskoe upravlenie (state political authority), the Soviet secret police

HHStA Haus-, Hof-, und Staatsarchiv, Vienna

KA Kriegsarchiv, Vienna KdfO Komittee fiir den Osten (Committee for the East) KOMZET Komitet po zemel’nomu ustroistvu trudyashchikhsya evreev (Committee for the Rural Placement of Jewish Labourers)

LBI Leo Baeck Institute, New York NBU | Natsional’na Biblioteka Ukrayiny im. V. I. Vernadskoho

NEP New Economic Policy NSZ Narodowe Sity Zbrojne (National Armed Forces) OZET | Obshchestvo po zemel’nomu ustroistvu trudyashchikhsya evreev (Association

| for the Rural Placement of Jewish Labourers) PPR Polska Partia Robotnicza (Polish Workers’ Party) PPS Polska Partia Socjalistyczna (Polish Socialist Party) PZPR Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza (Polish United Workers’ Party) RGIA Rosstiskii gosudarstvennyi istoricheski arkhiv TsDIAUK Tsentralnyi derzhavnyi istorychnyi arkhiv Ukrainy, Kiev WAPK Wojewodzkie Archiwum Panstwowe w Krakowie, Oddziat na Wawelu

YVA Yad Vashem Archives, Jerusalem ZOB | Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa (Jewish Fighting Organization)

BLANK PAGE

PARTI

The Shtetl: Myth and Reality

BLANK PAGE

Introduction. The Shtetl: Myth and Reality ANTONY POLONSKY

Ir is not difficult to find descriptions of the mythical shtetl. One of the most charac-

teristic is that of Abraham Joshua Heschel, scion of a great hasidic family who emigrated from Poland, first to Germany and then to the United States, and became one of the leading theologians of American Judaism. In his lament for the lost world of east European Jewry The Earth 1s the Lord’s, published in 1946, he wrote: Korets, Karlin, Bratslav, Lubavich, Ger, Lublin—hundreds of little towns were like holy books. Each place was a pattern, a way of Jewishness . . . The little Jewish communities in Eastern Europe were like sacred texts opened before the eyes of God, so close were the houses of worship to Mount Sinai. In the humble wooden synagogues, looking as if they were deliberately closing themselves off from the world, the Jews purified the souls that God had given them and perfected their likeness to God . . . Even plain men were like artists who knew how to fill weekday hours with mystic beauty. *

His sentiments were echoed, although with a characteristic twist, by the Polish __ Jewish poet Antoni Stonimski, also the product of a distinguished Jewish lineage, who, in spite of his baptism as an infant, always considered himself a ‘Jew of anti- semitic antecedents’. In his ‘Elegia miasteczek zydowskich’ (‘Elegy for the Shtetls’,

1947), he wrote: ,

No more will you find in Poland Jewish shtetls , _ Hrubieszéw, Karczew, Brody, Falenica In vain will you seek in the windows lighted candles And search for the sound of chants from the wooden synagogue.

The last scourings, the Jewish rags have vanished , They sprinkled sand over the blood, swept away the footprints

And whitewashed the walls with bluish lime | As after a plague or a great day of fasting.

1986), 89,92,93. | 1 A.J. Heschel, The Earth is the Lord’s: The Inner World of the Few in East Europe (1946; New York,

4 Antony Polonsky One moon shines here, cool, pale, alien, Outside the town, when the night lights up, My Jewish kinsmen, with their poetic fancies, Will find no more Chagall’s two golden moons. They have flown away frightened by the grim silence. No more will you find those towns, Where the cobbler was a poet, The watchmaker a philosopher, the barber a troubadour.

| No more will you find those towns where biblical psalms Were linked by the wind with Polish laments and Slavic ardour, Where old Jews in the orchard, under the shade of cherry trees, Wept for the sacred walls of Jerusalem. No more will you find those towns where poetic mist,

The moon, winds, lakes and the stars above

a Wrote in blood a tragic story

The history of the world’s two saddest nations.”

Examples of this sort of elevated nostalgia could easily be multiplied. They all depict a mythical shtetl. Partly this is merely the common phenomenon of the idealization of a lost and romanticized past, usually linked with the childhood of the author. But there are more serious flaws in this mythologized picture of the shtetl. In the first place, towns and, indeed, villages of very different types are indiscriminately lumped together. Thus Stonimski equates Hrubiesz6w, Karczew, Brody,

and Falenica. Of these only Hrubiesz6w could really be described as a shtetl. Karczew and Falenica are summer resorts near Warsaw, before the war mostly patronized by Jews, while Brody in the nineteenth century was a free port on the Russian—Austrian frontier and a major centre of the Haskalah. Heschel 1s somewhat more accurate. Korets, Bratslav, Lubavich, and Ger could certainly be described as shtetls. But Karlin is a suburb of Pinsk, and Lublin was a major town with a popula-

tion in 1938 of 115,000. Certainly, one needs to make a clear distinction between small towns, townlets, and villages. This is an awareness to be found in some writers. In his novella Dos shterntikhl’ (“The Shabbos Headband’) Israel Aksenfeld distinguished clearly between a shtetl (or, as he described it, a k/eyn shtetl),ashtot,and a gross shtot: Anyone familiar with our Russian Poland knows what Jews mean by a small shtet/, a little town.

A small shtetl has a few cabins, and a fair every other Sunday. The Jews deal in liquor,

grain, burlap, or tar. Usually, there’s a man striving to be a Hasidic rebbe. , A shtot, on the other hand, contains several hundred wooden homes (that’s what they call a house: a home) and a row of brick shops. There are: a very rich man (a parvenu), several well-to-do storekeepers, a few dealers in fields, hareskins, wax, honey, some big moneylenders, who use cash belonging either to the rich man, going halves on the profits, or to the tenant farmers and tenant innkeepers in the surrounding area. Such a town has a Polish . 2 A. Stonimski, ‘Elegia miasteczek zydowskich’ (1947), in his 138 wierszy (Warsaw, 1984), 175-6.

Introduction | 5 landowner (the porets) with his manor. He owns the town and some ten villages, this entire district being known as a shlis!. Some prominent Jew, who is held in esteem at the manor, leases the entire town or even the entire district. Such a town also has a Jewish VIP, who isa big shot with the district police chief. Such a town has an intriguer, who is always litigating with the town and the Jewish communal administration, even on the level of the provincial government. In such a town, the landowner tries to get a Hasidic rebbe to take up residence, because if Jews come to him from all over, you can sell them vodka, ale, and mead. All these

goods belong to the landowner, and so up goes his income. , Such a town has a winehouse keeper, a watchmaker, and a doctor, a past cantor and a present cantor, a broker, a madman, and an abandoned wife (an agunah), community beadles, and a caterer. Such a town has a tailors’ association, a burial association, a Talmud association, and a free-loan association. Such a town has various kinds of synagogues: a shu/ (mainly for the Sabbath and holidays), a bes-medresh (the house of study, for everyday use), and sometimes even a k/aiz/ (a smaller house of worship) or a shtib/ (a small hasidic synagogue). God forbid that anyone should accidentally blurt out the wrong word and call the town a shtet/. He’d instantly be branded as the local smartass or madman.

, A town is called a big town if there are a couple of thousand householders and a few brick buildings aside from the wooden homes. This 1s a horse of a different colour. Here, everyone boasts that he greeted someone from the next street because he mistook him for an out-oftowner. After all: In such a big town as this, how can you tell if stranger is a local? There are tons of people whom you don’t know from Adam.?

A second problem with the ‘mythological’ shtetl is that non-Jews are hardly present in it, or, if they are, appear in highly stereotypical form. Israel Bartal in his study of the representation of non-Jewish characters has shown that there is a high degree of continuity between the way these are depicted in the literature of the Haskalah and in later Hebrew and Yiddish writing.* When these towns were established, the dominant figure was the Polish landowner, the owner of the town. Yet when a fictionalized image of the shtetl was set down, the power of the porets had waned considerably with the Russian suppression of the Polish uprisings of 1830

and 1863 and the abolition of serfdom and unfree cultivation. To quote David Roskies’s important study “The Shtet/ in Jewish Collective Memory’: When the s/tet/ entered into literature, between 1831 and 1863, the dates of the two failed Polish uprisings against the tsar, it was just as the Polish nobility was being stripped of its powers. Thus the porits, for all that he once loomed so large on the shtet/ landscape and saw to it that nothing much in that landscape ever changed, himself became transported to the land of legend, either as the benign ruler, such as Graf Potocki, or as the sadistic and dissolute nobleman who signaled the collapse of all moral authority. The porits, much like the Roman emperor before him, came to be seen as merely a pawn in the divine scheme of things.° 3 T, Aksenfeld, The Headband, in his The Shtetl, ed. and trans. J. Neugroschel (Woodstock, NY, 1989), 49-50. The description later says that the context was 1812-13.

4 J. Bartal, ‘Non-Jews and Gentile Society in East European Hebrew and Yiddish Literature

1856-1914’, Polin, 4 (1989), 53-69. ,

> D. Roskies, ‘The Shtet/ in Jewish Collective Memory’, in his The Jewish Search for a Usable Past (Bloomington, Ind., 1999), 45.

6 , Antony Polonsky Hebrew and Yiddish literature abound in depictions, both positive and negative, of the Polish noble owner of the shtetl. In Ayit tsavua (“The Hypocrite’, 1858-64), a novel by Abraham Mapu, one finds a ridiculously romanticized depiction of the salon of a Lithuanian magnate, where enlightened Poles and Jews meet and discuss Voltaire, philosophy, and the Jews. “he Count’s wife and her daughter are welldisposed: they do not distinguish between members of different nations but only between good and bad people.’ It is the Countess who brings together the young enlightened Jewish couple who are the centre of the novel. She describes them as follows: “These are the young people of the new generation, filled with knowledge and reason.”©

More frequent is the negative depiction of the porets, which was also well established both in Jewish folklore and in hasidic hagiography, where the tsadzk was able to use his powers of intercession to turn aside aristocratic malevolence, a topic discussed in Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern’s account of the tsadik Levi Yitshak (Levi

Isaac) of Berdichev in this volume. The classic Hebrew writer of the Haskalah Yehuda Leib Gordon articulates this hostile image well in his first short story, ‘Shenei yamim velailah ehad bemalon orehim’ (“Two Days and One Night in an Inn’), which was written in 1859 but which remained unpublished for a decade. In this he presents a Polish sz/achcic arrogantly humiliating a poor Jewish pedlar: The nobleman sat on his chair, like an officer in front of his regiment. He sipped from the full glass in front of him and shook his head at everything the pedlar took from his basket to show he did not want his wares . . . The Jew showed the Pole all his treasures, exhausting his soul by his efforts and trying to induce him to buy with all the adjurations 1n the ‘Torah. But the nobleman did not choose any of his wares. He criticized and cursed him and all the Jews, and when he was wearied with all the trinkets set before him, drove the pedlar away.

As Brian Horowitz has shown in his chapter in this issue, one can find both the positive and negative images of the Polish nobility in the works of Lev Levanda, the leading Jewish novelist writing in Russian in the 1870s and 1880s. The negative image became more pronounced in the post-Haskalah period. It was given a characteristic articulation in the work of the Yiddish writer Yitshak Leibush Peretz (Isaac Leib Peretz), where, particularly in later stories, with their pseudo-folkloric character, the Polish nobleman and particularly the Polish noblewoman become symbols for the corruption and licentiousness of the non-Jewish world. As Bartal has pointed out, “The Polish noblewoman is the epitome of sexual attractiveness and lasciviousness, and can be resisted by the Jew only with difhculty.’ He quotes from Peretz’s story ‘Der markt’ (“The Market’): On market days, especially on the days of their festivals, they drive about in their carriages, all decked out, splendid, and accompanied by the Cossacks of their courts, through the 6 A. Mapu, Ayit tsavua, 3 pts. (1858, 1861, 1864), in Kol kitvei avraham mapu (Tel Aviv, 1950).

7 J. L. Gordon, ‘Shenei yamim velailah ehad bemalon orehim’, in his Kitvet yehudah letb gordon:

Prozah (Tel Aviv, 1960), 3-16. 8 Bartal, ‘Non-Jews and Gentile Society’, 62.

Introduction 7 towns and villages. When they see a handsome and comely Jew, they call the Cossacks .. . _ [And the Jew] is filled with fear and awe before the lady whom he had glimpsed and seen that she was very beautiful, splendidly dressed and ornamented.’

During the period when maskilim still expected the authorities to assist them in

the reform of the Jewish community, Russian officials are often depicted in a : favourable and highly stereotypic way, above all in the works of Gordon, Abraham

Baer Gottlober (Avrom-Ber Gotlober), and Isaac Joel Linetzky. Gordon’s short story ‘Shenei yamim velailah ehad bemalon orehim’, which has already been alluded

to, contains a highly stylized eulogistic description of a Russian government official: Out of the carriage stepped a man dressed in an official uniform, looking like an army officer. I heard him speaking the language of Russia and I felt secure enough to approach him. The Russians are a people of modest mien and genuine feeling and they adhere to the tradition of their Slavonic ancestors of making foreigners welcome and receiving them hospitably. . . . The Russian responded to me with a smile and answered me politely. ‘I am going to Warsaw, sir.... Very good, sir,’ continued the good-hearted official. ‘I will be happy to keep you company because I am travelling alone. . . I know you are a Hebrew [evrez].’ He said to me, ‘You cannot go on your way because it is still the sabbath. I shall wait for you until nightfall.’'°

Even before 1881 some writers, such as Sholem Yankev Abramovitsh (Shalom

Jacob Abramowitz, pen-name Mendele Mokher Seforim), took a much more hostile view of the Russian bureaucracy, while after that year favourable depictions of Russian officials become almost non-existent, to be replaced by the hostile and often buffoonish officials of Sholem Aleichem’s “Tevye der milkhiker’ (“Tevye the Dairyman’). Instead there was an idealization of the progressive intelligent, like the revolutionary student Romanenko in Sholem Aleichem’s novel Jn shturm (‘In the Storm’; first called Der mabl, “The Deluge’). The child of a mismatch between a noble and liberal Polish woman and a vulgar Ukrainian antisemite, Romanenko is described in as idealized manner as Gordon’s official: Anyone who knows the events of recent times will understand the meaning of the phrase ‘eternal student’. He is, indeed, one of the best children of this land; he has in his heart a warm love, a pure conscience, lofty ideals and is full of goodwill to do everything possible for the hungry and unhappy people .. . In short, not only does he hold revolutionary and socialist views, he is also an organizer and activist, the creator of a whole group."!

Peretz was more ambivalent. In his short story ‘In postvogn’ (‘In the Mail

, Coach’, 1891) he draws a sympathetic portrait of Janek Polniewski, a radical member of the intelligentsia who has abandoned the study of medicine to become

a provincial pharmacist and who rejects antisemitism as ‘a kind of cholera, an 9 Y.L. Peretz, ‘Der markt’, in his Ale verk, 11 vols. (Vilna, 1922), vi. 83. 10 Gordon, ‘Shenei yamim velailah ehad bemalon orehim’, 7. 11 Sholem Aleichem, Jn shturm, in his Folksfond aufgabe, 28 vols. (New York, 1917-25), xxiv. 65.

8 Antony Polonsky epidemic’. The narrator of the story is set at ease by the reassurance of his former

friend but is instantly suspicious when the latter ascribes his friendly feelings towards the Jews to an encounter with a Jewish woman. He remarks: ‘What do you think? That his conscience would hold him back? From a young Jewish wife! Why

not? Once, to gain glory, it was necessary to bring Jews to baptism; today it is enough to seduce a Jewish woman by drawing her away from her God, from her

parents, from her husband—from her whole life.’?” | The depiction of peasants is equally devoid of reality. ‘To quote Roskies again: When the market economy was still viable, the Ukrainian- Belorussian- and Polish-speaking peasants were the Jews’ main source of livelihood. On market days the peasantry from the surrounding villages descended upon the shtet/ with their open wagons loaded with livestock and produce. These they sold to the Jews in return for goods and services. By nightfall, the peasants were gone, including those who drank away their earnings in the local Jewish tavern. In fact, there were Gentiles who resided permanently within the town proper, but they mostly lived on the outskirts, and owned plots of land, which embodied their ongoing link to an agrarian lifestyle. (This is true even in present-day Poland.) Although the spire of the Roman Catholic koscio¢ [church] dominated the shtet/ skyline, often rivaled by the onionshaped dome of the Eastern Orthodox, the gentile majority made its presence felt only on market days, Sundays, or religious festivals. The surest sign of trouble was if the peasants reappeared en masse and off schedule. Then the only one who could save the Jews was the Russian constable or sheriff, and that only for a price.'*

| Thus, even though Sholem Abramovitsh felt an instinctive sympathy for the poor and oppressed peasantry, he still saw them as primitive and prone to violence. This emerges clearly in his novella Di klyatshe (“The Mare’), in which a broken-down horse represents the suffering Jewish people; the peasants, the popular persecutor of the Jews; the narrator (who in a Gogolesque turn of fate 1s turned into a horse), a typical Jewish radical of the period of reforms of Alexander II; and the Devil, the Russian government, who eventually rides the mare. Abramovitsh provides a char-

acteristic picture of the encounter between the narrator, Yisrolik, in his equine state, the peasants, and the mare: ... I stood up and I witnessed a terrible scene. Young wild bullies were harassing a skinny haggard mare on all sides, pelting her with stones, goading whole packs of dogs on her...

: I couldn’t simply stand there as a silent observer to such misdeeds... . ‘Savages!’ I said, making straight for this pepper of the earth. ‘What do you have against that poor horse?’

Some of the bullies didn’t even hear me; others did catch something and guffawed arrogantly. A few of the dogs looked at me in surprise, several of them barked at a distance, others glared, ready to leap at me from behind and tear me to shreds . . .* 12 Tn the Mail Coach’, repr. in The I. L. Peretz Reader, ed. with introd. R. R. Wisse (New York,

1996), 112, 116. 13 Roskies, “The Shtet/ in Jewish Collective Memory’, 45. 14 Sholem Abramovitsh, The Mare, in his Great Tales of Jewish Occult and Fantasy, ed. and trans. J. Neugroschel (New York, 1991), 554—5; with minor amendments to the translation.

Introduction 9 Abramovitsh also highlights the isolation of Jews and peasants. In Kitser masoes binyomin hashlisht: (‘The Brief Travels of Benjamin the Third’, 1878) the protagonists, Benjamin and Sendrel, do not even have a common language with a peasant

they encounter as they begin their search for the ten lost tribes. Sendrel rose, walked over to the peasant, and said as politely as he could: ‘Dobry dyen! Kozhi no tshelovitshe kudi dorogi Eretz-Yisro’eyl?’ [Good day! Tell me, sir, how does one go to the Land of Israel?’ | ‘Shtsho?’ [“What?’] asked the peasant, eyeing him in bewilderment. *Yaki Yisro’eyl? Nye batshil ya Yisro’eyl’ [“What Israel? I haven’t seen any Israel’. ‘Nye, Nye’ [‘No, No’], interrupted Benjamin impatiently from where he sat. ‘He thinks you’re asking about a person named Israel, not about the land.’ . .. The peasant spat, told them both to go to the Devil, and drove away muttering: ‘Eres-Srul, Eres-Srul!’’®

Peretz, particularly in his socialist period, had more sympathy for the peasantry. He put the following words into the mouth of the tailor-hero of his short story ‘Dos shtrayml’ (“The Fur Hat’, 1893): I used to enjoy making peasant coats. First, why not? Second, I thought to myself, ‘The peasant gives us bread, he does hard and bitter work in the summer and I cannot protect him from the sun, so he should at least be protected from the cold, during the winter, when he rests.’!®

Non-Jewish servants working in Jewish households also appear in many stories. In one of his stories Sholem Aleichem describes Hapke, a Ukrainian maid in a Jewish household: Hapke spoke Yiddish like a Jew and used in her speech a mass of phrases in /oshn-koydesh [literally ‘holy language’; Jewish religious terms, usually Hebrew- or Aramaic-derived]. When she spoke of Hveydor [another servant], she referred to him as a kapoerntk [a deroga-

tory term for a non-Jew].?" | The portrayal of Christianity, whether in its Roman Catholic or its Russian Orthodox version, is for the most part negative, although some distinctions are drawn. Thus one does sometimes find sympathetic portraits of the enlightened higher Catholic clergy, particularly in the period before 1881. One such figure is portrayed in Ayzik Meir Dik’s story ‘Zafrona’. He was one of the most distinguished of all the priests of the region; he knew oriental languages, Hebrew and Arabic, was a great engineer and scientist, and knew history. His wealth corresponded to his wisdom, since, the descendant of great ancestors, he owned much property. Despite his wealth he was modest with all people of the town . . . ‘They [the 15 Sholem Abramovich [Abramovitsh], The Brief Travels of Benjamin the Third, trans. H. Halkin, in D. Miron and K. Frieden (eds.), Tales of Mendele the Book Peddler (New York, 1996), 334. 16 Y.L. Peretz, ‘Dos shtrayml’, in his Ale verk, 11 vols. (Vilna, 1922), vi: Far kleyn un groys, 130.

‘7 Sholem Aleichem, Folksfond aufgabe, xvi. 92. ,

10 Antony Polonsky bishop and the Jewish narrator] both had benevolent feelings for both Jews and Christians. At one table they, each for his part, spoke peace and truth [traditional Haskalah catchwords]. The difference of religion did not separate their hearts.'®

Peretz sharply contrasted the pre-modern period, when religious coexistence had been a feature of shtetl life, and the modern period, when antisemitism became

the stock in trade of the parish priest. He describes the change in his story ‘Der drong’ (“The Stake’): _ Previously there had been a good priest, roly-poly, smiling, with red cheeks and laughing , grey eyes ... He was friendly with the Jews... He used to lend a rouble from time to time against some pawn and without high interest . . . Before the sabbath and holidays he was a redeemer and saviour. .. . “Take pity on Moyshe Khaym, an abhorred Christ-hater, but who has a wife and children, and lend him a few coins...’ While the old priest had maintained good economic relations with the Jews, the new one was active in boycotting them. The new priest was infected with antisemitism and preached

, against economic contacts with the Jews. He often referred to that story, the old tale ofthe hanged man [1.e. Jesus]. . . ‘Be careful,’ he says, “you should not deal with any Jew, neither

, buy nor sell.’ If they don’t listen, he refuses confession, won’t grant absolution. ‘Let their souls burn in hell for ever,’ he says.19

George Orwell argued that a cliché is the easiest way to convey complex information in a condensed manner. In this sense, all these descriptions, however clichéd, contain an element of reality. But they hardly begin to describe the complexity of social interactions both within the small town and between it and the outside world. Some aspects of the problems involved in describing the religious interaction between Jews and Christians in the shtetl are described in Michat Galas’s chapter in this volume. The third problem with the literary image of the shtetl is that it is highly abstract ~ and ideologically driven. In Roskies’s words: Two very different perspectives converged on the s/tetl: the one static and synoptic, the other dynamic and deconstructive. Neither owed much to the ‘real’ past. So far as the shtet/

itself was concerned, it existed on a timeless plain at the nexus of the Jews and their God. | Like Jerusalem, the shtet/ defined itself as a kehillah kedoshah, a covenantal community. As such, it maintained the essential institutions of shu/ (synagogue), besmedresh (studyhouse), shtiblekh (hasidic houses of prayer), khadorim (elementary schools), mikve (ritual bath), and besoylem (sanctified burial ground). These secured the bond between Jews and God, just as the various voluntary societies and professional guilds called khevres organized the social interaction among the Jews themselves. Critics were quick to point out that power was concentrated in the hands of the male burghers, who elected the Jewish community council called the kahal. They shed no tears for the abolition of the kaha/ by Tsar Nicholas I in

1844. Whether the shtetl of memory was located at the nexus of Jews-and-God or of 8 Ayzik Meir Dik, ‘Zafrona’, in his Geklibene verk, 2 vols. (New York, 1954), ii. 97.

, 19 Y.L. Peretz, ‘Der drong’, in his Ale verk, vii: Bilder un skitsn, 210-11.

Introduction II Jews-and-other-Jews, it lay outside of time and geopolitical space. The shtet/ was seen, for better or worse, as a kind of Greek city-state: independent, self-regulating, and oblivious of the contemporary world.”°

Thus, the maskilim, like Israel Aksenfeld in his novella Dos shterntikhl, saw the shtetl as the root of Jewish backwardness, but the generation of writers who were confronted with the new situation that followed the change in Russian government policy after 1881 were much more sympathetic to the shtetl. In their eyes, in spite of its poverty and apparent primitiveness, the shtetl became a fortress of authentically Jewish spiritual values, which was beleaguered on all sides. This view can be found in the writings of both Sholem Aleichem and Yitshak Leibush Peretz. However, not all writers of this generation found the shtetl charming and a repository of virtues lost in the city. Hayim Nakhman Bialik’s poem ‘Bitshuvosi’ (‘Upon My Return’) is a savage reflection on the suffocating intellectual isolation of the shtetl and of his own feelings of being unable to free himself from its prison-like atmosphere. The next generation of Yiddish writers, including Yitzhak Meir Weissenberg, Sholem

Asch, and David Bergelson, each had a new and distinctive image of the shtetl. Weissenberg highlighted the class antagonisms among shtetl Jews during the revolution of 1905, Asch wrote of ‘tough Jews’ and their close relations with the nonJewish population, while Bergelson described the spiritual emptiness of small-town life in the years after the crushing of the 1905 revolution. The literary depiction of the shtetl found its fullest expression in the more than 1,200 yizkor bikher (memorial books) created to commemorate the lost world of east

European Jewry, of which Roskies has written, ‘In more ways than one, these memorial books are a species of fiction. They borrow unconsciously from literary sources, even as they interpolate bona fide works of prose, poetry, and professional memoir.’”*' They have been studied by Jack Kugelmass and Jonathan Boyarin and. form the basis for Rachel Ertel’s book Le Shiet/.2* But they are very questionable as a historical source. As David Roskies has argued, they should be seen rather as ‘a valiant group effort to shape the disparate and conflicting memories of former shtetl inhabitants and the pieces of the symbolic shtetl landscape into a lasting, coherent, memorial’. He remarks on two other features of these accounts: After a brief chapter that outlines what little is known about Jewish life in the town prior to the twentieth century, the yizkor book hits its stride with vignettes about the coexistence of tradition and modernity on the crowded shtetl streets: rabbis, scholars, philanthropists, merchants, and madmen, rubbing shoulders with political activists, youth groups, amateur actors, soccer players, cyclists, modern women, and local boys who made good. . .. Within that idealized group portrait, there is an occasional Polish nobleman to liven things up.

20 Roskies, ‘The Shtetl in Jewish Collective Memory’, A4. 21 Tbid. 64. 22 From a Ruined Garden: The Memorial Books of Polish Jewry, ed. and trans. J. Kugelmass and J. Boyarin, 2nd, expanded edn. (Bloomington, Ind., 1998); R. Ertel, Le Shtetl: La bourgade juive de Pologne de la tradition a la modernité (Paris, 1982).

12 Antony Polonsky _ Otherwise, the Gentiles are depicted as an undifferentiated mass of peasants who appear and disappear on market day. Jewish—gentile relations are recalled in the context of strikes, pogroms, anti-Jewish boycotts, murders, and the Holocaust.?°

The yizkor bikher are thus of relatively little value in describing the history of the Jewish small town up to 1939. Where they can be of considerable importance, as

Jan Gross has recently demonstrated, is in providing detailed accounts of the process of mass murder in small towns, for which there are very frequently no other documentary sources.”4

We also have non-Jewish (predominantly Polish) descriptions of the shtetl. These are also highly abstract in both their positive and negative manifestations. In the Polish literature of the Enlightenment, discussions of the shtetl are primarily concerned to explain the backwardness of Polish towns, for which the Jews are frequently held responsible. This is how the shtetl appears in such works as Ignacy Krasicki’s Pan Podstoli (“Mr Pantler’, 1778-98) and Michat Krajewski’s Podolanka

w stanie natury wychowana (‘A Girl from Podolia Raised in a State of Nature’, 1784). According to the pre-war Polish critic Zbigniew Lesniodorski, the descriptions of provincial towns are limited to ‘a picture of destitution, neglect and decline,

supposedly caused . . . by the Jewish population’.2° This view of the shtetl was maintained in the literature of the early nineteenth century, permeated as it was by the principles of the Enlightenment and of the reforms of the period of the last Polish king, Stanistaw August. Thus in Potocki’s novel Podr0éz do Ciemnogrodu (‘A

Trip to Backwoodsville’, 1820), the traveller passes through ‘muddy, unpaved streets, covered by boards here and there, low houses, only a tenth of them made of brick, Jews and beggars everywhere . . . ill-built muddy towns, full of monasteries and Jews’.”© This view of the shtetl persisted until the twentieth century, even in the work of progressive writers like Stefan Zeromski. In Przedwiosnie (‘Before the Spring’, 1925) the hero crosses the frontier into the Kingdom of Poland. The sight he sees undermines his romantic view of Poland: [Spring] tried to shroud in its faint colours the disgusting sight which people had laid out against its background, full of immortal beauty: a Polish Jewish town. Cezary looked with gloomy eyes at the quagmire of muddy little streets, at the houses, all of various sizes, shapes, colours, and degrees of filthiness, at the pigsties and puddles, at the farm buildings

and burnt rubble. He returned to the marketplace surrounded by Jewish shops, their doors and windows splashed with months-old mud and unwashed under that for many months.?" 23 Roskies, “The Shtetl in Jewish Collective Memory’, 61. 24 J. Gross, Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Fedwabne, Poland (Princeton, 2001).

25 Z. LeSniodorski, ‘Miasta i mieszczanie w powieSci stanistawowskiej’, Pamietnik Literacki, 1-2 (1935), 188; quoted in E. Prokopowna, “The Image of the Shtetl in Polish Literature’, Polin, 4 (1989),

131. 26 S. Potocki, Podréz do Ciemnogrodu (Warsaw, 1820), i. 29, 146. 27 S. Zeromski, Przedwiosnie (Warsaw, 1948), 109.

Introduction 13 There were also more positive Polish stereotypes. The romantic novelist J6ézef Ignacy Kraszewski, in his Latarnia czarnoksieska (“The Magic Lantern’, 1844),

commented on the familiarity of the shtetl: |

And do you know what makes every town Polish? The Jews. When there are no more Jews, we enter an alien country and feel, accustomed as we are to their good sense and services, as if something were not quite right.”®

It was the inter-war writer Ksawery Pruszynski who gave the classic description of the Polish noble town in his account of Krzemieniec (Kremenets): Here it stands before me, Krzemieniec the jewel, the most beautiful of Polish towns and how Polish it is. In the depths of the ravine, former noblemen’s houses, bulging and white, with columns and with dark eyes for windows; in the crush of streets converge the Jewish houses

with fringed porches around them, like the inn in Pan Tadeusz. There are two types of Polish towns, those from the Piast period and those from the Jagiellonian period, the western and the eastern towns. The former were built by Germans and Italians, the latter by the nobleman and the Jew. Krzemieniec is the purest example of the latter.?°

Post-war Polish literature also has many descriptions of the shtetl, some written by

Jewish survivors, others by people like Tadeusz Konwicki, who grew up with Jewish children in what he describes as a provincial town, the quintessential small town on the outskirts of Vilna. This was a town among a vast archipelago of such towns, which produced the founder of Metro-GoldwynMayer and Jozef Pitsudski, famous, miracle-working rabbis and the arch-traitor and tsarist spy Bataszewicz, the leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, Wilner and myself... All that

was best in Europe and America came from there and pushed old Europe and young America forward . . . I remember Bujwidze better all the time. I dream of Bujwidze constantly. This microscopic town, this most typical of towns, in actual fact the name of the town alone without the town was so characteristic, and somehow formed types like myself, like Romain Gary, Soutine, David Halberstam and three quarters of American directors,

writers, actors and politicians.*° , Konwicki tried to re-create this environment in fiction in his book Bohin. A more recent example of this genre is Zagtada by Piotr Szewc, with its idealized view of

pre-war Zamoéé.3! | |

So much for the mythical shtetl and its literary reflections. In this volume a |

number of chapters discuss the way it has been represented. Joel Berkowitz discusses the way shtetl and shtot are depicted in Yiddish Haskalah drama; Mikhail Krutikov examines how the shtetl has been conceptualized in Jewish literary criticism; Eugenia Prokop-Janiec investigates the literary use of the town of Kazimierz 28 J. I. Kraszewski, Latarnia czarnoksieska (Krakéw, 1977), 271. 29 K. Pruszynski, Podréz po Polsce (Warsaw, 1937).

, 3° T. Konwicki, Wschody i zachody ksiezyca (Warsaw, 1982), 86. 31 T. Konwicki, Bohin (Warsaw, 1987); P. Szewc, Zagtada (Krakéw, 1993).

14 Antony Polonsky on the Vistula; and Katarzyna Wiectawska outlines the fantastic elements in the way shtetls are described in the work of Sholem Asch, Bruno Schulz, and Isaac Bashevis Singer. What can we say about the reality? Paradoxically, we are most fully informed | about the history of the small Jewish town in Poland—Lithuania in the early modern period (to 1795). Jews first settled in Poland in significant numbers in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, invited by the kings to settle in the developing towns of Poland and Lithuania as traders, minters, moneylenders, and bankers. Around 1500 they numbered about 24,000 and were located in some eighty-five towns. These numbers increased to about 350,000 by the middle of the seventeenth century, when the community was the largest in Ashkenaz, and to nearly three-quarters of a million by the mid-eighteenth century, when it was the largest Jewish community in the world and constituted over a third of world Jewry. By this time less than a _ _ quarter lived in towns under royal authority, such as Krakow, Vilna, Poznan, Lviv, and Lublin. Nearly three-quarters lived in towns and villages controlled by the local nobleman. In the course of the sixteenth century the sz/achta (nobility) had established itself as the dominant stratum in Poland—Lithuania politically, economically, and socially. Through parliament and the institution of the elected monarchy it had succeeded in reducing the king to a relatively powerless figure-

head. Socially, it had undermined the position of the burghers in the royal towns and had reduced the bulk of the peasantry to serfdom. It was during this period of noble dominance that Jews began to move to private towns, particularly in Ukraine. A law of 1539 conferred complete power over such towns established on noble estates on their owners. They encouraged Jews to settle in these towns since they were seen as less demanding politically and socially than

Christian burghers. Thus when, in 1576, Hieronim Sieniawski founded a new township in Oleszowo, near Lubaczoéw, he included provisions in the privilege he granted to new settlers which permitted the Jews to practise their religion: The Polish Crown flourishes with people of diverse estates, particularly in regard to their religious allegiance on the principle that no authority shall exercise power over faith, honour and conscience. We wish therefore to secure a peaceful life especially to those persons who have suffered persecution not because of any crimes or evil deeds, but for other reasons, so that they may enjoy all the liberties of the laws enacted by us.*”

It was in this way that the ‘marriage of convenience’ between the szlachta and the Jews that characterized pre-partition Poland—Lithuania came into existence. Jews began to manage the estates of the sz/achta through the system of leasing known as the arenda, and became the indispensable traders and craftsmen of the rural economy, locating themselves in the small towns and villages of the noble estates. 382 S. W. Baron, A Social and Religious History of the Jews, xvi: Poland—Lithuania (Philadelphia, 1976), 125.

Introduction 15 How did this work in reality? We havea clear picture of the situation in Opatow,

a small town on the Vistula, from an inventory made by its owner Pawet Karol Sanguszko, when he and his wife inherited the town on the death of her father, Aleksander Dominik Lubomirski, in 1721. At this time the town’s population numbered 1,700: 1,000 Jews and 700 Catholics. The Jews certainly dominated the town economically and socially. They owned most of the more imposing houses (the bulk of the houses were wood) and included sixteen of the nineteen merchants (the other three were probably Scots). The large majority of both the Jewish and Catholic populations consisted of artisans, but here there was some complement-

arity. The principal Catholic artisan trades were shoemaking, baking, and furworking; among the Jews, baking, butchery, and cap-making. One Jewish arendator (lessee) lived in the town.*?

The charter granted to the Jews of Opatow in 1670 was very specific. After

reaffirming earlier privileges, it continued:

In the first place, they are entitled to build on their own grounds, a synagogue, schools, a cemetery and a hospital. ‘They may sell all types of alcoholic drinks in different measures, goods in various measures and other types of trade in their home and in places where booths are permitted. We prohibit the burghers from establishing any obstacle to Jewish trade. They are also permitted to slaughter all types of cattle and sell the meat freely. In relation to rents and taxes, they are to pay the same as all burghers. We will maintain the courts of their elders as before, with the right of free appeal to the court at our residence,

. as is set out in their earlier privilege. We thus, having listened carefully to the humble supplication they have made to us, deign to accept their just request and confirm all their rights both ancient and more recent granted by the princes our ancestors of blessed memory and while maintaining our feudal

rights unimpeded, maintain, confirm and approve their request . . .*4 | As Hundert demonstrates in his study of the town, Jewish life here was marked | by vitality and energy, so that the Jewish predominance in commerce and artisan_ ship exceeded in its weight the numerical preponderance of Jews. The Church was unable to undermine the position of the Jews because of the protection they enjoyed from the town owner. Jewish society was very stratified and dominated by a small

group of related merchants and arendators. Contrary to the view held by earlier Jewish historiographers, most notably Simon Dubnow, the town owner was reason-

able in his behaviour. He sought what was best for the town. The situation of the Jews in Opatéw, in Hundert’s view, demonstrates that Jews felt reasonably secure in Poland—Lithuania and that ‘Poland was as much theirs as their neighbors’’. At the same time, he argues, ‘there is no question that animus and tension were the governing qualities in relations between Jews and Christians. The historical issue is how this animus was expressed in relations between particular people and groups of people at particular times and in particular places.’®° 83 G.D. Hundert, The Jews in a Polish Private Town: The Case of Opatém in the Eighteenth Century

(Baltimore, 1992), 1-8. 34 Tbid. 160-1. 8° Tbid. 38.

16 Antony Polonsky ~ Rosman’s analysis of the history of the town of Medzhybizh draws a similar picture.2° The town, founded in the twelfth century and provided with defences against possible Tatar attack, was situated in a border area in Podolia, midway between Lviv and Kiev, near the River Buh, on the line where Greek Catholicism gave way to Orthodoxy. It developed as an administrative centre for the Sieniawa— Czartoryski entail, the largest landholding in eighteenth-century Poland, and also became an important trading centre. It suffered considerably during the upheavals of the mid-seventeenth century and was devastated by Khmelnytsky, who occupied it four times; and it was occupied by the Turks in 1672-6 and 1678-86. The town finally returned to the control of the Sieniawa—Czartoryski family in 1687.

Medzhybizh did not regain its pre-1648 population of 10,000 during the eighteenth century, but by 1740 it was inhabited by 764 potential taxpaying households (545 Christian and 219 Jewish), or approximately 5,000 people (about onethird Jews). It profited from the increase in economic activity of the middle decades of the eighteenth century, and this renewed prosperity was reflected in the late 1730s in the building or restoration of the town’s synagogue and Catholic and Orthodox churches. During this period, as Rosman has demonstrated, the value of the general arenda of the town, which awarded its holder the lease on income derived from liquor manufacture and sale, various market and product taxes, the operation of local mills, and customary payments from some of the guilds, increased considerably in value. However, economic growth was not uninterrupted: the town was adversely affected by natural disasters and the predations of Haidamak rebels and the Russian army, which occupied the area on a number of occasions; the 1740s also saw something of an economic recession, with the price of village arendas falling and a reduction in the excise collected from self-employed Jews. The Jewish community of the town had been re-established after its destruction during the years of the flood, and by the mid-eighteenth century it numbered 2,039, when the town was one of the fifteen largest Jewish communities in Poland— Lithuania. Between 1722 and 1740, while the town’s total population increased by 50 per cent, the number of Jews had grown by 67 per cent. Jews owned the majority of the better, stone houses in the town as well as most of the stores on the marketplace. There was no closed Jewish quarter in Medzhybizh, and close to a third of the Jews had at least one Christian neighbour.

7 By analysing the partial and complete lists of office-holders between 1726 and 1743, Rosman was able to demonstrate that, although the communal organization of Medzhybizh conformed to the eighteenth-century pattern of a self-perpetuating oligarchy, there was more turnover and less repeat incumbency of offices than is revealed by Majer Bataban’s analysis of Jewish office-holding in Krakéw in the early years of the seventeenth century. He concluded: 36 M. Rosman, Founder of Hasidism: A Quest for the Historical Ba’al Shem Tov (Berkeley and Los

Angeles, 1996), 63-83. :

| Introduction 17 The structure suggested by these numbers is of an oligarchy composed of several factions, probably based mainly on family ties. Each faction had to be accommodated, and therefore no single group could commandeer all the offices year after year, merely exchanging titles among themselves, as was the case in seventeenth-century Cracow. In Medzhybizh apparently, the offices had to rotate through the factions, a process that took several years.°"

Jewish life was unquestionably marked by a wide social gap, and enmity between

, ruler and ruled, rich and poor, elite and plebeians. The elite groups—factors who worked for the Polish administrators, arendators of the magnate’s rights, those to whom was leased the collection of the kahal’s income, and the kahal itself—tended to overlap, which strengthened their position. At the same time there were significant divisions between these groups, and on occasion the kahal was capable of standing up for the interests of the common man, as was the pospdlstwo, a body made up of all the male householders whose level of taxation entitled them to participate in the political process but who were not currently holding office and who were charged with supervising the activities of the kahal. In this issue of Polin the pioneering analyses of Hundert and Rosman are developed by Adam Teller in his chapter on the shtetl as an arena for a degree of societal integration in eighteenth-century Poland—Lithuania. We do not have anything comparable to the studies of Rosman and Hundert on Jewish smaller towns in the nineteenth century. It is clear that the legal situation of the Jews in these towns changed significantly in this period. The abolition of serfdom and feudal conditions, first in Prussian Poland and then in Galicia, the Congress Kingdom, and the Pale of Settlement, did away with the rights of the noble owner of the small town. With the exception of the tsarist empire, where regulations restricting Jewish residence rights were extended after 1881, Jews now had the right to reside in any part of any town. Throughout this period they remained a vital part of the rural

economy and retained their role as intermediaries between the estate and the village. But social stratification became more extreme in the Jewish small town as some people profited from the commercialization of agriculture and the new links with the outside world and others were impoverished by the disappearance of their traditional occupations. Change certainly came only slowly to the Jewish shtetl. We have a very vivid description by the writer S. An-Ski (Solomon Zainwill Rapaport) of his experiences when he tried to bring the principles of the Haskalah to the small town of Liozno: At the beginning of 1881 I left Vitebsk, my birthplace, to become a tutor in the town of Liozno. Seventeen years old, this was the first independent act in my life, but I abounded in dashing self-reliance and was greatly inspired by the high ideals which lit up my vision. _ Abouta year earlier, I had left the straight and narrow; I became engrossed in worldly books and turned into an ardent maskil. I was then most influenced by Lilienblum’s Hatot ne’urim

(‘The Sins of Youth’). 87 bid. 77.

18 Antony Polonsky I did not go to Liozno so much to teach as to spread Haskalah among the young people, to

open their eyes. I took a bundle of Haskalah books along: I. B. Levinsohn’s Zerubavel, Mapu’s Ahavat tsion, Smolenskin’s Kevurat hamor and, of course, Hatot ne’urim. At that time, the Jewish towns of Lithuania were congealed in the old Orthodox ways and absolutely refused to face up to new trends and movements. Liozno, once the residence of the old Lubavicher rebbe, Schneur Zalman, was in this respect even more backward than

the other villages. Until my arrival, the town had had only one teacher, a former yeshiva student, whom the rabbi and the melamdim persecuted at first and then persuaded to repent. They cut his hair, took him to the ritual bath, burned the hair with the short coat, dressed him in a long garment and a skullcap, and sat him down in the synagogue to study the holy books. But their joy was short-lived: a few months later the penitent ran away and became converted. It was not easy for me to find jobs tutoring. To avoid provoking malicious acts against me

, from the start, I put on a mask of piety and showed that my only purpose was to earn my keep. I played my role well, I obtained lessons, and soon I was in touch with several boys. Despite its isolation from the great world, the town nevertheless had a few ‘infected’ young people, who reached out for light and knowledge and thirsted for a word of Haskalah. They understood immediately I was not as pious as I made out, and wordlessly, but with expres-

, sive glances, they hinted they wanted to establish contact with me. They soon succeeded. Once, late at night, I heard a cautious quiet tap on my window. Opening it, I saw before

, me two boys who, quietly but joyously and spiritedly, told me they came to discuss an _ important, a most important matter. Not waiting for an invitation, they entered my room through the window.

A youthful circle of maskilim was established. But it was discovered. Fortunately, the copy of Hatot ne’urim was bound with a story by Judah Leib Gordon, which

could not be regarded as heretical, and the threat of excommunication against An-Ski was lifted. But on the [next] fast day, the rabbi in his sermon demonstrated how I, and such as I, were

, the only ones to blame for the pogroms. He demanded that I be discharged as tutor. Besides, he issued rulings which were posted that same day in all the prayer houses. Of these rulings, : I remember only four: 1. All males, from thirteen years up, must wear skullcaps and not remove them at night; 2. Girls and, especially, married women must not sing 1n the presence of a man, or even

when alone; ,

3. At weddings, women and girls must not appear immodestly exposed; 4. A search should be made in all homes and in all attics; all books, except religious books, that might be found were to be brought the next day to the synagogue court-

yard for burning so that evil should be purged from the town. , About six or seven Hebrew books, quite innocent ones, were turned up, including also Gordon’s story, which the young man had not returned to me. To this, they added about a dozen Yiddish novels, mostly by Shomer. They madea pyre in the synagogue courtyard and

| set it afire. From the distance I could see only the smoke of the auto-da-fe. It reeked of the Middle Ages.

Introduction 19 The next day, Saturday after havdala, a townsman came and in a calm businesslike tone ordered me to leave town—unless I wanted to be marched out by the police. Besides, why did I have to stay? I would not have any more lessons anyway. In answer to my question as to how someone as innocent as I could be sent out with a convoy of prisoners, he said quietly, with a smile, ‘Can’t you understand? You’re not a child. Two pounds of tea to the police commissioners, and tomorrow you march out with the prisoners.’ I do not know if they would really have carried out the threat. But since there was no longer any point in my staying in Liozno, | left. Fora long time I kept the tattered Hatot ne’urim as a memento.*®

In this volume, aspects of the life of Jewish small towns in the nineteenth century are examined by Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern, John Klier, and Ben-Cion Pinchuk. Even after 1918 the Jewish small town remained a major focus of Jewish life, both in Poland and in the Soviet Union. According to the census of 1931, 43.3 per cent of Polish Jews lived in towns with more than 20,000 inhabitants, where they made up 26.4 per cent of the population as against 29.8 per cent who lived in towns with fewer than 20,000 inhabitants (28.8 per cent of the population) and 23.1 per cent who lived in villages and in the countryside (3.2 per cent of the population).*” For this period we have a number of valuable descriptions, both of individual small towns and of towns in specific regions of Poland.*° We also have a number of analyses of the attempts of the Soviet government to revive the economy of the shtetl. Perhaps most importantly, we have detailed accounts of the ethnic conflict which became much more evident after 1935, taken above all from court records. In this issue Konrad Zielinski gives an account of the impact of the First World War on the

life of the shtetl in the Kingdom of Poland, while Alina Cata and Regina Renz describe the situation in these towns between the two world wars. Anna-Maria Orla-Bukowska discusses relationships between Jews and non-Jews generally, while Rosa Lehmann shows how in the small town of Jasliska, near Krakow, a nexus of patron—client relationships developed between the Jewish inhabitants of the town and their Polish neighbours. This nexus was stable in times of order, but it was at odds with the social hierarchy in the country as a whole, where the Jews, particularly after 1935, were at best second-class citizens. In times when the coercive apparatus of the state was removed, this inevitably made the position of the Jews precarious

and exposed them to the violence of resentful former clients, something which goes far to explain why the Jews in eastern Poland sought the re-establishment of an orderly authority after the collapse of Polish rule in 1939 and why they were the 88 S. An-Ski, ‘I Enlighten a Shtetl’, in L. Dawidowicz (ed.), The Golden Tradition: Fewish Life and Thought in Eastern Europe (New York, 1967), 307-11. 39 F. Beranek, ‘Das Judentum in Polen’, in W. Markert (ed.), Osteuropa Handbuch: Polen (Cologne, 1959), 120.

40 Note particularly S. Kassow, ‘Community and Identity in the Interwar Shtetl’, in Y. Gutman, E. Mendelsohn, J. Reinharz, and C. Shmeruk (eds.), The Jews of Poland Between Two World Wars (Hanover, NH, 1989), 198-220.

20 Antony Polonsky target of murderous violence here. We devote the whole of one section, “The Sixty-

Fifth Anniversary of Events in Przytyk: A Debate’, to the recent controversy in Poland over the character of the outbreak of such violence in the town of Przytyk on

g March 1936. | ,

Certainly, both in the Soviet Union and in Poland in the 1920s and 1930s there was a widespread sense that the shtetl and its way of life were doomed. The contrast between the decaying shtetl of Opoczno and the more lively metropolitan centre of 4.6dz emerges clearly in the letters of Wolf Lewkowicz, which are analysed and presented in this volume by Mirostaw Wojcik. In the case of some Soviet Jewish writers, the decline of the shtetl was seen as a positive development. Thus Hershl Orland’s novel Aglomerat (“The Agglomeration’, 1935) describes the conflict in a shtetl in southern Ukraine over the building of a blast furnace. The older generation is opposed, but the young men and women of the shtetl flock to the factory. More frequently, both in the USSR and in Poland, the disappearance of the shtetl evoked nostalgia. In an untitled poem of 1926 the Soviet Yiddish poet Izi Kharik regrets that he cannot speak of the shtetl with the same natural filial attachment that is to be found in the verse of the Russian poet Sergey Esenin, who called himself ‘the last poet of wooded Russia’. Here I bend my young head and am still, And my heart’s unable to find peace.

Ah, withered twig, dear shtetl, shtetl,

I know that you desire to green again; |

I move, a silent guest, and I keep still.

And I am touched by grief; by so much sorrow— And I’m so envious of Esenin.

| [| too would like to come to you And, singing, call you mother.

I’m so sorry, shtetl, oh, so sad. ,

Often, it seems to me I stand at your border; And it seems to me that you Would rather not be bowed and that your huts Like round-eyed, newly wakened sheep Want to start up from their summer sleep. Shtetl, shtetl of my long-gone childhood. There was a time I wished to see you burning, But he who cursed you once upon a time

| Must learn to know that you have been accursed, Shtetl, shtetl of my long-gone childhood.*1

This nostalgia is even more strongly expressed in Polish Jewish literature. The novels written in Polish by Maurycy Szymel, Stefan Pomer, and Czestawa 41 Tzi Kharik, untitled poem, in R. Howe, R. Wisse, and K. Shmeruk (eds.), The Penguin Book of Modern Yiddish Verse (New York, 1987), 532.

Introduction 21 Rosenblattowa all recount the experience of having to leave the town in which they ~ were born. Their work is suffused with nostalgia, melancholy, and a sense that the traditional Jewish world is disappearing. In his prose and poetry Szymel evokes the

world of the shtetl and, in particular, the shtetl on the sabbath. In his poem, ‘O sobocie utraconej’ (‘On the Lost Sabbath’) he draws it in bright colours:

The polished candlesticks absorbed the liquid gold , Of the evening glow that flowed down the wet window panes. In the small bes-medresh the sky opened for me, The old Sabbath sky of mother, warm and womanly.

But he is aware that he can no longer fit into this world. In another poem, ‘Sobota’ (‘Sabbath’), All too often we are late on Friday evenings, _ And keep old woman-Sabbath waiting in the glimmer of candles.*?

The sense of foreboding was even more clearly articulated by the Polish Jewish poet Hersz Awrohem Fenster. In his poem ‘Elegia 0 sobotnim wieczorze’ (‘Elegy on a Sabbath Evening’) he asks his mother to relate to him sabbath legends, but his nostalgic mood 1s dispelled by his inability to believe. Referring to the Jewish legend of the wild river Sambatyon, which only rests on the sabbath, he is brought back to his own alienation from the world in which this legend was a reality: Tell me why the old and tired Sambatyon does not rest even on the Sabbath. I know that we are the Sambatyon, but why is our path so slippery and steep That our bones never know peace. . .4°

There was also another reaction. It saw the decline of the shtetl in Poland as the result of growing ethnic tension and popular and government-inspired antisemitism. In his prophetic poem ‘Unzer shtetl brent’ (‘Our Shtetl is Burning’), which foreshadows both the massacre in Jedwabne and the entire mass murder of Polish Jewry, the Yiddish poet Mordechai Gebirtig wrote: Brothers, our poor town is burning!

, Raging winds are fanning the wild flames And furiously tearing, destroying and scattering everything. Everything 1s burning. And you stand by And look on with folded arms. You stand and look passively On while our town is burning. 42 M. Szymel, ‘O sobocie utraconej’ and ‘Sobota’; quoted in E. Prokopéwna, ‘The Sabbath Motif in Interwar Polish-Jewish Literature’, in Gutman et al. (eds.), The Fews of Poland Between Two World Wars, 429-30.

43H. A. Fenster, ‘Elegia 0 sobotnim wieczorze’; quoted in Prokopéwna, ‘The Sabbath Motif in Interwar Polish—Jewish Literature’, 432.

22 Antony Polonsky , It’s burning, brothers, it’s burning. Tongues of flames have almost consumed the whole town. And the raging winds howl. Our town is burning.

The moment is at hand when, God forbid, Our town, along with all of us, Will be turned to ashes by the flames, And only bare, black walls will remain, as after a battle. Our town is burning, And only you can save it! If you love our town Extinguish the fire with your very blood, if you must! Don’t just stand there, brothers, With folded arms.

Don’t stand, put out the fire! Our little town is burning!*4

The Jewish small town in eastern Europe has gone for ever. It has left behind many memories and continues to exert a powerful appeal as a mythical lost para~- | dise. Can we go beyond this mythical shtetl and build up a more accurate historical understanding of the past? In the introduction to his book The Jewish Search for a Usable Past, David Roskies describes how he meets the Polish schoolteacher who has written a local history of the town of Tyszowce in present-day south-eastern Poland, of which he too had written an account. He finds no common themes in the

two histories: ‘There was no overlap between Tishevitz and ‘T'yszowce. Even the map that the mayor produced from the parish archives bore not the slightest resemblance to the one I had drawn on the basis of Jewish memories. No shu/, no heders, no house of study, no hasidic shtiblekh, no ritual bath. It was a good thing I had not visited this town twenty years before. The discrepancy between ‘our’ town and ‘theirs’ was simply too great. I did not possess then, nor did I

possess at this time, tools adequate to bridge that abyss. All I could do with my books and | _ Interviews was conjure up a vicarious and precarious mini-Jewish state called the ‘shtet? ... For my Polish counterpart, still worried about the status of his home, the dead, peaceloving, and powerless Jews posed no immediate threat. The Ukrainians did. That is why he created a seamless and heroic past. Each of us, I realized, had used the past to compensate

, our losses. Each of us did so by a colossal act of reinvention. : The one remaining question was this: Was a three-way competition for this godforsaken piece of real estate really worth the effort? When I left T'yszowce, the romance of the shtet/ — died within me.*

44M. Gebirtig, ‘Our Shtetl is Burning’, in E. Mlotek (ed.), Mir trogn a gezang! Favorite Yiddish Songs of Our Generation (New York, 1972), 231-2. 4° Roskies, The fewish Search for a Usable Past, pp. ix—x.

Introduction 23 It is our goal in this volume to prove that this is too pessimistic a conclusion. Shimon Redlich’s moving account of his return to his native town of Brzezany (today Berezhany) and his description of his attempt to write its history in such a way as to reflect the presence within it of three peoples, Jews, Poles, and Ukrainians, show that it is possible to move beyond a past depicted in terms of narrow ethnic stereotypes. We believe that we can recover a past which is as accurate a depiction as we can make of a world of the different national and religious groups and also of the different social strata, the nobles, artisans, traders, and peasants. It is our hope that our collective effort will contribute to this task.

: BLANK PAGE

The Shtetl as an Arena for Polish—Jewish Integration 1n the Eighteenth Century ADAM TELLER

As with much of Jewish history, one of the major problems involved in the historical study of the shtetl is distinguishing between myth and reality—in this case, between the picture obtained from the critical analysis of the historical sources and the image of historical phenomena developed by generations of Jews. As modern research has shown, the shtetl has enjoyed a prominent place in Jewish popular consciousness, which perceives it as a quintessentially Jewish place where Yiddish was the dominant language, life was lived to Jewish rhythms, and the outside, nonJewish world impinged only rarely (and then often negatively, to persecute the Jews).' This image of the small Jewish town has been bolstered in modern sociological and historical texts, which have uncritically transmitted this popular perception to their readers and thus perpetuated the Jewish collective memory.’ In addition, the fact that Jewish historical research itself has played a key role in the modernization of the Jewish people means that the authors of the historical studies have also had an ideological stake in the way that various phenomena in D. Miron, ‘The Literary Image of the Shtetl’, Jewish Social Studies, 1/3 (1995), 1-43; S. Zipperstein, /magining Russian Jewry: Memory, History, Identity (Seattle, 1999), 19-36; M. Zalkin, ‘From the

Armchair to the Archives: Transformations in the Image of the “Shtetl” During Fifty Years of Collective Memory in the State of Israel’, Studia Judaica, 8 (1999), 255-60. 2 M. Zborowski and E. Herzog, Life Is With People: The Culture of the Shtetl (New York, 1970); A. J. Heschel, The Earth is the Lord’s: The Inner World of the few in Eastern Europe (Woodstock, Vt., 1995). The myth of the shtetl has béen preserved in the large number of memorial books written by Jewish survivors of the various communities in eastern Europe after the Holocaust. There is now a growing

literature on these books. See, among others, O. Goldberg-Mulkiewicz, ‘Ksiega pamieci a mit zydowskiego miasteczka’, Etnografia Polska, 35/2 (1991), 187-98; id., ‘Itineraria miasteczek zydowskich’, in A. Paluch (ed.), The Jews in Poland (Krakéw, 1992), i. 387-403; J. Kugelmass and J. Boyarin, ‘Yizker Bikher and the Problem of Historical Veracity: An Anthropological Approach’, in Y. Gutman, E. Mendelsohn, J. Reinharz, and C. Shmeruk (eds.), The Jews of Poland Between Two World Wars (Hanover, NH, 1989).

26 . Adam Teller Jewish history have been portrayed.* Since modernization is widely perceived as | involving the processes of urbanization, economic development, and Jewish integration into the surrounding society, scholars (as well as publicists and others) have had a vested interest in contrasting modern Jewish life—viewed as positive—with a negative past which was neither urban nor integrated into surrounding society. In many respects, the shtetl in eastern Europe was an ideal counterpoint to the values of modernity; its image as a social and cultural backwater with a failing economy and as a place where social conservatism prevented significant connections between the Jewish and non-Jewish worlds has thus gained great currency and may be found in Jewish historical writing to this day.* Scholarly research cannot therefore afford to ignore the development of the images of the shtetl as social and historical constructs that shed light on the cultural development of the societies that gave rise to them. However, this means that it is no longer possible to accept these popular historical images at face value as representations of historical reality, since that would entail accepting the cultural

preconceptions on which they were based. Instead, in order to understand the development of the shtetl as a social phenomenon, it is important to re-examine

the relevant historical sources, free of the cultural preconceptions of previous generations.° This study represents an attempt to view the shtetl as a part of the broad social and cultural system that made up Polish—Lithuanian society in the early modern

period. Using as a source base not only literary works but numerous archival sources of both Polish and Jewish provenance, I eschew the common assumption that the Jews formed an isolated group. Instead, I will focus on the connections between the Jews and the other strata and groups within Polish—Lithuanian society, and treat religious hostility and violence (so long emphasized in historical research) as only one of a much wider range of relationships.® In this way it should be possible to examine not only the early development of the shtetl, but also the effect it had on the relationships between Jews and their non-Jewish neighbours in the eighteenth

century. Three major questions are at the heart of this study. First, what were the economic, social, and political factors at work in the Polish—Lithuanian Commonwealth which led to the creation of the shtetls? Secondly, what role did the 8 J. Schorsch, From Text to Context: The Turn to History in Modern Judaism (Hanover, NH, 1994); S. Feiner, Haskalah and History: The Emergence of a Modern Jewish Historical Consciousness (Oxford, 2002).

4 For the ways in which the Russian maskilim contrasted the city with the shtetl, see S. Zipperstein, ‘Russian Maskilim and the City’, in D. Berger (ed.), The Legacy of Jewish Migration: 1881 andits Impact (New York, 1983). Cf. D. Roskies, The Jewish Search for a Usable Past (Bloomington, Ind., 1999), 41—66. For cases of the uncritical transmission of the popular image of the shtetl in historical writing, see e.g. J. Katz, Tradition and Crisis: Jewish Society at the End of the Middle Ages (New York, 1977), 35-42; N. Davies, God’s Playground: A History of Poland (Oxford, 1985), 11. 253-4. © B.-C. Pinchuk, ‘Jewish Discourse and the “Shtetl”’, Jewish History, 15 (2001), 169-79.

6 J. Goldberg, ‘Poles and Jews in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: Acceptance or Rejection’, Jahrbucher fiir Geschichte Osteuropas, 22 (1974), 248-82.

| The Shtetl as an Arena for Integration 27 Jews play in the economic and social development of what were essentially small

Polish and Lithuanian towns in the eighteenth century? Thirdly, what form of relations developed between the Jews and their neighbours in the very particular

setting of the shtetl? |

However, before beginning a study of this kind it is important to establish some kind of definition of a shtetl. This is by no means an easy task, since the very concept of the shtetl is as much a cultural construct as a reflection of historical reality. Any attempt to pin it down in concrete and measurable terms will inevitably leave the disappointing feeling that something intangible has been lost.’ Nonetheless, it

remains impossible to examine any social phenomenon without a clear idea of exactly what it was, so a definition, however unsatisfactory, must be found. In this

| case, the characteristics of the shtetl should probably be broken down into three separate categories: the nature of the settlement in question, its size, and the degree of Jewish participation in its social and economic life.

| Urban status was generally legally defined in the Polish—Lithuanian Commonwealth, and the existence of a weekly market, and sometimes an annual fair, in the town was one of the main characteristics distinguishing a town from a village.® During the period under discussion many small settlements—particularly those on noble estates—were granted urban status. This was partly because the estate owners wanted to improve marketing facilities, but perhaps more so because, in Polish—Lithuanian society, the larger the number of towns on any given estate, the higher the status of the noble estate owner.” In reality, too dense a network of small towns seems to have had an adverse effect on economic activity, preventing the

_ development of proper regional and national markets.‘° This meant that, once created, most of the small towns were condemned to remain poor and underdeveloped, with little chance of economic or social advancement for their inhabitants (Christian or Jewish). In functional terms, Andrzej} Wyrobisz has divided the towns of early modern Poland—Lithuania into two major groups: centres of production and centres of consumption."! The first produced a significant surplus for their hinterland, whether ” On the problems of defining what a shtetl was in the context of rgth-century Russia, see J. Klier, ‘What Exactly Was a Shtetl?’, in G. Estraikh and M. Krutikov (eds.), The Shtetl: Image and Realtty. Papers of the Second Mendel Friedman International Conference on Yiddish (Oxford, 2000).

8 Z. Kulejewska-Topolska, ‘Oznaczenia i klasyfikacje miast w dawnej Polsce (XVI-XVIII w.)’, Czasopismo Prawno-Historyczne, 8 (1956), 253-68. Kulejewska-Topolska notes that in the first classification of towns (made in 1520) there appears a category of small towns without markets (‘oppida non habentes fora’), but this category is not found again in the sources she cites from later periods (ibid. 262). Cf. H. Samsonowicz and M. Bogucka, Dzieje miast 1 mieszczanstwa w Polsce przedrozbiorowe (Wroctaw, 1986), 393-410. 9 B. Baranowski, Zycie codzienne matego miasteczka w XVII1i XVIII wieku (Warsaw, 1975), 12.

10 W. Rusifiski, ‘O rynku wewnetrznym w Polsce drugiej potowy XVIII w.’, Roceniki Dziejéw Spotecenych 1 Gospodarczych, 16 (1954), 113-49.

11 A. Wyrobisz, ‘Typy funkcjonalne miast polskich w X VI-X VIII wieku’, Przeglad Historyczny, 72 (1981), 25-49.

28 Adam Teller from mining, agriculture, or crafts and industry. The towns in the other group needed support from their hinterland in order to fulfil their economic or social roles as trading towns, administrative and military centres, academic towns, or religious

centres. Since Jews, who by definition made up a significant proportion of the inhabitants of the shtetls, were not heavily engaged in production (on average, about 25 per cent of the Jewish population seems to have been engaged in crafts),‘* it seems clear that the shtetls would have been centres of consumption rather than

production. Moreover, since the social roles of administrative, academic, and religious centres would have required a large, specifically Christian, Polish- and Latinspeaking population to service their needs, the vast majority of the shtetls would have had to be trading towns serving the local market.!* | The question of size is obviously relative. A settlement that 1s considered large in

one place and time may well be considered small in another. It is therefore logical here to examine contemporary, eighteenth-century definitions used in the Polish Commonwealth. Perhaps the best of these was drawn up by the Sejm of 1775 in its

classification of towns for taxation purposes. It defined small towns (Polish: miasteczka) as those ‘that engage in agriculture and number less than 300 chimneys’./4 A later document classified these as ‘agricultural towns’, defining them as ‘towns with less than 300 chimneys, and which engage in agriculture’.!° The size criterion here is quite clear, indicating a population of under about 2,000 souls.’° It should be borne in mind, of course, that this was the total population, including both Jews and non-Jews. The comment concerning the agricultural nature of these settlements is not to be understood as indicating that they provided an agricultural _ surplus for their surroundings, but rather that the local market was largely agricul-

- tural in nature and that a significant proportion of the townspeople supported _ themselves, either entirely or in part, from agriculture. The third aspect of the shtetl—its Jewish character—is undoubtedly the hardest to define. There would seem to be two possible criteria: the percentage of Jews in

the total population, or the Jews’ prominence in urban life as measured by the density of their settlement around the marketplace. Jewish settlement in the centre of town was common in all but the largest cities in the eighteenth century, and so this does not seem a satisfactory criterion for distinguishing one settlement from | 12 R. Mahler, Di yidn in amolikn poyln in likht fun tsifern (Warsaw, 1958), 115-23. 138 Cf. Rusitiski, ‘O rynku wewnetrznym w Polsce’; S. Alexandrowicz, ‘Zaludnienie miasteczek Litwy i Biatorusi w XVI i pierwszej potowie XVII wieku’, Roczniki Dziejow Spotecenych 1 Gospodarczych, 27 (1965), 37.

14 ¢" |. miasteczka maia sie rozumie¢ te, ktore samym sie rolnictwem bawia, y mniey jak trzysta , kominow licza’, Volumina legum, viii (St Petersburg, 1868), fos. 133-4, p. 88. 15 Alexandrowicz, ‘Zaludnienie’, 37. 16 Baranowski, Zycie codzienne, 7. It should be noted that in the 1793 legislation on the towns titled

‘Miasta wolne Rzeczypospolitej’, the size criterion for miasteczka had risen to 400 houses and thus a : concomitantly larger population. See Z. Kaczmarczyk (ed.), Konstytucje grodzienskte zr. 1793 (Poznan, 1949), 22.

| The Shtetl as an Arena for Integration 29 another.!” This leaves the percentage of the Jews in the total population, which is at least a clearly quantifiable statistic.

An obvious approach, therefore, would be to define as shtetls those towns in which the majority of the population was Jewish. However, in most towns the urban population was divided into two groups: those living in the town proper, and those living in suburbs and settlements around the town. This second group was

much more heavily agricultural and played only a minor role in urban life.’® A much smaller proportion of the Jewish population lived in these suburbs than their neighbours, which meant that their role in urban life was often much greater than their proportion in the entire urban population. For example, in Poznan, one of Poland’s larger cities, Jews comprised only some to per cent of the total population of the town in the seventeenth century, but nearly a third of the population lived

and worked within the city walls.‘? Bearing this in mind, it would seem that a Jewish proportion of perhaps 40 per cent of the total population in Poland’s small towns would have been enough to ensure that the Jews were a truly significant force in urban society.

| Having reached at least a working definition of what a shtetl actually was in early modern Poland—Lithuania, it is now possible to examine how the phenomenon developed. The move of the Jewish population in Poland from west to east, from large to small towns, and from royal to noble-owned cities began in the midsixteenth century, receiving a boost from the transfer of Ukraine from Lithuania to Poland following the Union of Lublin in 1569.2° However, for the late sixteenth century Horn has calculated a total Jewish population of about 15,000 for the region of Rus Czerwona in south-eastern Poland. According to his figures, these Jews made up only about 12 per cent of the total urban population in this region at the end of the sixteenth century. Though he does not have complete data for 1648, he calculates that by then the Jewish population had more than doubled and that the proportion of the Jews in the urban population had also grown significantly.”’ 7 G. D. Hundert, ‘Jewish Urban Residence in the Polish Commonwealth in the Early Modern Period’, Jewish Fournal of Sociology, 36 (1984), 25-34; A. Teller, “Tafkidam hakalkali uma’amadam hahevrati shel hayehudim be’ahuzot beit radzivil belita bame’ah ha-18’, Ph.D. thesis (Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1997), 224-30. '8 This seems to have been more the result of lower socio-economic status than of a separate legal status. See T. Opas, ‘Wolnosé osobista mieszczan miast szlacheckich wojew6dztwa lubelskiego w drugiej potowie XVILi w XVIII wieku’, Przeglad Historyczny, 61 (1970), 625-7. '9 A. Teller, Hayim betsavta: Harova hayehudi shel poznan bemahatsit harishonah shel hame’ah ha-17 (forthcoming).

20 S. Ettinger, ‘Helkam shel hayehudim bekolonizatsiyah shel ukrainah (1569—-1648)’, Zion, 21 (1956), 107-42. . 21M. Horn, Zydzi na Rusi Czerwone) w XVI i piermszej potowie XVII w. (Warsaw, 1975), 42-75. Unfortunately, like most studies on the demography of Polish Jewry in this period, Horn concentrates almost entirely on the number of Jews in each settlement and rarely provides parallel figures concerning the non-Jewish population.

30 Adam Teller Nonetheless, with the exception of the Chetm district, he provides no data suggesting that the Jews had reached close to 40 per cent of the population in any of the cities of the region by 1648.7” Nor does Ettinger, in his study of Jewish settlement in Ukraine, provide figures to suggest the significant formation of shtetls there before 1648. He provides details | about the number of Jewish houses in various cities in the wosemddztwa of Volhynia and Bractaw in the first half of the seventeenth century. In the twelve Volhynian towns he mentions, the proportion of houses owned by Jews, according to a 1629 inspection (/ustracja), was under 20 per cent in ten cases, stood at 25 per cent in the case of Konstantyn, and reached 51.4 per cent only in the small town of Kisielin (thirty-seven houses owned by Jews out of a total of seventy-two”*). Of the five towns from the wojewddztwo of Bractaw for which he gives details, the proportion of houses owned by Jews did not exceed 15 per cent in any case. This would seem to indicate that in the period of the colonization of Ukraine (1569—1648) the proportion of Jewish settlement in the towns did not exceed 20 per cent except in the very rarest of cases.”4

The creation of a network of shtetls is therefore to be dated to the period following the Khmelnytsky uprising and the Swedish and Muscovite wars, which came to an end in about 1670. More than twenty years of war had left much of Poland’s infrastructure—both urban and rural—literally in ruins: some towns, and even whole districts, had lost over half of their population and a similar proportion of buildings, installations, and crop capacity.2° With the signing of the peace treaty in 1670, Poland entered a period of reconstruction. However, the scale of the task meant that only the richest and most powerful groups within the Polish economy—in effect, the small and closed group of magnate families, as well as King

Jan III, himself of magnate stock—were able to take it on with any hope of success. 7°

The main elements of the strategy of reconstruction included amassing huge estates in order to benefit from the economies of scale in their management. This was done through the absorption of smaller estates belonging to the lesser nobility, 22 According to the figures Horn provides, the Jews made up 36.6% of the urban population in the Chetm district in 1578. However, he himself casts serious doubt on the accuracy of these data, arguing that the real proportion of Jews in the urban population must have been significantly less (ibid. 64-5).

23 This town became an important centre for the Arian schismatics in the early 17th century until their expulsion in 1644. In 1764-5 there were some 185 Jews in the town. In 1870 Jews made up 73% of

the total population. See S. Stampfer, ‘The 1764 Census of Polish Jewry’, Annual of Bar-Ilan University: Studies in Judaica and Humanities, 24-5 (1989), 130; Stowntk geograficzny Krolestwa Polskiego, 4

(1883), 109. 24 Ettinger, ‘Helkam shel hayehudim’, 120-4. 25 J. Topolski, Gospodarka polska a europejska w XVI-X VIII wieku (Poznan, 1977), 125-66.

*° On the roles the Jews were given to play in the development of Jan III Sobieski’s personal estate in these years, see A. Kazmierczyk, “The Jews in Zotkiew, Domain of Jan III Sobieski’, in Paluch (ed.), The Jews in Poland, i. 121-6.

The Shtetl as an Arena for Integration 31 whose members found positions and incomes as clients of the magnates, and through

dynastic marriages.”’ Economic subsidies of various kinds, such as reductions in the feudal services (pariszczyzna) and the granting of various tax breaks to new settlers, were used to attract people to these latifundia.** These incentives were given not only to peasants and those who would work the land, but also to those who would repopulate the towns and revitalize the urban markets.”° Finally, following the downturn in the international market in grain, the magnates decided to exploit

| the home market by selling their produce in the form of alcohol. The Jews were well placed to take advantage of these new economic possibilities. There were a number of reasons for this. First of all, as a study of the Jews of Pinsk has shown, they had proved better able than their neighbours to recover from the destruction of the wars—perhaps because they kept more of their wealth in cash and moveable property.®° Another of their strategies is described in a letter from one of the administrators of the Radziwitt estates in Lithuania: A number of Christian families in the towns [on our estates] do not have the means to repair their houses, to build new ones [in their place], or to put up [entirely] new ones on empty plots. The Jews agree to do the repairs and build the new houses, but in return for their costs they demand possession of the property until the Christian owner can repay them.*+

Many Christian townspeople abandoned trade and crafts during hard times, turning to agriculture to support themselves, and they often found it difficult to pay off their debts and reassume their previous professions when peace came. This meant that the Jews were in a much better economic position in the towns after the wars than they had been before.

25-57. |

27 A. Pospiech and W. Tygielski, ‘Spoteczna rola dworu magnackiego X VII—XVIII wieku’, Przeglad

Mstoryczny, 69 (1978), 215-37; Z. Anusik and A. Strojnowski, ‘Radziwittowie w epoce saskie}: Zarys dziejow politycznych i majatkowych’, Akta Universitatis Lodztensis: Folia Historica, 33 (1989), 28 Cf. the ten-year exemption granted to new settlers of all faiths in the small town of Nowy Swierzen in 1701: ‘ktokolwiek chciatby sie budowa¢ i domy porzadne stawi¢, pozwalam wszelkiej religii ludziom

wolnosci na lat 10 od daty tego uniwersala mego, przez kt6éry czas zadnej powinnosci z gruntow 1 z placow dworowi memu nie powinni beda czyni¢é ani zadnych czynszow wyptaca¢c’ (Archiwum Gtowne Akt Dawnych w Warszawie (AGAD), Archiwum Radziwittowskie (AR) 15, 24, 4, k. 1).

29 Cf. the decision by the noble Matuszewicz family to invest in Jewish merchants coming to their town of Rasna in order to improve the market there; M. Matuszewicz, Diariusz Zycta mego, ed. B. Krolikowski (Warsaw, 1986), 1. 85, 395.

30M. Nadav, ‘Kehilat pinsk betekufah shemigezerot tah-tat ad shalom andrushov (1648—1667)’, Zion, 31 (1966), 153-96.

81 “Niektérzy gospodarze chrzescianie po miastach cale nie maja sposobu do reparacyi domow, do erekcyi nowych i do zabudowania plac6éw pustych. Zydzi zaS podejmuja sie reparowac i nowe stawiac

domy. Za ten zaS expens pretenduja, aby takowe posiadowali domy, péty p6ki aktor tych placéw chrzeScianin nie wrodci zlozonego na zabudowanie wedlug pomiarkowania ekspensw’ (AGAD, AR V, 12424, n.p., 2 May 1753).

32 Adam Teller An even more important factor in the improvement of the Jews’ situation was the attitude of the nobility towards both Jews and townspeople (viewed here as two separate groups). Traditionally, the nobles had been hostile to the townspeople, and particularly to the urban trading monopolies that had adversely affected the terms of their trade in the Polish cities.** On the other hand, even before 1648 the nobles had found in the Jews economic agents willing to help them evade and undermine the hated urban monopolies. In addition, the Jews had played a major role in helping to establish and finance the rural economy that had greatly benefited the nobility in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, so it was quite natural that they should play a similar role in its restructuring after 1670.*°

Thus it was that, during the late seventeenth century and throughout the eighteenth century, the nobility invited Jews to settle on their estates, and Jewish settlement in the towns of Poland—Lithuania greatly increased. As noted above,

many nobles founded new towns on their estates, believing that the more small towns there were, the greater the market activity would be and the richer __ they would become.** In turn, this led to the formal establishment of dozens of new Jewish communities, as the Jews negotiated the terms of their settlement with their noble patrons. To illustrate this, it is worth noting that of the 128 privileges granted to Jewish communities that have been collected and published by Jacob Goldberg, over a half were granted in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.®° Many of these privileges, which emphasize the Jews’ exemption from municipal jurisdiction in almost all cases, state clearly that they were granted with an eye to the benefits that Jewish settlement would bring to the town in the period of reconstruction. According to the privilege granted by Stefan Bidzinski, starosta of Checiny, to the Jewish community there in 1668: [The Jews, ] having been burnt and scattered by the Cossack and Swedish invasions . . . and taking into account... the further ruin of the town and... [the fact] that the Jews were previously settled here and particularly the benefits that will accrue to the common good [from 32 On the nobles’ attitude towards townspeople, see the text written in the mid-18th century by Hieronim Florian Radziwill on the educational principles he would pass on to his children (were he to have any): ‘Mieszczaniczukom z miast swoich nie pozwolic¢ sie szkot uczy¢, z bardziej jeszcze wychod-

zic, pod konfiskowaniem ojc6w dobra i ruchomosci. Gdyz na co ta chlopowi biegtos¢, ktorej nigdy chamski naréd na dobro nie uzyje, tylko na szkode i zdrade samego pana. Niech sie tegoz cham, co i ojciec, uczy rzemiosta, by cechy onych zawsze byli okryte, miasto zaS stad handlowne i profit panu przynoszace. Magdeburia bowiem onego, by z ludzi umiejacych sprawiedliwos¢ byla, wybra¢ kilku z nich bystros¢ rozeznania porozumiawszy, da¢ onym dobra edukacja. . .’ (M. Brzezina (ed.), Hicronima

Floriana Radziwitla Diariusze i pisma rézne (Warsaw, 1998), 196). Though these sentiments are extreme, they do reflect the general contempt that the nobility felt for the townspeople.

88 A. Teller, ‘Hape’ilut hakalkalit shel hayehudim befolin bemahatsit hasheniyah shel hame’ah _ ha-17 uvame’ah ha-18’, in I. Bartal and I. Gutman (eds.), Kiyum vashever: Yehudet polin ledoroteihem

(Jerusalem, 1997), 209-24. 34 See above, n. 9. 3° J. Goldberg (ed.), Femish Privileges in the Polish Commonwealth, 2 vols. (Jerusalem, 1985-2001).

The Shtetl as an Arena for Integration 33 them], and in order that the Royal incomes (from which the starostwo too benefits) should not be lost, [I grant them the following rights] . . .°°

| This wording is typical in a number of ways, especially in the emphasis it places on the economic benefits of Jewish settlement not only for the king and the starosta, but also for the town itself (‘the common good’). In addition, though Bidzinski

justified his decision by noting that the Jews had previously been settled in the town, the granting of the privilege marked a sea change in the Jews’ situation in Checiny. In 1602 there had been 36 Jewish families settled there (11 householders and 25 paying rent). By 1629 the number had decreased to 24 (11 householders and 13 paying rent) out of a total of 327 families. However, by 1765 Jews owned 65 houses in the town, including 17 on the market square. By 1775 Checiny had a total of 250 houses, of which just over 30 per cent were owned by Jews. Jews were thus a significant proportion of the urban population.?” Checiny was one of many towns to see this change in Jewish fortunes. For example, the Jewish community of Lezajsk, which would later become famous as the home of the hasidic leader Elimelekh, renegotiated its 1635 privilege with King Jan III in 1682. While the earlier privilege had allowed the Jews to live on one street in the town, the king now permitted them to settle on the market square—the town’s commercial centre.®° It is worth noting here that this improvement in the terms of Jewish settlement was not limited to private, magnate-owned towns. Both of the cases described above involve royally owned towns where nobles had significant

influence as local office-holders. |

It was this combination of support from the nobility and the Jews’ success in keeping urban life alive when the non-Jewish townspeople preferred to support themselves from agriculture that led to the increased Jewish settlement in Poland—

Lithuania’s small towns.*? In fact, within a relatively short time the Jews began to , 86 «|. Zydzi . . . przez szwedzkie i kozackie inkursyje spaleni [i]... Uwazywszy .. . dalsza ruina samego miasteczka a majac wiadomos¢, ze z dawna tu osadzeni zostajq, osobliwie jednak wziawszy

przed Sig dobra pospolitego augment aby tak znaczny Jego Krolewskiej Mosci Pana Mojego Mitosciwego 1 Rzeczpospolitej, ktory od nich i teraz starostwu przychodzi, nie zginac . . .. (Goldberg, Jewish Privileges, i. 69-72). 87 Z. Guldon and K. Krzystanek, Ludnosé zydowska w miastach lewobrzeznej czesct wojewodztwa san-

domierskiego w XVI-XVIII wieku (Kielce, 1990), 24—7, 188; J. Muszynska, Zydzi w miastach wojewodztwa sandomierskiego t lubelskiego w XVIII wieku (Kielce, 1998), 76-7. Though there are no precise population figures to determine whether Checiny was a shtetl according to the criteria established here

(bearing in mind that Jewish houses were generally much more crowded than those owned by Christians), the heavily Jewish nature of its population was certainly perceived by contemporaries. See

Guldon and Krzystanek, Ludnosé zydowska, 26-7. 38 Goldberg, Jewish Privileges, i. 148-50. 89 The expansion of Jewish life in the period when the Polish towns—and to a greater extent the non-

Jewish townspeople—were in decline was discussed in the inter-war period by the historian Roman Rybarski, who was known for his antisemitic views. Rybarski argued that the decline of the towns was caused by the Jews. In fact, the data would seem rather to support the opposite conclusion; i.e. that it was the decline of the towns and the townspeople that opened the way for the Jews to expand their role in urban life. It might even be argued that the Jews’ economic activity prevented further urban decline. See R. Rybarski, Handel i polityka handlowa Polski w XVI stuleciu (Poznan, 1936), i. 226-7.

| 34 Adam Teller | form a significant part of the population, sometimes even constituting the majority. By the time of the 1764-5 census most of Poland—Lithuania’s Jews were living in communities with less than 1,000 members.*° Unfortunately, too few comparative studies have been done to allow us to determine what proportion of these commu-

_ nities were situated in towns of under 300 houses, or in which of these the Jews formed at least 40 per cent of the total population during the eighteenth century. It is therefore difficult to determine precisely how many shtetls existed in Poland in this period, though there were undoubtedly many.*?! The Jews’ predominance in shtetl life was not solely a function of their demographic weight in the urban population. Equally important, if not more so, were the economic roles they played 1n shtetl life. Perhaps most importantly, they controlled the arenda propinacyjna or the monopoly on the sale of alcohol—a staple of daily life.4” Since the sixteenth century the right of propinacja had formed an important

_ part of the estate owners’ income from their lands, particularly in those regions where the export of grain to the international market of Danzig was not practical.

However, in the second half of the seventeenth century and throughout the eighteenth, the terms of trade for exported grain were not favourable, so the estate ~ owners decided to make more intensive use of the home market.** This led them to invest heavily in developing the network of taverns on their estates. For example, _ there were three taverns on the Kopys estate in eastern Belarus in 1684, and thirtynine some ninety years later; while on the estate around Newel in Lithuania there were six taverns in 1712 and no less than forty-eight in 1764.**

These taverns were almost exclusively run by Jewish arendators, who thus provided a range of economic and social services to the local population. First and foremost, the tavern provided a place of recreation (of which there were none too many in the small Polish towns). Here, the population would sit, drink, talk, argue, ~ and sing—all under the tutelage of the Jewish tavern-keeper, who soon became an integral part of the social landscape.* In addition, the tavern might also fulfil the functions of a local shop, and the tavern-keeper would sometimes lend money to those in need.*¢ All of this would have been impossible had there not been at least a 40 Mahler, Di yidn, 58-66.

41 A random sampling of materials drawn from my study of the Jews on the Radziwilt estates in Lithuania in the 18th century suggests that over half of these small communities might qualify as shtetls, though much more detailed comparative research is required to clarify the demographic processes at work. See Teller, “Tafkidam’, 39-53. 42 J. Goldberg, ‘Zyd a karczma wiejska w XVIII wieku’, Wiek Oswiecenia, 9 (1993), 205—13.

43 On the basis of figures from Matopolska, Rychlikowa calculated that by the second half of the 18th century, the income from propinacja made up over 20% of the owners’ income on average (though the figures could vary greatly from estate to estate); I. Rychlikowa, Produkcja zbozowa mielkie] wtasnosei w Matopolsce w latach 1764-1895 (Warsaw, 1967), 217-28. 44 AGAD, AR XXV, 1774, 1791, 2619, 2626. 4° By the roth century the Jewish tavern-keeper had become a familiar figure in Polish belles-lettres; M. Opalski, The femish Tavern-Keeper and his Tavern in Nineteenth-Century Polish Literature Jeru-

salem, 1986). 46 Goldberg, ‘Zyd a karczma wiejska’.

| The Shtetl as an Arena for Integration 35 degree of social intercourse between the tavern-keeper and his clients.*’ In fact, in the smallest of the shtetls, where there was only one tavern—which in effect had a monopoly in the town—the tavern-keeper must have known everyone in town and been familiar to all. Thus, the economic services that the Jewish arendator provided to both the estate owners and the local population made him an indispensable part of the socio-economic framework of small-town life. Likewise, the Jews’ role in trade was so dominant that it too became something of a monopoly.*® As mentioned above, one of the characteristics of post-1670 Jewish settlement in the small towns was the movement of Jews from a separate street or quarter to the houses around the central market square. This phenomenon was so widespread that there was hardly a small town with a Jewish population in which all (or nearly all) of the houses around the market square were not owned by Jews.*? Another sign of the Jews’ control of the market was the proportion of market stalls they owned. To cite a few examples: in Sieniawa in south-eastern Poland during the first half of the eighteenth century all the stalls were in Jewish hands;°° in the Belarusian town of Korelicze nine of the ten market stalls were owned by Jews;! and in Kopys in eastern Belarus (later a centre of hasidic printing) 75 per cent of the town’s stalls in 1747 were owned by Jews.” Finally, in Kopyl outside Slutsk, one of the very few small towns for which full demographic details of both the Christian and the Jewish populations in the mid-eighteenth century have been preserved, all of the town’s twenty-eight merchants were Jewish.*® In the realm of crafts, too, the Jews played a key role, though they were by no means predominant: only 7 per cent of Kopyl’s 243 craftsmen, for example, were Jewish.*4 However, a very interesting phenomenon can be observed here, as in some larger towns such as Slutsk and Opatow. With the exception of the fields where Jewish law demanded that they function, Jewish craftsmen tended to avoid those crafts that would place them in competition with their non-Jewish neighbours. Thus, of Kopyl’s sixteen Jewish craftsmen, only three had Christian competition.”° In practical terms this meant that for some items everyone had to go to a Christian craftsmen and for others they went to a Jew.°°

The thorough integration of the Jews into the small-town economy in the eighteenth century did not, however, turn the towns themselves into ‘Jewish towns’, as has been claimed.®’ On the most basic level, urban life continued to be run by the municipal councils, on which the Jews had no representation, and in 47 On the knowledge of Polish among Polish Jews, see D. Stone, ‘Knowledge of Foreign Languages among Eighteenth-Century Polish Jews’, Polin, 10 (1997), 200-18. 48 G.D. Hundert, The Jews in a Polish Private Town: The Case of Opatéw in the Eighteenth Century

(Baltimore, 1992), 50-61. 49 See n. 17 above. 60 M. Rosman, The Lords’ Jews: Magnate—fewish Relations in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

During the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, Mass., 1990), 45. °l AGAD, AR XXV, 1811.

2 Thid. 1788. °3 Ibid. 3837, 3838. 4 Ibid. 55 Teller, “Tafkidam’, 64-7. °6 Ibid. Cf. Hundert, Jems in a Polish Private Town, 46. 57 Tbid. 68.

, 36 Adam Teller whose election they only rarely played a part.°® Though the privileges granted to Jewish communities had freed them from municipal jurisdiction, it was the municipal councils that represented the towns, remained responsible for their administration, and collected taxes from the Jewish population. Thus, while the Jewish communities were responsible for administering Jewish life and economic activity, and were often treated by the noble or royal administration as parallel to the municipal councils, they never managed to attain complete independence.*® On the other hand, in the noble towns in particular, the support of the town’s owner could put the Jews in a position of strength in relation to their non-Jewish neighbours. By insisting that all court cases involving Jews came before the town owner’s court, the Jews could be sure of a fair (if not a favourable) hearing; this

would sometimes deter non-Jews from bringing a case in the first place. Maria Zofia Czartoryska’s administrator in the town of Jarostaw wrote revealingly: ‘Jews are entitled to justice from Christians, but Christians cannot make a case against a Jew. Who is able to travel to My Lady to complain about every single matter? .. . As the Jews were enslaved in Egypt, soon the people of Jarostaw will be enslaved to the

Jews.”©° This is a particularly interesting comment as it emphasizes both the strength the Jews drew from noble support, and the resentment that this aroused among the non-Jewish population. On a day-to-day basis, however, it seems to have become clear to many inhabitants of the small towns that the success of the local economy was entirely dependent on the Jews. This realization sometimes tempered their desire to remove the Jews from urban life. The townspeople of Zagory (Zagaré) in Lithuania wrote to Michat Kazimierz Radziwilt in 1746: “Though we were determined not to allow Jews to settle in town . . . yet since we are concerned to improve both our own and your Lordship’s income . . . and to improve both the town and its markets . . . we humbly beseech your Lordship to take the honourable Jewish merchant Ber son of Meir under your protection . . . and allow him [to settle in town].’®' Such a request would have been unthinkable in the larger towns, but in the shtetls, where the Jews played such an integral role in the economy, it was perhaps not as uncommon. , The wide range of economic contacts that developed between the Jews and their neighbours inevitably led to a broadening of social contacts and a degree of social integration—though not of course to the integration of the Jews as individuals into non-Jewish society. This social ideal would develop only during the period of the 58 Goldberg, Jewish Privileges, i. 27-8.

| 59 Cf. G. D. Hundert, ‘The “Kehilla” and the Municipality in Private Towns at the End of the Early Modern Period’, in A. Polonsky, J. Basista, and A. Link-Lenczowski (eds.), The Jems in Old Poland,

1000-1795 (London, 1993). *° Quoted from Rosman, The Lords’ fews, 72. 61 T ubogmy dotad mocne przedsiewziecie mieli .. . Zydow do miasta zagorskiego . . . nie dopuszcza¢, atoli jednak zwazywszy dobra dla nas i skarbu JOWKsM konsekwencyj a skad ozdoba mogta | byé miastu i targow polepszenie, suplikujemy pokornie . . . za starozakonnym Berem Mejerowiczem kupcem stawnym . . .aby JOWKsMci wziqwszy w swa . . . protekcyja pozwoli¢ mu... . tu. . .i mieszkac’ (A. Kazmierczyk (ed.), Zydzt polscy, 1648—1772 (Krakow, 2001), 222-3).

The Shtetl as an Arena for Integration 37 Enlightenment; in the previous period the corporate structure of all European society clearly defined and limited the connections between individuals belonging to different social groups. However, co-operation in business could lead to friendships and social connections between Jews and non-Jews. The eighteenth-century Jewish memoirist Dov Ber of Bolechéw writes proudly of his wide range of friends and connections in the non-Jewish world, particularly among the aristocracy. On the other side Roch Sikorski, a non-Jewish townsman in Bielsko Podlaskie, tells in his diary of a close friendship he developed with a Jewish shopkeeper.®? On another level those Christians who served Jews in business, in the home, or in the synagogue as the shabbes goy must have come to a much more intimate understanding of Jewish life and culture. They undoubtedly passed this knowledge on to their friends and neighbours, and at the same time introduced their employers to aspects of their own life and culture. It might be argued that relationships of this kind could develop in large towns as well, but it would seem that the Jews’ deeper penetration into life in the small towns meant that they must inevitably have been more intense there. However, though the pressure brought by town owners or royal administrators may have acted as a significant force for the Jews’ economic and social integration © into Polish small towns, it was unable to neutralize the religious basis for the hatred of Jews.®* Church legislation had traditionally frowned on social relationships of the kind that seem to have developed in the shtetls. Christian service of Jews, par-

ticularly in the home, was banned.© The eighteenth-century bishop Soltyk (known for his antisemitic views) referred to the shabbes goy in one of his letters as the man who ‘wiped the noses of the Jews’ candles’.®° Beyond that, the shtetl became the arena for a number of infamous blood libel accusations during the eighteenth century, in which the Christian townspeople’s attacks won an increasing degree of support from the local clergy, including Bishop Sottyk.® Thus it was that in the shtetls, as elsewhere in Poland—Lithuania, the Jews were the victims of violence, both verbal and physical, on the part of their neighbours. 62 The Memoirs of Ber of Bolechow (1723-1805 ), trans. M. Vishnitzer (London, 1922), passim. 63 Quoted in Goldberg, ‘Poles and Jews’. 64 “The Jews enjoy [in Poland] a perfectly free exercise of their religion and all other civil liberties. . . . On the other hand, however, religious hatred goes so far, that the name of Jew has become an abomination’ (Solomon Maimon: An Autobtography, trans. J. Clark Murray (Urbana, IIl., 2001), 4-5).

65 A. Kazmierczyk, ‘The Problem of Christian Servants as Reflected in the Legal Codes of the Polish—Lithuanian Commonwealth During the Second Half of the Seventeenth Century and in the Saxon Period’, Gal-Ed, 15-16 (1997), 23-40. 66 Cf, Soltyk’s letter to Michal Kazimierz Radziwitt dated 15 Dec. 1760: ‘Zydzi . . . naméwili sobie jednego czteka katolika do swoiej postugi w Boznicy na dzien i noc, do ucierania nosOw swieczkowych _.2(AGAD, AR V, 14847).

67 For a fairly comprehensive list of trials held on Polish lands because of the blood libel in early modern times and brief descriptions of the more prominent cases, see Z. Guldon and J. Wiyaczka, Procesy o mordy rytualne w Polsce w XVI-XVITII wieku (Kielce, 1995). On Soltyk, see ibid. 63-4. See also J. Kalik, ‘Hayahasim bein hakenesiyah hakatolit layehudim bemamlekhet polin-lita’, in Bartal and Gutman (eds.), Kiyum vashever, 1. 193-208.

38 Adam Teller | However, a close examination of the sources reveals that the Jews were able to give as good as they got, and often did so.®* Violence in the shtetls and towns of Poland was by no means one-sided. The court records contain many cases of Jews attacking

townspeople, peasants on their way to market, and even nobles and priests who | tried to interfere in their daily lives.©° This violence, which was endemic to Polish society in this period, should therefore be understood not so much as signifying the

| Jews’ weakness in the face of non-Jewish society, or their excessive self-confidence in light of noble protection, but rather as a sign that the Jews were well integrated into urban society and acted, mutatis mutandis, just like their neighbours. While this economic and social integration, supported by the nobility, undoubtedly suited the Jews, it does not seem to have satisfied the townspeople. Though they were unable to do much about it during most of the eighteenth century, when discussions of possible improvements in the status and functioning of the towns began during the reign of Stanistaw August, the question of noble interference in urban life and the Jews’ economic and social role became burning social issues. A Sejm constitution of 1768 stated, among other things, that the Jews should win

approval for their settlement and economic activity in the form of agreements (pacta) from the municipal councils, and that these agreements should form the basis of their privileges.’ During the Four-Year Sejm urban representatives, particularly from Warsaw, mounted vicious attacks in the press (as well as physical attacks) against the Jews, with the goal of removing them from all positions of influ-

| ence in urban society and the urban economy.” However, even during this period it was possible to observe different emphases

| among different groups. While the Warsaw delegation was vehement in its attacks on the Jews as the source of all the towns’ problems, the representatives of the Lithuanian towns—which were mainly small towns and shtetls—were much more moderate, demanding only that the Jews receive no special treatment and, in the royal

cities at least, fall under municipal rather than noble jurisdiction.” A document drawn up in 1789 by representatives of fifty-four royal towns did not mention the Jews at all, concentrating rather on the question of noble prerogatives in the towns.” 68 M. Nadav, ‘Ma’asei alimut hadadiyim bein yehudim lelo-yehudim belita lifnei 1648’, Gal-Ed, 7-8 (1985), 41-56. 69 See e.g. the sources from the ksiggi grodzkie lubelskie recorded in H. Gmiterek (ed.), Materialy Zrodtowe do dziejéw Zydéw w ksiegach grodzkich lubelskich z doby panowanta Augusta IT Sasa, 1697-1733 (Lublin, 2001), nos. 51, 567, 899, 1164, 1596.

7 Volumina legum, vii (St Petersburg, 1860), fo. 755, p. 352. 71 J. Wolitiski, J. Michalski, E. Rostworowski, and A. Eisenbach (eds.), Materiaty do dziejow Seymu Czteroletniego (Wroctaw, 1959), ti. 32-57. K. Zieliriska, ‘“The Jews Have Killed a Tailor”: The SocioPolitical Background of a Riot in Warsaw in 1790’, Polin, 3 (1988), 78-101. Cf. A. Eisenbach, ‘Wokot §wiadomoéci i roli politycznej mieszczaristwa polskiego na przetomie XVIII i XIX w.’, Kwartalntk Historyczny, 95 (1988), 173-96.

7 Gmiterek (ed.), Materialy Zrédlowe, ii. 96. Cf. A. Eisenbach, The Emancipation of the Fews in Poland, 1780-1870 (Oxford, 1991), 67-73. 73 Gmiterek (ed.), Materiaty zrédtowe, ii. 339-57.

The Shtetl as an Arena for Integration 39 This significant difference between the burghers of Poland’s great metropolis and the representatives of a range of lesser towns would seem to indicate that, even at this time, the townspeople—particularly in the small towns—remained in the same bind that they had been in throughout the eighteenth century: they did not want to live with the Jews, but they were unable to live without them. Nonetheless, all of the proposals were aimed at limiting noble influence in the towns and so transferring the Jews to municipal jurisdiction. The upshot of this would have been that the towns would be allowed to deal with their Jews in their own time and in their own way. Within a short time, however, the final partitions of Poland put an end to these proposals and opened a whole new chapter in the history of the shtetl.

In conclusion, it is necessary to distinguish between the study of the shtetl as a sociocultural construct and the study of its social and economic history. As a first step towards the latter, I have proposed a definition of the shtetl (in the conditions of the eighteenth century) as a small settlement of less than 300 houses, which dealt mostly in agricultural produce, and at least 40 per cent of whose total urban population was Jewish. On this basis, it is clear that the Jewish shtetl came into existence

as a result of Poland’s economic reconstruction following the wars of the midseventeenth century. Owing to their hostility to non-Jewish townspeople and their profitable use of Jewish economic activity in the previous period, magnates and nobles were interested in encouraging Jewish settlement in their towns. They used the Jews as agents in revitalizing the market for grain, through both the sale of alcohol and the small urban markets. This encouragement, together with their ability to recover more quickly from the vicissitudes of war, led the Jews to assume a much more prominent position in Polish urban life than they had held previously, particularly in the small towns where the townspeople were relatively weak.

| Within a generation or two the small town had become the dominant form of settlement for Polish Jews, and in many of them they had, with noble encouragement, begun to achieve a majority. The Jews’ contribution to the economy in these settlements was often crucial; they leased the monopoly on alcohol sales and held what amounted almost to a monopoly on trade. Certain branches of crafts, too, were almost exclusively in Jewish hands. Asa result of this economic penetration and the consequent flowering of Jewish life, the Jews developed a broad range of contacts with their non-Jewish neighbours.

These relations were marked by a pronounced duality: since the magnates and | nobles—the dominant force in society—were interested in the Jews’ success and did much to free them from municipal jurisdiction, the townspeople had little choice but to acquiesce. At the same time it became clear that the small-town economy would suffer without Jews. Thus it was that, in many cases, more or less close social relationships developed between Jews and non-Jews in the small towns, with the Jews feeling themselves to be and (at least de facto) becoming an accepted part of small-town life. On the other hand, religious hatred and the feeling that the

40 Adam Teller Jews were interlopers who had become integrated only through unfair noble intervention never disappeared. As a result, the Jews in the small towns became the victims of religiously motivated violence. In addition, when their status began to

improve towards the end of the eighteenth century, the townspeople began to agitate for a reduction of noble influence over the towns and for direct jurisdiction over the Jews.

| Thus, the Jewish shtetl would seem to have been, in the eighteenth century at least, not really Jewish at all. Created in response to Poland’s economic, social, and

political environment, and the arena for a broad range of contacts between nonJews and Jews, these always remained Polish towns with a large and well-integrated Jewish population. This being the case, it is worth returning to the issue of the shtetl as cultural construct and looking for the roots of the Jews’ feeling of isolation and their perception that the shtetls were truly Jewish towns. Though the answer to

this question should probably be sought in the social, economic, political, and cultural developments of the nineteenth century, it does seem possible that this feeling

might have had its rootsin the eighteenth century. _ The Jews had often during their history felt superior to their non-Jewish neighbours, but they had rarely portrayed their own lives as if the non-Jews did not exist at all.”4 If they began to do so in the eighteenth-century shtetls, it was as a result of the Jews’ identification with the nobility, the dominant cultural group in the Polish Commonwealth. The nobles despised the townspeople, whom they did not view as Poles in the true sense of the word.’? The Jews, for their part, were well aware of their own economic dominance and the political power over the townspeople that noble support gave them.’° It was perhaps only natural that they would adopt the

attitude of the nobility towards the townspeople and imagine for themselves an environment in which they could live without interference from their neighbours. Of course, in imagining this, they were only doing intellectually what the townspeople attempted to do politically during the period of the Enlightenment—to create an urban environment without their hated competitors. The perception of the shtetl as a Jewish town, therefore, had its roots firmly in the social and cultural relations of the Polish—Lithuanian Commonwealth, and is itself another clear sign

of the Jews’ integration into the life of the small towns in Poland and Lithuania _ during the eighteenth century. “4 R. Ben-Shalom, ‘Dimui hatarbut hanotsrit batoda’ah hahistorit shel yehudei sefarad uprovens (hame’ah hasheteim-esreh ad hame’ah hahamesh-esreh)’, Ph.D. diss. (Tel Aviv University, 1996); M. Kohn, ‘Jewish Historiography and Jewish Self-Understanding in the Period of the Renaissance and Reformation’, Ph.D. diss. (University of California at Los Angeles, 1979).

® Cf. J. Tazbir, ‘Polish National Consciousness in the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Centuries’, Harvard Ukrainian Studies, to (1986), 316-35.

7 “The inhabitants of Poland may be conveniently divided into six classes or orders: the superior | nobility, the inferior nobility, the half-noble, burghers, peasantry, and Jews... . The burghers are the most wretched of all the orders’ (Solomon Maimon, 1; my emphasis).

Inter-Religious Contacts in the Shtetl: Proposals for Future Research MICHAEL GALAS

Many studies of the history of the Jews in Poland and Polish—Jewish relations stress the lack of inter-religious contacts between Jews and Christians. For example, in his work Relations between Jews and Poles in S. Y. Agnon’s Work, Shmuel

Werses wrote: “The total alienation and distance between the two cultures was particularly marked in inter-religious contact. The inimical Christian world overtly expressed its presence in religious rituals. Jews were sometimes forced into encounters with Christian processions or even libelous accusations of desecration made by the priests, representatives of the Church.”! According to Mark Zborowski’s definition of the shtetl in the Encyclopaedia Judaica: “The market was the area where the shtetl came in direct contact with the goyim, whose life patterns were alien and often hostile to the shtet/ mores.”

In this chapter I would like to draw attention to new research on shtetls as a subject related to the history of Judaism and the broader history of religion in Poland and the Polish lands.* Many books and articles on the history of particular towns, published both in Poland and abroad, present one-sided views, describing the history of the towns from the point of view of either the Polish Christians or the Jews. In many cases these studies appear to be presenting the histories of two completely different cities that happen to share a name. The present study is not intended to resolve this issue, but will examine examples of possible contact points between the Jewish and non-Jewish communities, with special attention to inter-

religious contacts. There are already some positive exceptions to the standard approach to this subject; among them are Jacek Krochmal’s study of Przemysl, Stefan Gasiorowski’s doctoral dissertation focusing on Z6tkiew (Zhovkva), and the socio-anthropological studies of Alina Cata and Annamaria Orla-Bukowska.4 ‘ Jerusalem, 1994), 75. 2 M. Zborowski, ‘Shtetl’, in Encylopaedia Judaica, 16 vols. (Jerusalem, 1972), xiv. 1473. ® Tshould like to thank Professor John Klier and Dr Annamaria Orla-Bukowska for sharing with me

their studies on shtetls. . * J. Krochmal, Krzyz i Menora: Zydzi i chrzescijanie Przemyslu w latach 1559-1772 (Przemysl, 1996); S. Gasiorowski, ‘Relacje miedzy chrzescijanami a Zydami na tle dziejow Zotkwi w X VITi XVIII

42 Michat Galas | THE SHTETL IN THE PHYSICAL URBAN SPHERE The definition of the shtetl is itself problematic.® As Professor John Klier has - noted, most popular studies present the shtetl as a ‘ “state of mind”, an idyll, an exercise in nostalgia, or an artistic construct. .. . [This image, ] which has surrounded the shtetl, is much harder to locate . . . in physical reality.”© A significant reservation

| regarding the standard image of the shtetl arises from simple visual observation. _ , Having been born in a locality that before the Holocaust would have been called a _ shtetl, I know well what such towns look like. ‘Tuchéw, Tarnéw, Bobowa, Grybow,

| Jodtowa, Pilzno—these are towns that I have visited often. In most cases, studies on shtetls that include photographic materials concentrate

on individuals, streets, and market squares, and very rarely include panoramic photos of ‘the Jewish town’, as the shtetl 1s often called. ‘The books mage Before My

: Eyesand Yiddishland (a collection of Jewish postcards) are examples of such works.’ Several panoramic photos and postcards from various historical periods of the towns

of Widze, Tarnopol, and Buczacz—all of which surely can be called shtetls—are therefore included here. Church towers and a belfry that dominates the landscape are clearly visible in these photographs. They tell us that there had to be a space for non-Jews in the

| shtetls as well. There were churches even in towns where Jews constituted the majority, and in many cases there were churches of more than one Christian denomination. Some towns were regional centres of religious worship; for example, in Dukla 80 per cent of the population was Jewish, but the town was also—and still is—an important Catholic centre for the worship of St Jan of Dukla.® The situation was similar in other shtetls, such as Lezajsk, Lancut, Kazimierz Dolny, Berdyczow

(Berdychiv), Brzezany (Berezhany), Radomysl, Stary Sacz, and many others. Unfortunately, no history of any of these towns has been written taking into account both the Jewish and the Christian points of view. wiekw’, Ph.D. diss. (Jagiellonian University, 1998); A. Cata, Wizerunek Zyda w polskie; kulturze ludowej (Warsaw, 1992); A. Orla~-Bukowska, ‘Shtetl Communities: Another Image’, Polin, 8 (1994), 89-113; see

also ead., ‘Coexistence: Polish Jews and Polish Catholics, Jewish Shtetl and Catholic Villages’, Ph.D. diss. (Jagiellonian University, 1995). > J. Klier, ‘What Exactly Was a Shtetl?’, in G. Estraikh and M. Krutikov (eds.), The Shtetl: Image and Reality. Papers of the Second Mendel Friedman International Conference on Yiddish (Oxford, 2000). 6 Tbid. 23.

’ L. Dobroszycki and B. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett (eds.), Image Before My Eyes: A Photographic | History of Jewish Life in Poland, 1564-1939 (New York, 1977); G. Silvain and H. Minczeles (eds.), Yiddishland (Paris, 1999).

8 On Dukla, see A. Potocki, Podkarpackie judaica (Brzoz6w, 1993). Other books on the history of Dukla practically omit the Jewish presence in this town. See J. Michalak, Dukla i okolice (Krosno, 1997); E. Swieykowski, Studia do histori sztuki 1 kultury wieku XVIII w Polsce, 1: Monografia Dukh

, (Krakéw, 1903); B. Szczurek, Dukla: Miasto moje w fotografi 1 poezjt (Dukla, 2001); Zycie 1 kult btogostawionego Fana z Dukli (Dukla, 1993).

Inter-Religious Contacts in the Shtetl | 43

As Klier has stressed, | ,

In shtetlekh the Jews were never isolated from the non-Jewish population. Even those townlets which had a Jewish majority existed to serve the non-Jews who flocked to them on a weekly basis. Many more Jews lived side by side with the Christian population in the towns

or countryside. .. . The shtet! might better be envisioned as the center of an economiccultural zone, linking Jews to Christians and Jews to Jews.?

I would like to add that it was also a religious zone. Thus the shtetl can be seen in broader perspective; a simple glance at photographic records provides clues about the inter-religious relations and contacts that must have existed in those towns. It is

these relations that constitute one of the most interesting areas for prospective research on the shtetl.!°

TYPES OF INTER-RELIGIOUS CONTACT IN THE SHTETLS Religious Contacts in Everyday Life Contacts resulted naturally from proximity. “There was no shtet/ without its church, there was no shtet/ without its synagogue,’ Annamaria Orla-Bukowska writes.!! In some towns there were churches of different denominations; in his memoir about Sniatyn, Joachim Schoenfeld writes that there were three churches there: a Roman Catholic church, an Armenian Catholic church, and a Greek Catholic church.’” For centuries Jews and Christians lived side by side on Polish lands. Despite barriers and mutual prejudices, religious contacts were not completely eliminated. From Alina Cata’s studies we learn that there were two modes in the relationship

between Jews and Christians in small towns: the mode of everyday life, when those | relations were correct, and the crisis mode, during times of war, plague, or other disasters. Crises such as pogroms have been the subject of many studies, but as yet there has been little research on contacts in everyday life.+* In general, historical studies dedicated to particular shtetls devote little attention

to inter-religious contacts. In Schoenfeld’s memoir, for instance, we find just a few contradictory sentences on this subject. In his chapter on antisemitism Schoenfeld writes: ‘Antisemitism spread in sermons was the heart and soul of Jew-hatred. The Teachings of the New Testament paved the way for pogroms, autos-da-fe, ghettos, massacres, and so forth. Religious indoctrination, full of hatred against Jews, was force-fed into the brains of Christians from childhood and throughout their lives.’ But elsewhere in the book he describes examples of positive relationships between 9 Klier, ‘What Exactly Was a Shtetl?’

10 It is fascinating to compare a map of hasidic centres (G. D. Hundert (ed.), Essential Papers on Hasidism (New York, 1991), pp. viii, ix) with centres of the Catholic cult of the Holy Virgin (A. Jackowski (ed.), Miejsca Swiete w Rzeczypospolite; (Krakéw, 1998) ). Many places can be found on both maps. 11 Orla-~-Bukowska, ‘Coexistence’, ch. 3.

12 J. Schoenfeld, Shtet! Memoirs: Fewish Life in Galicia Under the Austro-Hungarian Empire and

Reborn Poland (1898-1939) (Hoboken, NJ, 1985). 13 Calta, Wizerunek Zyda, 181.

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Inter-Religious Contacts in the Shtetl 45

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ceoe «i aPaes x_— FS oopees tia Bi si© oe ke 8 eeoe oc. gt

caleba Pe

ate9 = aa.sa Oea es * ¥«aap = aeSa? ByRS é a _ _ ae

’ cpp 3 : F ave ; . j x]

” :alll dee ooa ii Sa a— ss Ke aON ee, ——_—

:ete * Sa awe” eee x,ee: | : nal > “%€ ;'S a. ee Y a la | . se “ aai ‘—eyRew. i _ ;° ,F

nie a >= ‘. _——— ae. : ‘ 2“tou i ; plea 4 aawe tee = »: :' : ate, Saga .

* 2 -. >a .»>. ‘

pie i ede Bie: ox? i? am aS n 4tyBd ‘ tT? ; - yd . he Os . : 4 . / 4 ‘ . ! ) '"y

Fig. 4. Widze, Belarus, 1988. From M. Zowczak, Biblia ludowa: Interpretacge watkow biblinych w kulturze ludowe; (Wroctaw, 2000)

46 Muchat Galas ~ Jews and Christians in the shtetl: “The relation between Jewish and non-Jewish students in our school was a friendly one. Jews and non-Jews visited each other’s homes.’ He goes on to say: ‘On Pesach [Passover] the Jewish students gave their non-Jewish colleagues some matzot and received from them pisanki [decorated eggs]. At Christmas time the non-Jewish students treated their Jewish colleagues to kutyiah (a traditional meal) made from boiled wheat with honey, nuts, and poppy

~ seeds.’?*

A few studies have been conducted on religious relations between Christians and Jews on Polish lands from the seventeenth century to 1939, that is, in the period

when the shtetl was formed and developed. In her studies of Poles’ view of the Jewish religion in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Judith Kalik stresses the fact that knowledge about Judaism in the Polish—Lithuanian Commonwealth, as - presented in the published works of Catholic theologians, was rather poor and came mostly from foreign-language sources. She writes that in intercultural contacts the

most important role was played by servants: ‘Christians who worked for Jewish households. . . . deserve special attention because they maintained the closest contacts with Jewish families and their style of life.’’° Contacts of this type were - possible above all in the shtetls. Direct contacts remained the primary source of Polish knowledge about Jewish religious tradition in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when works on Judaism written by Jews in Polish began to appear. The shtetl can thus be seen not only as an economic hub butalsoasa place of inter-religious contacts.

| In her case-study of the shtetl of Frysztak, Annamaria Orla-Bukowska finds that ‘Gentiles living with Jews knew their holidays very well, and what they need for them. Catholics and Jews went to each other’s place of worship, bathed in the same mykvah, and shared the same holiday treat.’!© So perhaps the Roskieses are right in

stating that ‘what Jews wanted in particular shtetlekh was not isolation from Christians but isolation from Christianity’ .1”

It seems, then, that religious contacts in the shtetl were much better than religious authorities of various denominations had described them in official or literary documents. But in order to generalize these findings we need more of such local studies—using both historical and anthropological approaches. Conversion

Conversions, the most radical consequence of inter-religious contacts, occurred infrequently in the shtetls. In his article on Jewish converts in Polish society Jacob Goldberg writes that, because of a lack of sources, ‘one cannot calculate even

“ Schoenfeld, Shtet! Memoirs, 116. |

15 J. Kalik, ‘Zydowska duchowoSé, religia i praktyki religijne w oczach Polakow w XVII-XVUI

wieku’, in M. Galas (ed.), Duchowosé zydowska w Polsce (Krakow, 2000), 87.

16 Orla-Bukowska, ‘Shtetl Communities’, 107. ‘7 D. Roskies and D. G. Roskies, The Shtet! Book (Hoboken, NJ, 1975), 34-

Inter-Religious Contacts in the Shtetl 47 approximately the number of neophytes in old Poland who converted to the Christian religion. On the basis of notes in church chronicles, archives, and memoirs, one can conclude only that such cases were relatively rare.’!® However, on the basis of recent studies we can say more about the instance of conversion in particular shtetls. The town of Zotkiew, near Lwow, may serve as an example: between 1675 and 1772 there were 8,656 baptisms in Zotkiew parish, including twenty-eight baptisms of Jews (nineteen in the eighteenth century) and twenty-nine baptisms of persons of other religions. (In 1774 there were 690 houses in Zétkiew, 270 of which were inhabited by Christians and 420 by Jews.'*) According to Goldberg, there were several primary motives for conversion:

, purely religious ones ‘resulting from the neophyte’s conviction about the truth of Christian religion and its superiority over Jewish religion’; intermarriage; social and financial ambition; and those motives connected with difficult life situations— e.g. a desire to avert a severe punishment.”° Jewish converts in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were also driven by _ these motives. However, as Goldberg stresses, from the middle of the nineteenth century the number of converts who were intellectuals rose significantly; this suggests that most converts were from big cities and not from the shtetl. Though they represented a relatively tiny proportion of the Jewish population, converts seem nevertheless to have had a strong influence on the formation of Jewish—Christian relations in the shtetl and in all of Polish society. The case of Jan Serafinowicz, described by Gaudenty Pikulski, serves as an example.”! Serafinowicz was the son of a rabbi from Grodno. He finished his rabbinical studies in Slutsk and then became a rabbi in Brest. When he was 24, he succumbed to mental illness. While in prison in Zotkiew, he had a revelation and was miraculously healed.

| That experience resulted in his conversion to Catholicism. After his baptism Serafinowicz began to make accusations against Jews. He was very active and succeeded in causing great confusion among both Jews and Catholics.” A Jew from PrzemySslany (whose name we do not know) represents another type of convert. This Jew settled down in Pomorzany, where he married and found work in a local mill. At the age of 25, after three years of marriage and with two children, he started an affair with the daughter of a mill owner. In 1756 the daughter bore a child, and when it became known who the father was, the Jew was handcuffed and imprisoned. After six weeks of imprisonment the owner of the mill persuaded

him to leave his wife and children and to convert to Christianity and marry her daughter. She promised him that he would also get the mill: | 18 J. Goldberg, ‘Zydowscy konwertyci w spoteczeristwie staropolskim’, in A. Wyczanski (ed.), Spoteczenstwo staropolskie, iv (Warsaw, 1986). 19 Gasiorowski, ‘Relacje miedzy chrzescijanami a Zydami’.

20 Goldberg, ‘Zydowscy konwertyci’, 214-22.

, 21 G. Pikulski, Z/os¢ Zydowska (Lwo6w, 1760). See also Goldberg, ‘Zydowscy konwertyci’, 216-18. 22 Goldberg, ‘Zydowscy konwertyci’, 350.

48 Miuchat Galas The Jew agreed and was baptized by a local countryman, receiving the name Iwan... . He did not stay in that new relationship for long. After five months he yielded to the persuasion of the rabbi from Pomorzany and arendators Orsza and Jeskiel Bitejka and decided to return to his old faith and customs. He went to Chocim, which was in the Turkish zone, and he served Jews and fulfilled all of the commandments with them. Four weeks later he returned to Pomorzany, but he was caught and imprisoned. On the second of March 1757, he was sentenced for apostasy to perish at the stake—as the law required. Because he had converted again he was [only] beheaded and buried at the town Orthodox church in Zétkiew.22

These cases illustrate two types of conversion with two different motives. This instance of conversion as the result of a love affair is not unique; as Alina Cala has noted: ‘Unavoidable, frequent contacts with Jews resulted sometimes in love affairs or even marriages.’ Cata’s interlocutors give examples from Narol, Kanczuga (two cases), and Tarnogréd.*4 Much has been written on the subject of the Frankists, the best-known group of Jewish converts in Poland. With their Jewish—Catholic history, they clearly constitute an example of inter-religious contacts. But the question arises: Can one connect Frankism with the history of the shtetl? In my opinion one can, for several reasons. First, Jacob Frank’s followers came from typical shtetls in Podolia and Volhynia. Several people joined Frank at each of the shtetls he visited. In the chronicle of his activities we read: From Jezierzany I went to Kopyczynce (1 January 1756) and two or three people with wives

and children accepted the Faith. . .. From there I went to Busko where | was for almost a week and about thirty people accepted the Faith of the Holy Trinity. ... From Busko through Dawidow, I went to Lwow, where I was for two or three days and returned to Dawidow, where an arendator with all his family accepted our faith. ... From Dawidow, where I was for about two weeks, I went to Rohatyn, where also a few people accepted my teachings. . . . After a week in Rohatyn I went to Podhajec where also a few people . . . accepted my teachings. From there I went to Kopyczytice.2®

The towns mentioned in this paragraph, as well as others cited in Frankist sources, can certainly be called shtetls. Secondly, following Gershom Scholem, one can say that Frankism was the first

revolution against the shtetl understood as a ghetto. In Scholem’s opinion, the Frankists’ activity, which earlier had been limited to underground propaganda in the ghetto and to rituals of revolt, began to take a different direction when the Frankists came into contact with an idea of freedom which was positive and which quickly prevailed over the purely negative one. Since there was no positive way to | effect a messianic revolt against the ghetto (or one could say the shtetl) from within, Frankism had taken on a nihilistic character. But now historical circumstances opened up another channel, and the followers of Frank became protagonists of the 23 Gasiorowski, ‘Relacje miedzy chrzescijanami a Zydami’, 290-1. 24 Cala, Wizerunek Zyda, 54-5. 25 Quoted in A. Kraushar, Frank i frankisci polscy (Krakéw, 1895), i. 68-0.

Inter-Religious Contacts in the Shtetl 49 new ideas in their various shades. After the messianic fire had died down, there remained the sober idea of progress instead of redemption and the new values of liberal enlightenment and reform instead of the vision of a general upheaval and

annihilation.”° 7 |

shtetl.)

Thirdly, one of the many paradoxes of Frank’s actions was that he tried to create a shtetl of his own. Before the disputation in Lwow, Frankists had fought to acquire

autonomous territory on which they could rule according to their own laws and customs. (It would be interesting to try to reconstruct this hypothetical Frankist Hasidism was another Jewish religious movement that was attractive to both Jews and Christians in the shtetl. The founder of hasidism, the Besht, did not relate only to Jews. As Moshe Rosman has stressed, ‘he lived ina world where Jewishand | non-Jewish strands were inextricably intertwined’. In Miedzyboz (Medzhybizh), Christians were aware of and reacted to Jewish communal and religious institutions, while the Jews were expected to be respectful of Christian sensibilities. “There was no ghetto in Miedzyb0z,’ Rosman writes; ‘Christians and Jews would have to come into contact.’”’

Support for this statement can be found in Shivhe: habesht, stories about the founder of hasidism. We read there that the Besht was in contact with Christians from many levels of society. According to tradition, the Besht ‘engaged in theological disputes with priests. He was patronized as a miracle worker and healer by _

, some Christians.’7° The image of the Besht was vivid in the memory of Christians for a long time after his death. Legends about the Besht were known among Christians in many places, but above all in the south-eastern part of Poland, even at the end of the nineteenth century. This phenomenon has been described by Helena Grochowska and especially by Hayim Chajes in his 1934 article on the Besht among Christians.?° Likewise, Alina Cata’s studies demonstrate that the memory of hasidim among people living in former shtetls 1s still alive. She observes: ‘Poles describe hasidim mostly in a positive way: hasidim were Jews of the strongest faith... . They protected people against fraud, they were honest. Hasidim were more pious, they could be seen more frequently with a book—even in the fields. Poles respected them. Chusyci [hasidim] knew how to heal.’°° These studies reveal that it was not hasidism as a Jewish mystical movement that

attracted Christians, but rather the religious authority of the Besht and other 26 See G. Scholem, ‘Der Nihilismus als religidses Phanomen’, in his Judaica (Frankfurt am Main, 1984), iv. 180-6. 27 M. Rosman, Founder of Hasidism: A Quest for the Historical Ba’al Shem Tov (Berkeley and Los

Angeles, 1996), 160. 28 Tbid. 29 H. Grochowska, ‘Srul Rai Bal-Szim’, Lud, 10 (1904), 50-8; H. Chajes, ‘Baal-Szem-Tow u chrzescijan’, Miesiecznik Zydowskt, 5—6 (1934), 441-59, 550-65.

30 Cala, Wizerunek Zyda, 109-18.

50 Michat Galas hasidic leaders—and that only in certain of its aspects. That is, it was the power of the Besht and later tsadikim in their role as ba’alei shem that appealed to non-Jews.*! Tsadikim did not limit their activities to the Jewish community; people from shtetls and villages turned to them for help in various situations. Many examples of such assistance can be found in hasidic literature. This instance described in Shivhei habesht is characteristic: There was a time when there was no rain. The gentiles took out their idols and carried them around the village according to their custom, but still it did not rain. Once the Besht said to the arendator: ‘Send for the Jews in the surrounding area to come here for a minyan.’ And he proclaimed a fast. The Besht himself prayed before the ark, and the Jews prolonged the prayer. One gentile asked: ‘Why did you remain at prayer so long today? And why was there

a great cry among you?’ The arendator told him the truth—that they were praying for - rain—and the gentile mocked him sharply, saying, ‘We went around with our idols and it did not help. What help will you bring with your prayers?’ The arendator told the words of the gentile to the Besht, who said to him: “Tell the gentile that it will rain today.’ And so it did.*?

A more recent statement from Sieniawa confirms that the tsadzkim enjoyed great respect: ‘In Sieniawa there was a tsadik, a rebbe. ... He was much respected by Jews;

they attributed to him various miracles. ... Even Catholics said that this rebbe was a holy wonder-worker. Even Poles went to him.’?8

We cannot learn a great deal about the doctrine or customs of hasidism itself from these stories, but we can conclude that contacts with the ba’alei shem created a positive image of tsadikim and their activities in the popular opinion of non-Jews. The tsadikim had authority in the eyes of the entire shtet! community—Jews and non-Jews alike. The issues presented here do not by any means exhaust the range of possible subjects for the further study of inter-religious contacts in the shtetl. The various

stages in the development of inter-religious relations have been outlined here, but the field could certainly benefit from case-studies of particular shtetls. Further research is needed on the attitudes of different Christian denominations towards

the Jewish religious tradition and on Jewish views of Christians—Orthodox, Catholic, Greek Catholic, and so on. Studies on the shtetl—an exceptional place in the history of east European Jewry—should treat it also as a place of contact between many cultures. New research on the shtetl, or local history, should not be one-sided, but should instead emphasize intercultural and inter-religious relations. Only in this way can we memorialize the Jewish presence in the shtetl and in Poland. 31 See K. Groezinger, ‘Cadyk i Baal Szem w chasydyzmie wschodnioeuropejskim’, in Galas (ed.), Duchowosé Zydowska w Polsce, 111-22.

32 LD. Ben-Amos and J. Mintz (eds.), Jn Praise of Baal Shem Tov (Shivhei ha-Besht): The Earliest

Legends about the F ounder of Hasidism (Bloomington, Ind., 1970), ch. 21. , 33 Calta, Wizerunek Zyda, 109-18.

‘The Hasidic Conquest of Small-Town

Central Poland, 1754-1818 GLENN DYNNER

... that small and intellectually meagre town, a town which the hasidim conquered and converted and abolished all the old customs, a town whose synagogue was closed and locked during all six months of winter . . . and the liturgy was mixed and muddled with every other liturgy, the doing of the new hasidim, and even the synagogue was looted and the old liturgy completely abolished from there by force—

upon my arrival in that town, I too was dragged into the custom of the town’s inhabitants and forced to pray in the beit midrash according to the liturgy of drunks: the Sefarad liturgy.! (ABRAHAM BAER GOTTLOBER, Zitkhronot umasaot)

ONE of the more remarkable phenomena in the east European Jewish past was the triumph of hasidism, a mystical revival sparked during the mid-eighteenth century by the disciples of Israel Ba’al Shem Tov (the Besht, c. 1700-60). As those disciples began to buttress their master’s doctrine of popular mysticism with palpable social

and political power, they discovered that certain spiritual concepts could be expanded to accommodate and justify their roles as leaders in the mundane sphere.” By the first decades of the nineteenth century, hasidism—now as much a sociopolitical innovation as a religious one—had emerged as a mass movement. It had

won such overwhelming support that, in terms of sheer influence, hasidism deserves to be recognized as the most important phenomenon in modern east European Jewish history before the rise of the new Jewish politics at the end of the nineteenth century.® * Czerniachéw (Ukrainian Chernyakhiv, near Zhytomyr) is the town in question; however, these words might apply to towns throughout eastern and east-central Europe. The hasidic liturgy is a combination of Ashkenazi and Sephardi liturgy. It is, more accurately, the rite initiated by R. Isaac Luria (1534-72), the pre-eminent Safed mystic. As many Safed mystics were descendants of the refugees from Spain, the term nusah sefarad is often inaccurately applied to hasidic rite. For details, see T. M. Rabinowicz, The Encyclopedia of Hasidism (Northvale, NJ, 1996), s.v. ‘Liturgy’; L. Jacobs, Hasidic Prayer (New York, 1975), 38-9. 2 I. Etkes, ‘The Zaddik: The Interrelationship Between Religious Doctrine and Social Organization’, in A. Rapoport-Albert (ed.), Hasidism Reappraised (London, 1996), 159-67. 8 Zionism, Jewish socialism, and to an extent, folkism and autonomism.

52 Glenn Dynner For all the scholarly attention dedicated to hasidism’s origins, our understanding of its transformation into a thriving mass movement remains fragmentary* and highly theoretical.? While its origins have been well documented, hasidism as an emergent mass movement at the turn of the nineteenth century awaits comprehensive and systematic historical treatment. The scope of Moshe Rosman’s groundbreaking and exhaustive look at the Besht and his circle within their historical context is limited to the lifetime of hasidism’s founder alone.® While Rosman finally

and decisively overturned the dubious conception of the Besht as a folk hero who * On isolated aspects of the spread of hasidism, see I. Halpern, ‘Hevrot letorah ulemitsvah vehatenuah hahasidit behitpashtutah’ and ‘Yahaso shel r. aharon hagadol mikarlin kelapei mishtar hakehilot’, in Yehudim veyahadut bemizrah eiropah (Jerusalem, 1968); D. Kandel, ‘Zydzi w dobie utworzenia Krélestwa Kongresowego’, Kwartalnik poswiecony badaniu przeszdosci Zydéw w Polsce, t/t (1912); id., ‘Komitet starozakonnych’, ibid. 1/2 (1912); I. Schiper, Przyczynki do dztejow chasydyzmu w Polsce, ed. Z. Targielski (Warsaw, 1992); R. Mahler, Hasidism and the Jewish Enlightenment, trans. E. Orenstein,

A. Klein, and J. Klein (Philadelphia, 1985); Z. Gries, ‘The Hasidic Conduct (Hanhagot) Literature - from the Mid-Eighteenth Century to the 1830s’, Zion, 46 (1981), 198-236; id., Sefer, sofer vesipur bereshit hahasidut (Tel Aviv, 1992); Z. M. Rabinowicz, Bein pshiskha velublin (Jerusalem, 1997); G. D. Hundert, ‘The Contexts of Hasidism’, in W. Kowalski and J. Muszyriski (eds.), Zydzi wsréd chrzescijan w dobie szlacheckiey Rzeczypospolite; (Kielce, 1996); id., ‘Apta vereshit hahasidut ad 1800’, in R. Elior, I. Bartal, and Ch. Shmeruk (eds.), Tsadtkim ve’anshei ma’aseh (Jerusalem, 1994), 59-64; E. Bergman,

‘Gora-kalwaria (gur): Hayishuv hayehudi behatsar harabi migor mireshit hame’ah 19 ad 1939’; W. Z. Rabinowitch, Lithuanian Hasidism (New York, 1971); M. Nadav, Toledot kehilat pinsk, 1506-1880 (Tel Aviv, 1973); M. Zalkin, ‘Mekomot shelo matsa’ah adayin hahasidut ken lah kelal? Bein hasidim lemitnagedim belita beme’ah ha-19’, in I. Etkes, D. Assaf, I. Bartal, and E. Reiner (eds.), Bema’aglet hasidim: Kovets mehkarim lezikhro shel profesor mordekhai vilenskt (Jerusalem, 2000); H. Gertner, ‘Rabanut

vehasidut begalitsiyah beme’ah ha-19: R. shelomoh kluger vehahasidut’, ibid.; N. Loewenthal, Communicating the Infinite: The Emergence of the Habad School (Chicago, 1990); D. Assaf, Tsadik _ ve’edah (Jerusalem, 2001). A more comprehensive study is Y. Petrovsky, ‘Into the Jewish Street: Hasidism and Traditional Jewish Societies’, forthcoming. On a later period, see D. Assaf, Derekh hamalkhut: R. yisra’el meruzin umekomo betoledot hahasidut (Jerusalem, 1997); trans.as The Regal Way: The Life and Times of Rabbi Israel of Ruzhin (Stanford, Calif., 2002).

® For theoretical approaches to the spread of hasidism, see G. D. Hundert (ed.), Essential Papers on Hasidism (New York, 1991), and Rapoport-Albert (ed.), Hastdism Reappratsed, esp. ead., ‘Hasidism

After 1772: Structural Continuity and Change’, S. Ettinger, ‘Hasidism and the Kahal in Eastern Europe’, and Etkes, “The Zaddik’. See also S. Dresner, The Tsaddik: The Doctrine According to the

Writings of Rabbi Yaakov Yosef of Polonoy (New York, 1964); J. Weiss, Studies in Eastern Jewish , Mysticism, ed. D. Goldstein (London, 1985s); I. Etkes, ‘Hasidism as a Movement: The First Stage’, in B. Safran (ed.), Hasidism: Continuity or Innovation? (Cambridge, Mass., 1988); A. Z. Aescoly, Hasidut

befolin, ed. D. Assaf Jerusalem, 1998); O. Pritsak, ‘Ukraine as the Setting for the Emergence of ~ Hasidism’, in Israel Among the Nations: Essays Presented in Honor of Shmuel Ettinger (Jerusalem, 1997),

67-85; Ch. Shmeruk, ‘Hasidism and the Kefi/la’, in A. Polonsky, J. Basista, and A. Link-Lenczowski (eds.), The fews in Old Poland, 1000-1795 (London, 1993); D. Assaf, ‘Hasidut behitpathuto: Diyokno

shel nehemiah yehi’el mibikhovah ben “heyehudi hakadosh”’, in I. Bartal, E. Mendelsohn, and Ch. ‘Turniansky (eds.), Keminhag ashkenaz vepolin: Sefer yovel lehoneh shmeruk (Jerusalem, 1993).

® Rosman has discovered the Besht residing tax-free on kahal-owned property and avoiding local conflicts (Founder of Hasidism: A Quest for the Historical Ba’al Shem Tov (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1996) ). Notably, Ignacy Schiper’s recently discovered manuscript begins to undertake a historically grounded criticism of the older historiography represented by Simon Dubnow.

| Hasidic Conquest of Central Poland 53 fomented a popular upsurge in reaction to some major social crisis, his findings cannot be automatically applied to the generations that followed, when hasidism blossomed into a full-fledged movement. A rigorous study of hasidism after the death of its founder is therefore urgently needed, and will be attempted here with respect to the region of central Poland.’

Borne by the charismatic disciples and descendants of the Besht and his pre-

eminent disciple R. Dov Baer, the Great Maggid of Mezerich (Mezhirech, Miedzyrzecz), hasidism spread northwards from its origins in Podolia (Ukraine) through Volhynia into what is present-day Belarus by the end of the eighteenth century.® Several disciples of the Great Maggid began to make their way westward into Galicia, the most important centre emerging in the town of Lezajsk.? Additional disciples of the Besht, including hasidism’s foremost theoretician, R. Jacob Joseph of Polonne, resided in Bessarabia for a time;!° while the Besht’s most prominent descendant, the celebrated R. Nahman, travelled southeastward and settled down in the Bratslav (Bractaw) palatinate.'? It is increasingly clear that from its inception hasidism appealed across social lines, drawing adherents from rich and poor alike and attracting charismatic male scions of the Jewish elite into the ranks of its leadership.‘? After the death of the Besht most of his disciples and descendants received the designation tsadik, marking them as new charismatic leaders who fused pre-existent roles (ba’al shem, rabbi, preacher?*). The tsadikim maintained that their ability to achieve a state of devekut, or cleaving to God, empowered them to fulfil the spiritual and physical needs of anyone willing to bind themselves to them as supplicants and devotees. '* For, it was held, the tsadikim were conduits between the upper and lower worlds.*°

The tsadikim were therefore much more than other-worldly mystics. Their vocations lay within the material realm as miracle-workers, rabbis, and preachers. Such assumptions of communal leadership by men who might have been content to 7 Ada Rapoport-Albert, in her insightful but idiosyncratic essay on the emergence of succession in _ hasidic leadership after 1772, does question the conception of hasidism as an exclusively popular movement of the masses. See ‘Hasidism after 1772’, 85.

8 Hence the nickname ‘Karliners’ for hasidim, found in anti-hasidic bans. See Rabinowitch, Lithuanian Hasidism; Loewenthal, Communicating the Infinite; and R. Elior, The Paradoxical Ascent to God: The Kabbalistic Theosophy of Habad (New York, 1992). 9 R. Elimelekh of Lezajsk (1717-87). 10 N. Huberman, ‘Hasidim un hasidut in bessarabia’, YJVO bleter, 39 (1955), 278-83. 11 See A. Green, Tormented Master (Tuscaloosa, Ala., 1979). 12 See Rosman, Founder of Hasidism. On the period following the lifetime of the Besht, see my ‘Men of Silk: The Hasidic Conquest of Polish Jewry, 1754-1830’, Ph.D. diss. (Brandeis University, 2002). 13 A ba’al shem was an independent, usually itinerant healer and mystical practitioner, like a shaman or witch doctor, who prescribed physical and spiritual remedies for his customers.

‘4 On devekut, see G. Scholem, ‘Devekut, or Communion with God’, in Hundert (ed.), Essential Papers; M. \del, Hasidism: Between Ecstasy and Magic (New York, 1995); M. Krassen, Uniter of Heaven and Earth: Rabbi Meshullam Fetbush Heller of Zabarazh and the Rise of Hasidism in Eastern Galicia (New

York, 1998), 43-03. 15 Tdel, Hasidism, 189-207.

54 Glenn Dynner soar permanently in the upper realms were not regarded as self-serving or ambitious in the eyes of the hasidim. Descending from his lofty state of devekut in order to attend the needs of fellow Jews, even undisguised material needs, was a tsadtk’s grim responsibility.1° Worldly duties formed part of a mandatory ‘exit rite’, or return to regular life after immersion within the divine. Even if these were rewarded financially, they drew the tsadik away from his sublime state of devekut and were accordingly rendered in a spirit of generosity and self-sacrifice.1’ Communal leadership by tsadikim was further justified through the mildly antinomian notion

that even the most mundane acts possess profound spiritual potential.’° By contrast, the old-style reclusive mystics who studied and practised kabbalah in exclusive gatherings, without bothering to lead their communities as mystics, were regarded as selfish elitists consumed with their own spiritual strivings.?®

Only with the appearance of these tsadikim and their followers, known as hasidim, may one properly speak of a hasidic movement, for it was they who fully realized the social implications of devekut and worship within corporeality, and it was they who disseminated and institutionalized hasidism. Their alleged indispensability for Jewish religious fulfilment was so relentlessly promoted and widely received that the tsad:kim emerged as the new supra-communal leaders of east European Jewry at a time when the Va’ad Arba Aratsot (Council of Four Lands) had been dissolved (1764) and the rabbinate was in decline.”°

Near the end of the Besht’s lifetime hasidism began to spread into central Poland, the area that became the Duchy of Warsaw (1807-13), and later, after 1815,

with reduced boundaries, the Congress Kingdom.”! The brothers R. Samuel Shmelke and R. Pinhas Horowitz, disciples of R. Dov Baer of Mezerich became rabbis in Ryczyw6t (1754) and Witkow (1760).?2 Several of their disciples sustained 16 R. Elior, ‘Between Yesh and Ayin: The Doctrine of the Tsaddik in the Works of Jacob Isaac, the Seer of Lublin’, in A. Rapoport-Albert and S. Zipperstein (eds.), fewish History: Essays in Honor of Chimen Abramsky (London, 1988). 17 Tbid. 127-33; G. Nigal (ed.), No’am elimelekh (Jerusalem, 1978), introd., 97-9; ‘Beha’alotekha’, 381-2; ‘Va’ethanan’, 485-6. 18 Rachel Elior considers ‘worship in corporeality’ (avodah begashmiyut) the decisive component of

the tsadik idea. See Elior, “Bein “hitpashtut hagashmiyut” levein “hitpashtut ha’ahavah gam begashmiyut” ’, in Bartal, Turniansky, and Mendelsohn (eds.), Keminhag ashkenaz vepolin. 19 For contrasts between the new tsadikim and the older, ostensibly selfish mystics, see Israel Ba’al Shem Tov and Dov Baer of Mezerich, Tsava’at haribash vehanhagot yesharot, repr.in Sipurim kedoshim mitalmidei ba’al shem tov, xci (Brooklyn, NY, 1993), 20; and Nigal (ed.), No’am elimelekh, 261. 20 Only historic Lithuania evaded their influence, owing to the presence of R. Elijah, the Vilna Gaon,

and his disciples, known as mitnagedim (opponents). On the decline of the rabbinate, see M. Rosman, The Lords’ Jews: Magnate—Jewish Relations in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth During the Eighteenth

Century (Cambridge, Mass., 1990), 198-204; A. Teller, “The Legal Status of the Jews on the Magnate Estates of Poland—Lithuania in the Eighteenth Century’, Gal-Ed, 15 (1997), 56—60. 21 Central Poland was unique in its tenuous experimentation with constitutionalism. 22 According to Mordechai Wilensky, the brothers became hasidic in their youth (Wilensky (ed.), Hasidim umitnagedim, 2 vols. (Jerusalem, 1990), 1. 84).

Hasidic Conquest of Central Poland 55 the hasidic effort in the region upon their departure.** Central Poland, with its relatively urbanized and cosmopolitan centres amid a largely rural hinterland, represented a true test of the movement’s versatility. For if the movement could prevail in both rural areas and cities such as Warsaw and Lublin, it would prove to be much more than a popular mystical upsurge in small-town eastern Europe. Warsaw, the heart of eastern Europe’s incipient industrial revolution, was home to a Jewish bourgeoisie comprising international merchants and military suppliers who were beginning to make forays into banking and industry. If one subscribes to the economic determinism that informs much of the historiography, these wealthy merchants would seemingly be the least likely to join an anti-modern, anti-secular subculture.24 Within several decades, however, the hasidic message indeed began to resonate amid this proto-banking elite, and some of its most prominent members

became patrons of hasidism.2° The involvement of hasidic patrons among the Warsaw mercantile elite, who protected, promoted, and enhanced the prestige of the movement, marks the first half of Polish hasidism’s success formula.

At the same time, backed by their big-city patrons, hasidic foot-soldiers in central Poland’s small towns and villages were making bold incursions into local religious life and foiling numerous attempts by their enemies to stem the hasidic

tide. The grass-roots activities of tsadikim, emissaries, and local adherents—the second half of the equation—afford us insight into the mechanisms through which hasidism usurped the loci of power in Polish Jewish communities. The process and

extent of hasidic infiltration of religious institutions like the study house (deit midrash), synagogue, and local rabbinate, reflected in—but certainly not limited - to—the cases of the towns Ptock, Kozienice, Olkusz, and Zelechow, will engage us for the remainder of this chapter.2° Instead of abstracting hasidism from its historical context for the sake of analysis, as is usually done, the following discussion rather endeavours to place the ascendancy of hasidism squarely within its Polish Jewish and non-Jewish milieu. Hasidism will prove to have been as much a social and political programme as a theological one.

POLISH HASIDIC EXPANSION, EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL By the end of the eighteenth century the hasidic presence in central Poland stretched westward in what 1s roughly a crescent shape whose furthermost points 23 Among R. Shmelke’s disciples were R. Levi Isaac of Berdichev, R. Israel of Kozienice, and R. Jacob Isaac, the Seer of Lublin. On R. Samuel Shmelke, see Schiper, Przyczynki do dziejow chasydyzmu, 20.

24 Hasidism rejected most forms of acculturation, including secular education. 25 On the role of the Warsaw mercantile elite in spreading and sustaining hasidism in central Poland, see my ‘Men of Silk’, ch. 3; and my ‘Merchant Princes and Tsadikim’, Polin (forthcoming).

26 While the present illustration of the phases of hasidic conquest is limited to the cases of Plock, Kozienice, Olkusz, and Zelechéw, the extant sources afford many additional examples. See my ‘Men of Silk’, ch. 2.

56 Glenn Dynner | consist of Lelow and Ptock.*" In only isolated instances did hasidism make its way further west, and here it simply could not take root. In 1791 the maskil Menahem

Mendel Lefin of Satanow was able to proclaim that Wielkopolska was ‘not yet entirely infected’; while the pre-eminent mystical text the Zohar, whose popularity

would evidently mean easy reception for hasidism, still lodged in obscurity in Germany.”° The tsadik Nahman of Bratslav, with almost breathtaking candour, essentially corroborates those geographical limits: In this land [1.e. eastern Europe], for example, ba’alet shem are esteemed. And in truth, there have been some authentic ba’alei shem and tsadikim. But nowadays fraudulent ba’ale: shem have proliferated. And as a rule, anyone who wishes and desires to go into it . . . succeeds even if he is a fraud and really knows nothing except that it is based on his rapture: how he bestirs himself and revels in it. It also depends on where he sets up the venture. If he starts in a place where they believe in it, or if he begins with women—for they are prone to believe in everything—then he succeeds. And after that, it is possible that those who are far from

believing in such a thing will also come to believe in him . . . on account of his having ‘succeeded’. But there is another land where such an endeavour is not esteemed at all, for example the German lands, where they do not have any belief in ba’alei shem. And there is no success or foothold for one who wishes to engage in it there. And such is also the case with the exploits and renown of the ¢sad:kim in this land; whereas in another land they do not enjoy the same prestige.”°

In his characteristically sceptical manner, Nahman of Bratslav implies that the east European Jewish disposition was particularly receptive to miracle-working—both fraudulent and authentic—in contrast to Jews in western Europe (whether women in western Europe were less ‘prone to believe in everything’ he does not say). A few hasidim temporarily slipped across the east-west divide, apparently as early as 1758.°° In 1773 R. Samuel Shmelke Horowitz accepted the Nikolsburg (Mikulov) rabbinate, while his brother R. Pinhas was offered that of Frankfurt am Main. Several future Polish tsadikim, including R. Jacob Isaac of Lublin and R. Israel of Kozienice, followed Samuel Shmelke Horowitz to Nikolsburg and 27 ‘These geographical contours derive in part from the hagiographic biographies of Polish hasidic celebrities; primary literature (Shivhei habesht, memoirs, correspondence, etc.); and archival sources. For a detailed geographical description and documentation, see my ‘Men of Silk’, ch. 1. “8 The Zohar (¢.1280) is a standard classic of Jewish mysticism. See [M. Lefin], Essai d’un plan de réforme ayant pour objet d’éclairer la nation juive en Pologne et de redresser par la ses moeurs (Warsaw, —

1791), Sects. 31-43, pp. 9-11; pp. 30-1 nn. gand h. 29 Nahman of Bratslav, Sihot haran (Lemberg, 1901), p. 36, no. 63. 80 About 1758 R. Jacob Emden charged that ‘Now upstarts have arisen, a new sect of hasidim in Volhynia and Podolia, and some of them have even come to this country [Germany] (Mitpahat sefarim (Altona, 1768), 31; quoted in S. Dubnow, ‘The Magid of Miedzyrzecz’, trans. E. Lederhendler, in

Hundert (ed.), Essential Papers, p. 59 and n. 2). See also Y. Friedlander, “The Struggle of the Mitnagedim and Maskilim Against Hasidism: Rabbi Jacob Emden and Judah Leib Meises’, in S. Feiner and D. Sorkin (eds.), Nem Perspectives on the Haskalah (London, 2001), 105-9. Emden may be refer-

ring to old-style hasidim.

Hasidic Conquest of Central Poland | 57 remained for a time.?! Nevertheless, hasidism could not take root in central and western Europe.” Any evaluation of the extraordinary expansion of hasidism within eastern and east-central Europe must acknowledge its relatively limited impact on existing politi-

cal structures. Rather than supplant local organs of Jewish self-government—the kehalim—with newly fashioned institutions, the tsad:kim preferred to fill kahal offices with their devotees.** Hasidism was superimposed upon the remnants of east

, European Jewish political autonomy in a manner similar to what has been termed the “imperial method’—co-opting existing elites and institutions for control and rule.* While the courts of the tsadikim did constitute institutional innovation, they were much less formal, tangible, and developed at this point than they were to become by the middle of the century.*? Hasidic prayer houses, a second type of institutional | innovation, appear to have been intended only as temporary expedients until the bezt midrash (communal study house) or main synagogue became the hasidic domain.

_ This conservative approach to social change is one reason why it is inaccurate to describe hasidism as a sect, subculture, or social anti-structure.*° To be sure, hasidism entailed liminal activities like pilgrimage and ritual revelry during sabbaths

and holiday gatherings. But the tsad:kim and their adherents ultimately strove to appropriate the existing infrastructure rather than undermine or reject it.

The memoirist Abraham Gottlober delineates three stages of the hasidic usurp- | ation of local power throughout eastern Europe: [The hasidim] introduced a new combination of Ashkenazi and Sephardi customs, and left the various communities for no reason other than to form special, small houses of prayer, which they called by the name &/oyz. And gradually, as their power increased, they brought their customs also into the main beit midrash. And only in small, poor towns did they become strong enough to conquer even the main synagogue.*’

The kloyz, beit midrash, and main synagogue, according to Gottlober, were rungs on a ladder of local conquest.*® 31 B, Nosek, ‘Shemuel Shmelke, Ben Tsvi Hirsh Ha-Levi Horovits: Legend and Reality’, Judaica Bohemia, 21/2 (1985), 84—g. Another instructive case is that of R. Nathan Adler and his circle of pietists in Frankfurt. See R. Elior, ‘R. Nathan Adler and the Frankfurt “Pietists”: Pietist Groups in Eastern and Central Europe During the Eighteenth Century’, in K. E. Grozinger (ed.), Judische Kultur

in Frankfurt am Main (Wiesbaden, 1997). | 32 Hundert suggests that hasidism was more attractive in eastern Europe because, ‘while Jews elsewhere could persuade themselves that the modern middle classes were permeable or penetrable’, there could be no such thinking in Poland, where Enlightenment ideas were the sole preserve of the nobility (‘The Contexts of Hasidism’, 182). 33 Ettinger, ‘Hasidism and the Kahal’, in Rapoport-Albert (ed.), Hasidism Reappraised, 63-75. 84 ChaeRan Freeze refers to the ‘imperial method’ in her important recent work Jewish Marriage and

Divorce in Imperial Russia (Hanover, NH, 2002), 128. 35 Assaf, Derekh hamalkhut. 36 What Victor Turner terms ‘communitas’. See Dramas, Fields and Ritual Metaphors (Ithaca, NY,

1964), 45. 37 A. Gottlober, Zikhronot, i. 127. 88 However, the hasidim did not necessarily accomplish these phases in any chronological order.

58 Glenn Dynner , What, precisely, did Gottlober mean by the terms k/oyz and beit midrash? The

word k/oyz originally applied to a small room where elitist, old-style hasidim engaged in kabbalistic study, not prayer. It was often attached to a shtibl, where prayer sessions took place according to the liturgy of the sixteenth-century Safed _ kabbalistic circle of R. Isaac Luria (the Ari).°? Although the kloyz and the beit midrash were both primarily places of study, the k/oyz was independent and privately funded, while the beit midrash was supported by communal funds.*? By Gottlober’s day, however, these terms had evolved in response to hasidism. The terms shtib/ and kloyz were now used interchangeably to denote primarily hasidic spaces, still privately funded, for study and prayer.*? Non-hasidim also established unofficial, regular spaces for worship, referred to as ‘prayer houses’ (domy modlitwy) in government documents. The Polish officials were uncomfortable with all such informal places of worship: even a congregation of acculturated Jews (known as ‘Germans’) on 616 Danitowiczowska Street had to petition the government to reopen their prayer house in 1815.** Two years later Minister Stanistaw Staszic began an inquiry into ‘prayer services in private houses’,

seeking to clarify ‘if the Constitution ensures all faiths freedom of such religious , ceremonies’, and ‘if the Treasury has not enacted any law for collection of a fee for this, and accordingly [whether it] should . . . be granted an exemption agreement’.*? But prayer houses proved too numerous and clandestine for government regulation. In Warsaw, which lacked a synagogue at this time, over 100 houses of prayer functioned by 1826.** But hasidic prayer houses, as concrete and visible °° David of Makow, Zemir aritsim, in Wilensky (ed.), Hasidim umitnagedim, i. 47-8 and 68. The 1772 Brody ban and Leszniéw decrees each mention an acceptable shtb/, in which several old-style hasidim have the exclusive right to pray in Lurianic ritual. See also N. Gelber, Arim ve’tmahot beytsra’el, vi: Brody (Jerusalem, 1957); Rosman, Founder of Hasidism; and E. Reiner, ‘Hon, ma’amad hevrati, vetalmud torah: Hakloiz behevrah hayehudit bemizrah eiropah bame’ot 17-19’, Zion, 58 (1993), 287-328. 40 Reiner, ‘Hon, ma’amad hevrati, vetalmud torah’; Rosman, Founder of Hasidism, 29. 41 Wilensky (Hasidim umitnagedim, i. 338) writes, ‘the term shtib/ as a house of worship of Beshtian

| hasidim, as far as I can tell, does not appear in anti-hasidic literature at the end of the eighteenth and , beginning of the nineteenth centuries’. In 1827 Peter Beer describes the hasidic place of prayer as a k/oyz (A. G. Hoffmann (ed.), Allgemeine Encyclopadie der Wissenschaften und Kiinste (Leipzig, 1827), s.v. ‘Chassidaer’). Gottlober, as we see, also refers to the k/oyz as a place of worship. Shtibl and beit midrash were also lumped together occasionally. See E. Dinard, Zzkhronot bat ami, pt. Il (New Orleans, 1920), 27.

, 42 Archiwum Gtowne Akt Dawnych w Warszawie (AGAD), Centralne Wtadze Wyznaniowe (CWW) 1723, 3-5; letter signed by Israel Rosen, I. Landshutter, R. Guttmann, S. L. Kronenberg, and I. Kohen. The Progressives opened the prayer house in 1802, and established a synagogue in 1843.

See A. Guterman, ‘The Origins of the Great Synagogue in Warsaw on Ttomackie Street’, in W. Bartoszewski and A. Polonsky (eds.), The Jews in Warsaw: A History (Oxford, 1991); M. Piechotka and K. Piechotka, ‘Polish Synagogues in the Nineteenth Century’, Polin, 2 (1987), 189.

43° Archiwum Pafistwowe w Kielcach (APKch), RGR I, 4405. On later attempts to regulate prayer houses, see J. Kirszrot, Prama Zydéw w Krolestmie Polskiem (Warsaw, 1917), 12-13. 44 AGAD, CWW 1441, contains a chart with names and addresses, including that of the hasidic patron

Temerel Bergson. See also Piechotka and Piechotka, ‘Polish Synagogues in the Nineteenth Century’; and complaints in Jutrzenka, 6 (1861), 45; 13 (1861), 103.

Hasidic Conquest of Central Poland 59 manifestations of the movement, were singled out in official complaints by Jews and non-Jews.

Hasidim occasionally erected their own synagogues. The wealthy Warsaw merchants Berek and Temerel Sonnenberg-Bergson founded the first hasidic synagogue in Praga, a suburb of Warsaw, in 1807.*°? One finds reference to the ‘synagogue of the hasidim of the rabbi of Lublin’ in Warsaw, and a synagogue apparently constructed for R. Israel in Kozienice.*© The latter laid the cornerstone of anew synagogue in Warka in 1810.*’ But the hasidic synagogue was less common than the hasidic beit midrash or kloyz/shtibl.*2 Moreover, the term ‘synagogue’ is

often applied loosely .*9 |

The second arena to be conquered, the beit midrash, continued to be a public prayer and study hall. The maskil Abraham Stern defined the term bet midrash at the request of the Komisja Rzadowa Wyznan Religijnych 1 OSwiecenia Publicznego (Government Commission for Religious Denominations and Public Education) in 1832,°° contrasting it with the synagogue. A beit midrash was a ‘house of religious

_ study, where every Israelite is free to attend at any time and read books having to do with the Israelite religion’. It was devoted ‘not only to the celebration of daily services, but also has this other purpose: that every single Israelite wishing to read books on religious knowledge comes there for that purpose at any time’. The dezt midrash was versatile and open to all (male) Jews. The synagogue, in contrast, was ‘devoted exclusively to the celebration of daily prayer services’.°! _ Gottlober recalls how hasidim attained the second and third phases of conquest.

Cantors, sent by tsadikim in order to elevate their prestige, infiltrated the Deit midrash and synagogue services and thrust hasidic forms of worship upon the congregants. Gottlober explains, ‘in order to disseminate the hasidic system it was 45 See the dedication to the synagogue in ‘Akt darowizny boznicy przez Berka’, Kwartalnik poswiecony badanta przesztosci Zydéw w Polsce, ser. 1, 3 (1912), 180-2. The first such synagogue was not

constructed in 1830 by Berek (who anyway died on 19 Nov. 1822), an error repeated twice by the Piechotkas in ‘Polish Synagogues’, 187, 190; and in M. Balaban, Zabytki historyczne Zydéw w Polsce (Warsaw, n.d.), 54. 46 Yehudah Mosheh of Alexander (ed.), Kedushat yitshak: Yemei hayei raboteinu hakedoshim ha’admorim mi’aleksander (Jerusalem, 1952), p. 20, no. 13; Z. Guldon, ‘Gminy wyznania mojzeszowego w

powiecie radomskim w XVI-—XVIII wieku’, in his Radom 1 region radomski w dobie szlacheckie Rzeczypospolites, ii (Radom, 1996), 158.

47 Warka minute book, in S. Huberband, Kiddush hashem, trans. D. E. Fishman (New York, 1987), 307-8. 48 Abraham Rubenstein’s bibliography of hasidic shtibls, batet midrash, kloyzn and so-called yizkor books, in his Hasidut: Reshimah bibliografit lashanah 1965 (Jerusalem, 1972), 353—4.

49 Synagogues were officially sanctioned and physically larger than prayer houses; however, in Warsaw prayer houses were also officially sanctioned (AGAD, CWW 1441). °° AGAD, CWW 1597, 266. °1 Tbid. 267-8. On Abraham Stern, see J. Shatsky, ‘Avraham Yaakov Shtern (1768-1842)’, in The

Joshua Starr Memorial Volume (New York, 1953), 203-11; and Mahler, Hasidism and the Jewish Enlightenment, 211, 230.

| 60 Glenn Dynner essential to change the old liturgy which was used by all the Jews in the towns, that is the Ashkenazi liturgy, into the Sefarad liturgy .. . And not only the liturgy was essential, but also the melodies of the prayer and their delivery before the public (the fartrag).’°* The special form of delivery is described by the mitnaged R. David

Makow, who fumes that during their worship the hasidim ‘begin to shout many - great shouts with strange utterances in the middle of the Eighteen Benedictions, like bam, bam, bam, ee, ee, ee, noy, noy, noy, gei, gel, gel, um, um, um...’.°® Parodying

the honour accorded to the tsadik R. Jacob Isaac, the Seer of Lublin, he quips, “he who raises his voice in prayer to a roar [shaon] is called by the name ‘genius’ [gaon]

. . . he who claps hand against hand [af] is called by the name hasid and rav [rabbi]!?4 Other Polish tsadikim, such as R. Levi Isaac of Berdichev and R. Israel of Kozienice, even dared to insert Polish phrases into their prayer (customarily read in

Hebrew) for added effect.°*° |

Hasidic testimony proudly substantiates these charges of eccentric worship. R. Levi Isaac of Berdichev ‘would run from corner to corner and dance with great and quite terrible fervour’.°® Another tradition asserts that ‘it was his custom during prayer to pray with fear and trembling. And he could not stand in one place owing to his awe [of God]. And when one placed him in one corner, he would be found in another corner.’°’ ‘And all who were present at the time of his prayer, their hair would stand up on their heads, and their hearts would melt, and all their crookedness would be removed on account of his voice.”°® Hasidic tradition even corrobor-

ates the insertion of Polish phrases. On Yom Kippur in the city of Lemberg (Lw6w/Lviv), in order to threaten the angelic representative of the Polish nation, R. Levi Isaac cried out the Polish words ‘Ja ciebie naucze!’ (‘ll teach you!’) during the Musaf prayer. Even his admirers were scandalized.®? From a political standpoint, the aim may have been simply to promote a hasidic mode of worship whose very flamboyance rendered it unmistakable. To Gottlober’s three phases of conquest we may add a fourth: the appointment

| of communal functionaries by tsadikim. The significance of appointments of hasidic ritual slaughterers has received a great deal of scholarly attention, owing to its 52 Gottlober, Zikhronot, i. 59. On hasidic emissaries, see also Solomon Maimon: An Autobiography,

ed. M. Hadas (New York, 1967), 51-2: “The heads of the sect sent regular emissaries everywhere, whose duty it was to preach the new doctrine and win converts.’ The emissary Maimon met was the future tsadik Aaron of Karlin. Ettinger, ‘Hasidism and the Kahal in Eastern Europe’, in RapoportAlbert (ed.), Hastdism Reappratsed, 67. 53 Shever poshim 64a, in Wilensky (ed.), Hasidim umitnagedim, ii. 159.

54 Zemir aritsim 3a, ibid. ii. 195. 55 Wilensky (ed.), Hasidim umitnagedim, i. 59, no. 15. 56 Kedushat yitshak, p. 19, no. 12. See S. Gutman, Tiferet beit levi (Iasi, 1909), 5, on R. Levi Isaac’s

| _ clamorous prayer. 57 BT Ber. 31a. The description originally applies to the mishnaic sage R. Akiva.

58 M. Bodek, Seder hadorot hahadash, ‘Megilat yuhasin’ (Jerusalem, 1964-5). See also Gutman,

Tiferet beit levi, 5. 59 Gutman, Tiferet beit levi, 15.

Hasidic Conquest of Central Poland 61 economic relevance.®° Gottlober, for his part, stresses the importance of cantorial appointments. (On the strength of R. Levi Isaac of Berdichev’s recommendation, his own father was appointed cantor of Stary Konstantynow over the objections of the mitnagedim.®') But in terms of spiritual authority, the appointment of neither slaughterers nor cantors approaches that reflected in one hasidic tradition: The holy tsadik R. Joseph Kizes travelled to Lublin. And he [R. Jacob Isaac, the Seer of Lublin] said to him, ‘Welcome, Rabbi of Janow [Zamoyski]’. And eight days had not passed before a delegation from Janow Zamoyski came to ask his advice about whom to take on as rabbi. And he answered them, ‘Indeed, your rabbi is already with me.’ And he presented him to them.®

By the nineteenth century Polish tsadikim were beginning to appoint town rabbis—

the most powerful religious functionaries before their own arrival on the scene. Occasionally, tsadikim assumed rabbinical offices themselves, as in the towns of Zelechéw, Stopnica, and Opatow. Such rabbinical appointments and assumptions of office are indicative of a major power shift.

The hasidim were confronted by opponents—non-Jewish and Jewish—at every turn. In the eyes of many Polish bureaucrats, from local police to district (wojewodztwo) commissioners, these Jewish sectarians were a social menace. In the town of Parczew, home to about twenty hasidim of the Przysucha school, one local official complained: They do not attend synagogue, but rather choose to celebrate services in rented houses, where sometimes throughout the entire night they make a great noise and celebrate services, with various songs, jumps, dances. It has frequently been seen that they engaged, in this same place chosen for prayer service, in games in which different drinks are drunk and songs are sung. And they fly out into the street singing, jumping and producing various shouts, which the mayor of the city cannot tolerate, and are punished by the police for disturbing the peace at night.®°

One is moved to empathize with the bewildered local police in this case, confronted as they were with such instances of hasidic riot and revelry. Other officials were

persuaded to act against hasidim by Jewish proponents of Enlightenment, the maskilim. But in some cases officials actually defended the hasidic right to worship. Perhaps here is the place to caution that historians of Polish hasidism have failed to appreciate the full spectrum of attitudes among Polish bureaucrats, ranging from 69 Ch. Shmeruk, ‘Hasidism and the Kehilla’, in A. Polonsky, J. Basista, and A. Link-Lenczowski (eds.), The Jews in Old Poland, tooo—1795 (London, 1993); I. Kuperstein, ‘Inquiry at Polaniec: A Case Study of a Hassidic Controversy in Eighteenth-Century Galicia’, in Bar [lan Annual, xxiv—xxv, ed. G. Bacon and M. Rosman (Ramat Gan, 1989); S. Stampfer, “The Dispute over Polished Knives and Hasidic Shekhita’, in I. Etkes, D. Assaf, and Y. Dan (eds.), Mehkaret hasidut (Jerusalem, 1999). 61 Gottlober, Zikhronot, i. 62. The cantorial function is described as a proving ground for aspiring

tsadtkim (ibid. 61). 62M. M. Walden, Niflaot harabi (Warsaw, 1911), p. 80, no. 229. 68 AGAD, CWW 1871, 12-13.

62 Glenn Dynner enmity to impartiality to even benevolence. Raphael Mahler’s dismissal of the ‘heavy, dull-witted bureaucratic apparatus’ is not justified in view of many of the documents which are brought to light here. Among hasidism’s Jewish opponents, the traditionalist mztnagedim decried separate hasidic prayer quorums because they very openly implemented ritual modifications that were supposed to be restricted to the elite.°* Separate worship

also undermined the local pecking-order, manifested in preferred seating assignments and ritual duties in the main synagogue.® Finally, the demands of tsadikim

for a pidyon (‘redemption’ payment) in return for blessings and other types of services were viewed as nothing more than exploitation.© As the nineteenth century progressed, however, the mitnagedim noticeably weakened and tended to shy away from involving non-Jewish authorities in their struggle against hasidism. They even occasionally joined forces with hasidim against the more threatening initiatives of the maskilim, whose programmes both groups regarded as secularizing and even Christianizing. The maskilim, for their part, as Enlightenment-based reformers, were less concerned about hasidic religious innovation. They rather reviled hasidism as a barrier

to modernization and emancipation, and viewed its leaders as charlatans who preyed on the ignorance and superstition of the Jewish masses. As the mitnagedim began to bow out of their conflict with hasidim by the second decade of the nineteenth century, the maskilim became bolder and more threatening. Their willingness and ability to win the authorities over to their cause rendered them the most dangerous of adversaries. In spite of the multivalent opposition by non-Jews and Jews alike, however, hasidic ascendancy continued undaunted. The following four cases represent the various stages of that seemingly inexorable rise.®’

ANATOMY OF A HASIDIC CONQUEST First Phase: A Hasidic Prayer House in Ptock The Jewish community in Ptock, which had 731 members by 1800, almost tripled

during the Prussian occupation (1794-1807) to 1,932. Much of the population 64 See Reiner, ‘Hon, ma’amad hevrati’, 287-328; and R. Abraham Katzenellenbogen’s letter of 1784,

in Wilensky (ed.), Hasidim umitnagedim, i. 128. 65 See J. Katz, Tradition and Crisis, ed. B. D. Cooperman (New York, 1993); G. D. Hundert, The Jews in a Polish Private Town: The Case of Opatéw in the Eighteenth Century (Baltimore, 1992). Although other groups, such as guilds and hevrot (societies), also organized separate minyanim (prayer quorums), these groups were sufficiently socially differentiated to avoid disrupting the social hierarchy. 66 On the evolution of the practice of accepting the pidyon, see A. Rubenstein, ‘He’arot lete’udah al geviyot-edut neged hahasidut’, Tarbiz, 32 (1963), 92-4.

°” These four towns illustrate the phases of hasidic ascendancy in central Poland. Additional towns in each category are presented in my ‘Men of Silk’, ch. 2.

Hasidic Conquest of Central Poland 63 influx derived from Prussia, understandably enough, where the Haskalah had begun to gain substantial ground. Yet Ptock was also the north-westernmost point _ of hasidic convergence. The potential for cultural warfare in this small town was therefore high. R. Judah Leib Margaliot, rabbi in Ptock from 1798 to 1805, wrote against hasidism in favour of Enlightenment-informed ideas in 1777, and then again in 1796.°° The Ptock maskilim went further, inducing the district commissioner Florian Kobylinski (1774/7—1843) to attempt a district-wide ban against hasidic prayer houses on 1 June 1818. His anti-hasidic campaign was to last through December and culminate in a surprising defence of hasidism by the central government in Warsaw.°? In defending their right to establish separate prayer houses throughout the Plock wojewédztwo, the hasidim employed all means at their disposal: bribery, behind-the-scenes influence, relentless requests, and a flowery petition to Kobylinski and the central government in Warsaw. Brigadier-General Kobylinski had led a unit of Napoleon’s legionnaires and was injured during the French retreat of 1812, losing both legs. The tsar appointed him commissioner of the Plock wojewddztwo in 1815.’° Now the general decided to wage a campaign against hasidism. His first charge was that, despite the existence of convenient synagogues in the town, several clandestine prayer gatherings were

being organized in private homes. He was determined to ban these gatherings because they were not held within designated public buildings, they encouraged the formation of sects, which caused dissent and hatred, they detracted from syna-

gogue attendance and thus obstructed the delivery of government decrees and orders, and they involved unregulated ‘income or secret, hidden contributions, or certain donations [which] result in the diminishing of general funds intended for the head of the public synagogue, and create the opportunity for abuse under the pretence of religious practice’.” This latter reference to potential exploitation of Jews by the tsadikim, through the pidyon and other fund-raising initiatives, was followed by a reminder of ‘the

| tendency of the Jewish nation towards negligence’. Here the commissioner’s reproach reached its highest pitch. He mused, ‘Are we to allow rituals performed in honour of the Highest Being to be celebrated in private homes, sordid and defiled, when there are public places dedicated to worship in honour of Gop, and out of this consideration, at least safe from the usual Jewish uncleanliness?’”? It probably did not occur to Kobylinski that unsanitary conditions in the Jewish quarter might be

connected to the Prussian decree of 8 November 1811, which had crammed the 68 T. Schiper, Siedemset lat gminy zydowskiej w Ptocku (Lw6éw, 1938), 28—30. Schiper refers specific-

ally to R. Judah Leib Margaliot, Or o/am (Frankfurt an der Oder, 1777) and id., Pert tevuah (Nowy

Dwor, 1796). 69 Mahler, Hasidism and the Jewish Enlightenment, 325. 1 Polski stownik biograficzny (Wroctaw, 1967), yearbook 8/2, vol. 57, pp. 157—8.

71 AGAD, CWW 1869, 1-3. 72 Thid. 3.

64 Glenn Dynner nearly 2,000 Jews of Ptock into a ghetto consisting of eight streets. ’* In any case, his low opinion of Jews was now openly acknowledged.

After this diatribe the provincial commissioner attempted to describe the hasidim, who were ‘known by the name “Men of Silk” [Kitajcy], and notorious for their scandals’. They unnecessarily isolated themselves from other Jews, simply because they wished to engage in lengthier services. This was not a sufficient reason: they might simply oblige the rabbi to extend services, which was by no means against _ the dogma of the religion.”* In response, the Komisja Rzadowa Wyznan Religijnych i OSwiecenia Publicznego in Warsaw requested further clarification.”° After Kobylinski’s first report, several Men of Silk approached him and asked not to be prohibited from gathering in private homes for prayer services. Without

yet having received word from the central government if this branch was to be respected as a separate sect, Kobylinski was not sure how to answer them. But he now wished to inform Warsaw that ‘it is known that certain Men of Silk differenti-

ate themselves from other Jewish Men of Silk, and live in mutual hatred’, an

acknowledgement of conflicts between rival tsadikim and their followers. Hasidim , were now so numerous, Kobylinski warned, that they possessed prayer houses in nearly every town in the wosewddztwo.

Kobylinski was particularly desirous of a final resolution because ‘until now,

even despite the great official prohibition, Men of Silk have been able to continue | _ to separate themselves from traditional Jews through payments to lower police officials’,”© a blunt reference to bribery. The time had come to investigate this confession and its general spirit. Did they have harmful laws? Could they be tolerated, - particularly in their present state of hatred against traditional Jews?’” Kobylinski felt that the Komisja Rzadowa Wyznan Religijnych 1 Oswiecenia Publicznego in Warsaw was competent to answer such questions “because the chiefs of this sect are found there [in Warsaw]’. The presence of tsadikim in the capital was apparently common knowledge. “ The hasidic petition which Kobylinski enclosed with his report, the first extant document of its kind, requests ‘the support of peaceful secondary houses of prayer for the supplicants, in Ptock, the 5th day of May, 1818: By the local synagogue are found two prayer houses—a main one and a second, smaller one. In spite of this, we the undersigned under the name Men of Silk maintain a third, similar school for engaging more in other prayers and spiritual learning, which has peacefully existed already for ten years. And its existence is protected by the local police, according to the copy of the annex attached here. As it has been formed upon good religious principles and perfect spiritual, religious knowledge by especially good people, the existence of the said school, _ which is not only fundamentally useful, but also not harmful; as we, the undersigned have carried out every public obligation and burden, both spiritual and governmental, and all 73 J. Szczepariski, Dzieje spolecznosei zydowskiej powiatéw Puttusk 1 Makéw Mazomiecki (Warsaw,

1993), 27; A. Kociszewski, Mazomsze w epoce napoleonskiej (Ciechanow, 1985), 316. ,

™ AGAD, CWW 1869, 4. Tbid. 5. 7 Tbid. 7 Tbid. 8. 78 Ibid. g.

Hasidic Conquest of Central Poland 65 public proclamations, only differing by devoting ourselves longer in other services and spiritual learning, for which we need separate schools; as in the main and smaller synagogue

where the general Jewish population—among them artisans, merchants, etc.—gather to hold services of short duration and we cannot manage our own devotions in such a short amount of time; and as on the second day of this month, the supervisor of the local police arrived and prohibited our conducting prayer and study in this school, we therefore place ourselves in this petition to the wojewédztwo Commission under the highest protection and humbly request for the utmost grace, by virtue of constitutionally guaranteed general tolerance and protection, to maintain peacefully our existing schools. And because our religion obligates us to pray publicly every day, for this reason we request the most speedy gracious resolution, in the hand of Szaie Michel, professing the deepest respect.”

It is signed by ten hasidim on behalf of the hasidic community of Ptock, an indication of how large that community must have been by then.®° This rare exposition in the voices of hasidim (presumably through a hired scribe) emphasizes their separate liturgy, different types of learning, and duration of their services. The hasidim

apparently hoped simply to appear more pious than other Jews, something for which the government officials surely could not fault them. If their prayer house had indeed already existed for ten years, the hasidic movement had been flourishing in this stronghold of Haskalah since 1808, despite what has been claimed.*+

In August, Kobylinski had still not received a reply from the central government; so he announced that, until otherwise advised, he had prohibited hasidic gatherings in private homes.®? By September he was agitated, complaining that ‘as the Men of Silk reside in many cities in the wojewodztwo, they constantly present requests to the wojewddztwo Commission on this matter; which for lack of a final decision from the Government, we have no means of addressing’.8* When Viceroy Zajaczek finally responded on 10 November 1818, however, it could not have been what Kobylinski had hoped for: ‘As there are ceremonial differences between Men of Silk and Jews of the Mosaic persuasion, according to strict tolerance we understand that Men of Silk may be left free to hold their services in homes, and not necessarily in synagogues.’®4 Zajaczek had sided with the hasidim. Doubtlessly frustrated, Kobylinski filled the margins of Zajaczek’s decree with refutations based on a report by a local maskil, ‘a Jew who desires the good of his fellow believers’.2° He sent his comments to Zajaczek in a more polite form four

Tbid. 11. ,

589 Tbid. The hasidic representatives are Samuel Szaja, Szaie Michel, Nathan Cohn, Mendel Salomon, Men[ahem?] David, Fiszel Mons, Mons Samuel, Behr Abraham, Aron (‘Tabzidiwicz), and Isaiah Abraham, ‘in the name of everyone’.

, 81 Cf. D. Kandel, ‘Komitet starozakonnych’, Kwartalnik poswiecony badaniu przesztosci Zydéw w Polsce, ser. 1, 2 (1912), 93.

82 AGAD, CWW 1869, 13. Mahler is mistaken in dating the attempt to ban hasidic minyanim in Plock ‘in the spring of 1824’ (Hasidism and the Fewish Enlightenment, p. 395, no. 15). The attempts

occurred in the summer of 1818. 83 AGAD, CWW 1869, 14. 8¢ Tbid. 16; my emphasis. ®>° No longer extant. Kobylinski summarized the arguments of the maskil to Zajaczek (ibid. 19).

66 Glenn Dynner days later.°° Kobylinski argued that the desire for longer services was not sufficient reason for separate services. He raised new Haskalah-based objections: ‘If they are permitted to have separate services, this could cause the formation of many different sects among Jews, which would hinder all means of their enlightenment. Then, ~ even rabbinical schools such as the one in Warsaw will not effect the enlightenment of this people.’®’ This warning of the hasidic threat to the programme of a hypothetical rabbinical school in Warsaw, whose plan had only been formulated that

very year, was not unfounded. When the rabbinical school finally opened eight years later, the tsadikim led a veritable crusade against it.°° Kobylinski’s protest was to no avail, for just ten days later Zajaczek issued his

final decree. Despite ‘various eccentricities and superstitions which accompany | the ceremonies of their persuasion’, the hasidim were really only guilty of longer synagogue services and stricter religious observance. They in no way opposed the obligations to the laws and regulations of the land, and were therefore entitled to ‘the enjoyment of the liberty and freedom of every other confession in our land’. The hasidim were not to be obstructed in conducting their services in any way.®? The irony of referring to a constitutional principle in a kingdom which so frequently ignored its constitution should not be missed. More curiously, as a proponent of Enlightenment reform and Jewish acculturation, Zajaczek should naturally have supported Kobylinski in battling hasidism. One senses that the wealthy patrons of hasidism in the capital, among them a major creditor of Zajaczek’s, played a decisive behind-the-scenes role in the affair.%°

, Notwithstanding a few final retorts by Kobylinski, hasidism emerged triumphant.9! R. Alexander Zusya of Hanipole, disciple of the tsadik R. Simhah Bunem of Przysucha, soon became rabbi of Ptock.9? Of course, his tenure was not free of 86 AGAD, CWW 1869, 18. The letter is dated 14 ‘lutego’ (February), not ‘listopada’ (November). But, as it is nearly identical in content to the notes scrawled on Zajaczek’s decree of 10 November, it appears that the month is an error. In addition, the first report on hasidism was not even issued until 1 June of that

year. Assigning the letter to February of the next year would not fit the schema either. 87 Thid. 18. 88 Schiper, Przyczynki do dziejéw chasydyzmu, 115; Mahler, Hasidism and the Jewish Enlightenment,

198-200. 89 AGAD, Protokolty Rady Administracyjnej 6, 484, Protocol CCLXXIV; second version in AGAD, CWW 1869, 20. The two versions are roughly identical. 90 On the business ties between the hasidic patron Berek Sonnenberg-Bergson and Zajaczek, see my ‘Men of Silk’, ch. 3, and ‘Merchant Princes and 7sadikim’. 81 Kobyliriski protested that banning hasidism did not limit tolerance, because he wished only to prevent the creation of sects and schisms in Judaism and prevent harm to Jewish customs. He saw no reason why the Men of Silk could not hold their services in the regular synagogue, or at least choose one single house for their services. The Commission on Denominations replied that it was a police matter and not in their jurisdiction (AGAD, CWW 1869, 25).

°2 In 1816 he succeeded R. Israel Markus, who had been rabbi of Ptock for twenty-five years (AGAD, CWW 14209). R. Alexander Zusya was, in turn, succeeded in 1832 by R. Aryeh Leib Zinz of Warsaw, a compromise appointee who was a rationalistic mitnaged and former teacher of the tsadik

R. Isaac Meir Alter of Ger (Schiper, Siedemset lat, 34-5; Abraham Issachar Benjamin of Powienic, Me’tr einet hagolah (‘Tel Aviv, n.d.), 14).

Hasidic Conquest of Central Poland 67 turmoil. R. Isaac Meir Alter, the future tsadik of Ger (Gora Kalwaria), felt compelled to write a letter to the influential Warsaw mitnaged R. Solomon Posner on R. Alexander’s behalf:?° I beseech His Eminence to grant a small thing on behalf of my friend, the great rabbi, av beit din [chairman of the religious court] of Ptock, who is in a dispute with ‘wicked people’ in his city. For they slander him, saying that there are dividing sects among our people, and that no one is fit to be av beit din. And he very much needs His Eminence, may he live, to write a letter there, so that, God forbid, there will be no division among our people. . .”°

The ‘wicked people’ probably refer to the maskilim who, by asserting that ‘no one is

fit to be av beit din’, were challenging the existing Ptock rabbinate and continuing to , influence the Polish authorities. Hasidism, however, had achieved enough accommodation and reconciliation with certain mitnagedim by now to appeal for their help against their common enemies, the maskilim.

Second Phase: The Beit Midrash in Koztentce The memoirs of the countess Anna Potocka contain an aside about an astrologer who introduced himself in the palace of Stanistaw Poniatowski, castellan of Krakow and father of the future king of Poland. The astrologer informed his curious hosts that ‘he was travelling in the interest of science; he wanted to interview a famous rabbi who lived at Kozienice, a little town not far from Wolczyn’.°® The famous rabbi was none other than R. Israel, the Maggid of Kozienice. As Poniatowski was castellan of Krakéw from 1752 until his death in 1762, R. Israel’s fame had already begun to reach the ears of members of Polish high society during his mid-twenties, assuming the accuracy of the account. In this period Kozienice contained the largest concentration of Jews in the Radom wojewddztwo.?' Despite two fires in 1767 (destroying fifteen Jewish houses®®)

and 1782 (destroying 105 Jewish houses), the Jewish population approached 1,240 %3 On Solomon Posner, see Mahler, Hasidism, 189-94; Schiper, Przyczynki do dziejéw chasydyzmu, 117; E. Bergman and J. Jagielski, Zachowane synagogi 1 domy modlitwy w Polsce: Katalog (Warsaw, 1996), 105.

°4 “Anshei beliya’al’ (Deut. 13: 14), referring to those who tempt the Israelites to serve other gods. °° Abraham Issachar Benjamin of Powienic, Me’ir einei hagolah, 15. 9° Memoirs of the Countess Potocka, ed. C. Stryienski, trans. L. Strachey (New York, 1900), 21—2. The astrologer tells the fortunes of Poniatowski’s children, saluting an infant, Stanistaw Augustus, as the future king of Poland. This is not, however, possible. R. Israel of Kozienice (b. 1737) was not yet born when the future king of Poland (b. 1732) was an infant. Moreover, Poniatowski did not become castellan of Krakéw until 1752, when the future king was 20 years old. 97 J. Muszynska, Zydzi w miastach wojewédztwa sandomierskiego i lubelskiego w XVIII wieku (Kielce, 1998), 35.

%8 According to a Jewish petition of 21 Aug. 1767, in Archiwum Paristwowe w Radomiu, WAP, Zarzad Doébr Panstwowych w Radomiu, 7, p. 144, the fire destroyed only fifteen Jewish homes, but also thirty-nine Jewish shops.

68 Glenn Dynner by 1787, comprising 54.9 per cent of the general population.®? Hasidic legend holds that in 1784, after the second fire, R. Israel rebuilt an entire street and donated the houses to the poor./°° On an inventory of Jewish property in Kozienice in 1784, one

of the twenty-nine houses left standing after the fire is owned by a certain Izrael Sabsowicz (i.e. Israel, son of Shabetai), indicating that R. Israel was comfortably established by then.1°! Kozienice was to be the first of three major centres of Polish hasidism, followed by Lublin and Przysucha. The earliest set of testimonies that capture R. Israel’s political ascendancy in Kozienice, from 1773, was published in the anti-hasidic work Shever poshim.'°? While the polemical nature of these testimonies is undeniable, they inadvertently reveal something which the witnesses would not likely have wished to publicize: the weakening of normative rabbinical authority in the face of an ascendant hasidic movement. The first testimony alleges that R. Israel had threatened several distinguished members of the community not to dare to obstruct the hasidic liturgical practice of inserting the passage known as ‘Keter’ in the Kedushah portion of the Musaf prayer.'°? R. Israel had reminded his opponents that another tsadik, R. Levi Isaac of Berdichev, had already burned down the town of Zelech6w when he was expelled, ‘so watch out, and protect your wife and children. If you say the phrase “We will sanctify Thy Name” instead of the Keter, it will really be a sanctification of God’s Name [kidush hashem, i.e. martyrdom]! R. Israel seemed to imply that if they failed to conform to the hasidic mode of worship, they would bring martyrdom upon themselves.'°* While details of this — 99 Muszytiska, Zydzi w miastach, 161 (table 12). Other population figures are 1,042 out of a total of 2,220 inhabitants by 1790 (ibid. 40); Z. Guldon, ‘Gminy wyznania mojzeszowego w powiecie radomskim w XVI-XVIII wieku’, in id., Radom 1 region radomski w dobie szlacheckiey Rzeczypospolitej, ii (Radom, 1996), 158. 100 D. J. ben Raziel and I. ben Feiga Sarah, Kedushat yisra’el, ‘Pa’ar yisra’el’ (Jerusalem, 1956), 22. The year of the fire is given as 1778, which is an error repeated in Rabinowicz, Bein pshishkha, 169. The fire of 1782 left one-third of the town’s population homeless. See Muszynska, Zydzi w miastach, 38. 101 T). Wojciechowski, ‘Inwentarz Kozienic z 1784 roku’, Kieleckie Studia Historyczne, 13 (1995),

227. The house is ‘niewjezdny’, meaning one of the twenty-two houses that did not serve as guest houses. 102 According to a letter written by R. Isaac, the av beit din of Krakow. Rubenstein surmises that the , letter was probably sent while R. Isaac was still in Chelm since he did not become av beit din of Krakow until 1776 (‘He’arot’, 96—7).

103 On the specific denunciation of inserting the Keter prayer, see R. Abraham Katzenellenbogen’s letter of 1784 to R. Levi Isaac, in Wilensky (ed.), Hasidim umitnagedim, i. 128, and commentary. During

the Musaf service the hasidim replace the phrase ‘We worship and sanctify you’ (na’aritsekha venakdishekha) with ‘A crown shall they give to you’ (keter yitenu lekha), perhaps following the Sephardi liturgy. See also Rubinstein, ‘He’arot’, 85; S. Dubnow, Toledot hahasidut (Tel Aviv, 1975), 131, 156. According to legend, the Zelechow fire occurred after R. Levi Isaac was expelled from the town, in 1775 (for dating, see Gutman, 77feret beit levi, 6; Rubenstein, ‘He’arot’, 94). This troubles Wilensky (Hasidim umttnagedim, i. 79), who seems to place too much stock in the legend. 104 Shever poshim 51a, in Wilensky (ed.), Hasidim umitnagedim, ii. 138. Yiddish portions of the testimony are rendered in collaboration with Stephen Simons.

point. , , ,

Hasidic Conquest of Central Poland 69

testimony are in doubt,’ the gist is that R. Israel was feeling quite defiant at this The second set of testimonies involves a controversy over R. Israel’s decision to rule certain meat kosher, which pitted him against the official power structure in Kozienice. The first of the series was related by R. Joseph, who was ‘appointed over the ritual slaughters’. R. Joseph learned that the ritual slaughterer had killed a cow

| belonging to a non-Jew without his supervision. R. Joseph asked, ‘How dare you slaughter and declare it kosher? This is a sick cow belonging to a Gentile; and the butchers have an agreement with the Gentile that if it stays with him it will become non-kosher, and so they won’t have to pay him. A sick cow belonging to a Gentile is forbidden until she can steadily walk four cubits.’ The slaughterer replied that the Maggid of Kozienice had sanctioned his action.

R. Joseph went straight to R. Israel and showed him a passage in the Siftez kohen**® which proved that the cow was not kosher. R. Israel retorted, ‘If it came forth from my mouth, it is kosher. Perhaps there is a soul in the cow, and so God desires that Jews eat the meat in order to redeem the soul.’ R. Joseph replied, ‘I have no business with mystic lore.’ The cow was sold as kosher. Alas, on sabbath eve it was shown that the organ was pierced, indicating that the cow was not kosher, and thus a ‘great damage’ had been done.!® R. Israel’s casual declaration that perhaps a soul required redemption through consumption of the meat in question, a highly contentious use of esoteric lore to justify a legal decision, had paved the way for

a serious dietary transgression.1°° Perhaps equally grievous in the eyes of the authorities, however, was R. Israel’s attempted appropriation of the supervision of slaughtering in Kozienice.’°° The cantor of Kozienice proceeded to confront R. Israel about his stubbornness in refusing to declare the non-Jew’s animal non-kosher, an act which he came to regret. The Maggid called him ‘Evil One’, and claimed that Satan stood at his right hand. As the cantor attempted to reply, R. Israel said, ‘Leave, impure one. You are banned and defiled in this world and the next. You’re still wearing your shoes? ‘Take off your shoes... .’. One of the hasidim called, ‘Let us distance ourselves from him.’ As the cantor again tried to respond on his own behalf, the Maggid repeated, ‘You are banned, etc. And you will force me to pray that you shall be excluded from the 105 Rubenstein calculates that the Ashkenazi alternative to the Keter formula would have been na’aritsekha (‘we worship you’) (‘He’arot’, 86). 106 A commentary on the legal code Shulhan arukh, ‘Yoreh de’ah’. 107 Shever poshim 51a, in Wilensky (ed.), Hasidim umitnagedim, ti. 139; and Rubenstein, ‘He’arot’, 86—7. As Rubenstein points out, the decision protected the kosher slaughterer, whose livelihood would have been affected by rejection of the meat. On slaughtering a non-Jew’s animal, see Siftez kohen, no. 8, on Shulhan arukh, ‘Yoreh de’ah’, ‘Shehitah’, no. 8. 108 R. Israel is also accused of using esoteric means to determine the ritual purity of his wife (Shever poshim 536, in Wilensky (ed.), Hasidim umitnagedim, ii. 141; Rubenstein, ‘He’arot’, 86-7).

109 See Ch. Shmeruk, ‘Hasidism and the Kehilla’, 186-95. :

70 Glenn Dynner cleansing of the Day of Atonement!’!?° The hasidim in Kozienice were audaciously placing mitnagedim under bans, as they themselves had been only two years earlier.

Soon the kahal was involved. Rather than backing down, however, R. Israel hurled threats at the rabbi of Kozienice and the entire kahal, ordering them to beg him and his hasidim for forgiveness in the bezt midrash. He gave them until the recitation of the words ‘Come in peace’, the last verse of the well-known hymn Lekhah dod: recited on sabbath eve, after which there would be no remedy. The messenger was so shaken by this audacity that he asked the rabbi for forgiveness before delivering the message. The rabbi, too, was shocked: ‘Perhaps you are _ mistaken. Perhaps he said that he and his congregation will come to me to ask _ forgiveness? Therefore, go to the Maggid and ask him again.’ But the messenger was ordered to return to the rabbi with the same words, because ‘I’m waiting until “Come in peace”. If the rabbi and kaha/l come and ask forgiveness, all is well. If not, it’s too late.’"? Is such behaviour conceivable for a leader whose movement was under siege? _ One would expect hasidim to be on the defensive so shortly after the wave of antihasidic bans in 1772.'!7 R. Israel’s audacity is less astonishing, however, when we consider that he and his hasidim were holding their services in the bezt midrash. The hasidim of Kozienice had already attained Gottlober’s second stage of ascendancy. Their behaviour should also be understood in the context of the Jewish political situation in Kozienice, for the local leadership was deeply divided at that time.

, Three years before the above testimony the former rabbi of Kozienice—Oszyja J6zefowicz—initiated a lawsuit against the kahal for 3,000 zlotys. R. Oszyja was a powerful and unscrupulous individual who had been accused of assault and theft in a tavern in 1756 while serving as town rabbi. At that time the kaha/ elders and nonJewish authorities sided with R. Oszyja, and he easily emerged victorious. But in 1770 R. Oszyja, described as the ‘former rabbi’, was embroiled in conflict with his former protectors, the kahal. The conflict was only resolved through a financial arrangement whereby the kahal repaid R. Oszyja 3,300 zlotys on condition that he pay 2,500 zlotys to an orphan whom he had wronged. As part of that resolution, the _ kahal emphatically condemned R. Oszyja’s attempts to install his ‘relatives and friends’ as rabbis and judges.!!8

R. Israel may have been implicitly threatening to side with the powerful R. Oszyja, who had been attempting to install his son Solomon as rabbi of Kozienice against the will of the kahal for the past four years. It is possible to speculate that by

| 1792 R. Israel and R. Oszyja had indeed forged an alliance, for that year R. Oszyja

, 110 Wilensky (ed.), Hasidim umitnagedim, it. 139. 111 Tbid. 112 Three waves of traditionalist opposition arose. The first occurred in 1772 in response to the establishment of a hasidic prayer house in Vilna. The second, in 1781, followed the publication of the first hasidic book, Toledot ya’akov yosef (Korzec, 1780). The third phase, sparked by the publication of ~_R. Shneur Zalman of Lyady’s Tanya (Slavuta, 1796), extended into the 19th century. 113 Muszyriska, Zydzi w miastach, 46-8; Guldon, ‘Gminy wyznania mojzesowego’, 157.

Hasidic Conquest of Central Poland 71 secured an agreement which left the town’s top rabbinical post to his son Solomon upon his death.*!* As late as 1816 the Kozienice rabbi is still recorded as Szlomo Szyjowicze (i.e. Solomon, son of [O]szyja), 86 years old.'?° R. Israel, for his part,

was by this time the most powerful figure in Kozienice (if not in all of central Poland), and might easily dictate such local appointments. In 1794 he even allegedly built a synagogue of several storeys in Kozienice.1'®© R. David of Makow alludes to R. Israel’s influence in 1798, warning of ‘frivolous women’ who, ‘during times

of distress flock to build houses for themselves in Kozienice or Neskhiz, _ [Nesukhoyezhe], and lose their wealth for nothing’.'!" R. Israel’s continued acclaim in Kozienice and environs towards the end of his life is reflected in the memoirs of Leon Dembowski (1789-1878), a member of Prince Adam Jerzy Czartoryski’s court. A nobleman named Skowronski was robbed

of 11,000 ducats on his return trip from Danzig. After several years, when the loss had already been forgotten, Skowronski received a letter from ‘the famous Magiet, rabbi in Kozienice, considered to be a saint by Jews’. The letter reported that the money had been recovered and might be reclaimed on condition that the thief was forgiven, that Skowronski would be content with 10,000 ducats (the rest having been squandered by the thief), and that he would not enquire of the rabbi how he discovered the thief. The money was returned under these conditions, and

Prince Czartoryski decided to visit the Maggid ‘to thank him on behalf of his friend’.1!®

Dembowski’s account of the visit illustrates R. Israel’s vast popularity in Kozienice and environs. We are first treated to a description of the town itself, which, apart from Dtuga Street, the large market square, and the royal palace, ‘consisted of dirty, narrow, wooden houses, and muddy formations of streets upon which transport was maintained with the help of coaches’.!'? The prince and his retinue arrived at the residence of the Maggid, whose house was found amid the

dirty streets. They first met the local Jews, who were ecstatic over their distinguished visitors: “The first group shouted, the second sang, and others danced. 14 Ibid. 1S AGAD, CWW 1429, 339. R. Solomon is also noted there as having been rabbi of Kozienice for forty-six years, i.e. since 1770. But we know that the post was to be left to him upon his father’s death, after 1792. Moreover, in that agreement R. Solomon is described as rabbi of Tartow. ‘16 Guldon, ‘Gminy wyznania mojzeszowego’, 158. '17 David of Makow, Zemir aritsim 15a, in Wilensky (ed.), Hasidim umitnagedim, ii. 213. 118 According to a version told among the Polish peasantry, a citizen is robbed of money on the way to Warsaw. The Maggid orders him to wait for three days, consults his holy books, and finds that the thief is among his guests. He asks the citizen to forgive 40 ducats, and the money is returned to him. In another peasant tale the Maggid consults his holy books and discovers the whereabouts of stolen horses. This is an act of revenge against the thief, who had cursed the Jews. See J. Gluzinski, Wloscianie polscy, in K. W. Wojcicki (ed.), Archimum domowe do dziejow 1 literatury krajowe] z rekopisméw 1 dziet najrzadszych (Warsaw, 1856), 537. ‘8 L. Dembowski, Moje mspomnienia (St Petersburg, 1898), 53-4.

72 Glenn Dynner Jew-boys and little brats cried from happiness.’!2° Finally, the noble travellers

: beheld R. Israel himself: Amid this noisy tumult we entered the Magiet’s residence, straight through a hall and into a big room, where behind a partition-wall lay the saint on a pyramid of bedding. He was a little old man [staruszek] of about go years of age, dressed completely in white, with a beard as white as snow reaching all the way down to his belt. His face was full of tiny, narrow wrinkles.'”4

The prince and his court were disappointed, however. Czartoryski began to speak to the Maggid in Polish, and, receiving no answer, tried German. After receiving no response again, the field marshal in the retinue tried to speak to the Maggid in Hebrew, which ‘he knew very well’, but to no avail. Seeing that no word could be extracted from the saint, the prince and his entourage retired to the inn for lunch. On the way out the same enthusiastic crowd of Jews converged, exclaiming,

‘Our Magiet, what a wise man!’ The bewildered memoirist is not sure if such ‘stubborn silence’ should be considered wisdom. But at the same time, he admits, R. Israel was charitable: ‘From all the surrounding lands baskets of contributions for the saint rolled in. He received it all, and on a given Friday distributed whatever came in among the poor. Besides monetary donations, they consumed from 80 to

200 [quarts] of dry goods each week.’!2? By 1814, the probable date of the event, R. Israel had accumulated throngs of admirers in Kozienice and consistent donors from the surrounding towns. !73 Kozienice remained a hasidic centre after R. Israel’s death, when his son Moses Eliyakim Briyah succeeded him and remained in the town. Despite the rarity of father—son succession in central Poland, several of R. Israel’s disciples complied with R. Jacob Isaac of Lublin’s order to pass their allegiance on to their deceased master’s son.!“4 On 26 March 1824 the central government instructed the district 20 Dembowski, Moje mspomnienia, 55. From 1778 to 1780 a traveller named Johann Phillippe de Carosi who passed through Poland recalls being assaulted by crowds of Jewish children in Kozienice. He

could only disperse them by pretending to be crazy and potentially dangerous. N. Gelber, ‘Oyslenishe rayznde vegn poylishe yidn inem 18 yahrhundert’, in A. Czerikower (ed.), Historishe schriften, i (Warsaw,

121 Ibid. 122 Tbid.; my emphasis.

1929), 241.

_ 123 Pawet Hertz has calculated that Czartoryski’s visit to Kozienice occurred from 1786 to 1787;

however, Dembowski had not even been born at that time. It is more likely that the visit occurred after the war of 1812 because, loyal to Napoleon, Dembowski only agreed to re-enter Czartoryski’s service after Bonaparte’s demise. This would place the event slightly before R. Israel’s death in 1814, when Dembowski was 25 years old. See ‘Rabbi Izrael z Kozienic i ksigze Adam Czartoryski’, W drodze, 9/133

~ (1984), 3-7. According to hasidic legend, the prince visited the Maggid to obtain a blessing in order that his wife might conceive, which occurred soon after. Prince Czartoryski’s sceptical brother, however, mentioned his healthy son before the Maggid in jest, telling him that he was actually ill. The Maggid instructed him to run home, because his son was on the brink of death. Indeed, the sceptic found his son dead when he returned. Ben Raziel and ben Feiga Sarah, Kedushat yisra’el, Pa’ar yisra’el, 21.

, 124 Abraham Issachar Benjamin of Powienic, Me’ir einei hagolah, 23. But the most prominent disciples, such as R. Isaac Meir Alter, future tsadik of Ger, soon transferred their allegiance to the tsadik Simhah Bunem of Przysucha (ibid. 259).

Hasidic Conquest of Central Poland 73 commissioners to attempt through ‘knowledge and persuasion to return them [1.e. the hasidim] from their errors’. The order to the Sandomierz commissioner con-

tained an addendum singling out the rabbis of Przysucha and Kozienice, who ‘under some pretext gather contributions or give advice and prophetic opinions for which Jewish folk, particularly masses of sectarians, frequently gather’.’*? On 29 September 1826 the Christian missionary W. F. Becker referred to Kozienice as ‘a chief seat of the Chasidim, where they have a famous rabbi’.'“° Both accounts attest to the continued prominence of hasidism in Kozienice.

Third Phase: Invasion of the Olkusz Synagogue In 1817 at least five hasidim of Olkusz—Michael Friedman, Isaac Rosenheim, Joachim Nayman, Solomon Hayman, and Jonas Rosenheim—invaded the main synagogue, the third rung on the ladder of local conquest. A brawl erupted in the synagogue, eliciting a formal complaint by the mitnagedim and a government inquiry into the new sect.!2” The ensuing investigation only revealed the weakness

of the mitnagedim and the power of the hasidim. When brought before the wojewodztwo authorities, the mitnagedim retreated from their initial complaints. The Jewish community of Olkusz, a mining town known for its silver and lead deposits, consisted of only 162 members in 1765. But it had substantial influence in

the region. After a jurisdictional dispute with the town of Kazimierz in 1779 the Olkusz kahal emerged with a domain consisting of the towns of Czarnowice, Wielka Wies, Kazniowce, Rudawy, and Mtynki.'7° In 1817, in the wake of the synagogue brawl, a formal complaint was lodged —

against members of a sect called ‘Michatki’, who would turn out to be hasidim. ‘Michatki’, bearing the additional meaning of ‘fools’ in old Polish, was derived from the name of one of the hasidim, Michael (Michat) Friedman. A mitnaged involved in the ruckus, Jacob Brull, lodged a complaint against Friedman and his colleagues,

Isaac Rosenheim, Joachim Nayman, Solomon Hayman, and Jonas Rosenheim. It was they who had caused the fist-fight by forming a new religion among Jews called Michatki, ‘which is causing division among the inhabitants of Olkusz of the Jewish faith’. As only the Jewish religion itself was acknowledged by the Constitution of the kingdom as tolerated, and as Jews did not want their religion undermined by the formation of new sects, Brull requested protection against his oppressors./9 The court requested that the Commission of the Krak6w wojewoédztwo explain

whether the formation of such new sects was in violation of the Constitution.'°° The police appeared less concerned about the violence in the synagogue than over 125 R. Mahler, Hahasidut vehahaskalah (Merhavyah, 1961), app. 13g, p. 486. 126 W.F. Becker, in Jewish Expositor and Friend of Israel, 11 (1826), 229. 127 The case is summarized by Salezy Majmon in [zraelita, 40 (Warsaw, 1894), ‘Luzne kartki’, 329, but contains errors, omissions, and embellishments. I quote from APKch, RGR I, 4399. 128 M. Bataban, Studja historyczne (Warsaw, 1927), 151-61.

129 APKch, RGR I, 4399, 1. 130 Thid. 2.

74 Glenn Dynner the broader question of whether new sects constituted a violation of the protection of the Jewish religion, as Brull and his colleagues maintained. The commissioner ordered an investigation, seeking to establish if the Michatki sect actually existed; how long it had existed; whether many people belonged to it; how far its branches reached; who founded it; to what extent it differed from the Jewish religion; what its purpose was; and whether it held morally harmful principles.1*" Several months later the commissioner of Olkusz informed the commissioner of the Krakow wojewodztwo that, owing to serious difficulties, he would have to delay his inquiry into the sects cited in the report. However, the commissioner wished to mention that ‘there is a similar sect called hasidism [Hasuty] which is found in every town where Jews reside, and is merely strictioris observantia’.'®* Although the

local commissioner was not yet able to set up a full inquiry, he at least noticed a similarity between the supposed ‘Michatki’ sect and hasidism, which only demanded stricter observance than normative Judaism. The next report contains the startling discovery that ‘no Michatki sect exists at all—only hasidim, who only differ from other Jews in their use of different books for prayer, with which they pray in separate places. There is no reason to obstruct the hasidim.’!°* The hasidim had been labelled ‘Michatki’ by their local opponent Jacob Brull out of hatred for his assailant Michael Friedman. The hasidim had been prohibited by the past regime, according to the Jew Ziskind Rosenheim; ‘however, this cannot be substantiated’. In addition, according to Rosenheim, a leader of the sect who resided in Stopnica was behaving like a prophet. He attracted less enlight-

ened Jews to himself and commanded them to ‘purchase redemption from him,

with hasidim.

under the rubric of donations’.!** The authorities now knew that they were dealing

Attached to the report are the proceedings of an interrogation of mitnagedim from 29 October 1818. Jacob Brull was the first to be questioned: 1. Do you persist in your petition to the Olkusz police court on 6 December 1817 to the , protocols that in the town of Olkusz is found a separate sect of Jews under the specific name Michatki, and do you insist that this sect and its followers exist? Answer: My petition to the Olkusz police court on 6 December 1817 raised in the protocols is acknowledged and insisted upon. 2. What proof do you have that this sect exists in Olkusz, and does it exist in other cities, and what is more, how does it differ from your ancient religion, and do the rabbis not scorn those who belong to the Michatki sect, and command you to disconnect yourselves from this sect if you do belong to it? Answer: That this sect is found here in Olkusz is proven by other Jews who reside here, because they celebrate one type of service and we another. But I called them Michat because

the oldest one of them who lives in Olkusz is named Michat Friedman. But they have always called themselves hasidim, and are found in every city in the district. The main difference between our ancient religion and the hasidim is that they recite the prayer

131 APKch, RGR I, 4399, 3-4. 182 Thid. 12. 133 Tbid. 14. 134 Tbid. 15.

Hasidic Conquest of Central Poland 75 Twiles swert'*° and we according to ancient custom and rites 7wiles aschkenas.'*° Our rabbis do not have any objection to this sect, within which several themselves are to be found. 3. Do the ceremonies of these Michatki members, or hasidim as they are called by you, not entail something which might be contrary to the laws of the state? Or harmful to your

religion? |

Here, Brull requested a few days to prepare his answer. On 2 November he returned and informed the commission that he knew little more about the hasidim, other than their use of different prayer books, and appealed to the commission to call Meir Blumberg of Pilica ‘who is better informed about this’. The commission then asked Brull if he had anything to add to or change, to which Brull cautiously replied: ‘I would only like to add that you will not arrive at the truth about this sect from rabbis who belong to it. But it would be better to call the local Jew Ziskind Rosenheim, who does not belong to this sect—because he is better informed than I.’ Brull may have been back-pedalling, but he still did not want the commission to hear the hasidic perspective.

The commission next called upon Joshua Landau, rabbi of Pilica, who was questioned because ‘no rabbi exists in the town of Olkusz’, owing to the departure of the former rabbi, Samuel Unger.'®” No reason is supplied for Unger’s recent departure for Pilica; but he did not assume a rabbinical post there, which had been held by the above-mentioned R. Joshua Landau since 1806.!°° Perhaps Unger’s departure was related to the hasidic—mitnagdic conflict, but we cannot be certain. The commission only asked him: ‘Does the sect called Michatki or hasidism actually

exist among Jews?’, to which R. Landau replied: |

Of any sect called Michatki we are not informed, and if there is I never heard of it. I only know that among us Jews there are certain Jews whom we call hasidim. They use books called Tiles swert in their prayers, which have certain changes and additions, corrected by ancient, enlightened men. But such Jews do not differentiate themselves in so far as religion and laws of the great state—for other laws would not be tolerated. These Jews are, I believe, less enlightened. ‘That is why they pray in separate schools. And this causes them to have certain changes and additions, as I related above. And in order not to disturb others, they pray in separate places.

The final subject of the interrogation was Ziskind Rosenheim, who was asked, ‘Is _ it known that the sect called Michatki or hasidim actually exists among Jews, how 135 Sefarad liturgy, a combination of the Sephardi and Ashkenazi. See n. 1 above. 186 Ashkenazi liturgy. ‘87 ‘This is confirmed in the official register of town rabbis for 1816, which states that the Olkusz

rabbi was ‘Samuel Unger, born in Pilica, 54 years old, rabbi since 3 years ago, elected by the kahal Elders and community. But four months ago he left his office and returned to Pilica. The kahal has the responsibility to hold elections, without which there can be no succession’ (AGAD, CWW 14209).

‘88 Ibid. 167. The name appears as ‘Izyia Lande’, who may be a relative of Joshua’s rather than _ Joshua himself. But the rendering of such names by the local officials is sometimes not very precise.

76 Glenn Dynner do they differ from your religion, and are many people in your congregation found among them?’ Rosenheim answered: Of any sect called Michatki I do not know. I only know that among us Jews there are certain Jews whom they call hasidim. Jacob Brull, out of hatred, called them Michatki because he is involved in a lawsuit with Michat Friedman, who belongs to the hasidim. This hasidic sect was prohibited by the previous Austrian government’s (... ) Cesarz decree; no one was even allowed to let a hasid spend the night with them. But the elders here lost the decree. And truthfully may I say that this hasidic sect is harmful to our community, as some of these

hasidim act as prophets. There is one in Stopnica—whose name I do not know—who attracts less enlightened Jews and commands them to pay redemption money under the

rubric of donations. °° | The ‘prophet’ was undoubtedly the tsadik R. Meir of Stavniz (Yiddish for Stopnica; 1760-1831), who was the official rabbi of Stopnica in 1814 and formally stepped _ down in favour of his son in 1817.19

The restrained responses of these mitnagedim and their apparent inability to supply detailed information about hasidism may well astonish those who are con- -versant with mitnagdic literature. This is a far cry from the scurrilous accounts of the eighteenth century. Brull and Landau were only aware of liturgical differences,

instituted by ‘ancient enlightened men’, leading the hasidim to found separate prayer houses ‘in order not to disturb others’—hardly incriminating claims. No mention was made of the five hasidim who assaulted Brull, who acknowledged that ‘our rabbis do not have any objection to this sect, within which several themselves are to be found’. Landau assured the authorities that the hasidim most certainly did not oppose the laws of the state. Only Rosenheim supplied potentially damaging — testimony, but undermined his own credibility by referring to an Austrian decree that had somehow been lost, and to a prophet in Stopnica whom he could not even identify. One cannot rule out the possibility that involving the non-Jewish authorities was considered going too far; hence the extremely measured responses. Nor is it impos-

, sible that fear of hasidic reprisal dampened the respondents’ zeal. Be that as it may, their timid responses further indicate an overall weakening of mitnagdic resolve in the second decade of the nineteenth century. Landau and Rosenheim’s appeal to _ Haskalah terminology, depicting hasidim as ‘less enlightened’, only suggests the 139° APKch, RGR I, 4399, 16-21. The omission points in angle brackets represent an illegible portion

of the document, but refer to an alleged decree by the Habsburg emperor. According to Mahler (Hasidism and the femish Enlightenment, 70-1), the Austrian government merely designated the hasidim

as freemasons in 1814. In 1816 the new president of the court police commission accused the hasidim , of ‘strange, imaginary offences’ and deemed them ‘enemies of “education”’. He asked the Galician governor’s office to keep a close watch on the sect and ‘if possible to suppress it altogether’. But this was the extent of Austrian measures to date.

40 AGAD, CWW 1429, 165; APKch, RGR I, 4402, 8—14, 30-2. Also known as R. Meir of Apt

(Opatow). :

| Hasidic Conquest of Central Poland 77 widening influence of the Haskalah. The authorities were forced to conclude that ‘it appears that there is some sect of Hussyty among Jews’, but it remained unknown when they appeared and what they stood for.!*! After a few more exchanges among officials, the matter was dropped.'** The hasidim would now be able to dominate the synagogue unimpeded.

Fourth Phase: Zelechéw In the town of Zelechéw hasidism reached the most advanced stage of conquest quite early. The controversial tsadik Levi Isaac of Berdichev, author of Kedushat levi (Slavuta, 1798),!43 served as rabbi of Zelechow from 1765 until his expulsion by the mitnagedim ten years later, in 1775. His term was stormy, despite (or perhaps as

a result of) his apparent efforts to establish a large synagogue, implement ritual reforms (takanot), and organize study fellowships for tailors, bakers, and simple merchants.!44 The rabbi also faced opposition from other hasidic leaders.'*°

In the available testimony R. Levi Isaac appears not only quarrelsome, but equally given to bouts of depression. According to the tsadik Judah Jehiel Safrin of Komarno, those quarrels ‘used to depress him beyond measure. And in the year

| 1773, owing to his terrible loss of heart, he fell from his lofty level... and prayed rapidly from his small prayer book, and went a little out of his mind, as is known’./*° R. Abraham of Pinczow recounts, “The Holy Maggid [R. Israel] of Kozienice, his

disciple, helped him a great deal, and said that obviously in heaven they had not caused him to fall from his lofty level, God forbid, but that in heaven above there was also an accusation that he [R. Levi Isaac] had provoked the supernal angels that year, and that because of this it was impossible to help him.’!4” When R. Abraham | was with R. Levi Isaac in 1794, after he had ‘returned to his great level in brilliant light’, R. Levi Isaac confessed to him that he was depressed again.!*®

The tsadik’s controversial nature finds expression in an event in the Zelechow beit midrash in 1773, which also involved R. Israel of Kozienice. The incident may have contributed to R. Levi Isaac’s dismissal from the Zelechéw rabbinate two years later. According to the testimony of a mitnaged, the hasidim circled with

41 APKch, RGR I, 4399, 23.

142 §. Majmon, in /zraelita, 40, claims that the authorities resolved that the hasidim were ‘harmless’. The assertion does not, however, appear in this collection of documents. ‘4° This edition contains only portions of the work that subsequent editions contain. ‘44 W. Jasni (ed.), Yizkor bukh fun der zelekhover yidishe kehile (Chicago, 1953), 22; S. Dresner, The World of a Hasidic Master: Levt Yitzhak of Berditchev (Northvale, NJ, 1994), 26—7.

“® Tna letter to R. Israel of Kozienice, which has been dated between 1802 and 1807, the tsadik Asher

of Stolin recalls: ‘when I was in the community of Zelechéw, I had several mishaps, and with God’s help I steered a middle course’. The mishaps have been identified as disputes with R. Levi Isaac. See

R. Asher of Stolin’s letter to R. Israel of Kozienice, in D. Z. Heilman (ed.), [gerot ba’al hatanya (Jerusalem, 1953), 184; Rabinowitch, Lithuanian Hasidism, 49, 68, 71. 146 Alexander Sender of Komarno, Zot haberakhah (Jerusalem, 1999), 23.

147 Tbid. 23-4. 148 Tbid. 24.

78 , Glenn Dynner the Torah scroll on Shemini Atseret eve, something which non-hasidim only do on Simhat Torah eve, and mocked a rabbi who was distinguished in Torah learning. R. Israel stood on a table and ‘screamed all sorts of mockery and bad words and bad numerical combinations [gematriyot] against this rabbi who is not of their sect. ~ Words which should not even be put in writing, etc.’ R. Israel and R. Levi Isaac then ordered the sexton to cry, ‘A Gentile does not bless an etrog’, and everyone answered, “True!” and again began to curse the rabbi. The sexton announced, ‘A Gentile doesn’t blow shofar,’ and they all again answered, “True!’ The next morning during the circling with the Torah scroll, R. Israel and R. Levi Isaac and the hasidim announced, ‘All is good for one who prays Keter. And upon whomever impedes the recitation of Keter shall be invoked all bans and curses, etc.,’ and

everyone replied, “True!’'*9 |

R. Levi Isaac, despite his position as av beit din of Zelechéw, had participated in R. Israel’s mockery of a respected rabbi and threatened those who would deny the hasidic mode of worship.!®° Having advanced to the highest phase in Zelechow, he and his followers were emboldened to the point of carelessness. They were soon reminded that their conquest was not yet consolidated. R. Levi Isaac was forced to depart in 1775, leading to a demographic loss of about 300 Jews in the town.'?' The

fire which raged in Zelechéw is claimed by tradition to have accompanied his departure; however, it actually seems to have occurred a few years earlier.’* Nevertheless, the expulsion shook the hasidic world.!°?

, In spite of this setback, Zelechow did not revert permanently to non-hasidic leadership, nor did R. Levi Isaac’s influence cease there. The wedding of R. Jacob Isaac’s grandson and the daughter of R. Avigdor, rabbi of Zelechéw, as recalled 149 Shever poshim 52b, in Wilensky (ed.), Hasidim umitnagedim, ii. 140.

‘°° Tbid. Wilensky has reservations about identifying the magid as R. Israel of Kozienice, because considering R. Israel’s well-known physical frailty, travelling to Zelechow and standing on the table would have been difficult. But these are weak grounds for dismissing the identification, especially as Wilensky suggests no alternative. See Hasidim umitnagedim, 1. 81. Abraham Rubenstein, on the other hand, posits the above identification (“He’arot’, 95). Rubenstein dates the testimony to 1773.

_ 1! According to one count, the number of Jews in Zelech6w amounted to 1,464 in 1765, when R. Levi Isaac began his tenure. By 1790 that number had dropped to 1,165. See Muszynska, Zydzt w miastach, 151 (table 5).

152 Wilensky (ed.), Hasidim umitnagedim, i. 79, 11. 138; Gutman, Tiferet beit levi, 6; Rubenstein, ‘He’arot’, 94. 153 R Eleazar of Lezajsk turned to his father, the tsadik Elimelekh, for an explanation; he responded: ‘Why do you imagine that this is in any way a new thing? Things of this kind transpired from the earli-

est times. We find that Nimrod cast our father Abraham, on whom be peace, into the fiery furnace, from which he escaped in safety. . . . [Just as the biblical Abraham was tested] so, too, all the tsadikim who have opponents [mitnagedim] will be justified. These rise against them, speaking falsehoods and determined to quarrel. Yet our eyes see how righteous the tsadikim are, for their prayers are , answered just as the prayers of the righteous were in ancient times’ (Eleazar ben Elimelekh of Lezajsk, Igeret hakodesh, in Nigal (ed.), No’am elimelekh, app., p. 591; trans. L. Jacobs in The Femish Mystics (London, 1990), 197-200).

Hasidic Conquest of Central Poland 79 by Abraham Zusman, demonstrates the authority which the tsadikim (including R. Levi Isaac himself) continued to enjoy in the town around 1804: When I was 7 or 8 years old, there was a great wedding in Zelechéw. For the holy rabbi Jacob Isaac (the Seer) of Lublin... married his dear grandson Moteli (as he was called at that time)

with the daughter of the princely rabbi Avigdor of Zelechow.1*4 . . . And there at the wedding was the holy, old Maggid our pure rabbi Israel of Kozienice . . . and also the aforementioned rabbi of Lublin, and also their great disciples and disciples of those disciples and many hasidim from far and near without number. And all the houses of the city were not enough for them, and they nearly had to sleep outside. And the wedding was on Friday, the evening of the sabbath. And during the preceding week their great disciples (with many of their own hasidim) had come to Zelechéw. And I cannot remember their specific names, except for the tsadik, our rabbi Jacob Simon, because the aforementioned holy ones made him at this time rabbi of Zelechéw on the condition that the genius and rabbi, the man of

God, our rabbi Levi Isaac of Berdichev, agreed to it, for the Zelechéw rabbinate had belonged to him. And the aforementioned holy ones wrote and signed the rabbinical con-

tract and sent it to Berdyczow and asked him to agree with them and forgive him the rabbinate and sign the rabbinical contract himself, and he did so. And [R. Jacob Simon] remained rabbi of Zelechéw many years. . .15°

For reasons unknown, the father of the bride, R. Avigdor, was being replaced as

rabbi of Zelech6w. The new appointee, R. Jacob Simon, known as R. Simon Deutch, was a prominent disciple of R. Jacob Isaac of Lublin and an arch-opponent of Przysucha hasidism.'°® Before appointing him, R. Israel and R. Jacob Isaac felt compelled to gain R. Levi Isaac’s consent. The second part of Zusman’s account illustrates the vast appeal of the tsadz:kim for the Jews of Zelechéw, including members of the highest social strata: And on the fourth day before the wedding our rabbi of Lublin came to Zelechow, and all the ereat ones and many hasidim, and all the great ones of the city went out to call on him in carriages and on foot. And in the evening they arrived at the city with him in great joy and surrounded him with their carriages. In the shops which stood at the centre of the market were many great torches, and there were candles lit in all the windows of the houses. And it is not possible to imagine or describe [in words] the joy that existed then in all the city, still

less in writing. And the next day the aforementioned old, holy Maggid of Kozienice came, and they also paid him all of the respect they had given to [the rabbi of Lublin] on the pre-

vious day...

This resplendent Jewish gathering reminds the reader of the fallacy of characterizing Polish Jews as a ‘minority’, in light of their enormous presence in many 154 Perhaps he is the Bigdor Szlamowicz registered as a homeowner in Zelechéw in 1789 (Muszyniska, Zydzi w miastach, 162, table 13). 155 A. Zusman, Barukh mibanim (Vilna, 1869), 97-8. 156 Abraham Issachar Benjamin of Powienic, Me’ir einei hagolah, 41~7; Walden, Niflaot harabi, in Sefarim kedoshim mitalmidet haba’al shem tov, ii (Brooklyn, NY, 1985), 37. 66.

80 Glenn Dynner towns and cities.1°7 According to figures compiled in 1787, the Jews of Zelech6w amounted to 70.7 per cent of the population and owned almost half the houses of the town.!°®

At the wedding the great ones made their entrance. R. Jacob Simon was accorded the honour of escorting R. Israel, who proceeded to perform the wedding ceremony with R. Jacob Isaac of Lublin. And on Friday afternoon there was a hupah [wedding canopy] in front of the synagogue. And I remember that on that same day it was muddy outside, and they placed boards on the ground from the holy Maggid’s house until the entrance of the synagogue. And I saw with my own eyes that the holy Maggid walked on the boards and the aforementioned rabbi and tsadik Jacob Simon, walked beside him in the mud and held onto the holy Maggid’s right hand. And another great one walked on the other side and held the holy Maggid’s left hand. The holy Maggid made the betrothal and marriage blessings. And our holy rabbi of Lublin read the betrothal agreement. (The holy Maggid was a short man and older than our holy rabbi of Lublin.) At the third meal of the holy sabbath the two holy ones did not eat together in one house, but rather each one ate in his own lodging. And where they prayed on sabbath eve and morning I do not remember now. And before the afternoon prayer of the sabbath the holy Maggid of Kozienice came to the synagogue and preached on the podium. And our holy rabbi of Lublin was also there in the synagogue, and heard the sermon.!°?

These events occurred in the main synagogue, which, in addition to the appointment of R. Simon Deutch, confirms the hasidic reassertion of control in Zelechéw approximately thirty years after R. Levi Isaac’s banishment. Continued hasidic prominence there prior to 1823 is verified in a police report from that year, which divides hasidim into two adversarial groups: adherents of the rabbi of Zelechow (R. Simon Deutch), who had now moved to Radzyn, and those of the rabbi of Przysucha (R. Simhah Bunem).'©° At least until R. Simon Deutch’s departure hasidim dominated the local synagogue and rabbinate.

, CONCLUSION The above cases are but four illustrations of the ubiquity of hasidism in Polish Jewish society by the second quarter of the nineteenth century. Much to the dismay of the movement’s formidable opponents, the small towns surveyed—as well as 157 On that faulty designation, see most recently Hundert, “The Contexts of Hasidism’, 177, 182. 18 Muszyniska, Zydzt w miastach, 168 (table 17).

159 Zusman, Barukh mibanim, 98. The last portion testifies to the writer’s concern with presenting the affair accurately: ‘And with my own eyes I saw this, may his memory be for a blessing, if it be his will, amen, amen. And even though this event was almost sixty years ago, and now it is 1864, praise God that I remember most of it as well as if it were yesterday. And everything that I have written is true and sure. And just as I merited to see the happiness of this wedding, may the Holy One, blessed be he, merit

me and all the children of Israel to see the happiness of the building of Jerusalem and the Temple

speedily in our day, amen, amen.’ 160 AGAD, CWW 1871, 12-13.

Hasidic Conquest of Central Poland 81 many other towns in the region—succumbed at one level or another to the persistent efforts of hasidic emissaries and adherents despite formidable resistance. In Ptock, where the maskilim were unusually influential, a lengthy battle ensued over the mere maintenance of a separate hasidic prayer house. In Kozienice the conflict raged after the hasidim had established a presence in the main beit midrash and R. Israel asserted his authority over kosher slaughtering. In Olkusz the struggle

concerned the main synagogue. And in Zelechéw the rabbinate itself was the coveted domain. In each case, the hasidim prevailed regardless of the stature of their adversaries, whether Ptock maskilim, the Ptock commissioner himself, the Kozienice kahal, or Olkusz and Zelechow mitnagedim. The outcome nearly always favoured a hasidic advance into a new stratum of the local communal power structure. Where the incursions went far enough, distinctions between the kaha/ and the hasidic court to which the kahal members owed their allegiance all but disappeared. The town and its kahal were now a hasidic domain.

The recontextualization of hasidism, an endeavour first realized in Moshe Rosman’s Founder of Hasidism, forces one to relinquish some of the impressions

conveyed in intellectual history, hagiography, and much of the older historiography. The rise of Polish hasidism is not only a story of brilliant doctrinal innovation by charismatic leaders, for the tsadikim were equally effective in the social and political spheres. What distinguished hasidism and practically guaranteed its

triumph was its combination of a popular spiritual message with tangible social and political might, accumulated and preserved paradoxically through both elitism and populism. While a consideration of their more mundane pursuits and aggressive political manoeuvrings may demystify the tsadikim, one gains manifold recompense beholding the complexity of their personalities and activities. No less fascinating are the followers of the tsadikim, the ‘hasidim’, who hailed from many social spheres. Hasidism appealed to all types, from humble artisans in the shetl to sophisticated international merchants in Warsaw. Were hasidism really restricted to simple, déclassé Jews, as the older historiography assumes, its survival and success would have been unfeasible in a society as hierarchical as that of east European Jewry. The rise of hasidism must rather be understood as the product of a partnership between a handful of Jewish notables and rabbis and the Jewish masses. The patronage of hasidism by the urban elite and the bold incursions upon local religious life by tsad:kim and rank-and-file hasidim were complementary.

Together, these disparate social groups unleashed the torrent of hasidism that swept eastern and east-central Europe in the early nineteenth century.

: BLANK PAGE |

‘The Drama of Berdichev: Levi Yitshak and his ‘Town YOHANAN PETROVSKY-SHTERN

IN Jewish popular memory Levi Yitshak ben Meir (1740-1809), the Berdichever Rebbe, is a hero par excellence, the protector of the Jewish people before God, the friend of the simple folk, and ‘a favorite of hasidic folklore’'—as if it were he, and not Abraham Joshua Heschel, the Apter Rebbe of nearby Medzhybizh, who wrote Ohev yisra’el and was given the same title, the “Lover of Israel’. Why has Levi Yitshak merited such esteem and popularity? He was not the only tsadik elected chief rabbi of a town. He established neither a hasidic court nor a long-lasting dynasty. Also, he was neither persecuted nor arrested by the Russian police like Yisrael of Ruzhyn. And he did not die a martyr’s death, as his disciple Moshe Tsevi of Savran did while tending to sick Jews during a cholera epidemic. Nor could he boast the pedigree of Ephraim of Sudylk6w, grandson of the Ba’al Shem Tov. Contemporary minute books from Podolia and Volhynia reflecting the impact of tsadikim on Jewish self-governing societies seem remarkably reticent about him. According to primary sources, Samson of Shepetovka and Abraham Joshua Heschel enjoyed much greater influence and popularity throughout the region adjacent to Berdichev than Levi Yitshak himself. Opponents of hasidism persecuted Ya’akov Yosef of Polonnoe no less than they did the rebbe of Berdichev. Finally, Shneur Zalman of Lyady’s intercession with the Russian government on behalf of Jews and hasidim was much greater than Levi Yitshak’s. Thus, against the background of contemporary hasidic leaders, Levi Yitshak looks commonplace or at least not particularly charismatic. And yet his legendary fame far exceeds that of other tsadikim. This is the puzzle that the historian encounters when conducting research on Levi Yitshak.

One way to untangle this problem is to examine Levi Yitshak’s social and cultural environment. Popular memory is influenced not only by the wonders This chapter was inspired by the discussion of Kedushat levi, Levi Yitshak’s book of homilies, at Brandeis University seminars led by Arthur Green in 1997-8. ' See A. Green, Tormented Master: A Life of Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav (Woodstock, NY, 1992), 95;

S. A. Horodetsky, Leaders of Hasidism (London, 1928), 46; M. J. Luckens, ‘Rabbi Levi Itzhak of Berdichev’, Ph.D. thesis (Temple University, 1974), 95-6; D. Shapiro, ‘Levi Itzhak of Berditchev (Prolegomenon)’, in L. Jung (ed.), Men of Spirit (New York, 1964), 412.

, 84 Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern performed by tsadikim, but also by the social factors that form a dark, almost invisible backdrop against which the tsadtk is placed. The darker the backdrop, the more

scintillating the tsadik’s holiness becomes. Jewish popular memory has firmly linked Levi Yitshak to Berdichev (Russian: Berdichev; Ukrainian: Berdychiv; Polish: Berdyczéw) and not to Zelechow or Pinsk, his previous rabbinic tenures.” It seems logical, therefore, to reconstruct Berdichev’s outlook at the turn of the eighteenth century and to examine whether it contributed to the reputation of Levi Yitshak.?

BERDICHEV: FIRST AMONG EQUALS Contrary to later legends that depict Berdichev as just another filthy, ugly, decrepit,

and moribund Kasrilevke,* between 1780 and 1830 Berdichev was the most “ Levi Yitshak’s biography, and especially the analysis of his almost twenty-five-year tenure in Berdichev, has yet to be written. Most authors view his life as divided in two, with the first period described as one of continuous persecution, and the second as a stable and happy span briefly interrupted by his depression in 1793, the conflicts around R. Nahman of Bratslav in 1802-3, and the death of his son Meir in 1806. Among the sources on various aspects of his biography there are quite a few worth mentioning. For an analysis of Levi Yitshak’s stance on the polemic between hasidim and their opponents, see S. H. Dresner, Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev: Portrait of a Hasidic Master (New York, 1974), 26-8, 36 ff.; H. Liberman, ‘Seder harabanut shel r. levi yitshak miberditchev’, in his Ohel rahel (New York, 1980), 66-9; G. Nigal, ‘Kehilot pinsk-karlin bein hasidut lehitnagdut’, in D. Assaf (ed.), Tsadtk ve’edah (Jerusalem, 2001), 338-41, W. Z. Rabinowitch, Lithuanian Hasidism from tts Beginnings to the Present Day (London, 1970), 25-40; A. Rapoport-Albert (ed.), Hasidism Reappraised (London, 1996), index; M. Wilensky (ed.), Hasidim umitnagedim, 2 vols. (Jerusalem, 1970), i. 122-31; S. Dubnow, Toledot hahasidut (Tel Aviv, 1944), 151-3, 193-204, 309-12. Levi Yitshak’s social and communal leadership in the context of government reforms targeting the Jews launched in pre-partition Poland and in Russia is discussed in Y. Halpern, ‘Rabi levi yitshak miberdichev vegezerot hamalkut beyamav’, in his Yehudim veyahadut bemizrah-eiropah (Jerusalem, 1968), 340-7. A preliminary analysis of some

pivotal issues in Levi Yitshak’s philosophy is provided in Shapiro, ‘Levi Itzhak of Berditchev (Prolegomenon)’, 405—14; see also Luckens, ‘Rabbi Levi Itzhak of Berdichev’, 58-96; S. A. Horodetsky, Hahastdut vehahasidim (Berlin, 1923), 11. 73-96. For an analysis of Levi Yitshak’s role in introducing hasidic prayer rituals, see G. Dynner, ‘Men of Silk: The Hasidic Conquest of Polish Jewry, 1754-1830’,

Ph.D. diss. (Brandeis University, 2002), 58-60. Among traditional hagiographies containing important data, the most noteworthy are I. Erlich, Radi levi yitshak miberdichev (Tel Aviv, 1986); Y. Shostik, Mehts yosher: Fun dem heyligen tsadik mefursom der groyser mamlits toyv af yedn yidn rabi leyvi yitshok fun

bardichuv (Lviv, n.d.); S. Gutman, Tiferet beit levi (Iasi, 1909). Additional biographical material is scattered among the hasidic primary sources. For the description of Levi Yitshak’s depression, see Yitshak Ayzik of Komarno, Otsar hahayim veheikhal haberakhah (Lviv, 1864), 50-2; for Levi Yitshak’s

understanding of hasidic prayer, see Igeret hakodesh, in Elimelekh of Lezajsk, No’am elimelekh (Jerusalem, 2001), 455-67.

| 3 Methodologically, this chapter follows Rosman’s portrayal of the Ba’al Shem Tov as a man of his time and place. See M. Rosman, Founder of Hasidism: A Quest for the Historical Ba’al Shem Tov (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1996), 63-82.

4 For an analysis of literary images of Berdichev, see M. Krutikov, ‘Berdichev in Russian-Jewish

Literary Imagination: From Israel Aksenfeld to Friedrich Gorenshteyn’, in G. Estraikh and M. Krutikov (eds.), The Shtetl: Image and Reality. Papers of the Second Mendel Friedman International Conference on Yiddish (Oxford, 2000).

The Drama of Berdichev 85 developed trade and economic centre in eastern Poland, equalled only by Warsaw.° In terms of its Jewish population Berdichev was not significant: it had one-sixth of the number of Jews in Brody and Lviv, half the number of Jews in Lublin, and twothirds of the number in neighbouring Medzhybizh and Shargorod. Of the twenty-

four Polish towns with 1,500-2,000 Jews, Berdichev occupied twenty-first place, surpassing only Krotoszyn, Komarno, and Korczyn. However, before the railway

network made it irrelevant in the 1860s, the town had been a major junction of , trade, connecting Poland with Turkey and Austria with Russia. Together with Grodno, Vilna, Shklov, and Biatystok, it played a pivotal role in foreign trade. Berdichev’s annual fair, established in 1765, was the largest in the Polish borderlands (the kresy), with a heavy wholesale trade in ironware, textiles, leather, flock, and wood. Jews controlled 85—94 per cent of this trade. In addition to this main fair,

in 1765 ten other fairs were established in the town. The volume of trade at Berdichev’s annual fair grew steadily, and reached its peak of 5,833,000 roubles in 1832.° Major banks and trading firms such as Efrussi, Gurovich, and Trakhtenberg

moved to Odessa from Berdichev.’ In a word, before the 1850s, when Odessa became the capital of east European trade in general and Jewish trade in particular, Berdichev had been its own Odessa.

At the end of the eighteenth century Berdichev also became a stronghold of manufacturing, especially textiles. The town’s artisans were organized into semiofficial Jewish guilds centred in the professional synagogues, brotherhoods, and prayer groups.® In 1781 some 30 per cent of the local Jews were in trade. Seven Jewish merchants retained an absolute monopoly on Berdichev’s cloth trade.° As early as the seventeenth century, tailors, united in a guild, obtained a privilege (privilegia) from the town’s owners; this fostered their economic success to the point that they were outside the control of the kahal.’° Berdichev, like Warsaw, was a key location for Russian army purveyors, notable among whom was one Bernshtein, in charge of textile supply. The first Russian Jewish banker, Izrail Yakovlevich Galperin (Yisrael Halperin), whose contemporaries loved and respected him © I. Schiper, Dzieje handlu zydowskiego na ziemiach polskich (Warsaw, 1937), 314, 423.

8). ,

® Ibid. 259, 289, 314, 338, 340-1, 381, 421-6. Horodetsky mentions the importance of the town but fails to mention its unparalleled role in east European commerce and trade (see Hahasidut vehahasidim, ‘ M. Polishchuk, Evrei Odessy 1 Novorossi: Sotstal'no-politicheskaya tstoriya evreev Odessy 1 drugikh gorodov Novorossu, 1881-1904 (Moscow, 2002), 23. 8 See A. Zederbaum, Di geheymnise fun berditshuv (Warsaw, 1870), 45-52. See also the collection

of ten pinkasim (minute books) belonging to different professional guilds active in rgth-century Berdichev located at the Natsional’na biblioteka Ukrayiny im. V. I. Vernads’koho (NBU), Kiev, Orientalia Division, Pinkasim Collection, nos. 15-21, 29-31. For more detail, see the list in Y. Petrovsky, Newly Discovered Pingasim from Ansky and Harkavy Collections (Moscow, 1996). An electronic |

version is available at . , 2 M. Osherovich, Shtet/ un shtetlekh (New York, 1948), 95-6. 10M. Wischnitzer, The History of Jewish Crafts and Guilds (New York, 1965), 252-72.

86 Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern : so much that they called him by his patronymic, Izrail Yakovlevich, also established himself in Berdichev. As a result of the town’s economic growth between 1789 and 1849, its population increased fourteenfold, from 1,951 in 1781 to 28,637 in 1849. Moreover, it appears that in the first decade of the nineteenth century to move away

from Berdichev was considered deplorable. For instance, when Nathan Shtern-

| hartz, the future court scribe of Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav, moved his family to Bratslav around 1802, his decision caused a prolonged family uproar.'!

| We can only speculate about the Berdichev kahals motives in offering Levi Yitshak the position of chief rabbi, but the significance of their invitation was selfevident. The fact that the Jewish community of the most prosperous and dynamic

town in Ukraine, if not in all of eastern Europe, invited him to serve as its religious | leader could only serve as a striking example to other towns and townlets in Ukraine. If the hasidic master was accepted by the best and wealthiest, should not ordinary Jewish communities strive to establish a hasidic authority in their midst?

It is therefore easy to imagine how the prestige of hasidism in late eighteenthcentury Ukraine rocketed after Levi Yitshak’s arrival in Berdichev. Nevertheless, the fact that he had reached a relatively safe haven did not mean that the stormy period of his life had ended. Most scholars, however, assume that it had, and substitute analysis of Levi Yitshak’s theology for further study of his life; thus, most studies divide into two parts, the first being biographical—‘before Berdichev’ — and the second theological—‘after Berdichev’. Such mechanical historiography completely ignores an aspect of Berdichev’s history that had a definite impact on the last twenty-five years of Levi Yitshak’s life. Like many other towns in the Pale of Settlement, Berdichev was a shtetl; that is, a private Polish town owned by a magnate. The Polish system of private ownership

of towns survived four Polish uprisings against Russian domination and was dismantled only in the late 1860s. Throughout most of the nineteenth century Berdichev remained under the magnate’s control, as did eight other larger towns | and 347 shtetls in the region. The town Jews obtained their first privileges from the entrepreneurial Barbara Radziwitt (1521-51), who has been called “Talleyrand ina skirt’.12 In 1793, as a result of the second partition of Poland, the town was transferred to Russian authority but did not lose its private status. It remained in the family’s possession until it was acquired by the Tyszkiewicz family in the mid| nineteenth century and later by the Russian nobleman Rukavishnikov. Ilya Grigorevich Orshansky, the first scholar of Russian Jewish legislation, called Berdichev a ‘serf town’ (krepostnoi gorod) among other private towns. This charged description was accurate. Conflicts between magnates and the kahal were part and

parcel of the private town economy, yet the case of Berdichev was particularly tense. In the late eighteenth century the magnate and his subjects failed to settle the 11 Sto evreiskikh mestechek Ukrainy: Istoricheskit putevoditel'. Podoliya, 2nd edn. (St Petersburg,

2000), 162. 12 A. Sajkowski, Od Sierotki do Rybenki (Poznan, 1965), 158.

The Drama of Berdichev 87 conflict amicably. Prince Maciej (Matvey) Radziwitt (1749-1821), Berdichev’s owner in this period, was unable to control the crisis, and the local Russian administration became involved.!* The case reached the chambers of the provincial court and ultimately triggered senate commission hearings in St Petersburg. The conflict

had serious repercussions for all sides. In fact, the struggle between the town’s owner and the townspeople symbolized the separation between the pre-modern— if not feudal—system of control and the early modern economy. In the midst of this crisis the Jews of Berdichev hired and dispatched to St Petersburg a shtadlan, or intercessor, by the name of Tsevi Hirsch Shimanovich, with a serious complaint against Radziwitt. The pleas from the Jews, supporting documents of the Russian

bureaucrats, the reports of the local inspectors, and self-justificatory notes from Radziwill shed light on the day-to-day realities of Berdichev at the end of the eighteenth century.’*

, THE SHTETL VERSUS ITS MAGNATE | On 26 June 1798 Tsevi Hirsch Shimanovich submitted a formal complaint to the authorities in St Petersburg denouncing Prince Radziwilt’s arbitrary rule. The figures in Shimanovich’s plea were impressive, testifying to the exorbitant economic burden that had been imposed on Berdichev’s Jews. Shimanovich argued that before 1761 Jews had paid to the treasury of Princess Radziwitt a tax of some| thing between 0.5 and 2.5 zlotys for a fixed quantity of brewed wine, vodka, and beer. However, Prince Radziwitt had increased this tax to 8.5 zlotys. He also forbade the town’s Jews to pasture their cattle on their fields, demanding 2.5 zlotys for the use of his own pastures, and prohibited them from buying bread and candles from anyone other than the arendator, his chief lessee. He introduced a one-off police tax of 1,200 zlotys, and a 6,000 zlotys annual tax that had never been imposed on the town before. He also demanded an additional 2,000 zlotys for his court doc-

tor, whom nobody had ever seen. He stopped paying fees for communal needs to the kahal treasury, and taxed guild merchants trading outside Berdichev twice as much as their established custom tax dues. Using bribes, he persuaded Boruch Moshkovich and Ya’akov Lisyansky, two wealthy lessees, to stop paying their taxes , 13 Maciej Radziwilt did not belong to the cream of the Radziwitt family. He is hardly mentioned in the books devoted to the genealogy and history of the Radziwitts, one of the most prominent families among the sz/achta. For the relations between the Radziwitts, their trade agents, and their subjects in 18th-century Lithuania (and Belarus), see A. Teller, “Tafkidam hakalkali uma’amadam hahevrati shel hayehudim be’ahuzot beit radzivil belita bame’ah ha-18’, Ph.D. thesis (Hebrew University, 1997). 14 See Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv (RGIA), fond 1374, opis’ 2, delo 962 (Senate, Prosecutor-General: ‘A Disputation between Count M. Radziwill, the owner of the town of Berdichev, and the Jews inhabiting this town, who complained of excesses of tributes and oppression on the part of

, Count Radziwill’, 1798-1802). I consulted the microfilm at the Central Archive of the History of Jewish People (CAHJP), Jerusalem, HM 7779.1-14. I should like to thank Binyamin Lukin for his

generous bibliographical assistance. |

88 Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern to the kahaland to function as Radziwilt’s puppets. To enforce his decisions he dispatched his ‘home Cossacks’, who acted as if they were local police or provincial authorities, at one point arresting the local tax collector and imprisoning members of poor families unable to pay the tax.!°

~The Russian authorities who received the complaints responded in various ways. The provincial prosecutor, Poltavtsev, took the Jewish side and supported the pleas presented to the capital. Conversely, the Zhitomir police chief, Baranov, demanded that the Jews respect the will of the town’s owner. When they refused, he

, called them rebels'!*—a term which, used just a couple of years after the Polish revolt, was an unambiguous threat. However, the senate committee in St Petersburg initially adopted a resolution favourable to the Jews. Radziwilt was furious. On 26 June 1798 he sent a sharp letter to General Gudovich claiming that all the decisions of the committee and of His Excellency Gudovich himself would soon be overruled. He clearly hinted that the privy councillor Count Aleksey Borisovich Kurakin would defend his interests. However, he also asked Gudovich for merciful protection from the Jews and the province prosecutor, Poltavtsev, ‘their zealous guardian’.!’ In addition, he demanded that all those who disagreed with his policy leave town at once and move to state towns (kazennye goroda).'®

But Shimanovich did not sit idle. On 4 August 1798 he sent Kurakin another strong and well-argued plea claiming that Radziwilt treated Jews as if they were his serfs (krepostnye) and not free residents of his estate. He explained that Jews had

been invited to settle in Berdichev as colonists. They had built their houses and owned them for at least two centuries, and had never paid taxes for leased property. But after the partitions Radziwilt had decided to reverse this practice, arbitrarily imposing new taxes and increasing old ones. He also demanded that Jews pay additional taxes for the leased property (which in fact belonged to them). He forbade

them to grind flour on home handmills and demanded that they pay taxes even for lighting their own rooms."° His total income from over-taxing local Jews was 433,000 zlotys.2° Memoirs from the period corroborate these complaints; for example, one observer argued that the town’s tax policy greatly benefited the Radziwitts.?’ In addition to the established tax, Jews in Berdichev had to pay taxes on some twenty-eight types of consumer product. Another observer recalled an exorbitant tax on alcohol imposed on the town’s Jews.?? Later, in the 1830s, another conflict testified to the ongoing tension between the Berdichev kaha/, on the one hand, and the lessees and Radziwiltt, on the other.”?

15 RGIA, fond 1374, opis’ 2, delo 962, fos. to’—14. '® Tbid., fos. 18-19.

\7 Tbid., fos. 2-3’. 18 Thid., fos. 29", 34, 42”. 13 Tbid., fo. 5".

20 Ibid., fo. 170’. 21 M. Morgulis, Voprosy evreiskoi zhizni (St Petersburg, 1903), 432. , 22 To avoid paying this tax Jews went to town with their family and returned with bottles of vodka popping out of their pockets. See I. G. Orshansky, Russkoe zakonodatel'stvo 0 evreyakh: Ocherki 1 issledovantya (St Petersburg, 1877), 389.

23 See e.g. court and senate documents on the case of Rubinshtein, who leased the production of

The Drama of Berdichev 89 _ After another year of hearings, in early 1799, the court decided to grant Radziwitt’s requests and protect him from ‘Jewish accusations’. All of the court’s members, with the exception of the chairman, Kryzhanovsky, voted in favour of this resolution. ‘It would have led to an enormous number of complaints had the Jews had won the case,’ the judges concluded.** The Jews appealed, but it appears that the decision was left to stand. However, the case was not closed. St Petersburg established new commissions and obtained new information. Radziwilt’s further explanatory notes and his more moderate tone indicated that he was now on the defensive. Between 1800 and 1802, making any number of excuses, he refused to go to St Petersburg for a personal hearing, dispatching instead his chargé d’affaires, Ivan Kalentsky. In his note to the prosecutor-general he argued that he had every right to tax Jews for the land on which synagogues and prayer houses stood, as well as for rabbinic positions. Yet, citing a 1764 privilege, he clearly circumvented any discussion of the level of taxes, including the one on rabbinic positions, which he had arbitrarily quadrupled.*° He also implied that, since he was responsible for keeping the town in proper order, he had an innate right to tax the Jews according to his whim. This self-justification was in response to the strong tone taken by the prosecutor-general and his deputy, who reiterated that Radziwitt should once and

for all stop over-taxing his subjects.”° | RABBINIC LEADERSHIP CHALLENGED In 1785 Levi Yitshak left his rabbinic position in Pinsk to become the head of the rabbinic court (av beit din) in Berdichev.”’ Thus, a persecuted rabbinic leader, who had been expelled almost physically from similar posts he had occupied in Ryczywot, Zelechéw, and Pinsk, Levi Yitshak was invited to preside over one of the most pros_ perous and rapidly developing communities in eastern Europe.”° The importance of this event for the history of hasidism is difficult to overstate. The Berdichev period was so important in Levi Yitshak’s life that oral hasidic tradition sanctified it with a quotation from Psalm 19: 11: ‘more to be desired [are the

judgements of the Lord] than fine gold’; the last three words are rendered in Hebrew as ‘mipaz rav’, and were read as an abbreviated list of the towns where Levi alcohol in Berdichev and was supported by the town owner, and the kahal and the town Jews, who refused to buy alcohol from the lessee (‘On the complaints of the nobleman Radziwill and the lessees of alcohol production [pzt'evogo otkupa] A. and G. Rubinshtein about the refusal of the Berdichev petty urban dwellers to purchase the lessee’s vodka’, 25 May 1833, Tsentral’nyi derzhavnyi istorychnyi arkhiv Ukrayiny, Kiev, fond 442, opis' 1, delo 1499).

24 RGIA, fond 1374, opts’ 2, delo 962, fo. 265 25 Tbid. 291-294". 26 Thid., fos. 47°, 300. 27 On the dramatic circumstances causing Levi Yitshak’s resettlement in Berdichev in the context of the hasidic-mitnagdic controversy, see Rabinowitsch, Lithuanian Hasidism, 25-7. 28 The real reasons why Levi Yitshak was invited to the town as a legal authority are still unclear. Horodetsky’s attempt to depict Berdichev as a hasidic town before the arrival of Levi Yitshak seems unsubstantiated (see Hasidut vehahastdim, 79-80).

go Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern Yitshak had held a post: ‘PaZ RaV’, denoting Pinsk, Zelechow, Ryczywot, and Berdichev (the last letter in the word rav is beit, as in Berdichev).?9 In other words, the posting in Berdichev was God’s true and merciful decision (according to the

previous line, in Ps. 19: 10), and for Levi Yitshak it was better than pure gold. Indeed, his impact on the town’s Jews was so strong that after his death in 1809 they decided to leave the post of chief rabbi empty.°° Amazingly, because of his stay in

Berdichev, the very name of the town acquired a connotation of redemption: Yisrael of Ruzhyn, for example, claimed that to soften God’s judgement before the Day of Atonement it was enough to concentrate on the name of the town.*! Though Berdichev was not a typical hasidic town, after Levi Yitshak’s appoint-

ment it became one of the major centres of the spread of hasidism in central Ukraine, and it established ties with surrounding hasidic centres. For example, in the 1800s hasidim from Berdichev went on a regular basis to pray in Medzhybizh, the seat of the late Ba’al Shem Tov. In 1802 the famous rabbinic council was held in Berdichev, and it was at this council that Levi Yitshak defended Nahman of Bratslav from attempts to excommunicate him.** Perhaps because of Levi Yitshak’s continuing protection of Nahman of Bratslav, Nahman’s followers established their voluntary society in Berdichev as early as the 1820s.*? In 1803 Yisrael Friedman, a

! young tsadik from Ruzhyn, arrived in the town for his engagement to Sara, the | daughter of R. Moshe Efrati; Levi Yitshak blessed the couple and took part in the festivities, which were celebrated more extravagantly than the visit of the tsar.** In the 1820s Meshulem Natan Margoliot, who replaced the late Levi Yitshak’s son as head of the local rabbinic court, accepted as binding all communal fasts proclaimed by Abraham Joshua Heschel intended to avert the new regulations promulgated by Alexander I.* Finally, not without the influence of the town rabbi, Ber Segal’s printing press, which was established in Berdichev in the early 1800s, became pivotal in hasidic publishing.®® Indeed, the conflict between Radziwitt and the _kahal could have rendered Levi Yitshak’s tenure in Berdichev unlucky and brief if

not for the town’s support ofitsrabbi. In every plea and complaint of the Jews of Berdichev, whether brief or detailed, the most painful issue is that of the freedom to practise Judaism. One may assume © that Shimanovich’s voice conveys the unanimous feeling of the town Jews: 29 Shostik, Melits yosher, 19. 30 Luckens, ‘Rabbi Levi Itzhak of Berdichev’, 55-6. 31 Gutman, 7iferet beit levi, 30. 82 Rapoport-Albert (ed.), Hasidism Reappraised, 16. 33 See Pinkas dehasidei bratslav [Bratslav Hasidim Society], n.d., copy by Avraham Rechtman, c.1912, NBU, Orientalia, Pinkasim Collection, fond 321, opis’ 1,n. 11 (0. r. 21). 34 TD. Assaf, ‘Yisra’el miruzhin umekomo betoledot hahasidut bemahatsit harishonah shel hame’ah ha-19’, Ph.D. thesis (Hebrew University, 1992), 38. 35 |. Alfasi, Harav miapta: Ba’al ohev yisra’el (Jerusalem, 1981), 49 ff. 36 Between 1808 and 1815 Berdichev’s printing press published Degel mahaneh efrayim by Moshe Haim Ephraim of Sudylkéw, Magid devarav leya’akov by Dov Ber of Mezerich, Kedushat levi by Levi Yitshak of Berdichev, 7siva’at rivash by Ba’al Shem Tov, and Shivhei habesht, the first edition of the stories about the founder of hasidism. See Y. Vinograd, Otsar hasefer ha’ivri Jerusalem, 1994), 106-8.

, The Drama of Berdichev gt Our religion is leased by the [town] owner. In order to conduct our own religious service we are obligated to pay money to those who have leased our creed from the prince [Radziwift]. Even the conscience of each of us is not free to express its religious needs.°"

And in a different plea:

Radziwitt has appropriated the boxes for alms and for orphans.°°

, And again: Even our religion and rabbinic positions are leased.*° And in greater detail: The rabbinate itself is leased so that when a rabbi is elected we are obligated to pay to the lessee. Jews have repeatedly complained of this to the authorities but they have obtained no protection.*°

Further correspondence confirms that the issue of taxing the position of the rabbi was second only in the minds of the Jews to the liquor tax. Despite an old privilege allowing Jews to elect rabbis and requiring rabbis to pay the town owner some 1,000

zlotys annually, Radziwitt repeatedly tried to appoint his protégés to the post. In the 1790s he appointed Ya’akov Lisyansky as town rabbi, but the Jews dismissed him as ‘harmful’. Radziwitt commanded the town rabbi—that is, Levi Yitshak—to pay at least 500 zlotys or risk imprisonment. In 1793 he appointed four Jews— Borisovich, Lisyansky, Moshkovich, and Tatarinovsky—as ‘judges’, purportedly to settle the issue of the tax on the rabbi’s position; the real purpose was to lease to them the 4,000 zlotys tax for the post, thereby enabling them to choose the town rabbi who best suited their interests.** In fact, Radziwitt did his best to establish a _ new type of court that was absolutely independent of the chief town rabbi.** In 1794 he accused the town rabbi—apparently Levi Yitshak—of inciting local Jews against

the town owner. He demanded that the rabbi immediately sell his property and leave town. After another strong protest on the part of the local community, Radziwitt acquiesced and allowed the rabbi to stay, though he claimed that the 4,000 zlotys tax was the price of his benevolence.*?

What do we learn from the conflict between the magnate and his town? Obviously, this conflict reflects tensions and shifts in the triangular relationship between the sz/achta (Polish nobility), the Russian authorities, and the Jews. Despite Berdichev’s well-established status as a private Polish town, the Jews perceived the

town’s owner as their primary oppressor, and the Russian government, whose sub- | jects they had quite recently become once again, as their long-awaited protector. In 37 RGIA, fond 1374, opis’ 2, delo 962, fos. 14°15. 38 Tbid., fo. 279. 39 Thid., fo. 279. 40 Tbid., fo. 5’. 41 Tbid., fos. 164-5.

42 See the whole text of RadziwiH’s 1793 regulation on the local court in Regesty i nadpisi: Svod materialov dlya tstoru evreev Rossi (1780 g.-1799 g.), 3 vols. (St Petersburg, 1899—1913), iil. 308-10. 43 RGIA, fond 1374, opis’ 2, delo 962, fo. 223.

2 Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern this sense, the conflict reflects early Russian Jewish sensibilities, if not the rise of

| Russian Jewish identity. In the context of ‘Russia’s gathering of her Jews’ (to paraphrase John Klier), the various responses of the Russian authorities to the conflict and the clear tendency to protect Russian Jewish subjects from Polish noblemen are

telling. They reflect the government’s perception of Jews as Russian subjects as early as the reign of Paul I. And they probably reflect the government’s sense of responsibility to its subjects—if not an attempt to win them over. On the Polish side, Radziwitt’s behaviour demonstrates that the partitions had no effect on the sense of security of the sz/achta. Moreover, the partitions appear to have created a legal vacuum that increased the autocratic nature of the sz/achta. ~ Still, Radziwitt seems to have been much more confident under Paul I (1796-1800)

than under Alexander I (1801-25). The case also illuminates a rift between the lessees; that is, between Radziwilt’s court or puppet Jews, on the one side, and the

kahal elders and the town merchants and artisans, on the other. To be sure, Berdichev became a battlefield on which the early modern Jewish middle class and business elite tried to bolster its own growth, while the town’s owner relied heavily

on his feudal system of economic control to try to stop them. , Finally, let us examine the repercussions and implications of this case for the

town’s rabbi. The fact that the post of town rabbi had been transformed into another lucrative source of income for a nobleman was no novelty: the position was ‘leased by the town owner’, to use the language of the complaint, perhaps in every Polish private town.** Also, the tax imposed on the town rabbi, confirmed in the times of Princess Barbara Radziwitt and later fixed at 1,000 zlotys, was not enormous. R. Avigdor, who very likely was behind the expulsion of Levi Yitshak from

his position in Pinsk, had to pay a similar amount in advance for his ten-year rabbinic tenure in the town.*° At the same time, in the far less developed town of Starokonstantinov, for instance, the arendator obtained 6,000 zlotys in 1778 from — the sale of alcohol alone, whereas the overall annual income from all lessees and sub-lessees in that town was 44,600 zlotys.*° Naturally, the salary of the town rabbi in a private Polish town was only part of

his income. He earned further income from overseeing the operations of the selfgoverning town societies (Aavurot), presiding over the rabbinical court (beit din), giving sermons (derashot), issuing wedding and divorce documents (ketubot and gitin), and overseeing the work of the ritual slaughterers (shohetim).*" Even so, 4,000 44M. Rosman, The Lords’ Jews: Magnate—Jewish Relations in the Polish—Lithuanian Commonwealth During the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, Mass., 1990), 200—3. 45 Luckens, ‘Rabbi Levi Itzhak of Berdichev’, 42.

*° See the pioneering research that has unfortunately been overlooked by Western scholars: A. I. Baranovich, Magnatskoe khozyaistvo na yuge Volyniv XVIII v. (Moscow, 1955), 121, 131; on arenda in general, see ibid. 117-37. 47 G. D. Hundert, The Jews in a Polish Private Town: The Case of Opatéw in the Eighteenth Century (Baltimore, 1992), 94—5.

The Drama of Berdichev 93 zlotys for the rabbinic position annually, if the complaint is accurate, might have been too much. Unlike other towns, where the kahal had to accede to the decisions of the magnate-supported lessees, the Berdichev kahal, supported by middleranking merchants and artisans, decided to oppose the town’s owner.*® The ensuing conflict placed Levi Yitshak against the local lord and his two or three little-known but influential chief lessees, who responded by doing their best to dismiss him from his post. Radziwilt’s own language in accusing Levi Yitshak is eloquent testimony to the seriousness of the conflict. This kind of social conflict was otherwise unheard of. Elsewhere hasidic leaders

| were persecuted either as individuals—Ya’akov Yosef of Polonnoe being the best example of this—or as representatives of a religious group suspected of schism— karlintsy, as hasidim were dubbed in Russian documents, or kat (sect), as they were scornfully identified by mztnagedim. The most notorious case involved the incarceration of Shneur Zalman of Liady, the founder of Habad—Lubavich hasidism, who was denounced as a leader of a sect, arrested, taken to the Petropavlovsk fortress in St Petersburg, interrogated, found not guilty, and released. But the case of Levi Yitshak was different: he was oppressed neither as an individual pietist (hasid) nor as a representative of the hasidic movement, but rather as a communal figure. Apparently, he retained his post by relying on strong and unanimous communal support.

The conflict between the town and its owner transcended the limits of the hasidic—mitnagdic controversy and created a remarkable bond between the town’s rabbi and the Jewish townspeople. Berdichev’s economic and trade elite, the kahal elders, local artisans, hasidim and mitnagedim, orphans and beggars, as well as Levi Yitshak himself, found themselves in the same boat. Had he triggered any opposition from the town’s elites, Levi Yitshak would not have been able to retain his post, but because his position was unstable, he had to associate himself with a// of the town’s Jews. The Jews of Berdichev protected, justified, and defended him before the town’s owner no less than he defended them before God. If Radziwitt’s efforts

to get rid of Levi Yitshak imply that the latter refused to join Radziwitt and the town lessees, siding instead with the town’s merchants, then the overwhelming admiration and gratitude of the town’s residents, and not only of his hasidic followers, becomes self-explanatory. Dubnow’s and later Dinur’s somewhat naive understanding of hasidic rebbes as popular social leaders in opposition to the regime is

indeed an exaggeration, but it might hold a grain of truth in the case of Levi Yitshak.

Is there any hint of the conflict between Radziwitt and Berdichev in what is known about Levi Yitshak from ‘hagiographical’ sources? To answer this question, let us consider the story “‘Hamokhsan shenishar al kino’ (“The Lessee Who Retained his Name’), which has been attributed to Levi Yitshak. The plot is simple. Haim, from 48 Cf. Rosman, The Lords’ Jews, 189-93.

O40 Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern a village near Skvira, is a modest and trustworthy Jew who leases an inn from a certain childless magnate. The magnate dies and bequeaths all his possessions to his nephew, who had studied philosophy in Paris. The nephew turns out to be an evil _ person who oppresses the villagers and banishes a number of them from the village. An unnamed and wealthy Jew from the village of Belilovka, unscrupulously violating the law of hazakah (rights of possession) and promising a better income, offers

, the new magnate his services as a lessee. Haim appeals, but to no avail. Pushed out by the magnate, Haim goes to the tsadik of Berdichev, complains to him, and asks him to intercede, but the rival lessee does not agree to settle the matter amicably and does not come to the tsadik. Thus Haim loses his only source of income, which had provided for his father and grandfather, and he becomes penniless. Following the advice of the tsadik, Haim goes to a nearby village and leases a small inn from another magnate. Subsequently, the Jew from Belilovka, who does not know how to ~ brew good wine, ruins himself and his magnate, whereas Haim, a skilled brewer, finds favour in the eyes of the peasants and his new master. The story ends with his new magnate praising Haim’s wine, and a formal apology from his previous master; Haim returns to his previous position, and the Jew from Belilovka, utterly _ defeated, following the advice of the tsadzk of Berdichev, asks for Haim’s mercy and is accepted as his sub-lessor or partner.*” This hasidic story, whatever its true authorship, effectively combines a theological and a social message. A version of a hasidic story about a lessee, a tsadik, and a magnate, not uncommon in hasidic literature, this tale could be read as a reflection of contemporary Berdichev. Many details apparently refer to real life in Berdichev: a childless magnate, his nephew studying in Paris, the oppression of the villagers, expulsions, tricks with arenda, and violation of the rules of hazakah. The name of Belilovka (Belilevke), a real Ukrainian village in the province of Kiev, is associated linguistically with beliya’al, the biblical embodiment of evil.°° If Levi Yitshak or anybody else had told this story, its message would have been immediately clear to its audience. On the most superficial level the tsadzk is far from omnipotent: the ‘bad’ lessee does not care about him, the laws of hazakah are not binding, the tsadik _ does not intercede directly with the magnate and so forth. However, on the hidden level, the tsadzk is an axis mund1, to use Arthur Green’s excellent metaphor: no one but the tsadik embodies the final truth; no one but the tsadik, acting behind the scenes, punishes the wicked and rewards the righteous, thus finally restoring justice. Whatever the consequences of the conflict between Radziwitt and Berdichev, the audience of this story knew that, thanks to the tsadik, the magnate and his lessees would be punished, the tax burden lifted, and the townspeople relieved— hence the paramount significance of the tsadik as the highest authority in the realm

of social justice. 4 G. Nigal (ed.), Rabi levi yitshak miberdichev: Sipurim (Jerusalem, 1997), 144-8.

, 0 See e.g. Prov. 16: 12; Judg. 19: 22; 2 Sam. 20: 1.

| The Drama of Berdichev 95 Although the stories about tsadikim (sipuret ma’asiyot) are modelled on folk tales, some are more embedded in history than others. Perhaps the story of Levi Yitshak’s

visit to Lviv, where he inserted a Polish curse into his prayer, refers to Prince Maciej Radziwitt, whom he dubbed—if our hypothesis is accurate—‘the princedemon of Poland’.?! Levi Yitshak’s bitterly sarcastic attitude towards both Jews and non-Jews occupying positions at the top of the social ladder might also reflect the conflict in Berdichev.® It is tempting to see his depression or ‘loss of spirit’ in 1793, concerning which vague testimonies have been preserved,°* as an oblique reflection of the new challenges by Radziwitt, who in the same year forbade the chief rabbi to head the local court.°* And Levi Yitshak’s desire to compose and publish his homilies in the first edition of Kedushat levi (Slavuta, 1898)—which was rare among tsadikim of his generation, who generally preferred an entirely oral message to a printed one—can be seen as his attempt to secure his position by

publishing a book of major importance. Levi Yitshak’s sharp criticism of the

Berdichev. ,

authorities, including his reproaches directed towards the God of Israel, which have been preserved in folklore, should probably be read not only as paradoxical hasidic

theodicy but also, to use Saul Ginzburg’s words, as a reflection of the drama of

This drama highlights one of the most characteristic features of Levi Yitshak’s personality: his non-sectarian approach to social and theological issues. He always preferred to rely on popular support, whether by rejecting the idea of establishing a group of followers and disciples, or by seeking the town’s help in his conflict with the magnate. Thus, before he became part of the collective Jewish memory, he was firmly embedded in collective Jewish history, together with the townspeople, as the opponent of Radziwitt. Ultimately, the drama of Berdichev suggests a sophisti-

cated and subtle interaction between the theology and the social history of hasidism. °1 Justifying his act, Levi Yitshak replied: ‘I managed to down my other enemies, but this was the only way I could get the better of the prince-demon of Poland’ (M. Buber, Tales of the Hastdim: The Early Masters (New York, 1973), 210).

°2 For example, see the stories ‘The True King’, ‘Abraham and Lot’, ‘Envy’, ‘Charity’, and “The

Greatness of Pharaoh’, ibid. 209, 219, 224-6, 228. 53 See Luckens’s rendering of Yitshak Ayzik of Komarno’s testimony in his ‘Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berdichev’, 50-2. °4 T believe that this regulation was a much more serious blow to the chief rabbi’s prestige than the transfer of the town to Russian rule, which also occurred in 1793.

BLANK PAGE

Polish Shtetls Under Russian Rule, 1772-1914 JOHN KLIER

' ON 24 Heshvan 5561 (11 November 1800), the parnasim, or communal elders, of the Minsk kahal voted to send a delegation to Vitebsk ‘to see how things are done there’. At first, this may appear a curious decision. What could the Jews of Minsk, a large and respected community, learn from their ‘little brothers’ in Vitebsk? The answer has to do with chronology: since 1772 Vitebsk had been under the power of Russia, serving as a laboratory for the implementation of policies designed to regulate a newly acquired Jewish minority for whom there were no existing legal provisions. Russian policy had brought Belarusian Jewry greater statutory rights than any other contemporary Jewish community in Europe. The Jewish denizens of Minsk, having fallen under Russian control only in 1793, wished to learn how to deal with their new rulers. This incident may serve as a salient reminder that the Jews of the Russian empire were in fact Polish Jews—or, more accurately, subjects of the Polish—Lithuanian Commonwealth, the state that was devoured by Russia, Prussia, and the Habsburg

empire in the last quarter of the eighteenth century. As its name implied, the Commonwealth was a multi-ethnic state, inhabited by peoples of diverse ethnicities, religions, and traditions. Even the Jews of the Commonwealth were a diverse lot: there were mitnagedim, hasidim, Karaites, and even a few maskilim—as the partisans of the Jewish Enlightenment movement, the Haskalah, were known. The Yiddish that they spoke was not uniform across regions. Their political traditions differed, especially between the Jews of the Polish ethnic heartland and those of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Nor were political boundaries a bar to communications

across frontiers; the boundaries between the lands of (Russian) Ukraine and (Austrian) Galicia were especially porous. Y. Brafman, Kniga kagala, 3rd edn., 2 vols. (St Petersburg, 1882-8), ii. 75. As is well known, the commentary that Yakov Brafman provided for this Russian translation of the pinkas, or record book, of the Minsk kahal was extremely tendentious and misleading, and led to charges that it was a forgery. As Isaac Levitats has demonstrated, however, the pinkas is almost certainly authentic, whatever Brafman’s misuse of it. See I. Levitats, ‘Levikoret “sefer hakahal” shel brafman’, Zion, 3 (1938), 170-8.

98 John Klier In response to the question ‘did Russian Jewry exist prior to 1917°?’, Eli Lederhendler has answered in the affirmative. He has argued that the factors uniting the Jews of the empire were greater than those dividing them.? One may accept Lederhendler’s assessment with one major caveat: we must differentiate clearly between Jews in the provinces of the Pale of Settlement and Jews in the Kingdom of Poland. This in turn suggests another theme for scholarly examination: the extent to which the transformation of ‘Polish’ Jews into ‘Russian’ Jews was not a one-way process.

Polish Jews brought a number of traits, structures, and relationships into the empire, including communal organizations, political relationships with the ruling power, diverse socio-economic relations, and a set of mutual stereotypes, prejudices, and attitudes that divided Jew from non-Jew. The transformation of these features of the Jewish community entailed a complex process of both accommoda-

tion and rupture that eventually produced ‘Russian Jewry’ within the Pale of Settlement and ‘Polish Jewry’ in the Kingdom of Poland. This chapter will explore the aspects of Jewish life that the Jews brought with them into the realm of the tsar, and examine how they contributed to the shaping of what would become Russian

Jewry. The main focus will be not so much on the shtetl itself, but rather on the wider world of which the shtetl was an important component.

COMMUNAL ORGANIZATION Before 1772 Jews had been barred from settlement anywhere in the territory of the Russian empire.® Thus, there was no existing precedent on the basis of which they might be organized or governed once the decision to accept them as Russian subjects had been made. The path of least resistance was simply to leave in place the

existing institution of Jewish autonomous self-government, the kahal. A decree of 1780 required all Jews to register in the nearest kahal. The state always treated the kahal as an urban entity, a reflection of its desire to use Jews to strengthen the weakly developed urban trade centres of the empire. As a consequence, the archetypal model of Jewish settlement, the shtetl (Russian: mestechko; from the Polish miasteczko), where the kahal was invariably based, was always considered an urban

phenomenon. This categorization was of vital importance when the government _ resolved to resettle Jews from the ‘countryside’, where they were thought to exer-

cise an invidious influence on the peasantry. The attempt at resettlement began with the Statute (Polozhenie) for the Jews of 1804, and reached its culmination in the May Laws (Temporary Laws) of 1882, which barred ‘new settlement’ of Jews in the countryside, ‘outside the towns and shtetls’. The failure of the Russian state to provide a satisfactory definition for the term ‘shtetl’ made instances of caprice and 2 E. Lederhendler, ‘Did Russian Jewry Exist Prior to 1917?’, in Y. Ro’i (ed.), Jews and Jewish Life in Russia and the Soviet Union (Ilford, 1995).

3 J. D. Klier, Russia Gathers her Jews: The Origins of the ‘Jewish Question’ in Russia, 1772-1825 (DeKalb, IIl., 1986), 28—30.

Polish Shtetls Under Russian Rule 99 abuse by Russian officials possible, but it also increased the possibilities for the evasion of regulations on place of residence, given the venality and incompetence of the rural police in the empire. Having described the shtetl as the ‘archetypal’ model of Jewish settlement, I

hasten to add that it was first and foremost a model of diversity. There was no , average size for a shtetl: they might range from villages ofa few hundred Jewish residents to fair-sized towns. In the immediate aftermath of the first partition, reflecting Empress Catherine II’s desire to stimulate urban growth, a number of shtetls suddenly found themselves metamorphosed into ‘district towns’. This categorization had its advantages under Catherine’s 1785 Charter for the Towns, which pro-

vided extensive rights of election and participation in town councils and courts to ethnic and religious minorities (which were often coterminous) in all towns. Jews

began to exercise these rights immediately. This provoked the anger of their Christian neighbours, who complained that Jews were being given special privileges that they had never enjoyed before. Equally upset were strictly Orthodox rabbinic leaders, who complained that Jews were ‘drawing close to Gentiles’. Thus, one variant of the shtetl was transformed into something quite different, from a political-administrative view, under Russian rule. Yet there were other shtetls that remained more closely linked to their Polish past. The private Polish town, a settlement particularly associated with Jews, made the transition to Russian rule relatively unchanged. The relationship between the Jewish residents and the magnate or sz/achta owner of the town was essentially feudal, with residence rights tied to the performance of certain economic functions on the estate of the landowner. While those involved in this relationship may have assumed that it had existed from time immemorial, in fact it was largely the creation of the ‘second serfdom’ in the

Commonwealth in the sixteenth century. Most significantly, this system ensured that the relationship remained contractual, with both parties free to change the terms of an agreement after its expiration. For the landowner, this might mean a new contract with a different party; for the Jews, it meant departure. In fact, the kahal system evolved an elaborate codex, enshrined in talmudic law, designed to protect the rights of contract-holders. The institution of hazakah (rights of possession) was the defensive weapon of the Jews against the power of the Polish landlords.

The annals of the Commonwealth are dotted with accounts of the struggles of Jewish communities against capricious landlords. What is less well known is that these conflicts continued under Russian rule until the abolition of serfdom in 1861 (and somewhat later in the ethnically Polish lands). Thus, the archives of the Russian governor-general of Kiev, Podolia, and Volhynia are filled with Jewish tenants’ complaints that their local lords had capriciously demanded money (ostensibly for the use of areas of the estate), violated contracts, and even been physically violent.4 4 See Tsentral’nyi derzhavnyi istorychnyi arkhiv Ukrayiny, Kiev (TsDIAUK), fond 442, opis’ 136,

delo 167 (1833), fos. 1-7', from the Jews of Verba, Dubno district. .

100 John Klhier Another type of feudal relationship that existed in some shtetls—permanent chinshevoe ownership—outlived even the abolition of serfdom. Chinsheviki were granted permanent possession of land (with rights to sell or mortgage) belonging to a feudal landowner, upon payment in cash or in kind (chinsh). The chinsh was linked _ to the price of land and could be increased. A special payment was due upon trans-

fer of the holding to another person. The chinsheviki also paid fees for keeping gardens, possessing market stalls, and many other economic activities. Any repairs or new construction also required the permission of the landowner, which was seldom given gratis. Clearly, the landholder had great latitude and could impose

additional payments capriciously. The Russian state sought to eliminate this category of ownership, the chief beneficiaries of which were Poles, by providing for mandatory sale of holdings under a law of 9 June 1886. However, this was also a time when the government was especially keen to eliminate Jewish influence in the countryside, so a number of restrictions kept Jews from benefiting from the forced

, liquidation. For some Jews this feudal relationship endured right up until the outbreak of war in 1914.° (We will return to the question of discriminatory legislation directed against Poles that had repercussions for Jews.) The introduction of Russian rule had other effects, both positive and negative. The rise of hasidism polarized many communities, and made the control of ritual _ life especially contentious. Although the Russian state had only the foggiest idea of what the struggle between the hasidim and the mitnagedim was about, it sought to placate both sides by providing for the existence of rival synagogues in every community under the provisions of the Statute for the Jews of 1804. Whatever peace this may have brought to the shtetl was more than negated by Russian taxation policies. The Russian state lacked the large and professional bureaucracy required to collect all duties and taxes: before 1865 and the creation of the post-emancipation system of local self-government (the zemstva), it resolved this problem in two ways. The first expedient was tax-farming, most notably of the state monopoly on the - production and sale of vodka in the Great Russian provinces. The second was the — system of krugovaya poruka, or collective responsibility for taxes imposed on liable ~ communities. The Jewish kahal constituted the taxpaying unit. However grudgingly, the Jewish community always made an effort to pay its _ taxes, recognizing the importance of maintaining the goodwill of the state. (This does not mean that there was no tax evasion, of course; only that it was concentrated at the communal rather than the individual level.) The communal rich bore the brunt of taxation, and this was part of the process that legitimized their domination

of the community; he who pays the taxes governs the non-taxpayers. The kakhal’niki, or communal leaders, possessed the right to levy taxes, of course, and were richly detested for their decisions. But there was only so much blood to be © Evreiskaya entsiklopediya, 16 vols. (St Petersburg, 1906—13), xv. 670—2. See also Y. Grushevsky,

, ‘Polozhenie evreev chinshevykh’, Nedel'naya khronika Voskhoda, 7 (14 Feb. 1902) and 8 (21 Feb. 1902).

| Polish Shtetls Under Russian Rule 101 squeezed out of the stone that was the Jewish poor; ultimately it was the rich who had to carry the community’s fiscal burden. The introduction of personal liability by Jews for military service in 1827 changed this relationship. The impact of the rekrutshchina is well known. The need to secure recruits discredited the communal leaders, particularly after it became obvious that the Russian army was carrying on missionary activity among the young recruits. The secondary literature—like Jewish legend—often claims that the Russian state purposefully recruited under-age boys in order to convert them more easily to Christianity. ‘This is simply not true: the Russian state did not demand under-age recruits (ages I1 to 17);it merely permitted the Jewish communities to provide such recruits for the socalled Cantonist regiments (which essentially trained young recruits for specialist activities as military clerks, musicians, etc.). It was the leadership of the Jewish community itself, under the provisions of collective liability, that chose such young

recruits. (My own research tentatively suggests that it was the influx of young recruits for the first recruitment of 1827-8 that prompted the Russian army to initiate its missionary programme.®) The consequences of these policies for the Russian Jewish community are well documented: the leadership lost its moral authority and the community became deeply divided along class lines, since it was the lower

classes that provided the majority of recruits (in lieu, essentially, of providing revenue for taxes). ’

| Other important changes have been largely neglected by the historical literature. One consequence of the internal turmoil, I will tentatively posit, is that it led the Russian state to abolish the kahal system in 1844. Another is that it triggered a determined effort on the part of larger communities to extend their reach to other, smaller communities. This practice did not begin in 1827; large Jewish communities had always sought to widen their tax base through the ‘annexation’ of smaller ones.® But now the consequences were even more significant. A smaller, and probably poorer, community would see the kakhal’niki of the larger centre selecting _their children and relatives for the tsar’s army. Thus, after 1827 the archives are filled with petitions and complaints from smaller communities in danger of being gobbled up—administratively, of course—by a neighbouring community. The

petitioners urgently needed to demonstrate a long tradition of autonomy and

independence from the claimant.

° See J. D. Klier, ‘State Policies and the Conversion of Jews in Imperial Russia’, in R. Geraci and M. Khodarkovsky (eds.), Of Religion and Empire: Missions, Conversion, and Tolerance in Tsarist Russia (Ithaca, NY, 2001).

’ M. Stanislawski, Tsar Nicholas I and the Jews: The Transformation of Fewish Society in Russia, 1825-1855 (Philadelphia, 1983), 13-34. 5 This tendency also underlies the phenomenon of ‘hasidic conquest’ described by Glenn Dynner in this volume. Such conquest enlarged the revenue base of the rebbe’s court. ” For a typical protest by a small community (Tarkova) about ‘annexation’ by a larger neighbour, see TsDIAUK, fond 442, opis’ 149, delo 6o2a so on.’®

The traditional culture of the small town was becoming modernized as well. Religious schools were established for girls, and women began to teach Polish or arithmetic in feders, where the very presence of a woman had previously been unthinkable. The Orthodox were establishing political parties with affiliated youth sections. The author from Katusz mentioned above wrote in his autobiographical sketch: In 1925 we had an eminent visitor in our town: the celebrated orator Reb Hirschhorn of Lwow, summoned by the Orthodox fraction to found the organization Agudas Yisroel. Following several beautiful lectures and a discussion with the antagonistic Zionist camp, the founding of the party was initiated and carried out... . The youth organization Tse’irei Agudas Yisroel was set up... . We were collecting donations for the Palestinian Fund [Keren Hayishuv] as well as for the poor.'?

The story of a young Gerer hasid from Sulejo6w who was caught reading I. L. Peretz’s Di shtrayml?° in a beit midrash illustrates how much more quickly modernity infiltrated traditional culture in the cities than in the towns. The hasid was punished by his father for reading secular books and, consequently, sent to a yeshiva in Warsaw. The Warsaw hasidim tried to re-enact the traditions of the shtetl in the city, but the young man found the very books that had placed him in conflict with his parents in a hasidic home where he was employed as a melamed.”' Jewish culture flourished along with modernizing processes, making the shtetl less provincial than the Polish province. It must be noted, however, that modernity coexisted with stagnation, poverty, and lack of prospects. The eruption of cultural and political activity was, paradoxically, the result of the stagnation that blocked social mobility. The pre-war Polish Jewish hit song ‘Rebeka’ clearly illustrates the hopelessness of a Jewish girl whose only escape was to dream about a rich man who would lead her to ‘the palace door’.?? Similar sentiments can be found at the end of the 1934 autobiography of a woman from Kotomyyja:

18 Such restrictions did not apply to younger children. 19 ‘Damaszek’, Autobiografia. 20 Y. L. Peretz, Di shtrayml (Warsaw, 1890); this short story was especially critical of hasidic customs. A shtraymlis a fur-edged hat worn by rabbis and hasidic Jews on the sabbath and holidays.

21 ‘Jafet’, ‘Sulejow’ (1939), YIVO, MS 3782. | 22 ‘This song was written in Polish by the Jewish songwriter Henryk Whas and the composer of popular music Zygmunt Biatostocki; it was translated into Yiddish and was very popular in the 1930s.

Cultural Evolution in Small Jewish Towns 141 I realized that my father would never manage without me, that he has to have me at the shop, that it is out of the question for me to go to the hakhsharah.?* That is why I stopped visiting the Hehaluts [Pioneer] organization. For a year I just worked at the shop, going for a walk in the evenings, sometimes to a movie or toa theatre. But I did not go to the dances; the charm of dance is lost without a beloved person. Besides I was disturbed by the emptiness—not of the party itself, but when it is over.*4

After the First World War the role of the shtetl lifestyle declined. The town community became more diverse owing to the plurality of coexisting (though often conflicting) political and cultural options. Group control over the individual was also decreasing; the repressive sanctions at the disposal of the religious authorities

were purely symbolic, and less and less effective. Traditional authorities were losing their power over people. Political leaders and secular intellectuals were now esteemed. The security of group isolation was also fading. The individual’s privacy was less threatened, but everyone had to depend on his or her own resources, no

longer sharing in the everyday life of the neighbours or in an extended family embracing many generations. 23 The hakhsharah was a training camp for young people who were preparing to leave for Palestine. The classes included vocational training, usually farming. Such camps were organized by Zionist parties, whose activists applied for emigration certificates for hakhsharah graduates. 24 R. Glaser, ‘Zycie wspétczesnego mtodego Zyda (Zydéwki)’ (Kotomyja, 1934), YIVO, MS 3816.

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Small Towns in Inter-War Poland REGINA RENZ

POLISH JEWISH provincial towns in the first half of the twentieth century deserve our attention for several reasons. Many factors contributed to the disappearance of these small towns, with their unique ethnic, cultural, and occupational structure. Antoni Stonimski commemorated their disappearance in a touching elegy: No more will you find those little towns, where the cobbler was a poet, The watchmaker a philosopher, the barber a troubadour. No more will you find those towns where biblical psalms Were linked by the wind with Polish laments and Slavonic ardour, Where old Jews in the orchard, under the shade of cherry trees, Wept for the sacred walls of Jerusalem.

Small towns were common in the Polish territories. As Ryszard Kotodziejczyk remarks, ‘Their numbers, their continuity—virtually up to the present—as well as their economic and civilizational significance are, in a way, derived from a centuries-long process of development, with its belated urbanization, the dominance of the village over the town, negligible industrialization, and all that we find

in the countries of central and eastern Europe.’! , Considering the diverse character of these small towns, it is not easy to specify which settlements, from an economic and social point of view, should be included in this category. In inter-war Poland there was a considerable discrepancy between

the number of chartered towns and the number of settlements that could be counted as towns on the basis of their social and economic characteristics. There

| seems to be more than a grain of truth in Pierre George’s remark that it is impos| sible to define the term ‘town’ in simple and universal terms; and yet the straightforward measures of size and appearance remain the best criteria.”

In previous studies several factors have been used as criteria for categorizing a settlement as a town—among them the settlement’s economic function, its production and processing of raw materials, and the number of its inhabitants (under 10,000 people). In 1937 Wanda Rewienska included in the category of small ‘ R. Kolodziejcezyk, ‘Spotecznosci matomiasteczkowe w Polsce XIX i XX w.: Zarys problematyki badawcze]’, in R. Kotodziejczyk (ed.), Miasteczka polskie w XIX 1XX wieku: Z dziejow formowania sie

spotecznosct (Kielce, 1992), 35. 2 P. George, Miasto (Warsaw, 1956), 40.

144 Regina Renz | towns all settlements that enjoyed civic rights; all settlements that had been classified as towns in the past; all settlements with railway stations; and all settlements with more than 2,500 inhabitants. Using these criteria, she arrived at a figure of 1,300 towns within the 1939 Polish frontiers. Of these, 730 settlements did not possess civic rights but met the economic and social criteria for inclusion in the

category of ‘town’.® |

Small towns served as the link between the industrial economy of larger towns and the agricultural economy of villages. This function arose not only from the strictly economic characteristics of small country towns, but also from tradition. For several decades small towns had developed an autonomous internal life and - a unique culture of their own. The townspeople maintained their own system of values, as well as traditions that preserved their individuality and prestige. It was not the law, but their involvement in crafts, trade, and services, that guaranteed their membership of the middle class. Each town lived in accordance with its own rhythm, arising from its own distinctive origins and history. Stefania KowalskaGlikman is right in stressing that the development or decline of a town was determined not by one but by a number of factors affecting the region as a whole.* This issue constitutes a separate problem to be researched. The process of the decline and agrarianization of smaller country towns, which began as early as the nineteenth

century, intensified in the twentieth century. Stagnation, and—more often— depopulation were, to a considerable degree, the. results of urbanization. People who left villages and deteriorating towns headed mainly for towns or cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants. Small towns did not provide the young with adequate prospects for the future and were therefore not attractive to them.° One characteristic of Polish towns was their overwhelming wooden construction. The majority of houses were single-storey, made of wood, and shingle-roofed; some were adorned with arcades. Houses were situated along unpaved lanes that became cart-tracks on the outskirts of the town. The houses consisted of a spacious entrance hall and one or two rooms, with a small shed. ‘They would often include a small shop or a craftsman’s workshop, a storeroom for materials and supplies, and provisions for the residents and fodder for the livestock. Behind the house there was a back yard with outbuildings, separated from neighbouring homes by a fence.®

In 1917, at a convention of town representatives in Lublin, the appearance of an average small town in central Poland was described thus: 3 W. Rewieriska, Gestosé siect miejskiej w Polsce (Warsaw, 1937), 241-9; S. Rychliriski, ‘Socjologia miast’, Przeglad Socjologiczny, 3 (1935), 567. 4 S. Kowalska-Glikman, ‘Mate miasteczka w publicystyce drugiej polowy XIX w.’, in Kotodziejczyk (ed.), Miasteczka polskie, 82. © A. Jelonek, Ludnosé miast 1 osiedli typu miejskiego na ziemiach Polski od roku 1810 do 1960 (Warsaw, 1967), 6-57; R. Renz, Spotecznosci matomiasteczkowe w wojewodztwie kieleckim 1918-1939 (Kielce,

1990), 34-6. 6 I. Tloczek, Polskie budownictwo drewniane (Wroctaw, 1980), 105-8.

Small Towns in Inter-War Poland 145 Generally, these are bigger or smaller housing complexes; in the Jewish district, they usually have no back yard, or so little of it that there is no room to put up an outside toilet or a sink, unless it is to be placed under somebody’s window. Obviously, the inhabitants are forced to dispose of dishwater, household refuse, and even all sorts of excreta of the healthy and the sick alike, straight onto unpaved streets and squares. In these small towns, therefore, the © upper layer of soil is constantly covered with rotting organic material. '

In inter-war Poland the appearance of a country town changed little. In a mono-

graph on one country town we read: “lhe Checiny of the inter-war period is a neglected town, with overcrowded housing facilities, no basic municipal amenities,

and a low level of hygiene, with disease spreading and outbreaks of epidemics occurring at intervals.’® The appearance of one industrial country town, Konskie, was not far removed from this description. The town had a chaotic, careless architecture consisting for the most part of one-storey wooden houses.’ In typical small towns, whose names never found their way into the handbooks of art history, most buildings were of one or two storeys, architecturally unattractive, clustered along cramped lanes, and situated on parcels of land built over with sheds and outbuildings. These country towns were termed contemptuously ‘the provinces’ or ‘the holes’ by the inhabitants of larger towns. The life of a small town was centred around the marketplace and its neighbour-

ing streets. The wealthiest craftsmen and merchants had their shops here, and it was here that the denizens of the town and its environs sold their produce, purchased necessities, transacted business, met at inns and restaurants, exchanged local gossip, and listened to news from afar. The most important public institutions were located on the marketplace, and it was here that the municipal authorities held their sessions and citizens argued their cases in court. Traditionally, cultural and educational institutions were situated here as well. Typically, small towns did not extend very far beyond the marketplace: in the smallest towns the marketplace was

not just the commercial and cultural centre, but was in fact the entire municipal organism, for just beyond it lay fields. !°

In the centre of a small town houses tended to be compact and cramped. The streets leading to the marketplace were somewhat less so. On the outskirts, along the roads leading out of the town, settlement was more dispersed. Churches figured prominently in the panorama of every small town. Their high roofs, with one or two steeples towering over the other buildings, became the emblem of these small

country towns and accentuated their uniqueness. The churches in some of these towns were excellent specimens of ecclesiastical architecture. In the vicinity of the ’ S. Klarner, ‘Higiena miast’, in Pamietnik zjazdu przedstawicieli miast i miasteczek (Lublin, 1917),

s J. Skrzypek, ‘Stosunki spoleczno-gospodarcze w Checinach w latach 1918—1939’, in Z. Guldon (ed.), VIT wiekow Checin: Matertaty z sesjt naukowe 24 V 1975 (Kielce, 1976), 142. 9 J. Brzozowski, Konskie wezoraj i dzis (Warsaw, 1978), 73. 10K. Wejchert, Miasteczka polskie jako zagadnienie urbanistyczne (Warsaw, 1947), 22.

146 Regina Renz church there would be accommodation and outbuildings for the church staff, as well as the presbytery, the vicarage, and the organist’s house.

The Jewish quarter gave the town its special appearance. The shtetl was primarily a distinctive locality with respect to culture and customs. Within a few centuries of their arrival in the region the Jews in the small towns had created a culture of their own. Numerous instances of Jewish architecture, both congregational and secular, such as the beit midrash, the mikveh (bath house), the kirkut (Jewish cemetery), the heder, the hospital, and the old people’s home, were essential elements of the small-town landscape. The most Jewish of geographical points was the

synagogue—the centre of religious and social life in the Jewish community.?! Unlike the places of worship of other religions, the synagogue was not a place for offerings, nor was it a holy place in the Christian sense. It was rather a place in which to gather for prayer and study. In contrast to the half-wooden, single-storey dwellings of the small country towns, the synagogue was, together with the church and possibly the town hall, one of the most splendid buildings in the small-town panorama. Another important centre of religious and social life was the bezt midrash, where the Jews used to gather—rich and poor, scholars and simpletons alike. It was here that acquaintances were introduced and the foundations of Jewish solidarity were established. Any Jewish traveller, upon arriving at the town, could call at the beit midrash and count on the assistance of the local Jewish community. It is difficult to imagine a Jewish country town without an inn or a restaurant. These gathering places constituted a unique type of public forum, and were the focus of everyday life for the inhabitants not only of the town itself, but also of the nearby villages—especially on Sundays, holidays, and market days. Nor would the picture of the town be complete without buildings such as mills, windmills, brick-

yards and stonemasons’ workshops. : In the landscape of every country town the cemetery occupied a special place. Its area was consecrated according to the appropriate ritual, and funerals were taken by a priest. The church oversaw the maintenance of its holy places. No wonder then that, in a country as traditionally Catholic as Poland, every cemetery was cared for; parishioners perceived their cemeteries as sacred places deserving special attention.

It was a deeply rooted assumption that whatever was found within the cemetery walls belonged to the dead, just as whatever was found inside a grave belonged to its

occupant. Such beliefs may be part of the distant echoes of pagan cults, but they also contributed considerably to the preservation of cemeteries.1* A small-town cemetery held the graves of family members, neighbours, and friends whose funerals one had witnessed; each grave had its own individual character. The most magnifi-

cent tombstones—sometimes in the form of small mausoleums—belonged to parish priests and more distinguished citizens. The majority, however, consisted 11M. Piechotka and K. Piechotka, Bégnice drewniane (Warsaw, 1957), 21. 12 T. Rudkowski (ed.), Wies i miasteczko u progu zaglady (Warsaw, 1991), 120.

Small Towns in Inter-War Poland 147 of a wooden or cast-iron crucifix stuck into the ground. The cemetery would be shaded by trees, and surrounded by a painstakingly maintained fence. Jewish cemeteries displayed an exceptional variety of tombstones (matsevot)

and tombstone inscriptions, as they generally survived untouched for centuries. According to the Talmud, ‘Jewish tombstones are more splendid than royal palaces.’ Jewish gravestones varied in their height and the type of stone of which they were made. Some, dating back to the Renaissance, baroque, rococo, and neo-classical periods, have been preserved, the latter with characteristic sloping cornices. A religious prohibition forbade the depiction of human beings, so such

representations were extremely rare. Their ornamentation mostly took the form of , motifs showing plants or animals, or objects associated with worship or with the occupation of the deceased. On the graves of kohanim, or descendants of the priests, arms outstretched in a gesture of blessing would be carved; the graves of rabbis, scholars, and those who read the Torah in the synagogues were denoted by books and bookshelves; a collection box would symbolize generosity, a virtue highly valued in Judaism. Women’s graves would have candlesticks carved on them, as it was the

women who lit the sabbath candles on Friday nights.‘ We cannot know whether the ban on the depiction of human beings impoverished or enriched sepulchral art. Clearly, it led to creative solutions based on allusion and metaphor. The small town was not just a smaller version of the larger ones; it was an independent urban organization whose inhabitants were frequently far removed in their opinions, morality, and code of conduct from those of big towns. The burghers of small towns were united, despite internal divisions, by their mentality and lifestyle as well as by patterns of speech and behaviour. The dominant groups were the craftsmen, the merchants, and the market gardeners. The presence of other social strata, such as the intelligentsia, the bourgeoisie, and the working class, was conditioned by the administrative and economic character of the town. An

intelligentsia was present in every small town, generally clustered in district centres. It was made up of clerks, teachers, clergymen, and—to a lesser extent— freelancers of various kinds. Because of the economic underdevelopment of the small towns, the bourgeoisie were few in number. Factory workers, similarly, constituted a small proportion of the population, although as a group they were charac-

terized by a roughly homogeneous structure with regard to occupational and material status.!°

, In the social and occupational structure of the small town there were quite a few grey areas. Many people combined two or more sources of income. Many craftsmen and merchants, mainly Christians, owned their own houses and pieces of land. The 13M. Krajewska, ‘Cmentarze zydowskie—mowa kamieni’, Znak, 2—3 (1983), 397.

‘4D. Muszyniski and L. Muszynski, ‘Cmentarze zydowskie’, in Kalendarz Zydomski 1991/92 (Warsaw, 1991), 169-70; M. Krajewska, Czas kamieni (Warsaw, 1982), 3, 5.

_ 18 J. Hoff, ‘Stosunki wyznaniowe i struktura spoteczno-zawodowa matego miasta galicyjskiego w dobie autonomii’, in Kolodziejczyk (ed.), Miasteczka polskie, 135-42.

148 Regina Renz _ additional source of income they derived from the sale of produce is documented in Franciszek Kotula’s monograph on Gtogow and in Jan Sktadzien’s recollections , of Pilzno.!© The practice of taking on additional jobs, within various social and vocational groups, assumed various forms. Physicians, midwives, and other medical , workers employed by clinics and hospitals supplemented their income by treating people on the side. Similarly, teachers increased their earnings by tutoring privately. Approximately 10 per cent of the professionally active population of the

small towns supplemented their income in some way.!? , Many small country towns, both in Galicia and in the Congress Kingdom of Poland, could be described as shtetls—localities dominated by a Jewish community, organized according to their own rules in their own unique manner. The Jews constituted an integral part of the material and spiritual landscape of small towns.

| Poles and Jews living in the same town formed two separate environments. Rose Price recollects: ‘I was born in a small Polish town. In our district, everyone knew everyone else: grandparents, aunts, friends, neighbours, merchants, and craftsmen. The strangers were the non-Jews—the Poles.’!® That there was such fundamental closeness and such great psychological alienation is astounding. Both the Polish and the Jewish side harboured grievances and prejudices, although these had different sources and disparate natures. The model of bilateral contacts accepted by both sides was one of peaceful isolation, of a life devoid of conflict, but also of closer friendship. The Jews were an ethnic community with a marked consciousness of their cultural

distinctiveness, which had been strengthened through the centuries by their common history, and which manifested itself in the cult of tradition and religious ties. Apart from tradition and religion, other important factors binding the Jewish community were the Yiddish language, clothing, customs, and communal institutions. In the small-town environment the gap between social strata was readily apparent. In descriptions of small towns the authors frequently draw attention to the fact that the wealthier citizens shut themselves off from the poor and the intelligentsia distanced themselves from the petty bourgeoisie (¢ykz) and obscurants (koftuny); they also point to the reciprocal isolation of Poles and Jews. Zbigniew Gruda writes in his memoirs:

For centuries, until the Second World War, the inhabitants of Pinczéw had been divided into four ‘strata’: citizens, colloquially known as gulony; the intelligentsia; the poor, 1.e. baniaki; and the Jews. The order of this enumeration . . . reflects accurately the position of each group in the social hierarchy, as perceived by the community. Each group occupied a quite specific part of the town, mixing with other groups reluctantly and infrequently. *® 16 F, Kotula, Miasteczko na przyktadzie Glogowa Matopolskiego 1 jego sqsiadow: Proba biografu (Rzeszéw, 1981), 15, 21; J. Skladzien, Za ciasnym wydawadt mi sie ten zakatek: Pamietniki (Krakow,

, 1982), 39. 17 Renz, Spotecznosci matomiasteczkowe, 59. 18 R. Price, ‘Odnalezienie Mesjasza’, Znak, 2—3 (1983), 325.

19 Z. Gruda, ‘Miasteczko nad Nida’, in J. Wyrozumski (ed.), Pinczdm 1 jego szkoly w dziejach (Warsaw, 1979), 267.

| Small Towns in Inter-War Poland 149 The various strata lived separate lives, and although their members met one another daily, they almost never met socially. Marriage between young people from two different strata was extremely rare, and was always treated as inappropriate. A great majority of country townsfolk were convinced of the permanence of this

system. A cautious attitude towards the new went hand in hand with distrust of and a certain resentment towards those who broke the pattern. In his monograph on Kunow, Aleksander Bastrzykowski claimed that ‘country townspeople are characterized by a habit of lording it over everyone else, by conceit and vanity; in brief, by all that had long ago been reflected in comic characters’.”° Unflattering opinions concerning the inhabitants of small towns found their way

into literature. For example, Pacanéw, popularized by Kornel Makuszynski, became synonymous with seediness, while small-town life was supposed to be characterized by the low intellectual standards of the locals. Obviously, townspeople had positive characteristics as well, such as diligence and thrift. A great deal of importance was attached to material wealth. Townsfolk therefore saved to purchase a piece of land or to open a workshop or a store. Not infrequently, in order to realize this lifelong ambition, they had to economize on food and clothing, not to

mention cultural needs.

Relationships between neighbours varied considerably, depending of course upon the parties’ personalities. Usually relations were proper, or even friendly, but arguments and disputes were also common. Generally, people would help one another in times of need. Assistance was granted particularly willingly to those afflicted by misfortunes such as fire, theft, or illness. These close neighbourly ties contributed to the persistence of the custom of spending leisure time at social gatherings. The natural need for entertainment was to a great extent satisfied by professional organizations as well as by cultural and educational associations. Country townspeople usually spent their spare time at social occasions organized | by guild or merchant associations. At Christmas and Easter everyone shared the traditional wafers (opfatki) or eggs that had been blessed for the occasion. Because guilds were often something of a church brotherhood, whose duty it was to provide candles for church celebrations, the candle-making (Janie Swiec) was itself the occasion for a gathering of the guild members. Great care was taken to ensure that the entire guild participated in the festive occasions of its members, and, by the same token, that a deceased master or apprentice was accompanied to his final resting

place. Occasionally, guilds and merchant associations had their own chapels or altars in churches. Religion played a vital role in the everyday life of the small town. Small-town

parishes functioned as the centre of social life. Even youths of a more radical religious orientation did not avoid the church on Sundays, as that would have 70 A. Bastrzykowski, Monografia historyczna Kunowa nad Kamiennga i jego okolicy (Krakéw, 1939), I32.

150 Regina Renz meant social isolation. It was the communal experience of singing and prayer that

mattered. Church buildings themselves, as well as their interiors, influenced the human consciousness. Some places of worship, roadside crucifixes, or shrines were unique monuments of collective national memory. The locals were careful not to neglect the crucifixes erected on the graves of former insurgents.”? Correspondingly, within the Jewish community Orthodox Jews predominated. Thus, from birth through marriage to the grave, ritual sanctified every significant moment of Jewish life. Holidays and rituals constituted the essential elements of the Jewish world: the sabbath, Hanukkah, Purim, Passover, and other holidays. On

Friday evenings the streets and squares of the small towns were deserted; the sabbath was beginning. According to an old saying, ‘It was not Israel that kept the sabbath, but the sabbath that kept Israel’. 7sadzkim (miracle-workers) enjoyed considerable respect among the Jewish population. By the turn of the nineteenth century, within the Polish territory, several dynasties of tsadikim had come into being. As Eugeniusz Duda notes, ‘Some towns and country towns, even the inconspicuous out-of-the-way Polish settlements such as Bobowa, Lezajsk, Opatéw, Kozienice, Betz, Kock Aleksandréw, Gora Kalwaria, Mszczonow, and others, became famous hasidic centres precisely during this period, thanks to the local tsadikim.’*” At least once a year, around the autumn holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, followers of a particular tsadik made a pilgrimage to his court. Religion was a source of hope and joy for the Jewish population. A pious Jew knew

that he was in exile so it was no wonder that misfortunes befell him. He also | expected his lot to improve, but only if, and as far as, God desired. Levels of education were not high in the country towns. From the 1931 census data we learn that every sixth inhabitant of a small town was illiterate.2? The small| town population was dominated by those with an elementary education. For example, in the early 1920s in the Kielce province only 4.6 per cent of the small-town population had completed secondary education, 0.6 per cent had finished vocational school, and a mere 0.5 per cent were university graduates. Unfortunately, data

for the subsequent years on the educational levels of country townspeople are insufficient. It seems that the percentage of the population with secondary and

| vocational education was on the increase. Data from 1936 show that in Kielce province 13.6 per cent of craftsmen had master’s qualifications and 27.7 per cent were in possession of an apprentice’s certificate.2* Craftsmen and merchants were not normally interested in occupational self-improvement; the majority assumed that a master’s certificate would not provide them with any actual benefits as their clientele came only from the closest surrounding areas and would not demand such. qualifications. 21 J. Marianski, Religijnosé w procesie przemian (Warsaw, 1991), 151, 187; H. Btazkiewicz, Dzieje

parafu Pilica (Krakow, 1988), 75-82. 22 EF. Duda, Krakowskie judaica (Warsaw, 1991), 27. 23 Maty Rocznik Statystyczny (Warsaw, 1939), 28-0.

24 Renz, Spotecznosci matomiasteczkowe, 116.

Small Towns in Inter-War Poland 151 Research on the small-town environment demonstrates that the probability that children would receive an education depended greatly upon their parents’ financial resources and level of cultural awareness. Thus the greatest educational progress was made by the children of the intelligentsia; the merchants’ and craftsmen’s children came second, and the children of country-town farmers came third; with the sons and daughters of day labourers in the last place. The attitude of day labourers towards children’s education was characterized by the authors of a study on small-town education as follows: ‘Day labourers do not approve of schooling; when

urged to see to their children’s education, they say, “But this daughter of mine won't be no governess or teacher, so it’s enough for her to know how to sign her name.” °*° The same study shows that the attitude of the craftsmen, merchants, and country-town farmers towards education was totally different. These groups fully

_ appreciated the role of education and made great efforts to provide for their children’s schooling. However, in a small town there was little opportunity to climb the social ladder. The farmers’ children most often became farmers or craftsmen; the craftsmen’s children became craftsmen or merchants. For the children of the poorer townspeople or day labourers, learning a trade represented great advancement. The activities of political parties as well as cultural and educational institutions effected a change in the mentality and lifestyles of small-town communities in the

inter-war period. Jewish children were less inclined to seek the guidance of the parents and their rabbis; they took their cues rather from one or another social or political organization. In his sociological and historical study of young Jewish people in the 1930s Max Weinreich concluded that the young were increasingly departing from the traditional forms of Jewish life, and that this in turn triggered exceptionally sharp criticism on the part of the older generation.2° Orthodox parents generally viewed their children’s social and political leanings as a misfortune threatening their hearths and homes and loosening the bonds between the generations. In 1933 the rabbi of Szydtow, Mejlech Rabinowicz, wrote to the starosta of Stopnica: On behalf of the complaining parents and the entire Jewish community, I would be greatly obliged if you would kindly put an end to the impudence of the young, and not allow them to enter the Hehaluts [Pioneer] organization, which is undesirable for the Szydtow settlement, as it leads to the corruption of the youth, which is prohibited by our religion.2"

Admonitions and prohibitions did not suffice in this case; in the inter-war period many changes were taking place in Jewish family life. Similar changes, slow as they were, could also be observed in Polish families. , 25 Z. Mystakowski (ed.), Wychowanie w srodowisku matomiasteczkowym (Warsaw, 1934), 123. 26 M. Weinreich, Studium 0 mlodziezy zydowskiej (Poznan, 1935), 18.

27 Letter from M. Rabinowicz, rabbi of Szydtéw, to the Stopnica district administrative officer, 26 June 1933, Archiwum Panstwowe w Kielcach, microfilm 2598.

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Jewish Patrons and Polish Clients: _ Patronage ina Small Galician Town ROSA LEHMANN

They all marched past before Martin’s eyes: the grandparents, parents, children. | He knew them all by name... There is the old rabbi, and at the home of Rabbi Segal, Martin was quite one of the family. He brought water several times a day, cut wood, and each Saturday he ate sabbath bread with fish in the rabbi’s kitchen. And who could compare with Martin on the morning of Passover when the rebbe asked

him to enter the rabbinical court? The rebbe, the judge, and the sexton waited for him. The rebbe spoke Yiddish and Martin understood every single word. The leavened bread from all over the town was sold to him, even the bread which the Jews from Melawe had not yet brought to the rebbe but which they did not trust. And he, Martin, bought the leavened bread and paid in cash. And when he left with his purchased ‘wealth’, he would bend before the court and speak in Yiddish: ‘Martin, the shabbes goy, wishes you a kosher and happy Passover.’ The face of old Martin cleared with joy, his eyes brightened, and his lips muttered Yiddish words that he had not heard in years. That there were no more Jews in Melawe, no single person to speak Yiddish with, was bad for Martin. (J. OPATOSHU, “The Jew Legend’)

WHEN I first began research on Poles and Jews in Poland and their mutual relationship I did have preconceptions about what this relationship entailed. ‘Through both my Dutch and my academic background I had learned of a troubled relationship. Poles and Jews lived isolated from one another in separate communities, and contacts between them were hostile owing to the virulent antisemitism of the Poles. I was still a teenager when I watched the documentary Shoah on Dutch television. For me, and the people watching with me, Claude Lanzmann’s documentary established a permanent association between Poland and the Final Solution of European I wish to thank E. Gebhard for his translation of the eyewitness account used in this chapter (J. Litwak, ‘Oral Testimony’, Mar. 1970, Yad Vashem, 03/3350, Oral testimony of Israel B. relating to the murder

, of the Jewish community of JaSliska recorded by Josef Litwak). I am also grateful for the valuable comments and suggestions of Jeremy Boissevain, Daniel Meijers, David and Rudo Niemeyer, and Hans Vermeulen on earlier versions of this chapter. I am especially indebted to the Poles and Jews from Jasliska who were willing to share with me their private memories.

154 Rosa Lehmann Jewry—concentration camps, memorial sites, concealed facts, painful memories, peasant backwardness, sorrow, resentment. In 1992, when I left for Poland to carry out my research, I was fully prepared to meet with resistance and hostility on the

part of my Polish hosts and informants.

However, my experiences and research findings did not meet my own expectations. During the regular visits I paid toa number of peasant households in Jasliska, a former town, now village, in south-east Poland, my peasant informants were more than willing to tell me stories about their former Jewish neighbours—'their Jews’,

as they would call them. The affection and commitment that were displayed in _ these stories were similar to those shown by grandfather Martin in Opatoshu’s story ‘The Jew Legend’, which opened this chapter.! Even if there was hatred and hostility between the Polish and Jewish communities in JaSliska, it was other

qualities that prevailed in the relationship: affection, commitment, admiration, surprise about the Jewish customs and observances, and dismay about the sudden and violent death of the Jewish residents. These findings inspired me to focus on the issue of reciprocity and co-operation between the Polish and Jewish communities in the research village, rather than on the issue of conflict.

This chapter attempts to contribute to a more accurate understanding of the relationship between Poles and Jews at the micro level by way of combining an anthropological perspective with an analysis of sources that are connected to each other both in time and in space. Drawing on archival documents and interviews with Polish residents from Jasliska and with Jewish survivors of the Holocaust originating from this village, I show that in the case of Jasliska, even after a difficult beginning and continued sources of tension between the Polish and Jewish communities, a certain measure of stability was achieved, in which Poles and Jews lived in close, but strained, interdependence. The chapter begins with a historical outline of

the Polish—Jewish relationship in Jasliska and addresses two questions: first, what were the conditions that gave rise to the mutual dependence between the Polish and Jewish communities? and secondly, to what degree can this mutual dependence be characterized in terms of patronage? Other studies have pointed to the aspect of patronage in the relationship between _ Poles and Jews in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Poland, when Jews functioned as intermediaries between the Polish nobility and the peasant serfs.” In this

context Jews were clients of the wealthy landlords who leased out to them the management of feudal estates. For the peasant serfs the Jews were powerful middlemen who had access to the goods and services they needed. This chapter argues that, while with the collapse of feudalism the Jews largely lost their role as brokers 1 J. Opatoshu, ‘The Jew Legend’, in his The Jew Legend and Other Stories (New York, 1951).

2 A. Hertz, The fews in Polish Culture (Evanston, Ill., 1988); M. J. Rosman, The Lords’ Jews: , Magnate—Jewish Relations in the Polish Commonwealth During the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge,

Century (Baltimore, 1992). |

Mass., 1990); G. D. Hundert, The Jems in a Polish Private Town: The Case of Opatow in the Eighteenth

Jewish Patrons and Polish Chents 155 between the landlords and the peasant serfs, they increasingly gained a new role as patrons providing access to first-order resources (such as jobs, funds, and specialized knowledge) to their peasant clients. It goes on to show that the measure of cooperation that characterized magnate—Jewish relations in the Polish—Lithuanian Commonwealth can be extrapolated to the peasant—Jewish relations that developed in the towns and villages of early twentieth-century Poland.

ECONOMIC COMPETITION: FROM EXCLUSION TO SETTLEMENT During the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries Jews from Germany, Bohemia, and Moravia were attracted to the growing towns and cities of Poland and

filled the commercial and entrepreneurial niche. Compared to those in western Europe, the Jews in Poland enjoyed a favourable legal and economic status. The 1264 charter on Jewish liberties in Poland defined the Jews as serfs of the state treasury (servi camerae) and subjects of the king, and at the same time secured the Jews’ economic and religious inviolability. Despite these basic rights, the legal and economic position of the Jews depended to a considerable degree on the policy of the owner on whose lands they resided: the king, the Roman Catholic bishop, or the (magnate) landlord. Progressively, as the position of the king weakened, the petty nobility and the royal patriciate became more successful in eliciting official restrictions on Jewish settlement and economic rights in royally chartered towns.* Such was the case in Jasliska when, in 1608, the residents* persuaded the ruling bishop to grant their town a privilege de non tolerandis Judaeis, a privilege which they successfully defended for centuries.° The first written record on the exclusion of Jews from JaSliska is in the town

book dated 1593. It tells of a secret meeting of ‘ordinary townsmen’ who after serious deliberation agreed that ‘whoever rents a room in his house to the Jew Lazur, who takes in toll, then such a man owes a 10-grzywna fine to the populace and to the gentlemen councillors’.® In 1608 the bishop decreed that ‘for the safety of ? Rosman, The Lords’ Jews, 38.

* A large section of the town’s population consisted of Hungarian merchants, who organized the import and trade of Hungarian wine. Another important part of the town’s population was involved in handicrafts. In the second half of the 16th century four large guilds (wielkie cechy) were established, embracing various industrial specializations, including blacksmiths, tavern-keepers, tailors, shoemakers, furriers, coopers, and weavers (Z. Orlik, ‘Dzieje Jaslisk’, Master’s thesis, Wyzsza Szkota Pedagogiczna w Rzeszowie, 1979). The Hungarian merchants as well as the Polish artisan guilds feared

the competition of the Jewish merchants. » See also F. Bostel, ‘Przyczynek do dziejow Jaslisk’, Przewodnik Naukowy Literackt, 18/7 (1890), 801-19; M. Horn, ‘Zydzi ziemi sanockiej do 16sor.’, Biuletyn Zydowskiego Instytutu Historycznego, 71 (1970), 3-30; A. Prochaska, ‘JaSliska, miasteczko 1 klucz biskupow przemyskich obrzadku tacinskiego (ciag dalszy)’, Przewodnik Naukowy Literacki, 17/3 (1889), 263-70. * Bostel, ‘Przyczynek do dziejéw JaSlisk’, 805.

156 Rosa Lehmann the townsmen’ Jews were forbidden to buy a farmstead, shop, or lot in Jasliska, or to

lease houses or to engage in trade, except during fairs or markets.’ This privilege de non tolerandis Judaeis met the interests of both the bishop and the townspeople: while the townspeople considered the Jews to be their main economic rivals, the Church aimed at preserving religious uniformity by restricting the settlement rights of all non-Roman Catholics.? However, the communal records show that the interests of the bishop and the townspeople clashed at times. When, in 1611, the Jews brought a charge against the authorities of Jasliska who kept them from taking up residence and buying wine even during fairs and markets, the bishop gave his , vote to the Jews.® Likewise, in 1630 the bishop and the leaseholder (dzierZawca) of the manor to which JaSliska belonged partly lifted the ban on Jewish settlement and decreed that ‘no single townsman is allowed to admit a Jew into his house to pass the night or store his merchandise, except for the current Jewish arendator’.’° Indeed, sources show that the first Jewish settlers were tax-farmers (pisarze poborow1) on behalf of the leaseholder of the customs of Jasliska."?

Thus, even during the period of de non tolerandis Fudaeis the attitude of the wealthier ruling stratum towards Jewish involvement in the town’s economy was fairly ambivalent. For the bishop and the leaseholder (respectively de jure and de | facto owner of the town) the economic activities of the Jews held several attractions. First, the role of the Jews as intermediaries between the town and the countryside stimulated trade as well as crafts in the town and in the region. Secondly, Jewish involvement in the arenda (particularly tax-farming) provided the town’s rulers with cash.’* Finally, taking into account the important contribution of the Jews to the local economy, and the general economic decline in the region since the seventeenth century, the exclusionary policies proved counter-productive. When, after the first partition of Poland in 1772, Jasliska was placed under the jurisdiction of the ” Bostel, ‘Przyczynek do dziejéw JaSlisk’, 805; Prochaska, ‘JaSliska’, 269.

8 This is clear from the fact that during the 17th century the town authorities of JaSliska more than once appealed to the privilege which was granted to the town by the ‘forebears of the present bishop’ and which says that ‘Ruthenians’ (rusznaczy), elsewhere denoted as ‘people of the Greek Catholic faith’ (ludzie greckiej religit), ‘are forbidden to have houses in the town or to take up residence in the town’

- (Bostel, ‘Przyczynek do dziejow JaSlisk’, 806). 9 Horn, ‘Zydzi ziemi sanockiej do 1650 r.’. 10 Bostel, ‘Przyczynek do dziejéw Jaslisk’, 806; my emphasis. 11 Horn, ‘Zydzi ziemi sanockiej do 1650 r.’. 2 Rosman (The Lords’ Jews, 107) defines an arenda as a lease of property or rights, transferred from the lessor to the lessee, in exchange for a pre-set rent. In practice the term ‘arenda’ referred to a lease of

monopoly rights mostly held by Jewish arendators. The best-known and most often exploited right available for the arenda was the right to propination (propinacja), meaning the exclusive right of the landlord to produce and sell alcoholic beverages within his domain. Besides the liquor monopoly, Polish landowners enjoyed the exclusive right to operate grain, fulling, tanning, and sawmills on their territory. In addition, an owner often leased out his rights to collect tolls or excise taxes in a given local-

ity. Other kinds of lease included fairs, saltmines, tobacco sales, fishponds, and dairy production (ibid.). The fact that noblemen were reluctant to engage in an occupation that they considered undignified kept the field of arenda almost exclusively Jewish.

Jewish Patrons and Polish Chents 157 Austro-Hungarian empire and the ‘enlightened’ Austrian policies weakened the power of the Polish gentry and the bishops, the true influx of Jews into Jasliska began. The first two Jewish families settled in JaSliska as early as 1808.'* The larger

influx started in the second half of the nineteenth century.'* By the early 1920s JaSliska numbered 224 Jewish residents, who made up a quarter of the town’s total population.!° By the time the Jews set foot in JaSliska, the town had lost much of its earlier

grandeur. The numerous wars which marked the end of the Polish Kingdom (1650-1772) and the ‘colonial policy’ which was consistently promoted by the subsequent Austrian rulers (1772-1918) had turned JaSliska into a feudal agrarian community of secondary importance. The abolition of serfdom in 1848 hardly improved the conditions of Polish town dwellers. The destitute peasants now paid ground taxes for plots too small to ‘pasture a goat on’.’© The local inheritance system, the outdated rotation system (tr0;poldwka), as well as the poor mountain soils resulted in crop yield below subsistence level. Hailstorms, pestilence, and a series of epidemics further affected agricultural production and led to heavy losses among the town’s population.‘’ The diminishing opportunities to sell crops and handicrafts | locally, as well as the low level of industrialization in Galicia, forced many families to leave Jasliska and emigrate ‘for bread’, particularly to the Americas. Emigration became so widespread that at the turn of the century every peasant household in JaSliska had at least one member who lived and worked overseas.’® As a result of these economic changes the Jews and Poles were no longer in com-

petition. Austrian election registers of 1870 show that 93 per cent of Poles were active in farming, and that of the sixteen registered Jews, seven earned a living from trade, five from the manufacture and sale of alcohol, and four as farmers.’? Indeed, Jews chose to settle in Jasliska because of the economic prospects offered by new outlets in a predominantly agrarian area. Also the Poles were likely to profit from the face-to-face interaction with the Jews, as the latter gave them the opportunity to obtain cash and purchase non-farm products locally. However, the complementary interests of the Poles and the Jews in no way guaranteed harmonious integration. The Jews, who during the second half of the nineteenth century, at the height of the agricultural crisis, moved into the town centre in ever growing numbers, were not | exactly welcome. Jewish settlement in Jasliska went hand in hand with rapid colonization of tradi-

tional Jewish niches and the acquisition of Polish lands and property. The Jews’ 13 Litwak, ‘Oral Testimony’. 14 Orlik, ‘Dzieje JaSlisk’; W. Grzesik and T. Traczyk, Od Komanczy do Bartnego (Warsaw, 1992). 18 Gtowny Urzad Statystyczny, Skorowidz miejscowosci Rzeczypospolite] Polskiej (Warsaw, 1924),

table 23. 16 Orlik, ‘Dzieje Jaslisk’, 50. 17 Ibid. 18 Ibid. 19 Wojewédzkie Archiwum Panstwowe w Krakowie, Oddziat na Wawelu (WAPK), Lista wyborcow dla wyboréw sejmowych (1870); Spis cztonkow gminy i przynaleznych do niej, kt6rzy sq uprawnieni do wyboru (1870).

| 158 Rosa Lehmann main asset in their attempt to settle in the small town was their economic strength.

They owed their economic weight to their predominance (or the Poles’ virtual absence) in the local cash economy. The unequal distribution of capital and land among the Polish and Jewish communities 1s illustrated by the figures of ground and income tax paid by the two communities to the Austrian treasury. Whereas in 1867 the few Jewish townsmen contributed 61 per cent of the total income tax paid by the town, the Poles contributed 92 per cent of the total ground tax.*° In times

of scarcity (e.g. famine or war) cash was an important asset that improved the

skirts. |

chances of survival. But also in peacetime the financially strong had an advantage over the financially weak. Since Jews had money available and many Poles were in need of cash, supply and demand easily met: the moneyed Jewish settlers bought up the lands of the mostly impoverished Polish town dwellers, who moved to the out-

The predominance of the Jews in the local cash economy worried the Polish community, and especially its leaders. Their worries coincided with a larger movement in Polish society to defend the so-called ‘Polish cause’. In the late nineteenth century factions of Polish nationalists had mobilized to eliminate Jewish commerce and to break the peasants’ dependence on Jewish merchants. Backed by the slogan of the ‘Polonization of trade’, the Polish nationalists established the T’owarzystwo , Kotek Rolniczych (Association of Agricultural Circles), which aimed at reducing the alarming poverty of the Polish peasantry and stimulating Polish entrepreneurship in the countryside.”! By 1896 the rural co-operative movement operated some 1,220 country stores, which sold goods and agricultural implements, bought up the agricultural products from the peasants, and gave loans and dividends in support of peasant activities.?7

In 1892 the Kotko Rolnicze (Agricultural Circle) was also introduced in Jasliska.?? This agricultural co-operative, set up exclusively to serve the economic interests of the Polish populace, cut into the business of local Jewish tradesmen in several ways. First, the rural co-operative plan associations were in powerful competition with the Jewish moneylenders. Secondly, Poles were encouraged to buy at the Kétko Rolnicze store and boycott Jewish shops. Finally, the number of products which could be purchased and sold by Jews had been significantly curtailed by the state authorities. Although firmly encouraged by the town and Church authorities, Polish contributions to local trade remained limited. Even during the 1930s, the period of nationwide anti-Jewish campaigns and economic boycotts, the total 20 WAPK, Verzeichnis der wahlberechtigten Gemeindebiirger und Angehorigen (1867); Wahlerliste fiir die Landstagwahlen (1867).

21 F. Golczewski, ‘Rural Anti-semitism in Galicia Before World War 1’, in C. Abramsky, M. Jachimezyk, and A. Polonsky (eds.), The Jews in Poland (Oxford, 1986); R. Mahler, ‘Jewish Emigra-

tion from Galicia’, in D. D. Moore (ed.), East European Jews in Two Worlds: Studtes from the YIVO Annual (New York, 1990).

22 Mahler, ‘Jewish Emigration from Galicia’, 130. 23° Orlik, ‘Dzieje JaSslisk’.

Jewish Patrons and Polish Chents 159 - number of Polish private shops in Jasliska never exceeded four. Most of the time the Poles had little choice but to frequent Jewish shops and did not follow the national attempts to boycott Jewish enterprises; it simply was not in their interest. The limited involvement of Poles in the local and regional market, apart from the activities of the rural co-operative, which from 1918 were heavily protected by the Roman Catholic Church and the Polish national authorities, can be traced to the lack of a Polish trade network to realize an efficient supply and distribution of merchandise and information. One major advantage of the Jewish merchant was that he had access to such contacts and information, and that, as a rule, he knew his customers. The extent and importance of the local Jewish networks 1s clear from the accounts of Jewish informants. First, through marriage bonds Jews were able to activate a family network that reached far beyond the confines of the local com_ munity. Jewish informants gave examples of how, in setting up one business or another, within or outside JaSliska, mostly relatives were consulted or involved in some other way. Secondly, generations of experience in trade laid the foundation for numerous contacts in the professions and with the main trading centres; hence, for example, the large number of Jewish companies that specialized in exploitation

of local forests and that were run by local Jews with expert contacts outside the region, in Krakow, and even outside the country, in Slovakia.

ECONOMIC INTERDEPENDENCE: ON JEWISH CREDITORS

| : AND EMPLOYERS IN INTER-WAR JASLISKA Notwithstanding the initial tensions, at the turn of the twentieth century both communities had adapted to the ‘natural’ economic division. The status of the Poles as ‘unfailing peasants’ and the Jews as ‘good traders’ remained unimpaired, in spite of attempts by the state authorities and the nationalists to do away with this division. This is clear from the accounts of the Polish and Jewish informants who even today explain the relationship as a natural outcome of things. In the capacity of peasants

and entrepreneurs, Poles and Jews provided important goods and services to each other and occupied reciprocal and therefore different niches in close inter- | dependence. In fact, Polish informants explain the peaceful coexistence in pre-war Jasliska by the complementary interests of the Polish and Jewish communities. Comments like ‘We respected each other because we bought products from them’ or ‘We lived on good terms, because the Jews always needed milk and eggs’ illus-

trate this point. |

As a result of the abolition of serfdom in 1848 the Polish peasants became increasingly dependent on the market with respect to both the purchase of basic products and income. The First World War in particular, which brought considerable material losses to the peasant households, had raised the level of need of the Polish peasants. Increased dependence on the market, however, coincided with a

160 Rosa Lehmann _ decline in opportunities to generate farm income other than by selling agricultural produce. During the inter-war years opportunities for work, which had never been high in the region, declined with the establishment of new national borders in 1921. The closure of the borders put an end to centuries of prosperous trade with, and seasonal migration to, Slovakia and Hungary. At the same time the Great Depression of the 1920s and 1930s reduced the opportunities for peasant migrants in the United States and decreased remittances from abroad.** With this increased dependence of the Polish peasants on the market, the signifi- cance of the Jews in the local peasant economy rose. Whenever a Polish peasant was short of cash or goods, he went to a Jewish shopkeeper, who would grant him limited credit. This could take two different forms: the Jewish shopkeeper either lent him the money necessary to purchase goods, not necessarily at Jewish shops, or he sold his goods on credit (a borg). The practice of private moneylending had become particularly widespread among Galician Jews (especially among the village _ shopkeepers) after the abolition of serfdom.”° This is confirmed by Polish as well as Jewish informants, who explained that the practice of moneylending (which in most cases would take the form of buying on credit) was prevalent in Jasliska until the outbreak of the Second World War.”° While Jews had always acted as creditors to Poles, from the second decade of the twentieth century they also became the main providers of jobs. During the 1920s and 1930s two Jewish sawmills employed over a hundred Polish men and women. In a witness account Israel B., a former inhabitant of JaSliska, recalls: ‘In 1912 two sawmills were opened, one after the other, of which the owners were Jews. The clerks and foremen were Jews, whereas the ordinary workers were Christians. The sawmills were a source of prosperity for the small town.’?” The role of Jews as clerks and foremen in the sawmills contributed to their com-

paratively high social standing in the local community. Such is confirmed by the account of the Jewish informant David I., who remembered Alter S., the foreman of the wood-drying section in the local sawmill. Alter S. lived in Daliowa (some 2 kilometres from Jasliska) and was loved by the villagers of Daliowa because he was the man who ‘hired and fired people’. Likewise, the people from Jasliska remember the successful entrepreneur and proprietor of the local wood industry, Abraham B.

24 Orlik, ‘Dzieje Jaslisk’. | 25 On this, see Mahler, ‘Jewish Emigration from Galicia’; Orlik, ‘Dzieje Jaglisk’. 26 Jt should be noted that during the inter-war years Poles also entered the sector of moneylending. _ Mortgage deeds in the real-estate registers show that debtors and creditors were Poles as well as Jews. However, in contrast to Poles, who often were indebted to Jews (with debts sometimes exceeding 200 zlotys), the Jews themselves were rarely indebted to Poles as richer relatives or co-religionists were

quick to help them out. Names of ‘fortunate’ Jews often appear in the mortgage deeds buying land and selling or giving it to the indebted Jews. As a result, Jews were indebted to ‘richer’ Jews rather than to Poles (R. Lehmann, ‘Conflict or Harmony? Poles and Jews in a Small Galician Town’, Jnternational Journal on Minority and Group Rights, 4 (1996-7), 323-9; id., Symbiosis and Ambivalence: Poles and Jews

ina Small Galician Town (New York, 2001)). 27 Litwak, ‘Oral Testimony’, 3.

Jewish Patrons and Polish Chents 161 As a benefactor of the Jewish community who slipped money to the house of prayer and to the Aeder, Abraham B. commanded respect among the local Jews. But for the local Poles he was no less important. Polish informants recalled him as a devout and important man. By way of showing their respect to him they submissively called him ‘Mr Owner’. Indeed, in 1935 the high social standing of Abraham B. was sealed with a seat on the town council. In this capacity he followed other prominent Jews who had been elected to the town council in earlier years (at least as far back as 1879). The high reputation of the Jews in JaSliska is also confirmed by Israel B., who made the following observation: During the first years of the First World War representation depended on the amount of taxes one paid. Since the Jews paid the highest taxes, they obtained six of the twelve seats,

in spite of their proportionally low numbers. This situation changed in 1923, when the number of seats was reduced by half. The political status of the Jews, however, remained unimpaired, and the people took full account of their opinions. In business matters they [the Jews] were renowned advisers and Christian intellectuals would go to them for

advice.®

Besides employing Poles as peasant workers in the sawmills, the Jews hired Poles as servants to clean their houses and look after their children, as shabes goyim, who

performed light domestic tasks on religious holidays, as timber-cutters in the forest, as carters who transported merchandise and wood, and finally as day labourers who cultivated the land owned by Jews. As one informant put it: ‘When a farmer had two strong horses, he used to work in the forest, and carry wood or merchandise to the town; and the Jews paid him for that.’ The extent to which the Polish residents depended on employment mainly provided by the Jews is especially telling in the recollection by a number of Polish informants that on Sundays, after morning service, a large number of Polish peasants would gather in the market square and

wait for the Jews to call them and give them some kind of job. It was on these Sundays that Jews would replenish their shops with merchandise and make the necessary preparations for the week. The peasant who happened to be selected by a

Jew as a carter or a porter was lucky, for ‘he was paid for his job’. Likewise, on the sabbath Polish boys and girls got ready to light the candles and the ovens in Jewish homes, to carry the prayer books for the Jewish men, and to fetch water or perform other light domestic tasks, for on the sabbath ‘Jews were not even allowed to light a match’. In return for their work the children received sweets or bread, and occasionally were given money. Jan S., who was affectionately called Yankele by his Jewish patrons, acted as a servant on such occasions: When the sabbath began, they [the Jews] prayed from night-time until the first meal at eleven in the morning. On the sabbath one Jewish woman used to go to my grandmother and would say to me: ‘Yankele, go and fetch me the kugel’—it was some kind of dough made | from potatoes, a dish made from mashed onions and fresh potatoes. I used to take all the pots 28 Ibid. 4.

162 Rosa Lehmann to all the families, and I had five families. The oven was in the wall of one Jewish house. A

| Jew stood there on guard so that nobody would enter. It was well guarded. When I came to take one of these pots, they gave mea hot piece of material. In that way I could transport two pots. And [ had to be careful not to fall down or to spill food, because it was their holiday meal. In return I got as much as they wanted to give me. Some 10 or 20 groszy per pot. So I was always waiting for the Jewish Saturday, and for this sabbath. I sometimes collected

1 zloty in this way—a worker at the sawmill had to work ten or twelve hours for this money. , Sometimes, when I visited these families, Jewish women offered a piece of their special sabbath bread to me. They said: ‘Here you are, take this.” And grandmother always asked me if I had fetched her another piece of bread and I told her: ‘Here, you have one, granny.’ And I had money for my exercise books, and my grandmother had money for flour. Because I went

to school. I was very happy because of that. Sometimes I saved money to buy shoes. If I managed to save 4 zlotys, I had enough to buy high-quality shoes, which I could wear the

| whole year through. POLISH CLIENTS AND JEWISH PATRONS: CO-OPERATIVE SYMBIOSIS RATHER THAN CONFLICT In the long term the economic interdependence of Poles and Jews provided the basis for stable and symbiotic relations between the two communities in JaSliska. Their close interdependence, as well as the competition for scarce resources, created the need for close political and economic relations. Of crucial importance in the maintenance of the political and social equilibrium were the strict ethnic bound-

aries between the Polish and Jewish communities, as well as the patron—client relationship that had developed between the members of the two communities.?9 The perspective of patronage, here defined as a set of relations in which two parties unequal in status, wealth, and influence form a dyadic, particularistic, selfregulating relationship of asymmetrical commitment and face-to-face contact,” | sheds a different light on the quality of the relationship linking Poles with Jews in inter-war Poland. It offers an alternative to those studies that analyse Polish—Jewish

interaction primarily in terms of conflict or that analyse Jewish and Polish communities in isolation. Where a social group has control of the means of production utilized by another

group, a relationship of inequality and stratification emerges. This was still the case for Poles and Jews in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Poland. During the period of the Second Serfdom (1550-1850) the Polish nobility had monopolized the means of production employed by both the Polish peasants and the Jewish merchants. After the abolition of serfdom in 1848 the Poles and Jews took control of the means of production associated with the economic sectors in which they traditionally operated; that is, Polish farmers took control of land, while Jewish 29 Lehmann, Symbiosis and Ambivalence. 30 V. Burkolter, The Patronage System: Theoretical Remarks (Basle, 1976), 7.

Jewish Patrons and Polish Chents 163 tradesmen took control of capital and capital goods. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries farming increasingly failed to provide a living for many peasant households. As a consequence, Polish peasants became increasingly dependent on the capital resources that were monopolized by the Jews. Indeed, to be able to make a living, many had to turn to Jewish creditors, and, from the second decade of the twentieth century, to Jewish employers, to gain the necessary cash or goods. A crucial aspect of the post-feudal relationship between Poles and Jews is not so

much the asymmetry it implied—this had already been the case in the relationship between the Jewish middlemen and peasant serfs of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—but rather the types of resource that were exchanged. Here it is neces-

sary to make a distinction between first- and second-order resources. Jeremy Boissevain defines the former as resources that are directly controlled, such as land, jobs, scholarship funds, or specialist knowledge. The latter are strategic contacts with people who control such resources directly or who have access to such people. According to Boissevain, those who dispense first-order resources may be called

patrons; those who dispense second-order resources are brokers.?! After the abolition of serfdom Jews lost their preferential access to law and order, which meant that their role as brokers between those who owned land and those who worked on it lost significance. Meanwhile, because of their former activities as brokers, the Jews gained access to a number of first-order resources—jobs, funds, and specialist knowledge—that were in short supply and on which the peasants depended heavily to make a living. In this context a relationship developed between the Polish peasants and Jewish entrepreneurs that bears elements of a patron—client relationship. Theoretically, the patron—client relationship distinguishes itself from other social relationships in a number of ways. To begin with, the asymmetry between the

| two partners in the relationship is more distinct than in other relationships, which is implicit in the goods and services that they exchange.** In the patron—client relationship the patron is loyal to his client as long as this is in his interests: he may furnish the client with some basic means of subsistence, be a ‘subsistence crisis insurance’ for him, protect him in various fields, or act as a broker and exert influence for his benefit. The client, for his part, is loyal to his patron: he is willing to offer basic labour services, as well as supplementary services, which are desired by the patron. In addition, he shows deference to the patron, serves as a loyal member

of the patron’s faction, leads new clients to the patron’s clientele, and agrees to maintain the status quo, which implies a hidden promise to give up all claims to autonomous access to resources.®? The difference in power between the patron and 3! J. Boissevain, Friends of Friends: Networks, Manipulators and Coalitions (Oxford, 1974), 147-8.

32 On this, see V. Burkolter and E. R. Wolf, ‘Kinship, Friendship and Patron—Client Relations in. Complex Societies’, in M. Banton (ed.), The Social Anthropology of Complex Societies (London, 1966),

I-22. °3 Burkolter, The Patronage System, 9.

164 Rosa Lehmann the client therefore largely depends on the degree to which the patron monopolizes the flow of information, goods, and services to and between his clients.*4 Another important aspect of the patron—client relationship is that it extends beyond the confines of membership of the family or group. From this it follows that entry into this patron—client relationship 1s mostly voluntary. A relationship may be initiated by the patron or by the client, both with the help of the same strategy. A

patron who is looking for a client helps someone generously and apparently unselfishly through some economic calamity, in the courtroom, or in other difficulty. Thereafter that person may be obliged to reciprocate. A client who seeks to establish relations with a powerful person will perform voluntary services for him in order to get the stronger party into some sort of debt relation.*° This links up | with another important feature of the patron—client relationship: that the exchange of services between the patron and the client is seldom predictable. Ideally, neither the content of an equivalent service is defined nor a specified time is set when the return service has to be undertaken, as ‘it is in the interest of both parties to keep the channel open, either by underpaying or overpaying at a later date’.*© The question remains to what extent Poles and Jews in Jasliska were linked by patterns of patronage. Considering the close interdependence of the Poles and Jews and the relatively strong economic position of the latter, one important characteristic of patron—client relations—the asymmetrical commitment of two parties— certainly obtains. Many peasants in one way or another depended on Jews, who represented the most vital economic sectors of trade and industry. Likewise, many Jews maintained relations with more than one Polish client. Moreover, the small size of the peasant community, as well as the prevalence of feudal relations and certain cultural values in the countryside, all contributed to the climate in which patron—client ties flourished best.?’ The small size of the community increased face-to-face contact, while the measure of informality of the relationships was high.

In addition, group solidarity among the peasants was low, meaning that they employed individualistic strategies to further personal, rather than group, needs. The following story told by a Polish informant reveals the different attitudes of Poles and Jews in matters of neighbourly concern and help: One neighbour cut his leg with an axe, up to his knee. So he was taken to the hospital in Krosno. My own brother carried him on his vehicle. One would wake up at 11 p.m., feed the horse, and at 12 p.m. one would leave in order to be in Krosno at the hospital at 8 a.m., which

were the opening hours. My elder brother took him [the injured man] there and left him

84 Boissevain, Friends of Friends. 35 Burkolter, The Patronage System, 11. 36 Boissevain, Friends of Friends, 159. 37 See Hertz, The Jews in Polish Culture, who stresses the authoritative role played by the Jews in the

village community, which he traces to the legacy of feudal society, in which the peasants had limited freedom and in which the Jews on behalf of the landed nobility took on the role of intermediary. Hertz beautifully unravels the cultural values and ideologies that underpinned this relationship and that, being firmly grounded in the society’s value system, survived the feudal system.

Jewish Patrons and Polish Chents 165 there. The head of the hospital in Krosno looked at him and said: ‘Cut off this leg.” And he [the injured man] said: ‘I will not allow you to cut off my leg.’ “Then you will die, so go home!’ He went home. At home the leg was aching terribly. There was no doctor here and he had no medicine. So he went toa second hospital, in Sanok . . . In Sanok they said: ‘Cut off his leg.’ [The injured man answered:] ‘I will not allow you.’ So he went back home again. And the leg was aching. So I went to Krosno with him. I parked my horse and vehicle on the verge. There was no big traffic then. I helped him to go there and they said: ‘You have already been here. We will cut off the leg or you go home.’ So he went home and people, farmers, the cleverer ones, they decided to go to Lwow, because we had the Lwow district here, and there [in Lwow] were specialists . .. But how to reach that place? One needs money for the train... Our people [Poles] said: ‘Let him die. What will we do with him?’ But the Jews collected money among them. They collected 17 zlotys. That was an enormous amount before the war. It was the price of a ticket to Lwow. Jews collected money and gave it, andhe _ went to Lwow to the clinic and his leg was cured. He did not need to have his leg cut off.

Patterns of patronage can be discerned in the example of the Polish peasant who brought a chicken to Abraham B. or occasionally worked in his fields. By voluntarily giving presents to the owner of the local sawmill the peasant was in fact apply-

ing for a job. After Abraham B. had accepted these services and employed the peasant as a carter, timber-cutter, or domestic help, the peasant would be sym-_

bolically indebted to the owner, who provided him with the basic means of subsistence, and would have to continue to supply these services. It is clear from the informants’ accounts that his employees, at the sawmill and elsewhere, were at Abraham B.’s disposal. In return for the extra labour given by his employees, and to ensure the continuation of such services, Abraham B. granted his employees certain privileges and acted as their ‘subsistence crisis insurance’. In like manner, Jewish families who had Poles working for them as domestic helpers (cleaning, serving, babysitting), porters (carrying water or merchandise), or carters (transporting merchandise or wood) would grant their employees certain favours in addition to paying their regular salaries.

The outstanding example of ‘subsistence crisis insurance’ was the Jewish creditor. Whenever a Polish peasant was short of cash or goods, he went to a Jewish shopkeeper, who in turn granted him limited credit. A proverb directly relating to this service says, ‘When things are bad, go see the Jew’.?° However, a Jewish shopkeeper not only granted credit when his client was short of money. To grant credit was to employ a strategy which tied the Polish client to his Jewish creditor, and vice — versa. The ensuing debt relation enabled both parties to profit from the services and return services that went beyond regular and formal transactions. Polish debtors and Jewish creditors forged a tighter link by presenting each other with gifts or by doing each other a favour every once in a while. Peasants were not supposed to pay off their debts unless they were becoming overstretched, since continuing rather than paying off debts ensured that the dependency relation could be maintained. 38 ‘Jak bida, to do Zyda.’

166 Rosa Lehmann However, if the debts became too great to be repaid, the relationship would no longer be profitable and the partnership would collapse, and, if the worst came to the worst, the debtor would be taken to court and this property sold at auction. Mortgage deeds witness numerous cases of land transfers from Polish debtors to Jewish creditors.*? Although this was rarely the case, settlement of debts sometimes meant bankruptcy for a Polish family, as a Polish informant recalls: A Jew had a shop, so my aunt went to him and asked him for credit . . . The Jewish shop owner asked her: ‘What do you want?’ [She said:] ‘I want some flour because the harvest was

not good, and I want sugar and salt too.’ ... So the Jew gave and gave and gave. And she could not write. When she bought 1 kilogram he wrote 2 or even 3 kilograms. And that was it, and so it ended. The Jew went to court and had a look at their mortgage in order to check how many fields they had. From that time on he knew the value of the land. So the Jew made a calculation and sent a warning to this person. He sent all the documents. Then she came

_ the second time—it was my aunt, Czestawa, the mother of Grzesiek—and he [the Jew] said: ‘Oh neighbour, you cannot get credits from me any longer, because the value of your land is less than the value of the goods you took.’ And he [the Jew] said: ‘You must give me the money back.’ She answered: ‘I don’t have money to pay you back.’ Her husband was a shoe_ maker—he was mending old shoes—better shoes are thrown in the rubbish nowadays. So _ she had no money to repay her debts. Then the Jew brought the case to court. They called an auction. ‘Who will give more for this farm?’ And then he [the Jew] sold it. . .. So the Jew sold this field. If1t was a house, people were thrown on the street. But there was also another way out. They [the debtors] kissed the Jew on his feet, and begged him to leave them in peace, to | let them stay in their homes. They promised to find a job somewhere, so that they could earn money and could live in their houses. So there was a case in court and this woman, my aunt, said to the judge: ‘Judge, this Jew wrote me more. He wrote me more, so he swindled me.’ [The judge said: | ‘But Mrs. M. how can you prove it?’ So the aunt brought a stick with her which they called ‘paliczka’. She told him that she had made some notches on her stick: ‘Here I had 1 kilogram of flour and here I had 2 kilograms, and here I had pepper and here I had sugar.’ She had made signs for herself, and she knew which one was for sugar and how _ many pounds she had bought . . . Then the judge told her: ‘Mrs. M., you know what? You can paint these notches on your backside.’ How could he have told her differently? People didn’t go to school during the Austrian times. One did not have to. It was not compulsory.

While it is clear that the Jews were powerful in the economic arena, it is harder to

assess their political influence. In the absence of data regarding the formation of political alliances (including voting behaviour) among the Poles and Jews in Jasliska during the inter-war years, the extent to which Jewish patrons were able to win the support of their clients against rival patron—client groups remains unclear. However, both Polish and Jewish informants hinted at the special prestige and authority enjoyed by the Jews in Jasliska. Abraham B., who was held in great respect by Jews and Poles alike, and who in addition was active in local politics, is a perfect example of a powerful local leader with apparent political aspirations. On the Jews’ political 39 Lehmann, Symbiosis and Ambivalence.

Jewish Patrons and Polish Chents 167 power Wojciech M. (aged 78), who had been active in local politics, commented: ‘When the elections took place in Jasliska, they [the Jews] were always the most important, because they were the richest, they had money, and in fact it was they who decided on everything. There were also poorer ones among them, but the Jews were better organized.’ If this statement reveals one thing, it is that the Jews had considerable influence in local politics. However, there were limits to the relative power of the Jewish patrons. As is argued in the literature on patron—client relationships, the relative bargaining posi-

tion of patrons and clients may depend on outside forces, that is, the degree to which a patron ts able to secure backing from the bureaucracy, the police, or the courts in his local domination of resources. If the patron is able to secure such backing, he will be able to use coercion at little cost, and, as a result, will be more successful in the political manipulation of his clients.*° In spite of the relatively strong economic position of the Jews in Jasliska, as members of an ethnic minority they had not had preferential access to law and order since the abolition of feudalism.

This means that higher political goals were probably of less interest to a Jewish patron than to his non-Jewish counterpart. Hence the capital of the Jewish patron, that is the network he had activated, and the goodwill he had earned, though proper

political instruments, were primarily a means to an end—to serve his economic

interests.

| Thus, the Jewish patron was mainly interested in economic transactions with his client. Similarly, the Polish client was primarily interested in the economic protection of his patron, the latter having access to scarce resources. The Jewish patron therefore committed himself to the Polish peasant when he needed a loyal customer or an efficient worker. The Polish client, on the other hand, went to the Jew when he needed economic support. Indeed, entry into a patron—client relationship was voluntary, and once a relationship was established a number of strategies were pursued which aimed at getting the other party into a debt relation. First, the return service was postponed for an unspecified period. Secondly, the content of an equivalent service remained unspecified. And thirdly, the channels were kept open by

underpaying or overpaying at a later date. It was particularly between Jewish employers and creditors and Polish employees and debtors that such unconditional transactions took place. Patron—client ties characterized the relationship between Poles and Jews in Jasliska only to a degree. Not all Jews maintained potential patron—client relations with the Poles. Most Jewish families were poor and were themselves involved in patron—client ties with their wealthier co-religionists. Moreover, not all Poles lost their autonomy in dealings with the Jews. While most Polish families needed the local Jews in one way or another, some, especially the wealthier families, could afford to operate independently of the Jews. Unlike the classical patron who is at 40 On this, see Burkolter, The Patronage System.

168 Rosa Lehmann all times able to win the support of his clients, the Jewish patron was unable to maintain a certain measure of political independence. In fact, the Polish peasants depended on the Jews as individuals, but the Jews as a group depended on the political goodwill of the Polish community. The weak political position of the Jews is illustrated by the fact that the ‘hidden promise’ to give up all claims to autonomous access to resources, which ts described as a significant obligation of the client towards the patron, was openly contested by the Poles with the establishment of the Kotko Rolnicze in JaSliska. The conclusion that Jews had limited political power brings us to another aspect of the patron—client relationship. It should be stressed that, besides the profitable economic returns, the social returns of patron—client ties were also considerable. The socializing of Poles and Jews turned out to be especially instrumental in reducing social conflict. Polish and Jewish informants confirm that the Jews invested carefully in social relations with their Polish neighbours and clients, regularly helping out Polish townspeople in times of need; no evidence was presented of such Polish support for the Jews. As a minority with limited political power, engaged in stressful activities and exposed to enmity from the national authorities, Jews had good reason to stay on good terms with the surrounding society. Hence, they supported their Polish neighbours in time of need, rewarded the services performed by their Polish clients, and finally, expressed their gratitude towards local authorities by giving them presents and inviting them to participate in Jewish celebrations. In this way, social interaction served to strengthen and stabilize the ties between the Polish and Jewish communities.

- CONCLUSION Recent studies on the issue of coexistence between Jews and Poles conclude that, while it is true that Jews and Poles periodically found themselves in confrontation, most of the time they lived in co-operative symbiosis.*! The field research I carried out in Jasliska supports this notion for the inter-war period.*? In this rural setting, in which the level of industrialization was low, as was the degree of social mobility,

_ the mutual dependence of Polish peasants and Jewish entrepreneurs fostered a relationship that was characterized by reciprocity and co-operation rather than conflict. Indeed, the accounts of both Polish and Jewish informants show that Poles and Jews met on numerous occasions and that socializing was the rule rather than

the exception. These meetings were not just chance encounters; they were an integral part of daily life and were approved of by both ethnic communities, as long 41 On this, see the work of Rosman (The Lords’ Jews), as well as A. Orla-Bukowska, ‘Shtetl Communities: Another Image’, Polin, 8 (1994), 89-113, and E. Hoffman, Shtetl: The Life and Death of a Small Town and the World of Polish Jews (London, 1998). 42 Lehmann, Symbiosis and Ambivalence.

Jewish Patrons and Polish Chents 169 as it did not harm the economic and political interests of the group. Hence, the numerous examples of Polish and Jewish children who became friends in school, of Polish and Jewish neighbours who shared the care of their common courtyard, of Polish clients and Jewish patrons who exchanged services on a regular basis, and of Jewish laymen and Polish authorities, secular and religious, who debated their views on religion, life, and politics. A certain level of co-operation, however, does not mean that tension between the two communities was absent. Throughout the period of coexistence the two com-

munities struggled for superiority in the social hierarchy in terms of economic success, control over the means of production, religious supremacy, and political power. However, while competition and hostility between the two ethnic communities was reduced considerably by the often close personal links of patronage connecting Jews with peasants, it was precisely these links that signalled the peasants’ dependence on Jewish entrepreneurs, and that gave rise to their ambivalent attitude towards the Jews. Hostility and distrust on the one hand, affection and respect on the other, can be explained by the peasants’ position as underdog and dependant of the local Jews. In fact, the widespread joke about the Polish squire who hated all Jews with the exception of his broker, his lawyer, his doctor, his banker, and so on,*? also applies to the Polish peasant, for the joke illustrates the tendency towards ambivalence that is inherent in the Polish—Jewish relationship. 43 Hertz, The Fews in Polish Culture, 54.

BLANK PAGE

Maintaining Borders, Crossing © Borders: Social Relationships 1n

the Shtetl

ANNAMARIA ORLA-BUKOWSKA

BACKWARD AND FORWARD IN the twenty-first century scholars debate a phenomenon that represented the absolute antithesis of postmodernity. ‘Represented’ because, though lasting for centuries, 1t was made abruptly extinct in the mid-twentieth century and is swiftly escaping living memory. Why does one study shtetl communities today?! As Mark Zborowski and Elizabeth Herzog wrote in their Preface to Life Is with People, ‘Itisa

culture that is not remote. On the contrary, it is one with which many have had direct or indirect contact, through its representatives or their descendants.’* One might even venture to guess that the majority of those researching the topic have had just such contact, in Jewish as well as non-Jewish families. Increasingly there is

a desire to return to one’s memories or roots; individuals scattered over various continents are visiting places that were home for themselves or close kin. A new non-fiction genre—from Theo Richmond’s Konin to Diane Armstrong’s Mosaic to Shimon Redlich’s Together and Apart in Brzezany—serves as partial evidence of this. Accompanying the nostalgia, however, is a desire to analyse a model of multiculturalism glaringly different from the one popularly propagated today—one in which, paradoxically, segregation instead of integration was the rule. In examining the shtetl, we find ourselves puzzled. Inconclusive are the debates in which historical methodology and thinking are applied to determine whether the shtetl was (to paraphrase Ezra Mendelsohn) good for the Jews or bad for the Jews, good for the Christians or bad for the Christians, or (to paraphrase Joel Berkowitz) a dystopia or a utopia.

‘ In this chapter the word ‘shtetl’ will refer not exclusively to the town, but inclusively to the whole community formed by the localities ascribed to it by custom and law. 2 M. Zborowski and E. Herzog, Life Is With People (New York, 1952), 22.

172 Annamaria Orla-Bukowska Arguments for calling the shtetl ‘backward’ abound, of course, if one compares its living conditions to those of the Western world. Who would see as ‘forward’ the

_ rarity of indoor plumbing, the dominance of dirt roads and dirt floors, or the non- | existence of mechanized public transportation? Moreover, these unenlightened folk seem to have been content with the way things were and seem not to have wanted to ‘progress’. This was a ‘traditional’ culture: a conservative society in which upholding and safeguarding the status quo was an ideal towards which all members of the group strove. In it all realms of social life were very much mutually and intricately intertwined. _ Religion and language, socio-economic status, lifestyle, and ethnic identity—all constituted components of one whole; religious life was home life was social life, and so forth. The public and private spheres of individual lives could barely be distinguished: quite the contrary, this was a world in which ‘everyone knew everything about everybody’—something considered unnecessarily intrusive by modern

standards.

Still, confusion in judging the shtet! community is aroused more by another aspect: not only fiction, but non-fiction accounts as well, often open with an impli-

cation, at minimum, that there was ‘harmony’, that ‘those were wonderful times’, that ‘all was well until the Germans came’.? In fact, as Rosa Lehmann points out, ‘Recent studies have come to address the issue of coexistence between Jews and Poles and conclude that, while it 1s true that Jews and Poles periodically found themselves in confrontation, most of the time they lived in cooperative ~ symbiosis’.* Is this pure idealization? Underlying the debates is an imperative: how can one reconcile memory of the peaceful symbiosis of the shtetl with memory of the horrifying conflagration of the Holocaust? In the wake of that trauma, scepticism is inevitably aroused when shtetl residents recall peace rather than pogroms. Yet

if mutual hatred and animosity was the norm, then how was it that Jews and Christians lived side by side for so many centuries in so many different places under

so many different rulers? Moreover, how was it that—instead of assimilating— their cultural differences remained strong, grew deeper, and even flourished? How is it that what looms before our twenty-first-century eyes as a retrograde dystopia could have been a romantic utopia? If we do not immerse ourselves in this world and look out through its eyes, we

cannot comprehend how groups that should have lived in conflict according to the prevalent theories of the social sciences built one universe together and lived instead in coexistence. It took the exported and imposed urban and modern ideology of Nazism, executing a premeditated mission with Western technological 3 See e.g. J. Gross, Neighbors: The Destruction of the Fewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland (Princeton, 2001), 37-8, 40; R. Lehmann, Symbiosis and Ambivalence (Oxford, 2001); and cases cited in S. Redlich, Razem 1 osobno (Sejny, 2002), 86-95. 4 Lehmann, Symbiosis and Ambivalence, p. xxi.

Maintaining Borders, Crossing Borders 173 advancement, to bring this to an end. That fact alone speaks much in favour of perceiving a societal progressiveness among the residents of the shtetl.

TOGETHER AND APART Nonetheless, one justification for assessing the shtetl as aberrantly regressive has been the observation that it was not only exclusive with regard to outsiders, but also exclusive between groups of insiders. As described by the title of Shimon Redlich’s latest work, Together and Apart in Brzezany,° the groups were, indeed, together in ~ one sense while quite apart in another. And it is especially this ‘apartness’ that bothers the contemporary Westerner. In the post-assimilation era, with the scorn-

ing and shedding of the ‘separate but equal’ motto, no positive value can be perceived in segregation, even voluntary self-segregation. Yet the Jewish and nonJewish residents of the shtetl are seen as having eschewed each other completely— nothing less than impermeable bubbles rebounding away from contact. The smaller the community of the shtetl and its villages, the more distinct appear to have been the boundaries subdividing it within. Their worlds were two (or more, depending on the number of different groups inhabiting the area), but these were simultaneously superseded by the one cosmos

that they created together. ‘What conception could a group have of itself and , others, if it never even meets any? Of course, it is clear that the small world of their community is the entire world for them, that they will attempt to encompass and comprehend it wholly .. . it is their world . . . their social group.’ More precisely, the entire universe extends only as far as their community: ‘If you live in Shinohata’, wrote Ronald Dore, ‘the “outside world” begins three hundred yards down the road .. .’.’ We do not have to construe community just in terms of locality, but more properly, in the sense which Dore expresses so lucidly . . . the sense of a primacy of belonging. Community is that entity to which one belongs, greater than kinship [my emphasis] but more immediately than the abstraction we call ‘society’. It is the arena in which people acquire their most fundamental and most substantial experience of social life outside the confines of the home. In it they learn the meaning of kinship through being able to perceive its boundaries .. .°

A strongly emotional and psychological bond with a specific place (something eliminated by modern mobility) is founded upon the significance with which a specific natural landscape is endowed, the edifices built by its residents or their forefathers, and, above all, the people who are born, live, work, and die there and all the extraordinary and ordinary events they experience individually or together. Of © S.Redlich, Together and Apart in BrzeZany: Jews, Poles, Ukrainians (Bloomington, Ind., 2001). ° J. Bystron, Megalomania narodowa (Warsaw, 1995), 15. See, too, Zborowski and Herzog, Life Is

, With People, 158. ™ R. Dore, Shinohata: A Portrait of a Japanese Village (New York, 1978), 60.

5 A.P. Cohen, The Symbolic Construction of Community (London, 1985), 15. |

174 Annamaria Orla~Bukowska such a connection is made a Heimat, a mata ojczyzna (‘small homeland’) or ojczyzna

prywatna (‘private fatherland’).? Its borders become the ones that enclose ‘all the world’ for all its residents, bringing them together. At the same time, it also allows for perception of kinship or other boundaries that enclose smaller groups within,

__ keeping them apart.

COMMUNITY AND BOUNDARY How is it possible for identity to be at once durably connected to the same home

town and yet to a different group than represented by one’s neighbours? As Anthony Cohen points out, ‘community’ implies ‘simultaneously both similarity and difference’.'° Furthermore, ‘Organic solidarity is society constituted by individuals, where differences which distinguish them from each other become also the bases for their integration and collaboration in a solidary whole.’ Hence, a single community of place not only permits, but actually requires and thrives on, various sets of similarities and differences. Marek Ziétkowski observes _ how neighbouring groups each have separate natural correlates (lakes, hills, etc.) and constructed ones (monuments, buildings, art and literature, etc.) that function meaningfully for each group alone; shared correlates which, nonetheless, evoke disparate reactions for each; but, finally, shared correlates which evoke identical reac-

| tions.!2 The first two sets comprise the differences upon which their exclusive _ boundaries will be built; this last set is what comprises the similarities around which their inclusive, common boundary will be built. Nevertheless, The important thrust of this argument is that this relative similarity or difference is not a matter for ‘objective’ assessment: it is a matter of feeling, a matter which resides in the minds

, of the members themselves. Thus, although they recognize important differences among themselves, they also suppose themselves to be more like each other than like the members of other communities.'®

Hence, as Zi6tkowski elucidates, A neighbour is someone found in spatial proximity, but concurrently someone with whom one has a certain kind of contact, about whom one has certain knowledge, and with whom one enters into varied interactions. A neighbour is not one of ‘us’ and though he may be treated as ‘foreign’ in the sense of being ‘other’ or ‘emotionally distant’, still he is not completely ‘foreign’ in the sense of being ‘unknown’. A neighbouring ethnic group, its products and culture, and the land on which it lives are to some extent the subject of ‘our’ knowledge (and attitudes). 14 9 S. Ossowski, Analiza socjologiczna pojecia ojczyzny (Warsaw, 1967), 203.

10 Cohen, The Symbolic Construction of Community, 12. 41 Tbid. 25. 12M. Zidtkowski, ‘Wspdélnota przestrzeni i odmiennosé tradycji: Sasiedzkie kultury etniczne’, Kultura 1 Spoteczenstwo, 35/4 (1991), 60. 13 Cohen, The Symbolic Construction of Community, 20-1. 14 Zidtkowski, ‘Wspdlnota przestrzeni i odmiennos¢ tradycji’, 59.

Maintaining Borders, Crossing Borders 175 Despite the ethnic, cultural, linguistic, and religious differences which preclude permeation of one another, the foreign can coexist with the familiar, and there can be permanent and constant exchanges between them.’° This feeling is what led Polish non-Jews to speak of nasz, ‘ours’, when referring to the whole population or to the groups of the shtetl community—~zts Jews, Poles, or Ukrainians, in contrast with some amorphous body of Jews, Poles, or Ukrainians elsewhere. Establishing borders—on the basis of and for the maintenance of the above-

mentioned differences—is crucial in the building of collective identity. Paradoxically, defining oneself or one’s group is always easiest to do in the negative— stating what one is not. We need the ‘other’ in order to describe and delineate our (collective) ‘self’, and to establish the borders of what comprises ‘us’. All cultural groups on a given territory define and stress who is ‘other’ for it; they need this mechanism like oxygen, for without it they vanish. ‘A certain level of xenophobia is necessary for the very survival of a community, for this protects it from dissolving

away: the liquidation of any and all distance with regard to others must automatically mean the liquidation of an attachment to one’s own group, i.e. its liquida-

tion.”'© As Eva Hoffman points out, ‘among their fellow Jews . . . their most important task was to maintain the continuum of their laws and beliefs, to uphold

the faith that made them who they were, that constituted their very selves’.!” In order both to include and to exclude, the community must have ‘a sense of discrimination, namely, the boundary. . . . [which] encapsulates the identity of the community. .. . Boundaries are marked because communities interact in some way or other with entities from which they are, or wish to be, distinguished.’!® Some borders do exist physically, but more crucial here will be those that exist psychically. ‘At this level community is more than oratorical abstraction: it hinges crucially on consciousness.”!? Part of this is a compelling sixth sense regarding

all the borders—which ones cannot be crossed or can, but only under certain circumstances. All this is dictated by religion, tradition, and customs, by the geography, and by the group(s) residing in one locality. Everyone knows his or her place within this landscape because it has been designated from birth and should remain so. “The matter of xenophobia becomes particularly sharp where parallel communities overlap on each other territorially. .. . both sides, for the right and proper arrangement of mutual relations, must meet specific mandatory and demanding conditions.’”? | The incontrovertible priority is to preserve and uphold the given order through the strict maintenance of set divides. Ironically, the more rigorous this is, and the ‘8 M. Grekowa, ‘BliskoS¢ przestrzenna bez sasiedztwa: O stosunkach bulgarsko-tureckich w Bulgarii’, Kultura i Spoteczenstwo, 35/4 (1991), 118. ‘6 Z. Musiat and B. Wolniewicz, ‘Ksenofobia i wspélnota’, Arcana, 43 (2002), 5.

7 E. Hoffman, Shtetl (New York, 1998), 85.

'8 Cohen, The Symbolic Construction of Community, 12. 19 Thid. 13. 20 Musiat and Wolniewicz, ‘Ksenofobia i wsp6lnota’, 6.

176 Annamaria Orla-~Bukowska more partitions there are, the more separate identities can exist concurrently. This is of the utmost consequence for the community: without the borders the longstanding order of its cosmos would spin out of control. So as not to disturb the ‘natural’ and preordained order of things, crossings had to be limited and control-

led, and crossing over had to incur severe sanctions. | From our modern point of view much of the above, though still at the core of modern nationalisms, constitutes unreasonable restriction on individual freedom and the right to pursue individually defined happiness. Yet, for the people living in such a society, a divinely ordained stability rules the world. Close contact with God and nature leads to a ‘divine community’ and ‘unity’ on earth.”? The modern individual operates relatively alone and uncomfortably in the grey area between mythology and fact, between imagination and reality, and between what is within limits and what is taboo. Individuals, things, and phenomena that are opposites, mirror images, ambivalent, or renegade, will always and within any group arouse tensions. However, in the traditional community the means to resolve these are available—through ritual?” or by conferring specified and special status upon those people or phenomena kindling disquiet and anxiety.?? Alongside the hard and fast boundaries are equally hard and fast rules taming contrasts, contra-

dictions, and the in between. Community and boundary reign comfortably over both similarity and difference.

SOME CAVEATS In recent years a wealth of literature—memoirs, biographies, historical accounts, and anthropological research—has appeared, disclosing more and more of the pre| war social life of shtetl Jews.24 This material is overwhelmingly from a Jewish perspective; in contrast, the non-Jewish perspective is extremely under-represented. Though research in this area has been and is being done, it should be borne in mind that the majority of surviving non-Jewish shtetl community residents are semiliterate people who continue to maintain a lifestyle not far removed from their prewar existence. Though referring to general trends throughout the region of central and eastern

, Europe, most examples provided in this text will be from Galician Polish Jewish culture and its counterpart, the Roman Catholic one. Though several groups might

cohabit with them, these two constituted the paramount, mutually complementary | 21 K. Wiectawska, ‘“. . . tajemnicze wnetrze ludnego miasteczka . . .”: Obraz sztetl w prozie Szaloma Asza i Izaaka Baszewisa Singera’, Obyczaje: Magazyn miedzynarodowy, 8 (2002), 6—9. 22 Cf. A. van Gennep, Rites of Passage (Chicago, 1960).

23 Cf. M. Douglas, Purity and Danger (London, 2002).

24 Often, unfortunately but understandably, as a prelude to Holocaust literature. Cf. M. Steinlauf, Bondage to the Dead (Syracuse, NY, 1997); Hoffman, Shtetl; H. Gryn, Chasing Shadows (London, 2001).

Maintaining Borders, Crossing Borders 177 ‘other’.2° Further, it is recognized that the situation in the Austro-Hungarian empire differed substantially from that in the Prussian, Russian, or Ottoman empires. Nevertheless, changes of political borders and/or regimes in distant capitals usually brought little if any change to the shtetl community. Finally, Jews are stereotypically seen as having been ‘urban’, but the territory they inhabited in central and eastern Europe was overwhelmingly rural and agricultural, towns were generally neither large nor modern,”° and communities were still compact and isolated enough to be encompassed by a network of interpersonal connections. Even in larger localities such as Konin, Jews found themselves in the same

types of relationship, and operating under similar restrictions, with their non-

Jewish neighbours as in smaller ones. | MAINTAINING BORDERS, CROSSING BORDERS

The borders separating the two communities were tangible and physical, as well as psychosocial and imagined. They were shaped in the collective imagination over the course of centuries and intimately known to all the residents. This was their mata ojczyzna, and they knew every corner of it and everyone who inhabited 1t— who belonged to it and who belonged to which group within it. On the one hand, a strongly perceived apart-ness, or, at best, beside-ness, is stressed in analyses of shtetl life. On the other hand, even in the most biased literature, example after example is found of close interaction. The bubbles appear to have burst, or at least have been much more permeable than is generally given. Hence questions arise: What borders did exist between the Jewish and non-Jewish inhabitants of the shtetl community? What type of person stood particular guard over them? Who was permitted to cross—how, under what circumstances, and to

what extent? | On Religion and Ethnicity |

Although crossing the boundary of inter-religious contact is the focus of another chapter in this volume, by Michat Galas, religion deserves special attention because of the central role it played in establishing and reinforcing consequent boundaries. Religion relayed history, dictated traditions and customs, set the sacred language as well as the secular alphabet, framed the group calendar and its holy days, and justified the rules of the community. Both Christians and Jews tended to view their neighbours from perspectives stemming partly from their religious convictions. As Abraham Cykiert notes, “The Shtet] was unashamedly Jewish, with life being

stable ‘other’. . ,

25 Though Roma were also a diaspora group living throughout Poland, their population was never as high in any one locality; also, because their population wandered, Roma could not be a permanent and

26 For a description, see A. Orla-Bukowska, ‘Shtetl Communities: Another Image’, Po/in, 8 (1994), 92-3.

178 Annamaria Orla-Bukowska ordered foremost by orthodox religious observances and then by the rich cultural traditions that developed. The religion was paramount and the Shtet/ revolved around the rabbi, the synagogue and the Jewish law.’?’ Directly stemming from religious law was the concept of kashrut, which, more strictly than anything else, separated Jews from non-Jews in their daily lives.?° In central and eastern Europe, the land of the shtetl, the concept of separation of Church and State did not take root; but where it did, the goal was to hamper State , intervention in the affairs of a Church rather than the reverse. It is more of a social truth that here, under the rule of vast multicultural empires, one’s ethnicity and religion were mutually defining. An ethnic Pole was a Roman Catholic and a Roman

, Catholic was an ethnic Pole in the same way as a Ukrainian was a Byzantine Catholic : and vice versa, a Russian was a Russian Orthodox and vice versa, and an ethnic Jew was a religious Jew and vice versa.”°

In most shtetls non-religious people were nearly non-existent before the 1930s. Secular Jews amid the commonly Orthodox communities were few and generally , looked upon with disdain;®° both Jews and Catholics saw them as renegades breaking unwritten rules. Members of educated elites who had moved into the area might be exceptions. Such people were always ‘newcomers’, never quite perceived as

- Snsiders’,?! but therefore allowed more leeway. The situation of the neophyte convert to Christianity was more complex.®” In the eyes of the Jewish community he or she became wholly excluded, even ethnically, from the old group, while, in the eyes of Christians, a member of the new group would be included religiously, though remaining Jewish ethnically. The latter border was completely impassable

from this side.

In any case—despite centuries of proximity, and despite numerous non-Jewish men and women remarking upon the perceived general beauty of Jewish women— _ intermarriage was not encouraged by either side. Nor was proselytizing conducted , among the Jews of the shtetl. The extreme rarity of crossovers leads one to conclude that this border in particular—as the cornerstone of all the others—was fearfully respected.®® In fact, more than one instance is found of Christians guarding the | 27 L. Wolowski, Memories of the Shtetl: Sculptures by Leon Wolowski, with text by A. Cykiert (Fitzroy, 1982), 13. 25 The segregation was one-way: non-Jews were quite often treated to and consumed kosher food such as matzot, hamentashen (special Purim cakes), and wedding or other delicacies. 29 Here it should be noted that the word ‘Jew’ describes, in most languages, both a believer in the faith and a person of Jewish descent. This equivalence was natural in the traditional world but causes

confusion now. 30 Orla~-Bukowska, ‘Shtetl Communities’, 93-4. 31 Nor perceiving themselves as fitting in; see Leopold Infeld’s comments in T. Richmond, Konin

(London, 1995), 105 ff. ,

382 ‘The procedure was simpler than conversion to Judaism, and being a member of a Christian group generally offered more advantages. 33 See the case of Felicja, the Jewish convert in JaSliska, and the sanctions against her, the priest who baptized her, and her family, in Lehmann, S'ymbiosts and Ambivalence, 115, 125.

— Maintaining Borders, Crossing Borders 179 border of Judaism: ‘Indeed my mother often told me that she and her sisters were taught their first Hebrew blessings and prayers by their Russian Orthodox maid, who also made absolutely certain that her father’s inn was strictly kosher.’?* Like-_ wise, cases were found of Jews guarding the border of Christianity: “During the time of the mass, the inns were closed and all the guests chased off to church.’®° Significantly, each group instilled among its own a certain trepidation towards the religious accoutrements of the other. Leopold Infeld, born in Krakow, recollected that ‘He was warned that he would go blind if he gazed at Christian holy images.’*©

Language From both sides, another demarcation separating Jews and non-Jews was language. This, on a more daily basis than religion, generally served, purposely or inadvertently, to protect the minority identity against the majority. Minority tongues are something the majority does not generally learn or formally study—out of not only ethnocentric but also practical motivation. As a consequence, however, the minority tongue can serve to keep secrets from the majority. Nevertheless, even in this sphere there was trespassing. Hebrew remained as enigmatic for the peasant as Latin (another mysterious language of pre-war times); these languages were tightly hemmed in by the sacrum sphere and made it out onto | the street only on rare occasions. Yet, on the one hand it was not so unusual for Jews to speak the dominant language; non-Jews consistently claim that their peers had no difficulties. For instance, ‘About a third of the population of Vary was Jewish. ... Many of them knew Yiddish, but all of them spoke Hungarian in and out of the home.’?” Shraga Bielawski recalled that his father ‘spoke Polish and Yiddish fluently, which was necessary for dealing with both the Christian and Jewish populations... . Everyone in my family spoke Polish, Yiddish, and Hebrew, and most of

us could speak some German and Russian.’*® This opinion is supported by a Carpatho-Rusyn villager who wrote: “There was no problem at all in understanding one another because Jews spoke in Lemko very well.’®” On the other hand, Yiddish is Germanic, and in both the Prussian and AustroHungarian empires German was the official language, whose fundamentals were taught or acquired involuntarily, even after the First World War. Knowing some German, one could understand basic Yiddish. Certainly, the marketplace and the Jewish-owned shops gave rise to learning the most important phrases and words— from ganev and ztodziez (‘thief’) to ein, tswe1, drei, and jeden, dwa, trzy—in each 34 Gryn, Chasing Shadows, 53. 85 A. Krzewniak, ‘Zydzi na polskie) Orawie’, Plaj: Zeszyt Krajoznawczy Towarzystwa Karpackiego, § (1993), 47; quoted in Orla-Bukowska, ‘Shtetl Communities’, 107.

86 Richmond, Konin, 105. 37 Gryn, Chasing Shadows, 63.

38 SF. Bielawski, The Last Jew from Wegrém, ed. L. W. Liebovich (New York, 1991), 5. °° T. Gocz, ‘Zydzi w Zyndranowej’, Plaj: Zeszyt Krajoznawczy Towarzystwa Karpackiego, 5 (1993), 8g; quoted in Orla-Bukowska, ‘Shtetl Communities’, 108.

180 Annamaria Orla-Bukowska other’s language. Anyone who conducted transactions needed to be fluent enough to negotiate prices. More interestingly, ‘Even the few Catholics in the village spoke Yiddish.’4° Cases of non-Jews speaking it fluently were perhaps infrequent, but certainly not unknown. A priest, a mayor, a girl apprenticed to a Jewish tailor, and a girl whose best friend was Jewish—all apparently spoke the language well enough that their command of it impressed both Jews and non-Jews.*! Though out of practice for over half a century, Galician peasants recalled words, numbers, or even sentences; some demonstrated Hebrew letters they had learned from friends. Pride was often expressed at having known it, and regret at having forgotten it. Daniel S. (82), when asked to recall the names and professions of the Jews he had known

during his lifetime, was visibly disappointed when he remembered only a few of them: ‘I | used to know the names of these people, but I have difficulties remembering them. . . . I used to know their names like I know my prayers.’

This barrier was not so rigid that crossing it was seen as undermining either community.** Nevertheless, certain subsets of each group were more likely to traverse it. On the Jewish side, Girls, less cloistered in their education, could communicate more easily with the gentile world. My mother spoke an educated Polish and developed an enduring love for Polish literature, while my father spoke the language awkwardly and felt no affection for Poland. In

many Konin homes the daughters spoke Polish while their brothers spoke Yiddish. The Koniners I meet are mostly men and women who attended Polish state schools in the Thirties. They spoke Polish among themselves, Yiddish with their parents.*4

On the non-Jewish side, the Polska Partia Socjalistyczna (Polish Socialist Party,

PPS) in Konin made banners in both Polish and Yiddish.*? In the Carpathian region in which Hugo Gryn lived, ‘virtually everyone spoke both Yiddish and Malorus, or Little Russian, including the non-Jews.’*° When he returned there decades later, both Gryn and his friend still passed back and forth through the language border: ‘We also met Vasily, who remembered me from the time he was a young waiter in my grandfather’s inn. We spoke in Ruthenian . .. He wished me and my family—1in a Yiddish that he had barely remembered after a lapse of fifty years—mazel and bracha, good luck and blessing, for the time ahead.’*’

40 J. Beller, Life in the Shtetl: Scenes and Recollections, trans. A. D. Pannell (New York, 1986), to. 41 Cf. Orla-Bukowska, ‘Shtet! Communities’; Lehmann, Symbiosis and Ambivalence; and Redlich, Together and Apart in Brzezany. 42 Lehmann, Symbiosis and Ambivalence, 61.

43 Crossing by speaking an additional language did not constitute crossover; learning solely the lan-

guage of the ‘other’ did. 44 Richmond, Konin, 161. 4 Tbid. g5—6.

46 Gryn, Chasing Shadows, 53. 47 Tbid. 60-1.

Maintaining Borders, Crossing Borders 181 Public Space The modern world abounds with markers which announce to the passer-by where he is located; shtetl community dwellers did not need signs. “Town’ was where the most important public and semi-private spaces were located: the marketplace, the places of worship, the school, and the cemeteries. The shops, inns, and teahouses

served as local news centres as well. ,

The shtetl’s topography was a landscape imbued with deep meaning which brought its inhabitants together. As Cohen puts it, “The “community”, in this regard, is a cluster of symbolic and ideological map references with which the individual is socially oriented.’*® Researchers observe the sentimental detail with which former residents describe each component of a symbolic geography. The precise portrayal, or, rather, a reconstruction of the shtetl in the mind’s eye, has become a key theme.*® It is not odd that this would be the case: physical things bring to mind memories and emotions attached to them. Although markers could be ‘physical’, not all would be evident—and certainly not evocative—to anyone but insiders: an almost dry creek, the bottom or top of a hill, the shrine at a crossroads, etc. These markers also reinforced the psychosocial ones between groups. Long established and long maintained, all residents would be fully aware of the boundaries, and unequivocal in acknowledging them. District

boundaries were drawn by official administrations in some distant provincial or national capital (often so as to encompass more Christians), but this had no effect on

local knowledge of the ‘real’ boundaries. ,

Roads, buildings, and spaces were divided into those exclusively Christian, exclusively Jewish, or mixed. The sacrum of the synagogues, mikveh, churches, and vicarages had to be respected, as well as the profanum of the cemeteries, and the

most treacherous area: the border of the community demarcating the end of the familiar and the beginning of the strange. Some spaces—the synagogue or the church—belonging to one group were taboo for the other; most spaces were shared

wholly or partly. |

The rynek (the market square) was generally a predominantly Jewish space—the

chain of Jewish-owned enterprises perhaps interrupted by a smattering of Catholic-owned ones, and the church. All public areas around the centre were shared at nearly all times by all. During a Jewish wedding or a Corpus Christi procession, however, this space was temporarily transformed into the sacrum of one group. Nevertheless, the fact that these were held in the open made observation or even

participation in the ceremonies less sacrosanct. At times it meant celebrating together. This pertained to non-Jewish guests or observers at a Jewish wedding, but 48 Cohen, The Symbolic Construction of Community, 57.

49 Cf. opening pages in Richmond, Konin, and Redlich, Together and Apart in Brzezany, or Yehuda Piekarz’s map in Gross, Neighbors.

182 Annamaria Orla-Bukowska extended to other occasions as well. When, in the summer of 1905, the tsar granted

permission for elections, Roman Catholics carried the banners of saints, Jews carried the sefer torah, and members of the socialist party carried bilingual signs.*° While Christian processions might evoke fright (‘we ran away as though from a fire’) a Jewish informant from Jasliska recalled the visit of the bishop to the town in a different tone. ‘He spoke of the event as a very rare and special occasion during which the Jewish and Polish religious elites met in public. Within the Jewish community the meeting was a topic of discussion long after the event had taken place.’>”

In many places local residents recall joint commemoration ceremonies upon the death in May 1935 of the Polish leader Field Marshal J6zef Pitsudski, including stops at both the main synagogue and the church.

Private Space Those who knew the lie of the land, including the villages, ‘like the back of one’s hand’, also felt an intimate connection to it and the people who lived there. Each home or shop bore not a number, but the name of its owner; residents of former shtetls still refer to a business by its pre-war holder’s name. ‘Invasions’ into more private areas were possible and were even necessitated by normal, recurring situations. As shops were quite often located in the front part of people’s homes, entering meant literally crossing the threshold into the space of the ‘other’. Additionally, on most weekday mornings Jewish merchants and pedlars needed to ride elsewhere for market days. Not possessing a horse and wagon, and not wealthy enough to afford a driver alone, a group of Jews would set out before dawn, saying their morning prayers en route. Hence, the Catholic peasant’s wagon was not only a shared space, but also briefly became a Jewish sacrum. Wandering pedlars crossed the border into village homes to present goods, con-

, duct sales, and relay community gossip. As welcome guests who saved the Catholic villager a long walk into town, these Jews were invited inside and offered tea served in a cup the pedlar brought himself. Jewish homes were, in turn, entered by nonJews ona regular basis; a non-Jew might even be a member of the household. There _ might be the resident wet-nurse, the shabes goy who came each sabbath and on other holy days, the apprentice who came nearly every day for instruction, and the tutor who came systematically during the school year. Finally, it was not uncommon for cases of genuine friendship to develop, espe-

cially between young Christians and Jews, entailing daily visits to each other’s homes. Sometimes parents would discourage contact: ‘ “My father would not let me bring shikses [non-Jewish women; pejorative] into the house,” one woman remem-

bers, “and he would not let me go to their homes in case I ate treyf [non-kosher food].”’°? Precisely for reasons associated with kashrut, the Catholic friend generally

5° Richmond, Konin, 95-6. | °l Tbid. 161.

52 Lehmann, Symbiosis and Ambivalence, 112. 53 Richmond, Konin, 161.

Maintaining Borders, Crossing Borders 183 went to the home of the Jewish one, though this was not the only direction of cross-

ing borders into private space.°** , Social and Political Organizations Exclusivity, however, did appear—sometimes by design, sometimes not—in the founding of institutions, agencies, clubs, etc. serving one group solely or primarily, or to which only its members could belong. Most of these would be more social, some more political, in nature. Boundaries thus shaped were built by non-Jews and Jews alike. Where politicized sentiments and political awareness ran high, Polish national-

ism, with a certain bravado once long lost sovereignty had been regained, and Zionism shaped and organized in the aftermath of the Dreyfus affair, would serve

to reinforce a sense of need for separate structures.°° The traditional shtetl, how- | ever, did not prove fertile ground for home-grown activism. Socially or politically engaged individuals and local leaders were always few in number and tended to be members of an imported and transplanted intelligentsia, often teachers. Moreover, Zionists could be disdained and harassed by an Orthodox Jewish community, while

_ nationalists promulgating economic boycott would be ignored or derided by Christians.°®

In Poland a Sok6t or Klub Strzelecki troop—patriotic, nationalistic, and somewhat paramilitary youth organizations—could materialize even in the smallest of shtetl communities, though they usually appear and disappear with a specific person’s term of residency in the community. In Jasliska, Jews did not participate in ‘festivals or fraternities organised by Poles. The local Hunters Club and Soccer Club, for example, by the nature of their activities, did not attract a single Jewish member.’°’ Yet elsewhere in the former Austro-Hungarian empire there was ‘the -Berehovo football and tennis club, BFTC, which had its own semi-professional football team and whose players were both Jewish and Christian’.°8 But the degree of actual engagement is illustrated by examples from Jedwabne. A man there ‘usually assisted at ritual slaughter . . . used to speak Yiddish . . . [and]

socialised with the family of the Jewish butcher and attended their parties and wedding receptions’. Yet this same person ‘was also a member of Zwiazek Mfodziezy Katolickiey (Catholic Youth Association), which was hostile to the Jews’. When Marta Kurkowska asked him what activities he took part in within that

association, he replied, ‘Well . . . we were being taught how to march nicely in 4 Cf. Orla~-Bukowska, ‘Shtetl Communities’, g9—101.

°° Elsewhere it could be Czech, Hungarian (cf. Gryn, Chasing Shadows, ch. 8), or other non-Jewish nationalism, accompanied usually, unfortunately, by antisemitism.

°® Cf. Olszariski and Schoenfeld, quoted in Orla-Bukowska, ‘Shtetl Communities’, 93-4, and A. Orla~-Bukowska, ‘Coexistence: Polish Jews and Polish Catholics, Jewish Shtetl and Catholic Villages’, Ph.D. diss. (Jagiellonian University, 1995), 152.

°7 Lehmann, Symbiosis and Ambivalence, 94. 58 Gryn, Chasing Shadows, 45.

184 Annamaria Orla-Bukowska fours.”°? In fact, belonging to this specifically non-Jewish organization does not seem to have influenced the stance or actions of its members at all: Another interviewee was Zofia N., born in 1918, who had been head of the women’s section of Zwiazek Mtodziezy Katolickiej. She remembers taking part in amateur theatricals. She also liked to go to social meetings in the Catholic Community House, but at the same time she also went to meetings in the Jewish club room. She said she became fond of Jewish dancing (p/asy), and after the war, as part of her job as acommunity household adviser, she taught Jewish dances to children in the neighbourhood village schools.©

In Brzezany, however, exclusion could be aimed not only at Jews, but at other nonJews. “The Polish scouts, the Harcerstwo, hated Ukrainians. They persecuted us and prevented us from speaking Ukrainian.’®! The dominant Poles in fact forbade Jewish or Ukrainian pupils membership in the more politically oriented, and therefore unapproved, minority organizations. But Bela Feld knew that her Ukrainian

friend Halyna Dydyk was in Plast while she herself was in Hano’ar Hatsiyoni (Zionist Youth).© More significantly, however, belonging to apparently rival nationalistic clubs seems not to have precluded close friendship: when Batia Prizand’s close girlfriend, a Polish Christian girl, Wikta Jakielanka, wanted to kill herself, a group of Hashomer Hatsa’ir (Young Guard) members hired a sleigh and rode to her home and successfully talked her out of it.®* Perhaps even more incon-

gruously, the Klub Strzelecki (Shooting Club) in Jasliska met ina room rented from a Jewish shopkeeper.™

| Stratification — For many and various historical and social reasons, each ethnic group tended to dominate in a different socio-economic stratum. Irrespective of this, there was a sharp cross-ethnic divide between the tiny elite and the many more poor, and one between the townspeople and the villagers. Among the Jews were to be found sheyne yidn (beautiful or upper-class Jews), balebatishe yidn (middle-class Jews), and proste yiden (simple, lower-class Jews); among the non-Jews there were wealthy

| landowners, clergy, intelligentsia, middle-class craftsmen, and peasants. Age-old _ divides existed within the groups themselves: the water-carrier’s son not only knew

he would not be a schoolteacher, but did not realistically aspire to become a rabbi; the peasant’s son not only knew that he would not be a shopkeeper, but neither did - heaspire to become a postman. In the Brzezany area, nevertheless, it appears that athletic ability could be a ticket into the local, mostly ethnic Polish elite. Such was the case with Natan Goldman, | best known for his boxing talents, as well as Adam Goldszlag, who played tennis in the mid-1930s.°° In Konin there was a Jew known to both Jews and non-Jews as 59 M. Kurkowska-Budzan, ‘My Jedwabne’, Polin, 15 (2002), 403. 6° Tbid. 403-4.

61 Redlich, Together and Apart in Brzezany, 65. 62 Tbid. 66. 63 Tbid. 64 Lehmann, Symbiosis and Ambivalence, 97. 65 Redlich, Together and Apart in Brzezany, 89.

Maintaining Borders, Crossing Borders 185 dziedzic—‘squire’ or ‘lord of the manor’—who owned a vast village estate. His son spoke perfect Polish and no Yiddish, learned to ride horses, and enjoyed shooting

| events.° In the village this family’s contact would be more frequent with peasants , and hired labourers; the father’s involvement in the town council and other elite circles also necessitated Polish fluency. Overall, Jews who lived in the villages of a shtet] community—regardless of whether they were innkeepers, landowners, or farmers—crossed borders daily and frequently. Their ties to the Jewish community would be correspondingly weaker: for lack of transport and other reasons, attend-

ance at the synagogues in town was infrequent, limited usually to the highest of holy days; town Jewry also especially looked down upon the dorfisher, the village Jew.®

GUARDIANS AND TRESPASSERS Though all groups maintained their boundaries, majority—minority relations were inevitably imbalanced in favour of the former, which had less to fear from outside influences, subsequent change, or even assimilation. As one might expect, then, the leaders of the cultural minority or minorities would be the most fervent guardians of the boundaries. The rabbi—if he was Orthodox and certainly if he was hasidic—maintained no contact with members of the other group. As sentinel of the minority, he would even protect his brethren from deviation within (e.g. Zionism or Reform Judaism). Likewise the rabbi’s wife would stand guard at the border, serving as a model for all Jewish women. In turn, her children would be expected to play a similar exemplary role and might not attend the public school so as to avoid worldly seductions.

Age and Gender In general—apart from the rabbi and his family—age and gender were the most important factors in guardianship. It was, above all, the elders of the community whose job it was to maintain the borders—especially adult men. They were firm in their convictions and not tempted by any curiosity about each other’s faith and customs; interactions would be restricted to the utilitarian or matters of utmost consequence.°® Furthermore, Christian men served, almost without exception, in the armed services. This not only strained or severed ties with their home community and the Jews in it, but introduced them, if at all, to Jews quite different from the ones they had known hitherto. Among the adults it was the women in the shtetl community who moved about more freely in both worlds, as Judaism placed little restriction upon female members of the group. Many tended shops and businesses while their husbands studied 6° Richmond, Konin, 51-4.

67 Orla-Bukowska, ‘Shtetl Communities’, 96. , 68 Exceptions were made for emergencies such as described ibid. 105-6.

186 Annamaria Orla-Bukowska in shul (synagogue). They chatted with customers, whom they knew very well, and

engaged in everyday conversation with Christian neighbours. The younger generation, the adolescents—as befits their role in any society— would simultaneously test the strength of the borders and begin to take responsibility for guarding them. Here, as with the adults, it was the duty of young males to secure the borders between the cultures more than young females. As boys, town Jews had to attend heder before and/or after public school, restricting the chance to

play with their Christian peers. In their teenage years, after their bar mitzvah, Jewish males were already adults in the eyes of Judaic law. They were expected to delve deeper into religious study (sometimes at the price of the secular), and to marry early and start families. These obligations curbed their liberty, limited free time, and thus precluded daily interactions with their non-Jewish peers. Young Jewish women, on the other hand, could continue to attend public school and play or do homework with non-Jewish girlfriends; along with their mothers they often staffed the family shop, resulting in constant exchanges with the Christian clientele. Overall, Jewish boys carried the symbols of Judaism, as they dressed differently, wore earlocks, were

circumcised, and attended Jewish religious school (kheyder). And Jewish boys were the guardians of Jewish norms and values. In other words, the cultural differences that distinguished the two ethnic communities were far more conspicuous with the Jewish boys than with the Jewish girls. This may help to explain why it was the Jewish boys and not the Jewish girls who frequently fell victim to Polish teasing. In like manner, a Polish informant would disapprove of the unfriendly and haughty attitude of her one-time Jewish (male) schoolmates, but at the same time she would judge her Jewish girlfriends as very cordial and sympathetic. ©?

In general, it was the youngest children of either sex who escaped the burden of any safeguarding duties and were thus freest to make all manner of connections. The younger the child, the greater the liberty to traverse boundaries, even of the most private of spaces. They could approach any and all members of other groups— from the nanny to the priest, from one’s playmates to neighbours—regardless of belonging. ‘Look at me!’ exclaims one Roman Catholic informant, ‘A Jewish woman carried me when I was still a baby!’ On the other side, Miriam Grossman recollects: We were a[Gerer hasidic] middle-class family and it was a custom that middle-class families had maids. I remember another non-Jewish woman, who was my beloved nanny for maybe

ten or thirteen years, and she had her bed in the kitchen, and I slept many times with her

because I loved her, and she loved me too.” , It may have been precisely because the children were more naturally curious and likely to break rules that each group instilled in them a little fear towards ‘strangers’. |

69 Lehmann, Symbiosis and Ambivalence, 102. 7 bid. 96-7. “1 Richmond, Konin, 261.

Maintaining Borders, Crossing Borders 187 Tales of, for instance, Jews or Roma stealing them away would serve to inhibit contact and keep the youngest from crossing borders too freely. In fact, time and time again, when asked whether they believed the ‘blood libel’ legend, Catholic informants in Galician Poland laughingly discounted it as just ‘humbug’ intended to frighten children. All things considered, non-Jewish and Jewish youngsters were much more likely

to meet informally, at play and at school, than were their adult counterparts. In addition, children were more easily admitted into the social and family life of the ‘other’ than were adults. Finally, thanks to their age, children were able to bypass socially accepted norms without serious risk. More generally, they ‘gave expression to the social tensions between the ethnic communities by teasing and attacking “the

other side”. . . . The interaction between Polish and Jewish children, including attempts at provocation and mischief, might very well have stimulated a certain degree of social exchange between both communities.’”

Status and Locus | There was another criterion, however, in the granting of passage: the socioeconomic status of a person, and where his or her home was located. These were decisive, too, in whether, how much, and within which circles Jews and non-Jews straddled or cleared the walls erected between them. Most devoted to protecting and maintaining the borders would be the conservative middle-class religious Jews living in the centre of the shtetl (the lower rather than the upper strata), along with the Christian intelligentsia (especially middleclass administrators and teachers) and peasants, especially those living in villages where there were few Jewish families. These men had the least day-to-day contact with their peers from the other group, and such contact as they had was irregular; they had fewer or no social acquaintances among the other group, and were less

likely to possess more than a minimal vocabulary in the other language. , Different frames of reference applied to the high elites, to the nobility and the affluent. In central and eastern Europe these were always a mix of various ethnicities—German, Austrian, Russian, Polish, Czech, Lithuanian, etc. It was obvious that individuals of this socio-economic and political class were a separate category to which different rules applied. The prosperous and established sheyne Jews were members not only of the kehilah but also of the town council. The non-Jewish elite (few though they were) comprised the other half of the council; hence acquaintances and even cordial friendships became matters of fact. The less populated the community, the more political or economic relationships were inseparable from social and cultural ones. ‘Those who sat on the various councils met informally to play cards or chess or simply socialize: 7 Lehmann, Symbiosis and Ambivalence, 96-7.

188 Annamaria Orla-Bukowska The Jewish informant Josko S. (75), for instance, recalled the evening walks of his father with the priest. While walking, both men would discuss all kinds of subjects. Harmonious contacts between the ‘learned’ priest and ‘lay’ Jews were customary in other towns and villages in the region as well. Pearl O. (82) recalled the long walks and discussions of her father with the priest. She also remembered the weekly meetings at her parents’ home, to which all members of the village elite were invited, among them the priest and teachers of the local primary school.’

| The upper classes generally interacted with each other, and were held in esteem by the rest, regardless of religion or ethnicity. The Jewish owner of the quarry and forests in Stepina and Cieszyna was spoken of with the same respect as the Catholic

owner of the manor in Kobyle.™ | Weddings and other festivities of a religious origin became occasions to — strengthen ties, especially with the nearest neighbours: During the summer, Jews organised dancing on the fields, which they first decorated with firewood. They put the wood on the ground and danced on it. This holiday was called Haman. They used to offer food and delicacies to the police, border guard, their neighbours and the mayor. They took this food to these houses. Also during wedding parties they

invited some Poles, my uncle and father among them.” Everyday relationships became very easy and matter of course when Jews and non-

Jews lived under the same roof. One non-Jewish family in Brzezany rented out rooms in their building to two Jewish families. “© In Twierdza near Frysztak a wooden domicile was split between a Catholic and a Jewish family.” Far away in Konin,

Miriam Grossman recalled ‘our Gentile neighbour, Mr Wodzinski, the attorney’, who lived next door to her family and discussed various matters with her father, and onto whose balcony she and her sister climbed one evening to be able to watch the stars. ’®

Shared interests built bridges, and so the upper and lowermost classes of all groups usually enjoyed the most interaction with peers. Hence it was more likely that a sheyner Jew would cross borders and enjoy contact with the local non-Jewish intelligentsia than even with the proste Jews of the same community. The same held for the Christian intelligentsia, where class divisions precluded anything but the

most formal relationships with peasant villagers. In Szyja Bronsztejn’s view, ‘Relations were undoubtedly best between the non-Jewish liberal intelligentsia and the Jewish intelligentsia.’”° 7 Lehmann, Symbiosis and Ambivalence, 98.

74 FG. and A. Orla-Bukowska, interview, Cieszyna, 1990; P.L. and Orla-Bukowska, interview,

Kobyle, 1991. Cf. Richmond, Konin, 50-7. Lehmann, Symbiosis and Ambivalence, 97. © Redlich, Together and Apart in Brzezany, 61.

77 7Z.P.and Orla-Bukowska, interview, Twierdza, 1991. 73 Richmond, Konin, 260, 262. 79 S. Bronsztejn, ‘Polish—Jewish Relations as Reflected in Memoirs of the Interwar Period’, Polin, 8

(1994), 86. ,

Maintaining Borders, Crossing Borders 189 Mixing was more likely if someone’s profession was outside the traditional socio-economic niche: the non-Jewish entrepreneur and the Jewish farmer continually crossed borders by virtue of their milieu and the lifestyle demands of their work. Their contact with the ‘other’ was daily and usually became highly typical

and ordinary. On the one hand, ,

When Christian and Jew did try to break down the barriers that separated them, the out-

Boguslawski: ,

come was not always a happy one, as Jozef Lewandowski relates. Around 1934 his father, an

upholsterer in Konin, went into partnership with a Polish upholsterer, his friend Mr

‘.. the worthy gentlemen failed to take account of social considerations. Father became unacceptable to the Orthodox Jews, Boguslawski non-kosher to some of his Catholic customers. Both went beyond the limits imposed by unwritten but harshly binding statutes. Rich folk such as landowners and industrialists could join forces, but not the poor masses. After a few years they split up.’®°

On the other hand, more successful in their joint ventures, two Polish Roman Catholic brothers in Frysztak recalled card-playing and drinking with their fellow leather traders who happened to be Jewish.®! Karol Codogni’s father in Brzezany was

a blacksmith who worked with Jewish craftsmen; though they needed one another, they also sometimes, naturally, quarrelled and even took each other to court.®

, Owing to proximity as well as relative isolation in the physical landscape, fellow villagers bonded with each other rather than with any elite in town. Among other things, Jews here forsook the strict Orthodoxy—impractical in rural life—of those in town; as Eva Hoffman puts it, ‘Culturally, these Jewish villagers cum townsmen ,

| were a hybrid species.’®* Less hindered by the social control in town, Jews and Christians in a village were guided more by a sense of belonging to it, and by their | own needs and those of their local compatriots. As Henry Kaplan relates: - It was a completely different life from the Jews living in Konin. ... We participated in country life.... We were not very religious . .. we did not go to the synagogue every Friday and

Saturday, and my father did not lay tefi/lim. He had seats in the synagogue and Rabbi Lipschitz was a friend of our family. At the same time, my father had seats in the village church near Glinka, for our workers, and his name was on the seats.*4

The non-Jewish peasants valued their Jewish equals as good, hard-working people not unlike them; it was only natural that the Jew and non-Jew in Cieszyna would hitch horses and plough their respective fields together.®? Bronsztejn notes how ‘Andrzej Burda described the attitude of the peasants to the Jews from the village of Rzeszotary near Krakow as friendly and says that “in the countryside, good will was something quite natural in the common lives of people bound by the land”.’®° 80 Richmond, Konin, 162. 8! J.C. and S.C. and Orla-Bukowska, interview, Twierdza, 1990.

82 Redlich, Together and Apart in Brzezany, 60. 83 Hoffman, Shtetl, 84. 84 Richmond, Konin, 54. 85 F.G. and Orla-Bukowska, interview, Cieszyna, 1990. 86 A. Burda, Lata walki i nadziei (Krakéw, 1970), 13; quoted in Bronsztejn, ‘Polish—Jewish Relations’, 78.

190 Annamaria Orla-Bukowska Finally, school brought and kept children together—the border here so permeable that schoolmates of different faith and ethnicity sat next to one another, whispered answers, copied homework, and played, teased, and tussled with one another. ‘There was a difference, too, between the school in town and the one-room schoolhouses in the villages: the latter made any segregation irrelevant and contact

continuous. School attendance on Saturday meant a need for Jewish children to make up lessons with their non-Jewish classmates; inclement weather would mean that Christian religious knowledge classes could be overheard by non-Christians. Walking home from school meant more time together—play was always outside more than inside. Israel Ne’eman recalled that he went to school almost solely with Ukrainians. ‘There were, on average, two Jews in each grade, and the relations were good. A Ukrainian boy whose father was a plasterer and a Communist was my close friend.’®” His non-Jewish counterpart Karol Codogni spoke some Yiddish and played with Jewish boys: ‘Living near and close to Jews was a perfectly normal thing for him.’®°

CONCLUSION | Indeed, it was only natural. The Jews and non-Jews of a shtetl community could not and did not live as adjacent forbidding fortresses. To paraphrase Roskies and Roskies, what each side wanted in particular was not isolation from the other, but insulation from its religion.®? As Bronsztejn writes, Jewish distinctiveness and difference ought not to be identified with being foreign. When there are no internal tensions, good material conditions, no professional competition, comfort of life, then distinctiveness forms part of the social scenery, is an accepted condition of unity in variety. Distinctiveness can become something foreign when it is in isolation, when there are no professional and personal contacts and no cultural interaction and diffusion of cultures, and when the economic environment turns hostile.

Likewise, Shimon Redlich asserts that, ‘Beyond the specific affiliations of culture, language, and religion within each one of these three ethnic groups [ Ukrainians, Poles, and Jews], they also shared a tradition of “local” commonness.”?! | In shtetl communities distinctiveness was very familiar and present on all sides. As Cohen points out, “The community boundary is not drawn at the point where _ differentiation occurs. Rather, it incorporates and encloses difference and . . . is thereby strengthened.’®2 An illustration is provided from Andalusia: ‘The members of a community recognize their common interests and values vis-a-vis those of other communities. But, at the same time, they cherish their differences from each

87 Redlich, Together and Apart in Brzezany, 63. 88 Ibid. 61. 89 D. Roskies and D. G. Roskies, The Shtet! Book (Hoboken, NJ, 1975), 34.

% Bronsztejn, ‘Polish—Jewish Relations’, 74. *! Redlich, Together and Apart in Brzezany, 61. %2 Cohen, The Symbolic Construction of Community, 74.

Maintaining Borders, Crossing Borders Igl other for, to a substantial extent, these provide the very stuff of everyday social life within the community.’’? Groups preserve different religions, different languages, a different style of dress, and some spatial segregation; the distinctions are strengthened and reinforced because this is a mutually desired value.

Living primarily in the very centre of the town, Jews were nevertheless able to build and maintain the strongest border possible between themselves and the others, the non-Jews. Under these conditions their separate cultures could and did bloom and grow; ignoring or destroying the boundaries would mean their selfdestruction: Yet, in order to survive for centuries in a foreign environment—among people professing a different faith, possessing different customs—one had to maintain one’s separateness. The guests could not mimic the hosts. They had to create their own community in the commu-

, nity within which they lived, create it with great effort because societal conventions can be austere (stern, uncompromising). And out of necessity they had—in order to exist—to love their own community more than that of the host and give priority to the interests of their

—own, internal community. And they created that community owing to this astounding strength of their national bonds.*4

An unwritten principle dictated that one would and should remain in the community—treligious, ethnic, and social—into which one was born. Assimilation of the minority to the majority—or even much acculturation—was neither encouraged | nor even desired in the shtetl. Furthermore, as Lehmann argues, ‘the strict ethnic boundaries . . . were of crucial importance in the maintenance of a political and

social equilibrium’.®° |

There was closure and continuity in this neighbouring with one another. Despite

political border shifts, migrations, and slighter or greater conflicts, one’s neighbours were generally the same as those one’s parents and grandparents had had. And so the terrain which various compatriots inhabited became ‘our land’, ‘our homeland’, and its residents nas:—‘our people’. The Jews and non-Jews saw their countrymen and women as people who differed in faith, language, and custom, but not in their loyalty, connection, and belonging to the community. In the shtetls a Polish Jew was not primarily a Jew: he or she was primarily someone tutejszy, ‘from here’, a andsman from the same community like all of its other residents. As Cohen describes it, Rural society (‘community’) was small, parochial, stable, and ‘face-to-face’: people interacted with each other as ‘total’ social persons informed by a comprehensive personal knowledge of each other, their relationships often underpinned by ties of affinity and consanguinity. It was a traditional and conservative way of life, in which people valued custom for its own sake and, given a reasonable degree of potential self-sufficiency in the production of their %3 Ibid. 88.

%4 W. Sita-Nowicki, ‘Janowi Btoriskiemu w odpowiedzi’, Tygodnik Powszechny, 41/8 (22 Feb. 1987), 5. °° Lehmann, Symbiosis and Ambivalence, 169.

192 Annamaria Orla-Bukowska subsistence, felt substantially in control of their lives, subject, of course, to the vicissitudes of nature and the divine.”

Having shaped over centuries a cosmos in which coexistence was possible without blurring and assimilation, preservation of its order and stability was of para-

| mount importance to all its residents. Those of us living in twenty-first-century urban environments find it hard to look beyond the rigid structure of traditional cultures; we see them as limiting. Yet they provided a comforting security not sup-

| plied by boundless postmodernity. This sturdy construction was hardly questioned at all until the end of the nineteenth century—and in many shtetl communities not until the 1930s. As Hoffman deduces, ‘Perhaps the main virtue of the shtetl for its

, inhabitants was the extent to which it was a community—small, closely interwoven, reassuringly familiar. Nobody in these rural enclaves needed to suffer from the modern malaise of uncertainty and nonbelonging.’?’ ‘Progressive’ ideas brought with them secularization, the decline of traditional authority, a rejection of inherent group belonging and preordained individual destiny, and heightened geographical and social mobility. Modern social phenomena such as intermarriage, conversion, or non-confessional assimilation would, in time,

place more Jews on the cusp between the traditional Jewish and Catholic cultures; class and spatial mobility would also shift non-Jews across the boundary. All of this undermined the age-old balance of power between the Jewish and Christian communities within the shtetl, and began to erode the borders of the small and comfortable ojczyzna prywatna, the private homeland of the shtetl, in favour of the large and unfamiliar ojczyzna ideologiczna, the ideological one of a nationstate.°5 Everything that knit the community together unravelled, and insecurity crept in. The price of this progress was a loss of community and kinship. ‘If the members

of a community come to feel that they have less in common with each other than , they have with members of some other community then .. . the integrity of the “community” they enclose has been severely impugned.’’? Individuals lost their intimate connection to a landscape and to all those who inhabited it. Until new understandings and new networks could be established, ambiguity and anxiety reigned, tensions rose, and conflicts erupted. Referring to the troubles at the dawn of this process, Keely Stauter-Halsted deduces, ‘It is, I believe, this pattern of transitional group identities and parallel but conflicting attempts to bring about economic improvements that confounded relations between peasants and Jews, setting the stage for the violence of June 1898.’!° 96 Cohen, The Symbolic Construction of Community, 25. %7 Hoffman, Sheetl, 12. %8 Cf. Ossowski, Analiza socjologiczna pojecia ojczyzny. 99 Cohen, The Symbolic Construction of Community, 20-1.

100 K. Stauter-Halsted, ‘Priests, Merchants and Political Activists: The Rise of Modern Anti-

: Semitism in the Galician Polish Countryside’, MS, 2002.

Maintaining Borders, Crossing Borders 193 By the late 1930s, especially in the two years after Jo6zef Pitsudski’s death, and

more frequently in the largest metropolises, relations between groups became combustible. Moving up in society was possible after the emancipation of the Jews and peasants near the end of the nineteenth century, especially in the 1930s when the economic depression forced many to consider options outside farm work. It was also then that political and economic antisemitism, rife in the programmes and publications of various conservative parties, began to infiltrate the shtetl. This broad problem deserves separate treatment, but perhaps a few general observations could be made here. For the most part, the peasants were not reading these materials and troubles did not break out in the villages. Rather, anti-Jewish behaviour and actions were apt to take place in town, especially on market day, when crowds appeared and outsiders could incite a riot; the larger the town and the larger the throng, the less

social control there was, and the more likely it was that the call would be taken up. 101

Nevertheless, antisemitic views did not necessarily mean an absence of good professional and personal relationships with Jews known to a person, since stereotypical attitudes did not relate to those who were ‘insiders’, ‘one of our own’. Furthermore, in a major sociological study regarding antisemitism among Poles, ‘researchers were surprised to find that the oldest respondents (born before 1923) were more well-disposed towards Jews than younger generations’ .!©* These informants would have had less formal, but much more informal, first-hand knowledge of Judaism and Jewish culture, and interpersonal relationships with Jews, than those born later. As Grekowa discerns in her home society,

‘other’. 9°

In the case of the most general form of the ‘familiar’—‘foreign’ relationship, in . . . a closed traditional community, what was ‘familiar’ was highly significant. And the meaning and value of this in and of itself could neither be destroyed nor even questioned while the tradi-

tional community existed regardless of the strength and nature of the contact with the

The Holocaust was in no way an inevitable consequence of the joint inhabitancy of the shtetl by Jews and non-Jews. Even in the opening months of German occupa-

tion Jewish villagers continued transactions and contact with their Christian neigh- | bours. Regardless of the outcome, positive or negative, the fact that many Jews left their valuables in the safekeeping of their non-Jewish neighbours meant that the latter were known well and trusted deeply. The Holocaust, however, for ever put an end to the life that such co-inhabitancy entailed. ‘The further one moves along [the] continuum from “folk” to “urban” society, the greater becomes the loss of community.’’°4 Where they live together today, 101 Cf. Redlich, Together and Apart in BrzezZany, 88—9; for an account, however, of the ineffectiveness

of a boycott, see p. 92. 102 TY. Krzemiriski, Czy Polacy sa antysemitami? (Warsaw, 1996), 301. '°8' Grekowa, ‘BliskoS¢ przestrzenna’, 120-1. *°4 Cohen, The Symbolic Construction of Community, 27.

194 Annamaria Orla-Bukowska Jews and Christians find themselves primarily anonymous residents of urban areas; what they know about one another’s culture (e.g. customs, religion, language) is superficial and derived primarily from infrequent lessons about groups, not from daily contact with individuals. Connections are more often utilitarian and relationships easy to end. As scholars and public discourse focus on discord, living memory of accord fades ever more quickly into the distance. How did people so different live so closely and know each other so intimately for so long in relative (though admittedly not perfect) harmony? No matter what the faith or ethnicity of the author, accounts of a shtetl community in memoirs, yizkor books, or histories are most often penned in the absence of the ‘other’. This fact is a reflection of the boundary between Jews and non-Jews but does not at all indicate lack of a local community, nor lack of border-crossing. Both sides strongly marked themselves off from the other. Borders—visible as the eruv (the boundary constructed to permit Jews to carry on the sabbath) and as invisible as the middle of a stream, and built at the levels of religion, history, tradition and customs, language, and geography—were known to and maintained by everyone. It was known who possessed the most unrestricted passport, and who should be the strictest of sentries. Yet numerous people on both sides crossed over—at various levels, by various means, and to various degrees. All in all, however, the golden rule

was ‘Good fences make good neighbours’. | Why did they live so apart? Because they needed to, they wanted to, and because

they could. First, without a strong sense of difference, group identities and the groups themselves would dissolve. Secondly, and paradoxically, the more dissimilar and separate the groups are, the more easily they maintain the boundaries between them; in turn, the more strongly those partitions are protected, the more

Cohen has said: ,

easily can cohabiting communities feel safe and secure.

_ The most striking feature of the symbolic construction of the community and its boundaries is its oppositional character. The boundaries are re/ational rather than absolute; that is, they mark the community in relation to other communities. It has been suggested that a// social identities, collective and individual, are constituted in this way, ‘to play the vis-a-vis’.

The purpose was to preserve a vital sense of different communities simultaneously:

the ethnic, religious, and/or linguistic community to which one belonged from birth, and the community of tutejszy to which one also belonged from birth. Ukrainians, Poles, Jews, and other groups were thus able to speak of ‘us’ and ‘ours’ when referring to those who believed as they did and spoke the same language as

they, and of ‘us’ and ‘ours’, too, when referring to those they saw as their compatriots from the same shtetl community. Jews trading horses in a small market town, speaking in haphazard Polish—that was the shtetl. Poles gradually picking up a few words of Yiddish and bits of Jewish lore—that was 105 Cohen, The Symbolic Construction of Community, 58.

Maintaining Borders, Crossing Borders 195 also the shtetl. Jewish bands playing at Polish weddings and local aristocrats getting financial advice and loans from their Jewish stewards—all that went into the making of the distinctive, mulchy mix that was shtetl culture.1°

The very realm of neighbouring proximity is one of a true celebration of differences; it is a realm in which that which is ‘familiar’ and that which is ‘foreign’ mutually grant each other the right to differ. As a consequence, human dialogue is made possible and real.1°"

A peasant born in 1902 who completed his fourth-year education in a one-room village schoolhouse before the First World War made reference in an interview not only to the rabbi and the cantor but also to the shames (synagogue sexton). As a hen and her chicks perambulated across the dirt floor of his wooden cottage, I asked

him if the Jews were guilty of killing Christ: ‘No,’ he answered, ‘it was the Sanhedrin.’!°> No teacher or priest had provided him with such information and insight; it had come from close relationships and crossing borders with his Jewish friends and neighbours. Without access to formal modern instruction on multiculturalism, the community had found a way to live it: ‘In the shtet/, pluralism was experienced not as ideology but as ordinary life.’!°? The very fact of physical and geographic neighbouring inevitably leads to some cultural contact, diffusion, and exchange.'!° The Jews and the non-Jews created a ‘forward’ model of coexistence through (not despite) conservative traditionalism, creating something—at least in this sense—closer to utopia than dystopia.

106 Hoffman, Shtetl, 12-13. 107 Grekowa, ‘Bliskos¢ przestrzenna’, 117. 108 J.C. and Orla-Bukowska, interview, Twierdza, 1990. 109 Hoffman, Shtetl, 12. ‘10 Zidtkowski, ‘Wspdlnota przestrzeni i odmienno$¢ tradycji’, 60.

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The Soviet Shtetl in the 1920s GENNADY ESTRAIKH | THE REVOLUTION WRITES OFF THE SHTETL BOLSHEVIK apparatchiks, most notably functionaries of the Evsektsii (Jewish sections of the Communist Party), began to deal seriously with the shtetl only in 1920-1, after the civil war. In the previous post-revolutionary years, when the shtetl was bleeding under the yoke of various armies and gangs, the Soviet apparatus was cut off from the bulk of the Jewish population. During the course of the civil war there were 1,520 pogroms; perhaps 200,000 Jews were killed, about 1 million became refugees; and 300,000 Jewish children were orphaned; one-third of all Jewish property was destroyed. In the words of the Soviet anthropologist Vladimir Tan-Bogoraz, the Jews ‘endured the revolution rather than making it’; they ‘paid more for the revolution and got less than other peoples’ of Russia.! The Central Bureau of the Evsektsii reported in 1922 and 1923 that in Ukraine, the epicentre of

anti-Jewish atrocities, the victims of the pogroms numbered 600,000, including 150,000 killed and 200,000 injured. In the provinces (guberniyas) of Odessa and Nikolaev 40 per cent of all skilled Jewish clothing-industry workers died of starvation.” The decrease in the Soviet Jewish population in the Soviet territories as a result of the First World War, the civil war, pogroms, and emigration has been estimated at 500,000.° The shtetl Jews’ enthusiasm for the revolution was thus undoubtedly apocryphal; 1t was perhaps a canard of the counter-revolutionary propaganda that equated Jewish Bolsheviks—a tiny minority of the Jewish population—with the masses of ordinary shtetl inhabitants. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine how the new regime, with its anti-religious slogans and expropriations, could appeal to an ordinary Jewish householder. This is not to say that no one in the shtetls supported the Bolsheviks; local supporters were usually recruited from among young people, who staffed the local Soviet institutions and were active in the requisitions that became an integral part of early Soviet Jewish life.* Also, many shtetl-dwellers who ' V.G. Tan-Bogoraz, Evreiskoe mestechko v revolyuisti (Moscow, 1926), 10-11. * Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv sotsial’no-politicheskoi istorii (RGASPI), fond 17, opis’ 60, delo

1930), 112. 4 Ibid. 9. 1005, fos. 5, 43—6.

° JI. Veitsblit, Di dinamik fun der yidisher bafelkerung in Ukraine far di yorn 1897-1926 (Kharkov,

198 Gennady Estratkh had suffered at the hands of the counter-revolutionary army saw the Bolsheviks as the lesser of two evils. Although the Red Army also sometimes carried out pogroms, the main perpetrators were recent defectors from the Ukrainian or White armies. The Soviet command quickly took demoralized units in hand.° The shtetl had been hit hard by the post-1917 devastation, and its impoverishment ‘exceeded in its economic effects the worst periods of economic slumps of the tsarist times’.® In addition, the state struck a grievous blow against the shtetl when it encouraged its most adventurous denizens to plunge into ‘the primary accumulation of capital’ under the New Economic Policy (NEP, 1921-9). Reckless in their desperate need to find a means of supporting themselves, these Jews often had no scruples about smuggling, bribing, embezzling, or other kinds of illegal activity.’ It is no coincidence that the only contemporary ballad featured in a folklorist study of Yiddish ballads conducted in the 1920s and 1930s is about a Jewish smuggler who was shot and killed while trying to run away from a GPU (Gosudarstvennoe politicheskoe upravlenie, Soviet secret police) officer.®

There were two possibilities for the shtetl: either a new role in the Soviet economy would be found for it or it would be doomed to extinction. The authorities

originally chose the latter approach. The disappearance of the shtetl (Russian: mestechko) from all Soviet administrative-territorial maps signalled that the new regime did not see a place for such a unit in the economy or society. The country was divided into settlements for the two valued categories of workers and peasants alone. The shtetl, on the other hand, represented a throwback to the feudal world,

where—in the poetic words of the influential Soviet Yiddish literary critic and writer Yekhezkel Dobrushin—‘es shloft oykh der luyekh un der zeyger’ (‘even the

, calendar and the clock are asleep’).? Virtually all Jewish activists staffing the Evsektsii reyected the shtetl. The prominent Yiddish poet Izi Kharik was one of those who condemned the shtetl to death: A letster roykh hot tsugedekt mayn shtetl, un letstn roykh hot tsugeshikt der vint. Oy, biz van, um oy, biz vanen betn zikh: shtetele, farshvind.!° (The last smoke had covered my shtetl, and the last smoke had been sent by the wind. Oh, how long, oh, how long should I ask: my shtetl, disappear.) 5 N. Gergel, ‘Di pogromen in Ukraine in di yorn 1918~21’, in Y. Leshtshinsky (ed.), Shrifin far

ekonomik un statistik (Berlin, 1928), 1. 111. | 6 Arcadius Kahan, ‘Observations on Jewish Policies Toward the Jews’, Canadian—American Slavic

Studies, 17/4 (1983), 508. 7 1. Veitsblit, Vegn altn un nayem shtetl (Moscow, 1930), 5, 9—10. 8 S. Magid, ‘Ballada v evreiskom folk’lore’, doctoral diss. (University of Leningrad, 1938), 381-6. Jewish smugglers appear also in David Bergelson’s novel Mides-hadin (‘Severe Judgement’) (1929). 9 Y.Dobrushin, ‘In shtetl’, Eygns, 1 (Kiev, 1918), 16. 10-1. Kharik, ‘Shtetl’, Nayerd, 1 (Moscow, 1925), 36.

The Soviet Shtetl in the 1920s 199 The communist Kharik was hardly an iconoclast. Rather, he was a talented disciple of pre-1917 Yiddish writers. As David Roskies notes: ‘When judged by West European standards of culture and civility, the verdict on the shtetl was unanimous: the sooner this small, homogeneous, insular, and linguistically distinct provincial backwater deconstructed, the better for all concerned.’'’ The derogatory Yiddish term kleyn-shtetldikayt and its Russian equivalent, mestechkovost’, were slurs on

the provincial, traditional Jewish lifestyle associated above all with shtetls in the , western, Polish areas of the Russian empire. Characteristically, Shmuel Niger, the master Yiddish literary critic, argued that the forced Jewish migration during the First World War, which had brought great hardship upon the refugees, had also benefited the backward Polish Jews by giving them the opportunity to come into contact with the modernized Russian (i.e. Lithuanian, Belarusian, and Ukrainian)

| Jews.”

In 1922 Abram Bragin, a Bolshevik intellectual best known as an enthusiastic agriculturist, wrote a memorandum on the economic catastrophe of the shtetl. He wrote inter alia: The economic future of the USSR is a future exclusively of the hammer and sickle; therefore, all the components of Jewish economy will certainly be eliminated. Even now there are clear results, rather than just signs, of this elimination. Private trade in the shtetls and district (wezd) towns has been killed, as has brokerage. Handicraft is dying away. A number of specific minor professions—local merchants, middlemen, and artisans—will have to be liquidated anyway.

Bragin also emphasized that the millions of embittered shtetl-dwellers had no representation in the existing Soviet apparatus, especially as the Evsektsii functioned only in the domain of propaganda and culture.'? In 1923, following this memorandum, some economic functions were assigned to the Evsektsii. Chief among these functions was the supervision of artisans (kustar1).‘4 Jewish artisans began to be treated according to plans originally developed for peasants, whose impoverished majority was seen as the principal ally of the revolutionary proletariat.

SOCIAL ENGINEERING In the class-conscious, Manichaean world-view of the Bolsheviks, the proletarian—

non-proletarian dichotomy was the most fundamental division in society. ‘The people were seen as biological material, only part of which—primarily the pro-

letariat and its allies, the peasants—could be tolerated in socialist society. Soviet | 11D. G. Roskies, The Jewish Search for a Usable Past (Bloomington, Ind., 1999), 48. , 12 Sh. Niger, Shmuesn vegn bikher, pt. 1 (New York, 1922), 22-3.

Moskve, t (1995), 212—16. , 13 Bragin’s memorandum was first published by V. Khiterer in Vestnik Evreiskogo Universiteta v

14 Alfarbandishe baratung fun di yidishe sektsyes fun der al. k. p. (b) (dekabr 1926) (Moscow, 1927), 4—5. |

200 Gennady Estratkh social engineers thus stigmatized a large part of the population, categorizing them as lishentsy, or ‘disfranchised’ persons. For political and economic reasons, disfranchisement was introduced in June 1918 as a constitutional measure intended to protect society against various ‘class-alien’ groups of the population, including ‘exploiters’, clergy, and ‘people not engaged in labour’.’° The introduction of this caste system was catastrophic for hundreds of thousands of Jews, many of whom had been involved in trade. In the mid-1920s Jews constituted about 45 per cent of Ukraine’s lishentsy.*® In addition to losing their voting rights, /shentsy and their offSpring were discriminated against in access to education, rations, housing, and other social privileges. While the proportion of lishentsy was generally higher in smaller towns, the former shtetls, particularly in Ukraine, stood out as the areas with the highest proportion of disenfranchised inhabitants. If the average percentage of /ishentsy in Ukraine was 1.9 in 1925-6 and 4.6 in 1926~7, the corresponding figures for the shtetls were 23.6 and 39.1 per cent.’’ Young Jews invented various devices for cleansing the stain of non-proletarian origins from their biographies. One oral testimony describes one such escape from disenfranchisement: My older brother disowned my parents in the newspaper, because it was impossible to get jobs if your parents were disenfranchised. He announced that he did not recognize them as his parents, because they belonged to the clergy. Of course, my father permitted him to do so, otherwise he would have never ever done anything like that.*®

My own father, born in the Ukrainian shtetl of Krasilov, was almost thrown out of the Yiddish department of the Zhitomir Teachers’ Training Institute because a vigilant student, a native of a nearby shtetl, remembered a shopkeeper by the name of Estraikh. Fortunately, my father was able to demonstrate that the shopkeeper was his cousin many times removed—sufficiently removed to save my father from the purge. Education became an imperative for young shtetl people. Beyond the Jews’ proverbial—and often exaggerated—stress on learning, university or technical school education was seen as the only route to social advancement. Young people had virtually nothing to do in their impoverished, stigmatized shtetls. Local artisans, wary of being categorized as exploiters, were reluctant to keep apprentices. 15 A. I. Dobkin, ‘Lishentsy: 1918-1936’, Zven'ya: Istoricheskii al'manakh, 2 (1992), 600; . S. Fitzpatrick, ‘Ascribing Class: The Construction of Social Identity in Soviet Russia’, Journal of Modern History, 65/4 (1999), 755. 16 7. Y. Gitelman, Jewish Nationality and Soviet Politics: The Jewish Sections of the CPSU, 1917-1930 (Princeton, 1972), 354.

, 17 E. Kimerling, ‘Civil Right and Social Policy in Soviet Russia, 1918~1936’, Russian Review, 41/1 (1982), 24-46. 18 A. Shternshis, ‘Soviet and Kosher in the Ukrainian Shtetl’, in G. Estraikh and M. Krutikov (eds.), The Shtetl: Image and Reality. Papers of the Second Mendel Friedman International Conference on Yiddish (Oxford, 2000), 145.

| The Soviet Shtetl in the 1920s 201 Many artisans were themselves on the dole—particularly those among them who worked in towns, where they faced strong competition from the growing state sector. Conditions were better for artisans working in the rural market, because peasants could pay them with agricultural products.!* All artisans were burdened with taxes so excessive that they were often unable to eke out a living. In order to survive, they were forced to unite in co-operatives, or artels (associations for common work). The Soviet authorities saw these as a rather progressive mode of production, an intermediate stage on the way to mechanized manufacturing.”° Co-operatives were able to gain access to some scarce raw materials, and their members could acquire voting rights relatively easily. Not surprisingly, many artisans’ co-operatives existed only on paper, as an economic and social expedient.

In some places Jewish shtetl inhabitants acquired plots of land attached to the shtetl and found salvation in farming. This practice was not strictly legal, because the 1920 agrarian code permitted the allocation of land only to those categories of citizens who had had the right to own land before 1917. In other words, it had been formulated—wittingly or otherwise—as an anti-Jewish Act, and was repealed only in 1923, first in Belarus and then in Ukraine and Russia. In the meantime, a loophole in the law allowed groups of Jewish shtetl inhabitants to acquire land if they organized as agricultural co-operatives. In fact, these Jews were generally eager to co-operate with each other because they lacked individual experience in agricultural work. In the late 1920s about 20,000 Jewish families in Ukraine and about

10,000 Jewish families in Belarus were involved in shtetl farming.”? | By the mid-1920s three strata had emerged in the Soviet Jewish population. The first group, the ‘Soviet allrightniks’, consisted of members of the party, the Komso-

‘mol, and trade unions who had access to the most prestigious and lucrative positions in society. This group was growing rapidly; the number of Jewish communists quadrupled during the years 1922-30 to 76,000.77 Still, the ‘allrightniks’ remained a minority of the general Jewish population. The second group was made up of the temporary beneficiaries of the NEP and included numerous fly-by-night profiteers. The third and largest group, the ‘losers’, consisted of people, notably shtetl inhabitants, who could not or did not want to adapt to the new regime professionally or ideologically. During his visit to the Soviet Union in 1926 Joseph Roth learned that ‘Of the 2.75 million Jews in Russia, there are 300,000 organized

19 Tan-Bogoraz, Evreiskoe mestechko v revolyutsti, 19-21. , 20 A. F. Chumak, ‘K voprosu o vovlechenii kustarei i remeslennikov v_sotsialisticheskoe stroitel’stvo’, Voprosy istorii KPSS, 11/7 (1967), 59; E. G. Gimpelson, NEP i sovetskaya politicheskaya sistema, 20e gody (Moscow, 2000), 185. 21 L. Zinger, Evreiskoe naselenie v Sovetskom Soyuze (Moscow, 1932), 119, 126; Y. Leshtshinsky, Dos sovetishe yidntum: Zayn fargangenhayt un kegnvart (New York, 1941), 158, 191-3; Hersh Smolyar, Fun ineveyntk: Zikhroynes vegn der ‘yevsektsye’ (Tel Aviv, 1978), 202.

22 N. Gergel, ‘Yidn in der ruslendisher komunistisher partey un in komunistishn yugntfarband’, YIVO bleter, 1/1 (1931), 63-9.

202 Gennady Estraikh workers and employees; 130,000 peasants; 700,000 artisans and self-employed. The remainder consists of (a) capitalists and “déclassé” individuals, who are described as “unproductive” elements; (b) small traders, middlemen, agents, and hawkers,

who are seen as unproductive but proletarian individuals.’? , Shmuel Godiner, a leading Soviet Yiddish writer, portrayed the typical déclassé

Jew as a formerly affluent accountant from Shklov who had lost everything and ended up as a street trader in Moscow.** Symptomatically, Godiner’s character, formerly a rather secularized semi-intellectual, became a follower of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, R. Joseph Isaac Schneersohn.”° Many Jews, hit hard by the revolution, turned to religion—among them the shtetl artisans, who were the favourites of

the Lubavitcher Rebbe.”° In general, religious Jewish communities—which in Ukraine, for instance, numbered 1,003 in 1926 with a total of 137,437 members— competed successfully with the Jewish communists. The local rabbi’s influence was often very strong, especially as he was usually the distributor of the relief packages that came from the /andsmanshaftn—the societies in the West (mainly America) for

former residents of the shtetls. In addition, many communities introduced their ~ own dues and used them to help the most destitute inhabitants.” In the eyes of Soviet functionaries, the shtetl was a disgrace to the new society.

Moshe Rafes, a former leading Bundist who became a deputy head of agitprop on the Comintern’s executive committee, wrote about this disgrace in a letter of 17 January 1925 to another former Bundist, Moshe Olgin (who was now editor of _ the New York communist Yiddish daily Morgn-frayhayt). Asking Olgin’s advice on how to choreograph the forthcoming visits of American left-wing delegations in order to ensure their positive opinion of the Soviet Union, Rafes expressed particular concern about the shtetl, many of whose petit bourgeois inhabitants were hostile to the Bolsheviks.7° For Rafes and other Jewish functionaries, it was an open secret that the devastated shtetl had scores to settle with the revolution. Indeed, in 1926,

during a meeting of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, Shimen Dimanshtein, the first commissar in charge of Jewish affairs in Lenin’s government, admitted that the revolution had brought misfortune to the majority of Jews.?9

| 23 J. Roth, The Wandering Jews (London, 2001), 107. 24S. Godiner, ‘A shklover levone af arbat’, in his Figurn afn rand (Kiev, 1929).

25 Schneersohn headed the underground Sovet ravvinov v SSSR (Committee of Rabbis in the USSR). 26 See D. E. Fishman, ‘Religioznye lidery sovetskogo evreistva (1917—1934)’, in I. Krupnik (ed.), Istoricheskie sud' by evreev v Rossitt SSSR: Nachalo dialoga (Moscow, 1992); id., ‘Judaism in the USSR, 1917-1930: The Fate of Religious Education’, in Y. Ro’1 (ed.), Jems and Jewish Life in Russia and the

— Soviet Union (Ilford, 1995). ,

27 Alfarbandishe baratung, 58, 79; A. Shternshis, ‘Passover in the Soviet Union, 1917-41’, East European Jewish Affairs, 31/1 (2001), 68-9. 28 RGASPI, fond 445, opis’ 1, delo 85, fos. 61-4. 29 RGASPI, fond 17, opis’ 60, delo 832, fo. 27.

| | The Soviet Shtetl in the 1920s 203 , PRODUCTIVIZATION In the early 1920s the ‘productivization’ of the Jews, or the transformation of shtetl tradesmen into workers and peasants, gripped the imagination of some Soviet leaders as well as that of the architects of the Evsektsii. The idea of productivization received powerful backing even from certain circles in the western Jewish Diaspora that were taken with the romance of the Jewish man with a hammer and sickle. In the Soviet Union two organizations were responsible for carrying out this romantic plan: KOMZET (Komitet po zemel’nomu ustroistvu trudyashchikhsya evreev, the Committee for the Rural Placement of Jewish Labourers) and OZET (Obshchestvo po zemel’nomu ustroistvu trudyashchikhsya evreev, the Association for the Rural Placement of Jewish Labourers). The official Soviet policy, spelled out in 1926, was to use a few hundred thousand Jewish peasants, compactly settled, as the critical mass for the preservation of the Jewish nation.®? Importantly—and ironically—the shtetl, where Jews had been living for centuries, was never considered as the locus of national consolidation.

Also in 1926 Esther Frumkin, a former leader of the Bund turned influential Soviet functionary, unveiled her programme for the social transformation of Soviet Jewry. According to this programme, which was approved by the Central Bureau of the Evsektsii, proletarians and other productive cohorts of the Jewish population could take a short cut to socialism and all but certain assimilation. As for the ‘non-

productive elements’ who could not eke out a living in the economically ruined shtetls, many were to be settled in rural areas, where they would eventually consolidate to form a socialist Jewish nation.*! This strategy for dealing with the Jewish problem was formulated during the course of the campaign to build a Jewish repub-

lic in the northern part of the Crimean peninsula. After 1928 the plan for Jewish nation-building in the Crimea was curtailed, but the same strategy was applied to the plans for Birobidzhan. Ironically, this nation was to be created mainly from rather dubious biological material—the former /ishentsy.°” In fact, young and active members of the shtetl population usually opted to

migrate to industrial centres rather than to the rural reservations where the Kremlin and its Jewish officials wanted to breed the Soviet Jewish post-shtetl nation. In all, during the first decade following the revolution, at least 1 million Jews left the shtetls of Ukraine and Belarus.®* Zvi Preigerson, the Moscow-based Jewish writer, has described this process: ‘In the beginning, young people moved one after 30 M. Kalinin, ‘Evrei-zemledel’tsy v soyuze narodov SSSR’, Izvestiya, 25 Nov. 1926. 1 G. Estraikh, ‘From Shtetl to the City of the Sun Calling at the Schools of Communism: Yiddish in Soviet Ukrainian Trade Unions of the 1920s’, East European Fewish Affairs, 29/ 1-2 (1999), 55—6.

82 Y. Golde, Evrei-zemledel'tsy v Krymu (Moscow, 1931), 26; Kh. Sloves, Sovetishe yidishe melukheshkayt (Paris, 1979), 144-0.

38 Y, Larin, ‘Territorial’naya peregruppirovka evreiskogo naseleniya’, Revolyutsiya i kul' tura, 15 (1928), 35.

204 Gennady Estratkh another from the shtetls into the big world. Legions of Komsomol members with sparkling eyes dispersed over the vast expanse of the Soviet Union, joining the ranks of its builders. Then the old people followed them, and the shtetls, now , completely deserted, have been buried in oblivion.’** Many of the remaining inhabitants depended for their survival on parcels and money sent by their relatives and charitable organizations overseas (most notably the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee). There was no lack of volunteers to move to rural settlements. As early as July

1925 over 110,000 Jews registered as potential settlers.°° M. Daniel (Daniel Meierovich), a talented Soviet Yiddish writer, portrayed one such volunteer in his story “Tsvey vyorst hinter kharkov’ (“Two Miles from Kharkov’). Daniel’s hero decides to join a Jewish agricultural commune because he is afraid of losing his children, especially after two of them—pupils at the Yiddish school—leave their parents’ home and write a letter to the shtetl soviet requesting that it ‘liberate them

| from their capitalist father’.2° _ |

The resettlement project stagnated, however. In 1928 the chairman of KOMZET, Petr Smidovich, and its secretary, Abraham Merezhin, reported to the Central Committee that the latter’s resolutions on mass resettlement of Jews had not been realized owing to lack of finance. (In fact, the bulk of the credits—16.7 of

22.5 million roubles invested in Jewish resettlement during the previous four years—had come from abroad.) The number of Jewish proletarians, too, had been increasing extremely slowly. Before the revolution there were 152,000 Jewish workers in the territory of what was to become the Soviet Union; and in 1926 there were 203,000 Jewish workers. During the same period nearly 700,000 Jews lost their income as traders. As a result, 600,000, or 23 per cent of all Soviet Jews, were without means of subsistence. The 1926 Soviet census revealed that unemployment was much higher among Jews than among the general population: 8.9 per cent compared with 1.8 per cent in Ukraine; and 7 per cent compared with 0.8 per cent in Belarus.*” Also, Jewish industrial workers had on average only 1.5 dependants, whereas Jewish artisans averaged 3 dependants. Another index illustrating the economic situation was the ratio of breadwinners among Jews to those among the general population. While in such centres as Moscow and Leningrad the Jewish and the general population had more or less the same share of breadwinners, this ratio was 38.9 to 61.8 in Ukraine and 37.1 to 63 in Belarus.*® A poor artisan would earn 20—25 roubles a month, and had to spend 15-20 roubles

for his family’s accommodation and taxes. This left him and his family in grinding 34 Z. Preigerson, Bremya imeni (St Petersburg, 1999), 82. 35 Y. Golde, ‘Itogi registratsii evreiskogo naseleniya’, Evreiski krest' yanin, 1 (1925), 38.

36 See G. Estraikh, ‘A Touchstone of Socialist Realism: The 1934 Almanac of Soviet Yiddish Writers’, Jews in Eastern Europe, 3 (1998), 34. 37 RGASPI, fond 445, opis’ 1, delo 86, fos. 35-6. 38 Z. Mindlin (ed.), Materialy 1 issledovaniya statistiko-ekonomicheskoi komissii pri pravlenii Vserossuskogo ORT, v (Moscow, 1930).

The Soviet Shtetl in the 1920s 205 poverty. A shopkeeper, too, could scarcely keep his head above water. The follow-

ing stock was typical for a private shop: three chimney-lamps, two earthenware pots, eight combs, one tin-plate grater, half a pound of paint, six tin-plate tankards, twelve sheets of rice-paper, one plate, six dozen buttons, six pounds of laundry soap, one mirror, two strings of glass beads, and four watering-cans.°*? Towards the end of 1928 a group of students from the Jewish Department at the

Moscow-based Communist University of the National Minorities of the West, headed by Esther Frumkin, was sent to Ukraine to investigate the conditions in various shtetls of the republic.*° In all of them there was a very high percentage of Jewish /ishentsy. For instance, in Zatonsk, with a population of 1,935 Jews and 75 Ukrainians, over 35 per cent of the Jews were /ishentsy, compared with the average 2.2 per cent in this region. The number of traders was declining everywhere. Thus, in Zinkov, where there were 3,100 Jews and 200 Ukrainians, the number had fallen

by more than half, during the past year. The students were not happy with the social and cultural features of the shtetls they investigated. Everywhere the older generation tended to keep the sabbath, and many of the children had private religious tutors, melamedim. The conversion of synagogues into Jewish artisans’ clubs was a hot topic in that period. (It became the central topic in Perets Markish’s

much-discussed 1928 story ‘Khaveyrim kustarn’ (‘Comrade Artisans’).*') In Zinkov the rebetsin (rabbi’s wife) threatened that if the synagogue was converted into a club, she would write to America asking the charitable organizations to stop providing aid. In Novo-Ukrainka many artisans voted against such a conversion. In all, the shtetl remained ‘the stronghold of the old way of life, where rabbis wielded - more authority than Communists’.*” The shtetl problem was of greater importance in Ukraine than in Belarus: in the mid-1920s almost 30 per cent of Ukrainian Jews lived in shtetls; in Belarus less than 25 per cent of the Jews were shtetl dwellers.*? In addition, the Ukrainian shtetl had been much more devastated during the civil war and needed more help than did the Belarusian shtetl. Not only was the shtetl problem different in the two republics, it also was seen differently by the local Jewish functionaries. Belarus was a stronghold of the proletarian, internationalist traditions of the Bund, whereas Ukraine, with its smaller proportion of urban and proletarian Jews, had a social basis for hybrid currents that were more nationalist than Marxist, such as labour Zionism and territorialism.** 39° Alfarbandishe baratung, 55, 57. 40 RGASPI, fond 520, opis’ 1, delo 329, fos. 1-36. 41 P. Markish, ‘Khaveyrim kustarn’, Di royte velt, to (1928), 26—42; 11 (1928), 10-34. 42 Gitelman, Jewish Nationality and Soviet Politics, 355. 43 Zinger, Evreiskoe naselenie v Sovetskom Soyuze, 14. 44 Cf. M. Mishkinsky, ‘Regional Factors in the Formation of the Jewish Labor Movement in Czarist

Russia’, in E. Mendelsohn (ed.), Essential Papers on Jews and the Left (New York, 1997); see also G. Estraikh, ‘From Yehupets Jargonists to Kiev Modernists: The Rise of a Yiddish Literary Centre, 1880s—1914’, East European fewish Affairs, 30/1 (2000), 23-5.

206 Gennady Estratkh | The proletarian and internationalist traditions in Belarus, on the one hand, and the Jewish particularism in Ukraine, on the other, developed further after the revolution. Jewish activities became part of mainstream Soviet work in Belarus, whereas in Ukraine they were much more compartmentalized. Thus, in April 1922 the Central Bureau of the Evsektsii reported to the Politburo that the party committees in many provinces of Ukraine regarded local Jewish communists’ activities as ‘a kind of exclusive, sometimes even nationalist work’ rather than as ‘a constituent part of the general party work’.* In Belarus, where over 20 per cent of all workers were Jewish (as opposed to Ukraine, where only g per cent were Jewish), the ‘Jewish work’ had a much more proletarian character. In some professions Jews dominated. They made up 76 per cent of all clothing-industry workers (62.7 per cent in Ukraine); 73.3 per cent of all printers (42.1 in Ukraine); 70 per cent of all tobacco workers (58.5 in Ukraine); and 69.3 of all tanners (38.4 in Ukraine).*© While in Ukraine Yiddish was the main language used by some district, town, and _ factory trade union organizations, in Belarus the trade union for the entire clothing industry (with 93.3 per cent of Jewish trade unionists) and many a local organization of other trade unions conducted their activities in Yiddish only.*” Moreover, only in Belarus was Yiddish one of the official languages of the republic. Thanks to the stronger position of the Jewish communists there, more was accomplished towards the reconstruction of the shtetls. |

For all that, the shtetl did not disappear in either Belarus or Ukraine. In the mid-1920s about a quarter of all Soviet Jews lived in the shtetls, compared with 40 per cent before the First World War.*® The first Soviet census, conducted in 1920, revealed that the most significant decrease in Jewish population had occurred in the smaller shtetls.*9 After 1923-5, however, the mass outmigration stopped; the NEP opened the possibility of earning a livelihood in shtetl-based small production and trade, whereas the larger urban centres were plagued with unemployment and intensifying antisemitism. According to some analysts, the population even began to grow in some shtetls.°° Soviet Jewish scholars, writers, and functionaries continued to operate with the accepted—albeit never rigidly defined—concept of the shtetl.°’ They generally defined it as a semi-urban locality, which had formerly been called mestechko, and where Jews had been living for generations, represented a significant part, 1f not the majority, of the population, and made up the majority or even the totality of some 45 RGASPI, fond 17, opis’ 60, delo 1005, fo. 25.

, 46 Zinger, Evreiskoe naselenie v Sovetskom Soyuze, 42-3. 47 Estraikh, ‘From Shtetl to the City of the Sun’, 51-60. 48 Zinger, Evreiskoe naselenie v Sovetskom Soyuze, 116. 49 Z. Mindlin (ed.), Materialy i tssledovaniya statisttko-ekonomicheskot Romissi pri pravlenn Vserossis-

kogo ORT, iii (Moscow, 1928), unpaginated. 5° Veitsblit, Vegn altn un nayem shtetl, 14. 51 M. Altshuler, Soviet Jewry on the Eve of the Holocaust: A Social and Demographic Profile (Jerusalem, 1998), 40-4; see also J. Klier, ‘What Exactly Was a Shtetl?’, in Estraikh and Krutikov

| (eds.), The Shtetl: Image and Reality.

| The Soviet Shtetl in the 1920s 207 professional and social groups. The irony of Soviet-era statistics on the shtetl is that

the analysts selected those settlements that they themselves regarded as shtetls. The Moscow demographer Leyb Zinger, for example, argued that Soviet shtetls had about 600,000 Jewish inhabitants in 1926.°* The chairman of OZET, Yury Larin, on the other hand, wrote that in the shtetls of Belarus and the western partof Ukraine, i.e. along the borders with Poland and Romania, there were about 800,000 Jews, 400,000-500,000 of whom were ‘absolutely redundant’.®® In any case, the

shtetl persistently posed a serious problem, and the strategy of dealing with it | altered in the second half of the 1920s.

THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE SHTETL Among the people who originally staffed the Soviet Jewish apparatus, the internationalist type of Jewish socialists dominated. They tended to reject any specifically Jewish objectives of the apparatus, emphasizing its generally revolutionary, class character.°* One such internationalist, Moshe Altshuler, headed the Ukrainian Evsektsii in the early rg2o0s. Altshuler saw the devastation of the shtetl as an inevitable concomitant of the proletarian revolution. In 1924, however, the Central Bureau of the Evsektsii forced the Ukrainian Party authorities to replace him with Motl Kiper, who was much more sympathetic to the shtetl. This reshuffling — mirrored a general change in approach towards Jewish-related work. This change was brought about by two factors: the introduction of the NEP, which supported private enterprise, including cottage industry; and the strong pressure—in the form of numerous letters and delegations sent to the authorities—from the hungry shtetls. Characteristically, the new Jewish boss was sent to Kharkov, then the capital of Ukraine, from Belarus, where practical rather than purely propagandist forms of activity had been developed by the local Evsektsii from the very beginning.°° Kiper provides an authoritative explanation of the change in policy towards the shtetl: according to him, many Soviet functionaries originally believed that mass migration to industrial centres and to rural areas would once and for all solve the problem of the shtetl. The shtetl as such was to disappear completely, to be erased from geographic maps. Experience in the real world, however, proved that this idea was utopian. Although the resettlement played a significant role, its scale was not sufficient to accomplish the stated goals. In some shtetls the natural growth of the population almost compensated for the outmigration. Asa result, reconstruc- , tion, or ‘bringing the shtetl into a healthy state’, began to be seen as an additional resolution to the problem of the shtetl.°° 52 Zinger, Evreiskoe naselenie v Sovetskom Soyuze, 115. °8 Yu. Larin, Introd. to I. Veitsblit, Derazhnya: Sovremennoe evreiskoe mestechko (Moscow, 1929), 3.

4 See the materials of the Conference of the Jewish Commissariats and Jewish Sections (20-24 Oct. 1918), Zhizn’ natsional' nostei, 1, special issue (1918). 68 Smolyar, Fun ineveynik, 157-0, 161. °6 M. Kiper, Evreiskoe mestechko Ukrainy (Kharkov, 1930), 85-7.

208 Gennady Estratkh In 1925 the Moscow-based Central Bureau of the Evsektsii came out with the theory that the Jewish population was about two years behind in its post~ revolutionary transformation. For instance, the Bolsheviks had found mass support among the Jewish population only in 1919, 1.e. two years after the revolution; the NEP had taken root in the Jewish surroundings only at the end of 1923 or the beginning of 1924 rather than in 1921, when it was first introduced. This happened, the

Jewish Marxists argued, because the Evsektsi, afraid of undermining its internationalist stand and of being accused of pursuing a labour Zionist programme, , originally steered clear of all non-propagandist work. But even after the function of the Evsektsii had been transformed, the Jewish apparatchiks were reluctant to lobby openly for the vital interests of the Jewish population. Rather, they pre-

, ferred to emphasize the need to support the shtetl poor as part of the party’s general strategy in the NEP period, and regarded the pursuit of any programme that could be seen as ‘nationalist’ or as an attempt to develop a Jewish economy as unacceptable.’ For all that, while the Jewish apparatus turned its ‘face to the shtet?’ ,°® in keeping with the party’s decision in 1924 to turn its ‘face to the countryside’,°®” some of the

Jewish communists tried to preserve the shtetl as the primary Jewish habitat. A remarkable figure among such ‘preservationists’ was Elie (Ilya) Veitsblit, head of

the Department of Social and Economic Studies at the Institut far Yidisher Proletarisher Kultur (Institute for Proletarian Jewish Culture) in Kiev. He became known as a vocal opponent of the resettlement of Jews to rural areas, rejecting it as

a recurrence of Jewish nationalism and, in general, an impractical project. In his effort to find a new role for the shtetls Veitsblit suggested revitalizing them. According to his blueprint, the shtetls that became district centres in Ukraine and Belarus should also become centres of local, primarily agricultural, industry. Veitsblit argued that in the rural areas shtetls represented the main reservoir of qualified labour. In his vision of the linking (smychka) between the new shtetl and the socialist village, Jewish artisans complemented the peasant contingent of the district’s ‘integrated agricultural complex’ (agrokombinat). As for the unqualified Jewish inhabitants of the shtetl, they should join local collective farms, especially as this process was already under way. Furthermore, those shtetls that for various reasons (such as remoteness from railway stations) could not become hubs of local industry had to become villages, and their qualified workers were to be resettled either in the district centres or in industrial centres outside the district.© In the early 1930s Veitsblit became a victim of the Stalinist repression. He was the first victim at the Kiev institute, which would be devastated twice later on— | 57 Alfarbandishe baratung, 6-7; Smolyar, Fun ineveynik, 195—8. °5 Gitelman, Jewish Nationality and Soviet Politics, 355. &9 FE. H. Carr, Socialism in One Country, 1924-1925, ii (Harmondsworth, 1970), 342-3. 6° Veitsblit, Vegn altn un nayem shtetl, 8, 18-23.

The Soviet Shtetl in the 1920s 209 first in the mid-1930s and then in the late 1940s.°! We can only speculate about the

real motives for Veitsblit’s arrest. Judging by Zinger’s criticism, Veitsblit wrongly suggested that the Soviet Jewish agencies concentrate all their efforts on the shtetldwellers, leaving the Jewish proletarians and peasants to general Soviet organizations. This would have limited the functioning of KOMZET and OZET, or even

led to their liquidation. The idea was deemed a ‘leftist deviation’ in the early 1930s.°* Even more incriminating was the fact that Veitsblit’s theory could be seen as an echo of the publications in the Polish labour Zionist press, which argued that ‘educational and economic mobility, whatever [its] positive aspects, was dispersing the previously compact communities of the former Pale of Jewish Settlement in the Russian Empire and weakening the basis for Yiddish culture’.®

The mainstream approach to solving the Jewish problem in the Soviet Union combined further resettlement of Jews to Birobidzhan and various other industrial centres with the ‘productivization’ of the shtetl proper. State support for the shtetl was provided for ina series of decrees. On 3 November 1927 the Belarusian government issued a decree on the transformation of the shtetl’s economic structure.®* On

15 December 1928 the presidium of the Nationalities Council of the Central Executive Committee of the Soviet Union adopted a resolution calling for, inter alia, the construction of new factories in the towns and shtetls inhabited by Jews and recommending that assistance be provided to Jewish artisans in organizing their co-operatives.©° On 26 February 1929 the Ukrainian government issued a decree on assisting the poor Jews of the shtetls by developing co-operatives. The local Yiddish soviets, whose deputies and employees were concerned with administrative, social, and cultural matters, played an important role in the shtetls’ reconstruction.®’

Many of those involved in Yiddish culture realized that the transformation of the shtetl meant the end of their way of life. The shtetl backwater was the main habitat of Yiddish speakers. As the poet Perets Markish put it in 1927 in a letter to a Warsaw-based fellow writer, ‘the bit of Yiddishkayt [Jewishness]| that we have

| depends only on backwardness. The less backwardness remains, the less Yiddish

remains.’ In 1929 Itsik Fefer, the leading Yiddish poet in Ukraine, included in his Selected Works a section scatologically entitled ‘Bliendike mistn’ (“Manure in Full Bloom’).

61 FE. Rosenthal-Shneiderman, Af vegn un umvegn, iii (Tel Aviv, 1982), 73. , 62 Zinger, Evreiskoe naselenie v Sovetskom Soyuze, 144.

63S. D. Kassow, ‘The Left Poalei Zion in Inter-War Poland’, in G. Estraikh and M. Krutikov (eds.), Yiddish and the Left (Oxford, 2001), 121. 64 Prakticheskoe razreshenie natsional'nogo voprosa v Belorusskoi Sovetskoi Sotstalisticheskot Respub-

like, pt: tt (Minsk, 1928), 117-18. 6 Tbid. 102-6. 66 Tbid. g7—101. 87 Gitelman, Jewish Nationality and Soviet Politics, 352-3. 68 M. Ravitch, Dos mayse-bukh fun mayn lebn: Yornin Varshe, 1921-1934 (Tel Aviv, 1975), 412. 69 J. Fefer, Geklibene verk (Kharkov, 1929), 329-56.

210 Gennady Estratkh Presented as a poetic travelogue, the section is dedicated to the author’s visit to his home shtetl of Shpola, whose 5,000 Jews made up 95 per cent of the local population. Shpola also boasted one of the first Yiddish soviets.’° Fefer notices many signs of change in his shtetl: Young Pioneers, members of the Komsomol, a club for workers of the clothing industry, new houses, and a tannery that provides jobs for local workers. The former tavern-keeper trades in needlework rather than in liquor and women, and her only son is in the Red Army. The poet’s former melamed had died, and his daughter had run away with a goy. The shames (synagogue sexton) dreams of a job as a courier at the local office of the Evsektsii. Not much is left of

, the old shtetl, of the ‘synagogue, goats, shops, and mud’. Fefer is happy to see the transformation: Shtey ikh yontevdik un ze, vi in rash fun yorn ot-o-do in mist, in vey vert a velt geborn. (I’m standing in a festive mood, seeing how in the noise of years

, here, in the manure, in pain, a world is being born.)

Allin all, the reformed shtetl was granted an amnesty in the 1920s. Significantly, by 1929 the shtetl problem looked different from how it had looked a decade earlier. First, outmigration had helped to marginalize the shtetl problem: the shtetl Jewish

population decreased to 530,000 and accounted for less than 20 per cent of all Soviet Jews.’ Secondly, the NEP programme allowed shtetl Jews to find earnings in small producers’ co-operatives (artels) and collective farms (ko/khozes) and various other co-operatives. Educated people could work at the schools and other educational or cultural institutions—both Yiddish and non-Yiddish—at the hospitals, and in the state apparatus. Thirdly, the industrial development of some of the former shtetls created new jobs. Contemporary Yiddish novels, such as Hershl Orland’s Hreblyes ‘Dykes’, 1930) and Tsodek Dolgopolsky’s Zayd (‘Silk’, 1933), describe the shtetl’s industrial transformation through, for example, the establish-

ment of a drainage system or the encouragement of shtetl workers to work in neighbouring factories. ‘It is wrong and harmful to dream of the shtetl Jewish envi-

ronment’, lectures one of Dolgopolsky’s characters, happy with the transformation of the former shtetl into a residential district for workers in the new silk factory. _ In the meantime, a hybrid Soviet—traditional Jewish lifestyle took root in the

Ukrainian and Belarusian shtetl. This was a predominantly Yiddish-speaking | world, where a former ritual slaughterer (shohet) could work in an all-Jewish co-operative producing chicken products. But the only method of slaughtering 7 See Leshtshinsky, Dos sovetishe yidntum, 353. 1 Zinger, Evreiskoe naselenie v Sovetskom Soyuze, 116.

The Soviet Shtetl 1n the 1920s 211 chickens that he and his colleagues knew was in keeping with the laws of kashrut. Thus, ‘Soviet meat turned out to be kosher.’’” Granted, after finishing at the local Yiddish school, the children of these kosher Soviet butchers would leave the shtetl

in droves, forsaking the parochial world of their parents for the industrial and cultural hubs of the country.

THE SHTETL’S DEATH AND AFTERLIFE On the basis of pre-war Soviet Jewish statistics, Mordechai Altshuler argues that at least 247 shtetls inhabited by over 440,000 Jews still existed in Ukraine and Belarus in 1939. He concludes that: the Soviet regime had not managed to uproot completely historical continuity, even though the authorities had dismantled most of the organizational frameworks of the Jewish collective. ... Even while the proportion of metropolitan Jews continued to grow, the persistence of the shtet/ influenced Jewish life in the Soviet Union prior to the war. World War II, and particularly the Holocaust, changed forever the residential and demographic profiles of

Soviet Jewry.

Although the Second World War devastated most of the former shtetls, many Jews in the areas occupied by the Romanian army survived. It was these survivors who, together with the Jews who had managed to evacuate to the east and then return to their war-ravaged homes, formed the post-war Soviet shtetl Jewry. Pesakh Novick, the editor of the New York Yiddish communist daily Morgn-frayhayt (‘Morning Freedom’), was given the following population figures during his postwar visit to Ukraine: Korosten 11,000 Jews; Balta 8,000; Zhmerinka 3,500; Bershad 2,500; Shargorod 1,500; Malin 1,200.4 From the 1960s to the 1980s the Moscow Yiddish literary journal Sovetish heymland (‘Soviet Homeland’) was virtually the only forum interested in the destiny of the Soviet shtetls. In the 1960s the writer Shmuel Gordon wrote a number of travel

stories about his visits to the Podolian part of Ukraine. In Medzhibozh he found thirty or so Jewish families, and approximately the same number of Jewish households remained in Derazhnya. Hirsh Reles, another Yiddish writer, published a

number of stories based on his travels to the former Belarusian shtetls.” | Since the late 1980s a few enthusiasts from Leningrad have been conducting field studies in the former shtetls of Ukraine, particularly in Podolia. In a number of localities they have found sizeable groups of Jews who, in the atmosphere of late Soviet and post-Soviet democratization, have managed to create organized forms of 72 Shternshis, ‘Soviet and Kosher in the Ukrainian Shtetl’, 148. 73 Altshuler, Soviet Jewry on the Eve of the Holocaust, 44-6. 74 P. Novick, Eyrope - tsvishn milkhome un sholem (New York, 1948), 295-6. ™ See G. Estraikh, ‘The Shtetl Theme in Sovetish heymland’, in Estraikh and Krutikov (eds.), The Shtetl: Image and Reality, 152-68.

212 Gennady Estratkh Jewish life. For instance, in Bershad (whose Jewish population in 1959 was 2,200; 1n 1993, 400; in 1998, 140) a Jewish cultural society was registered in 1988 (the local

Jewish religious community had been registered as early as 1946). In 1991 the society began to publish a newspaper called Shabat (‘Sabbath’) in Ukrainian and Russian. In Gaisin (whose Jewish population in 1959 was 1,400; in 1993, 280; in 1998, 150) a Jewish cultural society, which later opened a Jewish Sunday school, was registered in 1993. In Shargorod (Jewish population in 1992, 700; in 1994, 200; in 1998, 100) both a Jewish cultural society and a religious community were registered in the early 1990s. In Yampol (Jewish population after the war, 1,500; in 1998, over 100) areligious community was registered in the early rggos. ° In other words, there are still people—perhaps a few thousand—in the former Soviet Union who can be called shtetl inhabitants, or, to be more precise, inhabitants of the former shtetls. Perhaps one day a comprehensive history of the Soviet shtetl will be written, with particular focus on the policies of the 1920s that enabled

the preservation of some forms of east European shtetl life until the end of the twentieth century. It would be wrong, however, to look for the heritage of the shtetl only in situ. The ‘shtetl spirit’, or the spirit of enterprise under virtually any con-

ditions, often survived despite migration and suppression. Thousands of shtetl entrepreneurs managed to acclimatize to the Soviet environment and to find semilegal (or completely illegal) outlets for their ventures. Many of them had spent years in labour camps or even faced the firing squad. Children of such veteran

| black- and grey-marketeers were usually law-abiding white-collar workers, but in some of the doctors, academics, and engineers their latent enterprising tendency became active either in the West or under perestroika.”” 76 V. Lukin, A. Sokolova, and B. Khaimovich, 100 evreiskikh mestechek Ukrainy, ii (St Petersburg, 2000), 137, 140-1, 199, 202, 435, 443, 481-2. “7 Tt certainly was not in the genes of the vast majority of Soviet Jews, including myself; one of my

grandfathers was the personification of Sholem Aleichem’s Tevye the Milkman, another of Y. L.

Peretz’s Bontche the Silent.

Shtetl and S/tot in Yiddish Haskalah Drama JOEL BERKOWITZ PERHAPS the most intriguing characteristic of Yiddish drama of the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment) is that it tended to be written more for the page than for the stage. To put it another way: since there was no stable Yiddish theatre during most of the Haskalah period, it may strike us as curious that the “enlighteners’, or maskilim,

_ chose to write dramas at all. The radical break in modern Jewish politics represented by the Haskalah was a necessary condition for the flourishing of secular Yiddish theatre and drama, but before that began in earnest, maskilim had been writing plays that were distributed among intellectuals, performed in schools, read in salons, and occasionally published. Considering that the maskilim themselves had little or no formal training in the craft of playwriting, their dramas are, more often than not, remarkably attentive to just the sorts of details that would work on stage, with distinctive characters marked off from or grouped together with each other by clothing, social class, speech, mannerisms, and point of view. Haskalah drama also relies on a pronounced sense of place. The characters hail from, and reside in, a wide spectrum of locations on the central and east European

Jewish map. Plays written and set in late eighteenth-century Germany feature visitors from England, France, and Poland. Dramas written in eastern Europe in subsequent decades present characters from cities, towns, and villages that are sometimes real, such as Krakow and Lemberg [Lviv], and sometimes fictional, such as Israel Aksenfeld’s Nibevole or S. Y. Abramovitsh’s Glupsk. Haskalah plays are set primarily in the shtetl, but take us to the city and the countryside as well, and all

of these settings carry symbolic weight. Emile Zola once defined drama as ‘a frag- , ment of nature seen through a temperament’—a notion that his contemporary Jean Jullien transformed into the more famous formula ‘A play is a slice of life placed on the stage with art.’! The plays of the Haskalah show us a corner of east European Jewish life through the temperaments of a group of writers who collectively paint a vivid, grotesque portrait of shtetl society. Even without reading these works, anyone familiar with the central tenets of the Haskalah might venture some guesses as to how this geographical symbolism might ‘ Quoted in M. Carlson, Theories of the Theatre (Ithaca, NY, 1984), 279.

214 Joel Berkowitz _ manifest itself. Because Berlin was the cradle of the Haskalah, we might expect the maskilic dramatists to see Germany as a model of civility, education, culture, and

of course good manners. The shtetl-dwellers, by contrast, will be much in need of guidance by the few characters who have learned of the advances that German society has to offer. Such education might be acquired through visits to Berlin or other metropolises—even Berdichev will do at a pinch—or at a greater remove, from reading the latest literature from the West. We might expect the shtetl to be under the thumb of unscrupulous, barely literate hasidic rebbes in conspiracy with what Abramovitsh dubbed the shtot baley-toyves? (literally, the city benefactors): an - assortment of shady characters with their grubby hands on the town’s purse strings. Finally, we might expect to find young lovers trapped by their fanatical, unfeeling _ parents’ desires for familial prestige (yzkhes) and fortune at the expense of their

| children’s happiness. Such situations are the norm throughout the drama of the _ Haskalah, though, as we shall see, playwrights frequently complicated the situation _ by departing from this basic formula. Although the earliest Haskalah comedies are set in Germany rather than in the

shtetls of eastern Europe, the dramatic depiction of the shtetl that begins to take shape in these late eighteenth-century works would continue to develop through— out the period of Haskalah drama, which (at least in terms of typical subject matter) overlaps with the first half-dozen years of professional Yiddish theatre in the 1870s and early 1880s. While most plays within the relatively small body of Haskalah

_ drama touch on the shtetl in some way, this chapter will focus on a handful of historically significant works that represent several phases and geographic areas of Haskalah dramaturgy and provide meaningful commentary on Jewish life in the shtetl. Over the course of almost a century, for most of which no stable venues existed for the performance of Yiddish drama, Haskalah playwrights created a

| symbolic geography that would serve the later professional Yiddish theatre as a template—in terms of subject matter, character types, plots, and even specific lines of dialogue—for depicting the shtetl.

, THE GERMANS: WOLFSSOHN AND EUCHEL Significantly, our story begins far from the shtetl, in terms of both the writers and their subject matter. The first Yiddish Haskalah plays were written in the 1790s by two close friends who were members of the German maskilic elite. Aaron HalleWolfssohn (1754-1835) and Isaac Euchel (1756-1804), both disciples of Moses ~ Mendelssohn, populated their plays with German Jewish characters, centred them

around German Jewish issues, and located them primarily in respectable yet troubled German Jewish households. In the works of both playwrights, visitors from outside the country add spice to the comic stew and offer us a picture of the cultural influences streaming in from both East and West. The large cast of Euchel’s 2 Di shtot baley-toyves is the subtitle of Abramovitsh’s drama Di takse (“The Tax’) (1869).

The Shtetlin Yiddish Haskalah Drama 215 Reb henokh; oder, Vos tut men damit? (“Reb Henokh; or, What Can Be Done About It?’, 1792) includes an Englishman whose presence prompts native characters to try out their imperfect English, with lines like ‘He is dressed in his sadur days Closh’ (‘He is dressed in his Saturday clothes’) and ‘J whist you much Plinsurd’ (‘I wish

you much pleasure’), and a French immigrant who speaks broken German with a strong accent; for example, “Toyzend dank mayn er [Herr] leytnand. Voila la veritable Noblesse’ (‘A thousand thanks, Herr lieutenant. This is true nobility’).°

| Reb henokh may be the least theatrical and most rambling of all the extant Haskalah plays. Wolfssohn’s Laykhtzin und fremelay (‘Frivolity and False Piety’, c. 1794), on the other hand, pre-empts any notions we might form of a Darwinian development of Haskalah drama from simple to complex, from 1790s amoebas to 1870s mammals. Although Wolfssohn was almost completely uninterested in character development, his didactic comedy focuses its creative energy on a tightly crafted plot in which hardly a line is wasted. Like Euchel, Wolfssohn lambastes the excesses of religious fanaticism, but also warns of the dangers of embracing German secular culture at the expense of yidishkayt. The former is embodied in the play in the Polish hasid Reb Yoysefkhe, a Jewish Tartuffe living in Reb Henokh’s house and tutoring his teenage son. Reb Yoysefkhe’s origins would have resonated with Wolfssohn’s audience, for as the literary historian Max Erik explains, the Berlin maskilim saw in the Polish melamdim ‘the fundamental reason for distorted Jewish education’.* Wolfssohn cleverly keeps us from meeting the son Shmuel, thereby keeping the focus on the hasid’s talent for manipulating the wealthy but unsophisticated father by twisting Jewish texts to suit his lascivious and avaricious plans. By citing Scripture to suit his purpose, Reb Yoysefkhe manages to plant the idea

in his master’s head that the hasid would make a perfect match for Henokh’s daughter Yetkhen, thus establishing the central conflict of the comedy. And what a pronounced conflict it is, for Yetkhen represents the other end of the play’s moral spectrum: a self-hating Jew enamoured of all things German, and therefore modern. We see her having her hair coiffed, flirting with a non-Jewish admirer through

the window of her bedroom, and becoming bored with the ocean of pulp fiction littering her chambers. The ‘frivolity’ of the play’s title comes across in such moments as Yetkhen’s reading aloud of a billet-doux from a suitor: Charming girl! I have taken the liberty of enclosing herein some music I admire: several arias from the opera Oberon that I just got from the music shop. As thanks, all I ask of you—my dear!—is permission to hear you sing and play them. In any case, take this little token as a

sign of my undying esteem and affection, and with that I remain with admiration, Yours sincerely, Von Schnapps.® ® T. Aykhl [I. Euchel], Reb henokh; oder, Vos tut men damit?, in J. Shatsky (ed.), Arkhiv far geshtkhte far ytdishn teater un drame (Vilna, 1930), 104, 106. 4 M. Erik, Etyudn tsu der geshikhte fun der haskole (Minsk, 1934), 116. > A. Halle-Wolfssohn, Laykhtzin und fremelay (trans. as ‘Silliness and Sanctimony’ by J. Berkowitz

and J. Dauber, unpub.). All further references will be cited in the text.

216 | Joel Berkowitz With a skilful use of potent symbols, Wolfssohn has clearly drawn the play’s battle lines. Reb Yoysefkhe, wearing the costume of the hasidic shtetl-dweller and speaking a Yiddish laced with Hebrew and Aramaic, wins his employer over to his

point of view. Yetkhen has been seduced by forces in direct counterpoint to : Yoysefkhe’s influence: her dialect is heavily Germanized and her cultural vocabu, lary marked by the trappings of middlebrow German culture. Surely the worlds of these two figures could never interact comfortably, though for a brief moment it - seems that they might. When told by her servant that Reb Yoysefkhe is on his way to her chambers, Yetkhen initially brushes it off as a bad joke; after all, she has never seen the hasid so much as look at a woman, much less address her. He does indeed pay her a visit, though, and she is astonished to find him adept at the pleasantries so

, central to polite conversation, such as complimenting her piano-playing: YETKHEN. Are you also a music-lover, then? REB YOYSEFKHE. What do you mean? Music is my life! I let food and drink go untouched while I hear singing and dancing, and especially when someone plays the piano. Believe me, I have spent many an hour standing outside your door listening to you sing. YETKHEN. Really? If I had known that, I would have practised more diligently.

| REB YOYSEFKHE [to himself]. That’s quite a good sign. [Aloud] May I possibly be permitted to trouble you to ask you to sing something? You have such an incredibly beautiful voice. YETKHEN. I’m not in the mood to sing today, but I will play something for you. [She plays. Reb Yoysefkhe draws himself very close to her.| You must not sit so near tome... you'll get powder on your clothes, you see? _ REB YOYSEFKHE. Don’t worry, you can get me all powdery if you like.

, (Act IT, scene 4)

Despite first impressions, Reb Yoysefkhe turns out to be a master of drawing-room flattery—at least until Yetkhen crosses him. The encounter turns sour when she learns his true agenda. Since her father has not had the chance to tell her yet, it is left to Reb Yoysefkhe himself to inform Yetkhen that her father has chosen him to be her husband. When she realizes that he is not joking, and rejects the idea with similar earnestness, he erupts in violent anger, which he vents upon her piano, one of the most powerful (and expensive!) symbols of the family’s sociocultural status: REB YOYSEFKHE, What an impudent woman she is! Her father can’t force her—is that the way for a child to talk about her father? Shame on you! You’re impudent! If I were your

_ father, I would make you take me, even if you said no a thousand times. , [Strikes the piano with his fist so that the sides shake YETKHEN [claps her hands together and cries|. This would sadden God himself: mein schones

Klavier ts ganz kaput! [Sinks powerlessly (Act IT, scene 4)

Although Reb Yoysefkhe can mimic the mores of German bourgeois society up toa point, his default setting is the boorishness of the shtetl; when he loses his cool, he reverts to being the Beast from the East.

The Shtetlin Yiddish Haskalah Drama 217 The cultural clashes between East and West, religious and secular, come to a head in the brothel where the third and final act is set. After fleeing the tyranny of her unreasonable father, Yetkhen turns to her suitor Von Schnapps, who shows his true colours by betraying her to a brothel-keeper. The sharp-talking madam who runs the bordello is in the midst of giving her new charge a tutorial when Yetkhen’s uncle Markus arrives, just in time to prevent his niece from being tainted. During the play’s final scenes Markus brings his brother-in-law to the brothel to see the results of his rigid behaviour, only to have other scales fall from Reb Henokh’s eyes as well. The men find the hasid in the brothel, and learn that he is a regular customer who has established a line of credit based on his vaunted prospect of marriage into Reb Henokh’s family. This final plot twist tidily summarizes the play’s message: blind adherence to either extreme in modern Jewish life—either of religious fanaticism or of secular excess—can lead to calamity. The measured middle ground of Markus the maskil is the only proper solution. Wolfssohn pulls off a final theatrical coup that puts the treacherous visitor from

the shtetl in his place in more ways than one. The moment Reb Yoysefkhe is dis- | covered by his employer, ‘his profound embarrassment robs him of speech, and this embarrassment and anxiety last throughout the scene’ (Act III, scene 11). The supposed rabbi who distorted language to suit his own lecherous purposes is ultimately , denied access to language, and must mutely endure his embarrassment and punish-

ment. His mimicry of bourgeois behaviour has been similarly disastrous, as the madam herself confirms. Just as he exploited holy language and texts, he transgressed the rules of the unholy brothel, and, having been exposed, he can no longer

remain there. The madam, left to guard Reb Yoysefkhe until Markus and Reb Henokh can return in the morning to mete out justice, now refuses to keep him

inside the house: :

Look how the rascal stands there, rooted to the spot! Ha ha ha! You see, Jew—that’s what happens to all rogues! But if you think ’'m keeping you in my house overnight, you've got another think coming. You'll have to sleep in the woodshed tonight. It’s plenty cold there, but you’re full of hot air. March, march, get a move on. [She drags him out of the door

(Act IIT, scene 11)

With these lines, the play emphatically concludes that the shtetl sensibility has no place in enlightened German Jewish society.

THE GALICIANS: AKSENFELD AND GOTLOBER Although episodes such as the conversion of Mendelssohn’s daughters to Christianity might seem to have borne out the worst fears of critics like Wolfssohn, the Galician and Russian maskilim of subsequent generations tended to be far less guarded in their championing of the Enlightenment and in their condemnation of

218 Joel Berkomitz the forces they felt to be in its way. In a twist of literary history, we find writers as entrenched in the origins of the Jewish Enlightenment as Wolfssohn and Euchel managing to be critical of the movement’s potential excesses, while their successors to the east often painted a black-and-white view of German utopia versus shtetl dystopia. Nowhere is the dichotomy more striking than in the novel Dos shterntikhl (“The Headband’, 1861) by Israel Aksenfeld (1787-1866), in which the hero, Mikhl, makes a simultaneously geographical and intellectual journey from the fictional shtetl of Loyhoyopoli (or Nosuchville) via Berdichev to Breslau, where he is dazzled by the civility, clothing, and culture of the city’s Jews. A pivotal experience is his visit

to a beer garden, which he finds to be a modern Garden of Eden: , Mikhl couldn’t get over all these great wonders. Just think! For one Polish gulden, he was in Paradise among gentlemen and such lovely, radiant ladies! He had drunk beer and treated Avrom Zaks and his lovely wife to coffee. He was listening to musicians, and they were play-

, ing a thousand times better than Itsikl Litvak in Nosuchville. He strolled about Paradise for two whole hours. And it all cost only one Polish gulden. That was what life was all about, wasn’t it! ‘Back home, the people live like pigs!’ said Mikhl to himself.®

Both Aksenfeld and his contemporary Avrom-Ber Gotlober (1810-1899) turned their backs on their hasidic upbringing with all the bitter zeal of the convert, and this led them to carry their critiques of religious fanaticism to gleeful excess. It is in

their plays that the grotesque becomes a central device of Haskalah dramaturgy and the symbolic geography of the shtetl again manifests itself in familiar but sometimes ironic directions. The shtetls of both playwrights are run by rebbes, bal-shems, and

fraudulent wonder-workers who have the superstitious populace in their thrall. , They bleed their constituents dry while writing talismans and issuing blessings that

clearly have no effect and are often self-contradictory. Yet there is a telling difference in how these two writers, as opposed to earlier and later maskilim, handle outrageous rabbinical misconduct. The German maskilim wrote plot lines in which

reason and honesty would inevitably triumph over chicanery, as a natural byproduct of enlightenment. Wolfssohn, for example, gave his Polish hasid a long enough line of rope—or more precisely, a line of credit at the local brothel—to hang himself. This does not work in the shtetls of Aksenfeld and Gotlober, where the rebbes’ followers are too ignorant to see through their leaders’ shenanigans without some outside assistance.

The favoured device for exposing the corruption and backwardness of the shtetl’s religious authorities—one that Avrom Goldfaden would later use to great effect—is to have maskilim out-rebbe the rebbes. Rather than try to counter superstition with logic, as Wolfssohn’s and Euchel’s raisonneurs do, Aksenfeld and Gotlober have the maskilim triumph over the hasidim by beating them at their own game. In Aksenfeld’s Di genarte velt (“The Duped World’) the maskilic hero masquerades as a creature called Epes (Something), who grows and shrinks in an 6 Y. Aksenfeld, The Headband, trans. J. Neugroschel (Woodstock, NY, 1989), 103.

The Shtetlin Yiddish Haskalah Drama 219 instant with the help of stilts, which the hero keeps inside his trouser legs and with which he scares peasants into doing his bidding. Gotlober’s Der dektukh, oder tsvey khupes in eyn nakht (‘The Bridal Veil; or, Two Weddings in One Night’, 1838) also features a hero who disguises himself as a ragtag monster. During the confusion caused by this device, he and his beloved manage to get together under the wedding canopy, preventing her forced marriage to a noseless simpleton and the hero’s marriage to the blind daughter of a stuttering rabbi. However outlandish some of these events may be, there is always a logic to where they unfold. Regardless of the details of the plot, Aksenfeld and Gotlober frequently present a similar scenario in the opening scenes and chapters of their dramas and _ fiction: a shtetl under the thumb of incompetent and corrupt religious authorities, and badly in need of a rational being to outsmart them so that order can be restored. | Toa certain extent, this resembles the plot line of the classic Western: there are bad hombres in the shtetl, which is waiting (whether it knows it or not) for a good maskil in a white yarmulke to ride into town and save the day. He also comes heavily armed, though of course with reason and cunning rather thana Colt .45. The maskil rarely comes to town on horseback, but the cowboy analogy is apt in another way as well: almost always, the maskil is either new to these parts or has spent a formative period away from the shtetl and in the big city (a common motif in Yiddish fiction as well).’ During his time away he has developed talents that would

almost certainly have lain dormant had he never left, and which he uses to great , effect once he returns. The hero of Di genarte velt, for example, uses linguistic skills such as his knowledge of Church Slavonic in order to exploit the superstition of a

simple Russian neighbour, setting off a chain of events that will undo his hasidic foes. Elsewhere, characters who have been to bigger cities try to pass on what they

have learned there to their fellow shtetl-dwellers. A character in Aksenfeld’s Der , ershter yidisher rekrut in rusland (“The First Jewish Recruit in Russia’) remarks, I come from a small shtetl, from Tityev. But when my father was still alive and I was_ younger, I spent years in Berdichev among the most important people, and learned how to read and write Russian and Yiddish. I spent plenty of time listening to the people of Brod and to other capable people who had been to many countries, besides St Petersburg and Moscow. We poor shtetl Jews can’t do anything and don’t know anything, so I can tell you that you don’t understand what is happening here.®

This character’s exposure to the wider world gives him the sophistication to make , the case for the rabbinic principle of dina demalkhuta dina (‘The law of the land 1s your law’), thereby fighting the uphill struggle to get his neighbours to accept that 7 Dan Miron discusses the ‘visitor motif? in Yiddish fiction in “The Literary Image of the Shtetl’, in his The Image of the Shtetl and Other Studies of Modern fewish Literary Imagination (Syracuse, NY, 2000), 25—32.

8 Y. Aksenfeld, Der ershter yidisher rekrut in rusland, in Y. aksenfelds verk, ed. M. Viner (Kharkov, 1931), 154.

220 Joel Berkowitz they must comply with the tsar’s recent decree ordering each town to put forward a recruit for the Russian army. The enlightened cowboy’s campaign to bring reason to the shtetl usually suc-

ceeds, which is hardly surprising, since he is the spokesman for a playwright who shares all or most of his world-view. When unfeeling parents, blinded by the desire to extract a maximum of prestige from their children’s marriages, try to arrange

preposterous matches, the youngsters who belong together generally manage to turn the tables and get their way. Such efforts often have broader implications for the community, for the same elements that can force people into disastrous marriages tend to be responsible for other injustices. But when the focus of the play

is not romance but some wider social principle, such as military conscription in — _Der ershter yidisher rekrut or the meat tax in Abramovitsh’s Di takse (“The Tax’), the maskil’s prospects for success are far less predictable.

THE FIRST JEWISH RECRUIT IN RUSSIA The action of Aksenfeld’s Der ershter yidisher rekrut unfolds in the shtetl of Nibevole.

The townspeople initially express their resistance to the new decree ordering each

community to provide a conscript for the Russian army, until Pinkhes, the character from another shtetl quoted above, points out that they do not have a choice; the

document they were given to sign is simply for the purpose of acknowledging receipt. It is not, as the community had initially believed, a referendum to be voted

on. Pinkhes and the other main voice of reason in the play, Reb Aaron Kliger, repeatedly argue that until the Jews accept that the government has their best interest at heart and follow all its laws—-even when doing so requires painful sacrifices— they will never be fully integrated into Russian society.

This plea is seen as so reasonable—and so unavoidable in any case—that the shtetl-dwellers quickly acquiesce. The hitch, however, lies in the choice of a recruit, for while all agree that someone must enlist, of course no one wants it to be their own son. Again, the maskilim hit upon what seems to be a foolproof plan, as they concoct a scheme to enlist the services of a fiery, impudent, self-confident vagabond named Nakhmen. Although he is an only child without a father, and therefore automatically exempt from the draft, Aaron and Pinkhes devise a ruse to reel him in like a big fish, and get him to sign up voluntarily. He does, and the shtetl is seemingly saved.

In rational and utilitarian terms, this outcome is an unqualified success. ‘The emotional core of the story, however, runs in precisely the opposite direction. If Aksenfeld’s play works at all as drama rather than merely as a civics lesson written

| in dialogue, it is because Nakhmen becomes increasingly sympathetic as the action unfolds. His first appearance in the play is unlike anything else in Haskalah drama.

, It takes place in the local tavern, which is not unusual. What does depart from the norm is an extraordinary song—a ten-minute rap to the accompaniment of a solo

The Shtetlin Yiddish Haskalah Drama 221 violin—in which Nakhmen, not unlike the Tupac Shakurs and Puff Daddys of a later era, boasts of his disregard for authority, his charm, his physical prowess, his

living according to a natural law far more real than anything stuffy society has to | offer. While he does not call for violence against the authorities, he does mock their foibles, and since we readers have seen the subjects of his derision in action, we know how much they have earned his contempt.

However charming his rap may be, it does not necessarily raise the reader’s esteem for Nakhmen above the level of that of a lovable rogue. Indeed, even the play’s cast of characters introduces him as ‘a no-goodnik, a troublemaker. He has his good points—is handsome and clever—but is not fit for good company.”? Aaron and Pinkhes clearly agree with that assessment, which allows them to rationalize their designation of him as the town’s recruit. To get him to comply, they exploit his feelings for Aaron’s beautiful, intelligent daughter Frume (whose name, fittingly, means ‘pious’). Aaron and his wife have been wary of Nakhmen’s clear interest in their daughter, but now they send the town’s matchmaker to the tavern to tell Nakhmen that, first of all, his feelings for Frume are mutual, and secondly, her parents will not resist the match—that 1s, as long as he enlists in the tsar’s army.

Nakhmen’s transformation in everyone’s eyes, which sets off a violent and at times far-fetched shift in the main characters’ fortunes, occurs offstage, as if related by the messenger in a Greek tragedy. It is initially described comically, as the matchmaker laughs uncontrollably while describing how gullible the boy was in agreeing to the plan. But Nakhmen’s gullibility suggests an innocence that belies his swagger, and in the matchmaker’s report, we (together with Frume) begin to see just what an innocent he is. The situation is made all the worse in that it is built on a cruel irony: since entering the army and marrying Frume are in fact incompatible, the more suitable Nakhmen seems as a husband, the more it becomes apparent how misguided and immoral is the scheme to dupe him into becoming a soldier. Frume’s dismay only deepens when her father returns home to describe Nakhmen’s behaviour before the army officials. All the onlookers were struck by his cheerfulness on what so many others would have considered a dire occasion; clearly his elation at thinking that he had won Frume’s hand in marriage made the ordeals of military life seem trivial to him. Even when the local Count invited him to drink a

toast to his new military calling, Nakhmen demurred, keeping his promise of the night before never to touch another drop for Frume’s sake. Hearing all this, Frume can no longer stand the torture of hearing of her would-be husband’s nobility just as his future apart from her is assured. She drops dead on the spot. The rest is chaos: Frume’s mother, who has been anxious about the draft situation to begin with, goes out of her mind, and then Nakhmen’s mother seizes control of the action. Makhele is blind—or more precisely, has no eyes—and is led in by a neighbour as she calls for the head of the matchmaker. There is the air of a biblical

| 9 Ibid. 148.

222 , Joel Berkowitz prophet about her, and indeed her language is explicitly biblical as she asks for her son to be returned to her: ‘Gib mir op mayn kind, mayn eyn-eyntsik kind, mayn

zun, mayn Nakhmen’ (‘Give me back my child, my only child, my son, my Nakhmen’).!° Makhele’s wording is a striking echo of the prelude to the binding of

Isaac, in which God commands Abraham, ‘Kah-na et binha, et yehidkha, asher ahavta, et yitshak’ (“Take your son, your only son, the one you love, Isaac’, Gen. 22: 2). Her language drives home the point that this is a modern version of the binding

of Isaac, testing the town’s faith in its government. This time, though, no angel descends to stay the hand that is about to dispatch the human sacrifice, which throws into question the maskilic confidence in the power of reason. Indeed, Reb Aaron ultimately confesses, in the wake of his daughter’s death and wife’s madness, ‘I acted only with reason, and forgot that in affairs of the heart, reason fails.’!!

ABRAMOVITSH’S DI TAKSE The maskilim who try to combat evil forces in Dz takse (“The Tax’, 1869) by Sholem Yankev Abramovitsh (1835-1917) are emotionally sensitive as well as reasonable, yet will not necessarily prove any more effective for all that. Certainly they have a

daunting task before them: once again to rout the forces of corruption. But this form of corruption is different from that depicted by the earlier maskilim, for Abramovitsh dispenses with the formula of clever charlatans hoodwinking an ignorant populace. In D: takse the people know they are being cheated, but lack the power to do anything about it. Perhaps they are more aware because Di takse is set in the city rather than in a shtetl or village. This is not Breslau, however, but rather the Mendelesque creation of Glupsk, his city of fools, modelled on Berdichev. Glupsk plays a central role in the symbolic geography of Abramovitsh’s fiction, and although it is nota shtetl, it adds to our understanding of the shtetl outlook. As Dan Miron observes, Abramovitsh ‘insisted on exploring the shtetl mentality as it manifested itself in a larger, less intimate, and even deceptively semi-modern place such as his Glupsk’.!2 , Di takse is set in the big city not just to show that one need not live ina kleyn shtetl — (small town) in order to have a kleyn-shtetldik (provincial) mentality, but because

neither its plot nor its impact would be possible in a smaller community. The play presents a sequence of schemes by which the Jewish leaders of Glupsk—the ironically named shtot baley-toyves, or city benefactors, of the subtitle—find new and increasingly devious ways to raise the tax on kosher meat and line their own pockets with the proceeds, rather than funnelling them back into the community’s 10 Aksenfeld, Der ershter yidisher rekrut in rusland, 195. 11 Tbid. 194.

12 D. Miron, ‘Sh. Y. Abramovitsh and His “Mendele”’, in his The Image of the Shtetl and Other Studies of Modern femish Literary Imagination (Syracuse, NY, 2000), 108.

The Shtetlin Yiddish Haskalah Drama 223 desperately underfunded social support institutions. The city is large enough to allow its greedy leaders in effect to launder the money they pretend to collect in the name of charity, as one of them suggests: I wouldn’t worry about the money. The city is large, thank God, one can make a rouble, especially for a mitzvah like this. . . . It will seem that the city is collecting money for the city’s own sake; so I ask you, who won’t give money? I would get out there and start gathering money right away—it’s a sin to waste any time!?*

In Di takse, unlike the dramas of virtually all of Abramovitsh’s predecessors, the city is depicted as no better for the ordinary Jew than the shtetl. In some respects, it may be worse.

| D1 takse bombards us with a dizzying array of dramatic devices that offer vivid proof of the hypocrisy, cruelty, and pettiness of the men who choose to steal from the community rather than to lead it. The first is their names, a Jonsonian catalogue of vices and virtues of the sort that Aksenfeld had employed time and again. The

‘band of city benefactors’ includes Reb Yosele Shinder, from the Yiddish verb shindn (to fleece); Rev Ruvn Piavkin, from the Russian for leech; and Reb Aaron Knekhtbarg—literally, ‘slave mountain’. The heroes are just as clearly delineated: Reb Gedalye Pikholts, or woodpecker, and Reb Shloyme Veker, or awakener, will act true to onomastic form and attempt to rouse the citizens to action against their oppressors. Much of the effect of Dz takse relies on sharp juxtapositions, often visual versus verbal, which require a sense of the action as placed on a stage rather than simply described on a page. An early scene shows a city elder picking up a charity box and addressing it in a perversion of the sacred words of the wedding ceremony: ‘Akh, kestele, kestele, harey as mekudeshes li, harey as mekudeshes li’ (‘Ach, little box, little box, behold how you are consecrated unto me!’).‘* Act IT brings the entire gagele of civic leaders together, paying lip-service to the hardships of the poor while they stuff themselves with food and drink, and ultimately reach the unsurprising decision to raise the people’s taxes once again. The opening of the fifth and final act shows a very different spectacle: a number of the people who are being crushed by the taxes are onstage plucking feathers from a variety of fowl: geese, ducks, turkeys, chickens (one rooster even has a line of dialogue). We know by this point in the play that if the tax is raised once again, all of this activity will be in vain; the people plucking the feathers will be unable to afford the slaughtering that will put food on their own tables. Apparently cutting against these theatrical moments is a familiar but curious feature of the text—familiar because it is the signature voice of Mendele Mokher Seforim (Mendele the Book-Pedlar) as intermediary in Abramovitsh’s narrative, but curious because the text purports—at least on some level—to be a work for the *8 Mendele Mokher Seforim [S. Y. Abramovitsh], Di takse; oder, Di bande shtot baley-toyves, in his

Geklibene verk, i (New York, 1946), 191. 14 Tbid. 164.

224 Joel Berkowitz stage. Di takse opens with a prologue by Mendele, who claims to have received the ‘story’ (he does not call it a ‘play’ or a ‘drama’) from an anonymous writer who has documented the ‘true’ events of one city’s experience of corrupt leadership: The manuscript was not written neatly [writes Mendele], was flecked with ink in places, many scenes were transposed, it was not arranged in order, and at a few points was even missing several pages—the writer was apparently in a hurry. . . . I couldn’t restrain myself and threw in a few words of my own based on things I’ve seen and heard in my travels.'®

Mendele’s prologue stakes a claim to a double measure of accuracy—the writings of

ordinary people supported by his own observations—as it sets out a clear goal: ‘May my efforts not be in vain, so that God will have mercy and deliver soon— indeed, in our time—a miracle, that the Jews in every city will get rid of their bene-

| factors until the coming of salvation.’!® The prologue itself need not distract us from the play, though Mendele does not step aside once the action of the play begins. We run into him a number of times in the text he claims to have edited, as he points out gaps in the manuscript, agrees or

_ disagrees with characters, reports that he has left out scenes for the sake of our enjoyment, promises to restore them in a future volume, and sometimes supplements characters’ remarks with examples from his own experience. When Pikholts describes a certain Reb Treytl, for example, Mendele notes, ‘On my travels to Bessarabia I met such a Treytl in a shtetl on the Dniester, a few versts from Yampele. I heard terrible things about him there; he is a devil in a long talis-kotn.* People have had to endure no small share of troubles on his account—may God _ Almighty watch over and protect all Jews from such Reb Treytls.’!8 Mendele’s periodic appearance in the play’s footnotes presents a new twist on the question of the performative quality, or lack thereof, of Haskalah drama. Earlier Haskalah plays can be placed at various points on the spectrum from purely literary to essentially theatrical works. Some might be seen as polemical tracts that just happen to take dramatic form; others, even if not intended for full-scale performance, exploit the dramatic genre more effectively. But how are we to respond to a work of dramatic literature that displays flashes of theatrical brilliance, yet whose narrator repeatedly inserts himself into the text, thus continually reminding us that we are readers, not potential viewers? The answer to this question depends on whether we approach it via the historical development of Yiddish drama, or by conceptualizing Di takse simply as a work of modern theatre, open to all the theatrical possibilities that that concept allows. In the first category Mendele as a fictional narrator and sometime participant follows

in the distinguished tradition of such commentators as Tristram Shandy and

15 Mendele Mokher Seforim, Di takse, 157. 16 Tbid. 158. 17 A four-cornered fringed undershirt worn by Orthodox Jewish men. 18 Mendele Mokher Seforim, Di takse, 158.

The Shtetl in Yiddish Haskalah Drama 225 : Tom Jones, who frequently subvert and intrude upon their own narratives. These characters appeared in novels, however; in dramatic literature Mendele’s involvement is much more radical. Had the professional Yiddish theatrical tradition begun a couple of decades before Abramovitsh began writing, rather than over a decade into his literary career, perhaps it would never have occurred to him to involve Mendele in such a text-bound manner; perhaps Mendele would have appeared as an onstage narrator instead, like Thornton Wilder’s Stage Manager in a dystopian ur-text of Our Town. If we momentarily set aside what we know about the tradition of salon drama in Yiddish culture, we might see Di takse not as an old-fashioned play, but rather as an extraordinarily modern one. Mendele constantly breaks the so-called ‘fourth wall’, that bane of twentieth-century directors and writers who try constantly to pull the audience back into the action from the distant, darkened audience space. The play

contains numerous instances of what we would now consider expressionism: the broad speech patterns and gestures of characters, the greater interest in social commentary than in individual psychology. But the modern theatrical movement that is perhaps most compatible with Di takse is Bertolt Brecht’s concept of Epic Theatre. To begin with, Brecht would have been quite at home with the play’s focus on the impact of economic forces on the lives of ordinary people. This emphasis could be effected in a variety of styles, but Abramovitsh’s approach in many ways illustrates Brecht’s discussion of key ‘shifts of accent’ between dramatic theatre and epic theatre:

plot narrative

DRAMATIC THEATRE EPIC THEATRE implicates the spectator in a stage situation _ turns the spectator into an observer,

but

wears down his capacity for action arouses his capacity for action

suggestion... argument the spectator is in the thick of it, shares the spectator stands outside, studies the experience

eyes on the finish eyesonthecourse —

feeling reason!®

Even on the page, Mendele’s participation is a tour de force, quite capable of being

transformed into effective theatre by a director with a Brechtian or other nonnaturalistic sensibility. One other change in approach sets Abramovitsh apart from all other Haskalah drama: his refusal—or is it inability?—to resolve the problems set out in the play. The final scene of Dz takse is a long soliloquy spoken by Veker as he prepares to 9 B. Brecht, ‘The Modern Theatre is the Epic Theatre’ (1930), in Brecht on Theatre, ed. and trans. J. Willett (New York, 1964), 37.

226 Joel Berkomitz leave Glupsk, having concluded that the injustice rampant there is more than he can combat. As he prepares to leave, the city catches fire, leading him to exclaim: ‘Akh, Glupsk! God has rained down his wrath upon you. He afflicts you with his four terrible punishments. He afflicts you berav, with hunger; bedover umageyfe, with disease; b’eysh, with fire, with conflagrations; ubekhayes roes (literally, “with wild beasts”), with city benefactors.’”° It sounds as if Veker has been reading __ Abramovitsh’s fiction, for Mendele in his prologues revels in strikingly similar juxtapositions. Veker’s grim conclusion also brings to mind the long literary tradition of decent people driven to despair and self-imposed exile—in particular the misanthropic Shakespearian quartet of Titus Andronicus, Lear, Coriolanus, and Timon of Athens. Veker practically paraphrases Titus’ ‘Rome is a wilderness of tigers’ by equating the city elders with wild beasts, and in his decision to pick up and leave, his action says what Coriolanus puts into words: “There is a world else-

| where.’

Brecht might have applauded Abramovitsh’s unresolved ending, which preserves the corrupt activities of the city elders as an ongoing process rather than asa completed action with a known outcome. Abramovitsh, ever the modernist, parts company with his maskilic predecessors by refraining from answering the questions his play has posed. Written at the end of an era, Di takse closes with the reasoning cowboy riding out of town, his work unfinished. The final stage direction

reads, ‘He gives the horses a crack of his whip and rides onward.’ Abramovitsh leaves matters in the hands of the people; whether they choose to put out the fire is up to them.

GOLDFADEN’S UNENLIGHTENED ANTI-HEROES In one sense, Avrom Goldfaden (1840-1908) does not belong with the other playwrights mentioned here. Unlike them, he made his living as a dramatist, so he needed to make his plays commercially viable, not just ideologically compelling. As we have seen, the lack of a commercial venue for earlier Haskalah plays did not

necessarily eviscerate their theatricality, but Goldfaden had to work from the opposite direction: first put bodies on seats, as the theatrical dictum goes, and then worry about the message. A number of his extant early plays fall solidly in the entertain-

ment rather than the Enlightenment camp—among them farces, musical interludes, and character sketches that make no attempt whatsoever to engage in the social criticism and campaign for education so central to the Haskalah.

| Most of Goldfaden’s predecessors among the maskilim were also one-hit wonders | as playwrights, which is not astonishing given their lack of financial incentive for , writing plays. Goldfaden, on the other hand, was sufficiently successful at his craft , to turn out a corpus of dozens of plays of varying lengths, from short vaudevilles and 20 Mendele Mokher Seforim, Di takse, 250.

The Shtetl in Yiddish Haskalah Drama 227 burlesques to the six-act transcontinental epic Meshiekh’s tsaytn?! (‘The Messianic Era?!’, 1891). The length and fruitfulness of Goldfaden’s career make it possible to catch an extended glimpse of how his dramaturgic as well as his political vision evolve. Before we look at the way in which Goldfaden ultimately transported his audiences beyond the shtetl, thus for ever changing the geography of Yiddish drama, itis important to see how he recapitulated and refined the shtetl vision of his predecessors. His major early plays continue the attack on religious insularity carried out so vehemently by earlier dramatists like Aksenfeld and by Goldfaden’s own teacher at the Zhitomir rabbinical academy, Avrom-Ber Gotlober. Gotlober’s Der dektukh, more than almost any other Haskalah play, exerted an enormous impact on Goldfaden’s early farces. The monstrous quality of its noseless bridegroom, Leml, clearly inspired Goldfaden with the possibilities it provided for the theatricality of ugliness.

| Other maskilic playwrights, like Aksenfeld, depicted their share of spiritual monsters, but Gotlober embodied this monstrosity in a freakish body that would inspire the creation of two of Goldfaden’s most famous anti-heroes, Shmendrik and Kuni-Leml. Goldfaden did not just recycle his teacher’s device, though, for he saw that Gotlober had not fully exploited the comic potential of his own creation. Not only does the audience hardly ever see Leml, but we never even see his nose—or rather, the space where his nose was supposed to be. He is thus nothing more than a

| human prop, but Goldfaden saw the possibility for turning such a creature into a character. He thus made the physical traits of the title character of Shmendrtk (1877) less severe, but more plentiful, and brought them out into the open where the audience could laugh at them. Shmendrik is ‘15 years old, not tall, a yarmulke on his head and two long, straight earlocks, in red underwear that buttons at the back. Over the underwear a talis-kotn, and a long string of lead amulets, parchments, and wolf’s teeth hangs around his neck, and a silver hoop in one ear.’*! Goldfaden shows not just a deformed central character, but one whose motley costume gets immediately to the point of the drama by trumpeting the superstition that the playwright suggests is rife in the shtetl. Leml resurfaces even more obviously in Di tsvey kuni-lemls (“The Two KuniLemls’, 1880). Even the name Kuni-Leml, which would enter everyday Yiddish vocabulary as a byword for great foolishness, half-derives from Gotlober’s Leml, a noseless youth whose deformity is covered by a veil, an ironic parallel to the bridal veil of the title. To the name ‘Leml’ (‘Lamb’) Goldfaden tacks on a prefix that accentuates his character’s stutter, sending a machine-gun spray of ‘k-k-k-k’ throughout the play—in stereo, in fact, for the second Kuni-Leml referred to in the title is an impostor who seeks to usurp the original Kuni-Leml’s place under the wedding canopy. The student Goldfaden went so far as to pay his teacher the compliment of recycling specific lines of dialogue. When Gotlober’s heroine learns that she has

, 21 A. Goldfaden, Shmendrik (Odessa, 1879), 3.

228 Joel Berkowitz been betrothed to Leml, her true love, Yosele, makes light of the situation: ‘Would your father embarrass that holy man, the Kanaver rabbi [Leml’s father], over such

a trivial matter, a bit of nose, and turn him away with his precious only son? ~ “Disgraceful!” he would say, “Where is it written that every Jew must have a nose? , What, one can’t be a Jew without a nose?” ’** Both Gogol and a body of Jewish humour lie behind Yosele’s teasing. The shadkhn, or matchmaker, turns up time and again in Jewish folklore, the subject of endless jokes about his penchant for exaggerating his clients’ assets and glossing over their shortcomings. In fact, in Di tsvey kunt-lemls Goldfaden places an echo of Yosele’s line in the mouth of Kalman the Matchmaker: Are you going to make a big fuss over such nonsense? So what, one of his eyes doesn’t see, and he limps on one leg. Show me, Reb Pinkhesl, where it’s written in the Shulkhen orekh [Shulhan arukh, code of Jewish law] that a Jew has to see with both eyes, or walk equally well on both legs. He speaks witha bit ofa lisp. Well, do our holy books say that a Jew has to speak perfectly? A Jew must know that he is a Jew; beyond that, nothing matters.”°

In this and a number of other instances Goldfaden takes an idea from Gotlober and heightens its comic value. Here he does so by playing it deadpan rather than having a character explicitly acknowledge the absurdity of the comment. Goldfaden also recognized Gotlober’s failure to exploit some of his own devices for theatrical purposes. A fundamental illustration of Goldfaden’s use of the germ of an idea from Gotlober emerges from the cast of characters itself. Der dektukh

includes a stuttering rabbi, the rabbi’s blind daughter, and of course the nasally | challenged Leml. Gotlober, however, makes little use of the stutter, never even brings the blind daughter on stage, and does not give Leml a single line. Goldfaden

would not let such potential go unexploited. By folding all these traits into the single character of Kuni-Leml, humanizing that character, and placing him in the spotlight, Goldfaden greatly heightened the comic theatricality of his farce. While the pro-Haskalah message in works like Shmendrik and Di tsvey kuni-lemls was

| nothing new, Goldfaden achieved something that writers like Aksenfeld and Gotlober had not: he humanized the opposition. However deformed Kuni-Leml was, and however much his physical and mental shortcomings were meant to symbolize his spiritual backwardness, he became the beloved property of Yiddish audiences everywhere, and the drama that surrounded him became ubiquitous on _ Yiddish stages around the world. Goldfaden’s early plays, then, differ from their predecessors’ depictions of the shtetl more in the refinement of their theatrical technique than in their content. Over time, though, Goldfaden would further distance himself in both regards. The rupture in Goldfaden’s career—indeed, in Yiddish literature more broadly— brought about by the pogroms of the early 1880s would ultimately create a shift in 22 Avrom Ber Gotlober, Der dektukh, oder, tsvey khupes in eyn nakht (Warsaw, 1876), 20. 23 A. Goldfaden, Di tsvey kuni-lemls (New York, n.d.), 10.

The Shtetlin Yiddish Haskalah Drama 229 not only the ideology but also the geography of his works, and consequently of Yiddish drama as a whole. Goldfaden’s movement beyond the Enlightenment message of his early plays would bring with it a move out of the shtetl itself. It was a

shift already under way near the start of his professional career, when he began experimenting with a device that would become part of his artistic signature: tableaux representing a supernatural or far-off scene injected into the main playing space. The last scene of Di bobe mitn eynikl (“The Grandmother and her Granddaughter’, 1877) features almost cinematic intercutting between the dying grandmother’s house and pictures from afar: first of settlers in Palestine, then of her granddaughter, who fled the grandmother’s religious severity to marry her modern, secular, German-speaking tutor.

Goldfaden’s geographic sweep would gradually grow more ambitious. The change begins to become more apparent in Di kishefmakherin (‘The Sorceress, 1879). In a sense this operetta carries on the maskilic campaign, but it quickly moves away from the details of contemporary communal politics to present a less obviously didactic—even seemingly escapist—shtetl portrait that nonetheless rides

profound currents of Jewish life. The maski/ in Goldfaden speaks most directly , in this play through one of his villains: the Bobe Yakhne, an ancient aunt of the heroine’s evil stepmother, Bashe. As the two women concoct a plan to have Bashe’s

husband framed and arrested, and her daughter Mirele kidnapped by the Bobe Yakhne and sold into white slavery, the old woman reveals the key to her power as she puffs on her pipe: ‘You’re still convinced that I can do magic? You still think that when I boil cauldrons, singe hair, turn my wand in chimneys, or stick a knife in the ground, that all that actually does something? I do these tricks only to swindle the fools who believe in them, but in reality it’s absolutely worthless.’** With little

variation, such could be the thoughts of a hasidic rebbe or wonder-worker in a classic Haskalah farce—except that a maskil would be loath to make the hasid so candid about his methods. On the whole, however, Di kishefmakherin does not focus on this familiar theme of exposing the gullibility of the masses. It also omits another beloved maskilic plot device: the misguided arranged marriage. In the play’s exotic array of characters, a matchmaker is nowhere to be found, nor is Mirele confronted with any freakish

candidates for a husband. Nevertheless, Goldfaden finds a way to maintain the classic storyline of the dashing young maski/ coming to the rescue of his beloved —

this time to try to rescue her from the clutches of the sorceress, and when that initially fails, to go on an international search to save her. These changes in the classic plot line show Goldfaden continuing to expand the boundaries of Yiddish drama—not only the geographical boundaries, but also the conventions that tend to accompany them.

24 A. Goldfaden, Di kishefmakherin (Warsaw, 1930), 17.

230 Joel Berkowitz OUT OF THE SHTETL Within a couple of years historical events led Goldfaden to move more decisively _ away from the conventions he has inherited. The outbreak of pogroms in Russia in the early 1880s seems to have caused a change of heart in the playwright, for shortly after writing the enormously popular Diz tsvey kuni-lemls he shifted his modus operandi from satires advocating Jewish religious and communal reform to nationalistic spectacles that reinforce ideas of Jewish heroism and solidarity. For our purposes, what is most noteworthy about these works is that most of them take place long ago and far away: in reworkings of biblical legend, such as Akeydes Yitskhok (“The Binding of Isaac’, 1887) and Kenig Akhashveyresh (‘King Ahasuerus’, 1887); in ancient Palestine, as in Shulamis (1881) and Bar Kokhba (1883); or in the Middle Ages, in melodramas like Doktor Almasado (1881) and Rebbe Yozelman (c.1894). After refining the theatrical depiction of the shtetl, Goldfaden helped lead Yiddish drama to broader vistas encompassing the full length and breadth of the Jewish experience.

CONCLUSION One wonders how the shtetl would have looked had the masters of the hasidic tale added dramatic literature to their repertoire. Instead, they ceded that particular piece of literary turf to the maskilim, who revelled in creating a rogues’ gallery of corrupt rebbes, fake miracle-workers, and their fanatical, gullible followers. Such characters are counter-Promethean, bringers of darkness wherever they go. Wolfssohn’s Reb Yoysefkhe brings his brand of darkness westward, where his spiritual and sexual corruption threaten to destroy a respectable German Jewish family—until of course a maskil intervenes and sets things right. We might expect Markus, living in the cradle of the Haskalah, to have an enormous advantage over his counterparts in eastern Europe. This is not necessarily the case, however. It is true that he ultimately prevails by using reason, that cherished Enlightenment faculty, but maskilic characters in the shtetl often do just as well by resorting to the

opposite: by taking the backwards beliefs of their opponents to even greater extremes, the maskilim often expose the worst abuses perpetuated in the name of God and tradition. We might also expect the maskilim, waging a bitter ideological battle with hasidim and traditionally religious Jews (mutnagedim) alike, to paint their heroes in the most

flattering light possible, but that does not always happen either. Many maskilic protagonists are clearly meant to be unambiguously admirable, but a strain of ambivalence begins to creep into Haskalah drama from the very beginning, and never entirely disappears. Wolfssohn gives us a glimpse of what happens if one moves beyond a certain degree of secularization and abandons one’s Jewishness completely. Aksenfeld has maskilim implement a plan that makes sense for most of

| The Shtetl in Yiddish Haskalah Drama 231 the community, but brings death, madness, and heartache to the play’s central characters. Abramovitsh’s maskilim ultimately give up on reforming the shtetl at all.

This is perhaps an unwitting premonition of Goldfaden’s eventual path as a playwright: not because the internal social problems are too intractable, but because those issues seem to pale in comparison to the onslaught of a new, bloody wave of

: antisemitism.

By this time, the specific set of conditions that had given rise to Haskalah drama had largely disappeared. No longer was Yiddish dramaturgy the domain purely of intellectuals writing plays in the margin of careers as fiction-writers, lawyers, jour-

nalists, and teachers. No longer, for that matter, were enlightenment and modern- | ization necessarily the first things on such playwrights’ minds. The same external threats that would alter the subject matter and settings of Yiddish drama would ~ eventually change the milieu in which those plays were performed. Not only the

Yiddish theatre, but Yiddish drama itself, followed the Jews of eastern Europe out | of the shtetl and on to new centres of Jewish life in Europe, South Africa, and the Americas. In drama, as in other genres, the shtetl would continue to exert its influence on the imaginations of the writers and audiences who had left it behind, even

as these emigrants came to terms with their new surroundings.

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Kazimierz on the Vistula: Polish Literary Portrayals of the Shtetl EUGENIA PROKOP-JANIEC

IN Polish literature the shtetl has been presented most frequently as a landscape: as the setting for events.‘ It is less often perceived as a community, and more recently it appears as a form of east European Jewish culture. This pattern can be seen in the literary history of Kazimierz nad Wista (Kuzmir). However, in the case of Kazimierz, there were some real and significant reasons for placing landscape at the forefront of representations of the town since it marked the unique character and attractiveness of Kazimierz. The ruins of historic buildings and the hilly landscape—culture and nature—were combined there in an integrated whole of exceptional beauty. The authors of the entry for Kazimierz in a geographical dictionary of the Polish Kingdom published in 1882 describe the town as follows: There are probably few towns in Poland that have such a number of curiosities within such a _ limited area. On the one hand, there are mountains covered with abundant vegetation; on the other, the Vistula flowing just at the foothills of the town. In the middle, the walls of the townhouses and abandoned ruins of old granaries emerge from among the trees. The high church roofs tower above them, while the castle stands even higher. And above the latter, a round, lonely watchtower stands on the highest mountain. All this makes this a landscape worth painting.”

The town’s picturesque quality and the strong relationship between history and nature found there made Kazimierz an ideal subject for romantic art. As far back as 1841 romantic historicism and a love of ruins began to dominate descriptions of the town. The landscape is presented as both fascinating and mysterious: A strange sight met my eyes. . . . I was in the most romantic area. . . . I found myself among the walls . . . of an ancient city and it seemed to me that I had gone back to the fourteenth century, to the times of the Peasants’ King [Kazimierz the Great]... . The Gothic crumbling townhouses surrounding the marketplace and the gloomy edifices scattered in the ' Here I refer to the findings presented in my chapter ‘The Image of the Shtetl in Polish Literature’, Polin, 4 (1989), 129-42. * ‘Kazimierz’, in F. Sulimarski and B. Chlebowski (eds.), Sfownik geograficzny Krélestwa Polskiego 1 innych krajow stowianskich (Warsaw, 1882), ili. 925.

234 Eugenia Prokop-Janiec mountains above the town stirred some strange feelings in the soul. The pale light of the night hid the ruins from the eye, leaving the wanderer much to imagine in this enchanted sight.?

| The presence of the Jews was barely mentioned in such descriptions. For instance, the author of this piece mentions only in passing that the ancient townhouses 1n the marketplace in Kazimierz ‘have nowadays become the property of the sons of Israel’ (p. 639).

Jewish elements found their way into the tales of Kazimierz through local legends and stories, however. ‘he founding of the town was commonly attributed to King Kazimierz the Great, and, according to an oral tradition still popular in the twentieth century, the castle nearby, in the village of Bochotnica, used to belong to the king’s mistress, the “beautiful Esterka’ (p. 644). The legend of Esterka, which

appeared in many versions and was sometimes accepted as true, introduced the : issue of the Jewish past in Poland into nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature. The story reminds us of the Jews of Kazimierz, who until the inter-war period were proud to be known as the ‘royal Jews’.*

Historical perspective is another special feature of depictions of Kazimierz. Medieval and Renaissance relics testify to the former glory of the town, whose history—like that of Poland—followed a pattern of recession and adversity. Once called Little Danzig, this rich and influential port on the River Vistula was devastated by war and plague. History thus transformed it into a poor provincial town. In the inter-war period, among reminiscences from journeys through Poland, the following description can be found: In the times of King John III, merchants from Danzig and Elblag were replaced by the Jews. Their wooden houses with shingle roofs, with outhouses and porches, their butchers’ stalls [yatkes|, shops, and synagogue, appeared among the overgrown ruins of former prosperity.

] Since 1771 they have traded here in bread, herrings, and fruit, and the rights they have 3 K. Baliriski, ‘Wspomnienie jednego dnia wedréwki po kraju’, Biblioteka Warszawska, 4 (1841), 635-6. Further references are in the text. 4 The legend of Kazimierz and Esterka as reflected in Jewish and Polish literature is discussed in Ch. Shmeruk, The Esterke Story in Yiddish and Polish Literature: A Case Study in the Mutual Relations of Two Cultural Traditions (Jerusalem, 1985). In the 19th century, among the writers concerned with Kazimierz, Karol Balinski was sceptical of the legend. He rejected the tradition according to which Esterka once lived in Bochotnica. In the zoth century this attitude was shared by Wactaw Husarski (‘Pradzieje Kazimierza Dolnego’, Wiadomosei Literackte, 2 (1939), 1). Some local legends of Esterka are

quoted by Konrad Bielski in his memoirs Spotkania z Kazimierzem (‘Encounters with Kazimierz’;

| _ Lublin, 1965). The king’s mistress is also the heroine of Helena Platta’s poem ‘Esterka’, in Zielony choradt (Lublin, 1968). Tadeusz Breza wrote a humorous treatment of the legend on the occasion of the

construction in the town of the monument to Kazimierz the Great (‘Odda¢ to malarzom i miodozericom’, Kurjer Poranny, 230 (1933), 4). In ‘Miasto naszych snéw’ (Wiadomosei Literackie, 2 (1939), 5) Anatol Stern wrote about the theatrical parodies of the legend staged by painters visiting the town.

Kazimierz on the Vistula 235 enjoyed have been equal to those of the remaining population. . . . Old Kazimierz was already then a poor, ruined Jewish town.°

Thus Kazimierz was not a shtetl from the very beginning, but became one over time. As the years passed, it gradually grew poorer and fell into decline. In general, Polish literature in the last two centuries has portrayed Kazimierz as

both Polish and Jewish. (This is also true of the literary portraits of other Polish towns, both real and fictitious.) The Jewish world has been represented fragmentarily and episodically, and most often as background or as part of the general

environment. |

However, some literary works feature it as a town that is exclusively Polish. Such representations can also be found in the literature of the second half of the twentieth

century, primarily in adventure and historical novels whose stories are set in the seventeenth or eighteenth century.® Interestingly, the same is true of prose concerning the German occupation of the Lublin region and the rebuilding of that region after the war. The description of Kazimierz’s Polish and Jewish neighbourhoods is characteristic of inter-war literature, in which the popularity of the town as a literary topic reached its apogee. This trend was particularly notable in the 1930s. Among the literary factors enhancing the fascination with Kazimierz was an increasing interest in the provinces and in the atmosphere of their sleepy towns. One publication that showed such an interest was the January 1939 issue of Wiadomosci Literackie (“Literary News’), at the time the most popular and influential literary magazine. The issue, devoted to Kazimierz, contained memoirs, essays, and reminiscences on the town by more than a dozen writers. Among the contributors were some whose work would also keep the legend of Kazimierz alive after the war.? Through their selection of characters and places, most of the texts introduced both the Polish and the Jewish worlds as they existed in the town.

The two worlds are also present in the best-known inter-war portraits of Kazimierz, Dwa ksiezyce (“Two Moons’, 1933) by Maria Kuncewiczowa and ‘Lato’

~ (Summer’, 1938) by Adolf Rudnicki. In her rich and diversified literary output Kuncewiczowa created a unique, personal variant of the legend of Kazimierz.’ In ° H. Mortkowicz, ‘Powisle’, in her Na drogach Polski (with 50 linocuts by Tadeusz CieSlewski, Jr.) (Warsaw, 1934), 297-8. ° T. Lopalewski, Strachy na Lachy (Warsaw, 1964); E. Paukszta, Stracency: Powiesé historyczna z XVII wieku (Warsaw, 1985). 7 J. N. Ktosowski, Ziemia bez skarg: Powies¢ (Warsaw, 1956).

8 Among the authors published in that thematic issue of Wiadomosei Literackie were Maria Kuncewiczowa, Adolf Rudnicki, Hanna Mortkowicz, Adam Wazyk, Antoni Stonimski, Anatol Stern, Ewa Szelburg-Zarebina, Wanda Melcer, Tadeusz Breza, Tymon Terlecki, and Andrzej Wolica. 9 See T. Ktak, ‘Legenda Kazimierza w twoérczosci Marii Kuncewiczowej’, in W. Wojcik (ed.), W strone Kuncewiczowej: Studia 1 szkice (Katowice, 1988); I. Paprocka, ‘Kazimierskie fascynacje w zyciu i tworczosci Marii Kuncewiczowej’, in L. Ludorowski (ed.), O twérczosci Marii Kuncewiczowe] (Lublin, 1997).

236 Eugenia Prokop-fantec Dwa ksiezyce, a series of novellas, she portrayed both Poles and Jews, inhabitants of the town as well as newcomers: “The church bled pink in the tangle of acacias bending like the Baroque saints; the wells resembled little shrines; the villagers would go about in circular robes and huge, flat straw hats; on Friday evenings the windows

shivered with the warmth of candlesticks, with the madness of beards, prayer

shawls, and the fragrance of spices.’!° , This description of the town emphasizes its dual ethnic and cultural character. However, the Jewish porters, boatmen, and merchants in Dwa ksig&yce are seen from the Polish perspective, and mostly in the context of their contacts with Poles. The Polish perspective is also apparent in the style of the work, where the words of the Jewish characters are quoted exclusively in Polish as spoken by the Jews, with traces of Yiddish vocabulary and intonation.!! Their Yiddish speech, on the other

hand, is referred to as gibberish (pp. 48, 51, 54, 86). This dismissive attitude surfaces in one scene, when one of the characters alternately ‘gibbers [in Yiddish] or utters slow, beautiful Polish words’.!? _

The Polish perspective is particularly noticeable in the presentation of Jewish culture. Thus, in Dwa ksigzyce prayers at the synagogue are seen through the eyes of Poles whose curiosity has led them surreptitiously to enter the synagogue. However, their interest in the ritual soon gives way to the shame they feel about observing ‘secretly ... the most intimate relationship of the strange people with their cruel God’ (p. 172). As they observe the praying Jews, the Poles’ most intense feeling is that of alienness: Everything was so strange—the sound, the smell, people’s eyes and mouths—that Krystyna

| descended into the fourth dimension; things lost their sense, they became denaturalized and monstrous. She shook her arm with a start as something imperceivable rested on it. She had to look and think for quite a moment before she realized that 1t was a hand. The withered hand of an old woman immersed in prayer. (p. 171)

This estrangement has an obviously religious character. The awe-inspiring, passionate, and ecstatic tone of the Jewish prayers, reverberating with demands and despair, expresses the desire for the Messiah to come. On the other hand, in the church, where the heroes seek to soothe themselves after leaving the synagogue,

there prevails an atmosphere of peace stemming from the thanksgiving prayers worshipping Christ. The contrast between the synagogue and the church 1s the contrast between the Old and the New Testament, between the impatience of waiting and the joy connected with the fulfilment of the messianic prophecies. Kuncewiczowa records one more aspect of the strangeness manifest in Polish—

Jewish relations: the Jewish characters’ sense of alienation and homelessness. 10 M. Kuncewiczowa, Dwa ksiezyce (Warsaw, 1977), 22-3. 11 See such expressions by the story’s characters as ‘Ja kaze i jus’ (‘I have ordered it and that’s that’) (ibid. 84); ‘Szi git! Cynamonowe ciastko dla moje} dobrej Gitli’ (“Be quiet! A ginger cookie for my good

Gitel’) (p. 85); ‘Stul pisk dzyka Swynio’ (‘Shut up, you wild pig’) (p. 85). | 2 Kuncewiczowa, Dwa ksiezyce, 86.

Kazimierz on the Vistula 237 Szymon Goldman, who went to Kazimierz from Warsaw for a plein-air painting session, wished ‘that the wet winds would turn his woolly curls into hemp; that the cool air would make his eyes grow colder and narrower. He longed for a natural place for himself in some nook of the vast Slavonic lands’ (p. 89). He considered his painting of the Slavonic landscape false and his own ‘Judaean’ features (p. 92), as he described them, ‘improper’ (p. 90). In order to ‘outwit the antisemitic prejudice’ and to win favour with the Polish woman he loved, he initiated an oriental masquerade; in this way he turned the ‘loathsome strangeness’ into a ‘charming strangeness’, and Jewish features into Arab ones (p. 94). Nevertheless, in writing about the forms of strangeness and the reasons for it, Kuncewiczowa does not focus on Polish—Jewish conflict. Unexpectedly, and sometimes perversely, she studies the similarity between the fate of the Poles and that of the Jews. The novella in which the religious motifs appear concludes with a scene in which the two groups unite after the death of the town’s beggarwoman: ‘In their ardent sympathy for the corpse, the Catholics would fraternize with the Jews. ... May the father of Jesus and the God of Israel look after the great matters, but here is the body that has to be washed and buried with due care’ (pp. 176-7).

| The Polish perspective in Dia ksigzyce becomes even more apparent when the story is juxtaposed with Adolf Rudnicki’s ‘Lato’. Although the narrator of this holiday report from Kazimierz shows equal interest in both communities of the town, he himself is one of those whom assimilation has placed in the Polish—Jewish

borderland. He is at home in the Polish language, but the Jewish world, with its cultural diversity and ideological schisms, is close and important to him. ‘Lato’ distinguishes itself by its perception of the Jews as a community and by its comments concerning the community’s current problems within the broad social and cultural context. Antisemitism is one of these problems. It runs rampant outside the town, but its ominous echoes manifest themselves here as well in acts of ill will, in reprimands, and in accusations. Other important questions concern the bankruptcy of assimilation, the ‘triumph of the ghetto’, and linguistic Polonization. In ‘Lato’ the observation that ‘the Jewish masses speak mostly Polish’!? and the characterization

of their use of Polish are coupled with the eulogizing of Yiddish as a language ‘reverberating . . . with the echo of the holy books, prayer verses, and proverbs’ (p. 169). It 1s also a language full of wisdom, grace, and ‘a metaphysical weakness hiding an indestructible, powerful life instinct—the role of lasting [rola trmania) (p. 169). The speech of some of the Jewish characters is undoubtedly the Polish

equivalent of the Yiddish; yet the narrator points out that Yiddish is practically

untranslatable into any non-Jewish language. The description of a group of characters on their way to Ger (Gora Kalwaria) to pray with the hasidim on Yom Kippur plays a prominent role in the report. For the narrator, this pilgrimage is not just a religious act, but is rather a quest for unity 8 A. Rudnicki, ‘Lato’, in his Sto jeden (Krak6éw, 1984), i. 169.

238 | Eugenia Prokop-fFaniec with the Jewish world. Rudnicki transforms the story of that visit to the tsadzk intoa rumination on the nature of Jewish spirituality and the metaphysical significance of

‘the great autumn holidays’ Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, as well as on the power and beauty of the Jewish religious tradition.’* Of the Jews who move away from Jewish tradition but observe Yom Kippur, the narrator says: ‘Anything they could compare with these forms, marvellously developed through the centuries-old tradition, seemed pale and insignificant. So they yielded and. . . during this period

_ they preferred the religious songs, which brought them a great deal of sublime happiness’ (p. 161). On another occasion he stresses the significance of the cultural rootedness of the heroes for their feeling of spiritual unity, and for their consent to the existing order of the world and their own place in it. Such comments make the Jewish world presented in ‘Lato’ appear not as a local peculiarity, but as a part of Jewish life in Poland, in due order of continuity and change.

| Descriptions of the two communities of Kazimierz can also be found in post-war literature, but mostly in the form of memoirs and documentary prose. One of the most interesting depictions of this kind appears in Kobieta z prowincj (“A Woman from the Provinces’, 1987) by Waldemar Sieminski. The author, who was born

in Kazimierz, is interested in the literary legend of the town,’ and, referring to it, : formulates a programme for a literature which would cultivate local values.*° In the _ story he builds on the memories of a simple Polish woman from the provinces who used to live among the Jews before the war. She is well acquainted with Jewish customs, rituals, and prayers, and she even speaks Yiddish. Her reminiscences have exceptional sociological value not only as a record of the everyday life of the shtetl, but above all as a document on Polish provincial mentality. Closeness and attachment intermingle in Anna’s statements with an envy generated by poverty and the feeling of being disadvantaged, as well as with unfavourable stereotypes of the Jews. At one point Anna declares: “The Jews were my second family.’!” At other

points, however, she recalls: ‘The Jews would eat good things only, while for the , poor Catholics there was only wholemeal flour left’ (p. 126); “The factories were Jewish and so were the shops’ (p. 127); ‘A Pole who owned a shop could not keep it, since he had to buy from Jewish wholesalers at high prices’ (p. 127); ‘We feared the _ Jews a bit. The Jews have money, the Jews are cunning and they make matzah from ~ Catholics. Although no one treated that seriously and no one had ever said they saw it with their own eyes, one could say exactly how the Jews did it’ (p. 128).

| But it is this Polish woman who expresses the pain felt over the absence of the Jews from Kazimierz: ‘I was sitting on the porch indulging in. . . the silence. And then I felt that strange, intense longing for the Jews. . . . In the silence of Easter I

suddenly felt a great absence of something. I was listening and listening and that 14 Rudnicki, ‘Lato’, i. 160. 15 W. Sieminski, ‘Sztuka zwiazana z Kazimierzem’, Literatura, 9 Aug. 1979, 5. 16 Id., ‘Wartosé miejsca w literaturze pieknej: Lokalnos¢ i uniwersalizm’, MS, 1989. 7 Id., Kobieta z prowincji (Warsaw, 1987), 121.

Kazimierz on the Vistula 239 silence, yes, that silence was dead. It was the absence of their voices. . .’.1° It is also she who mourns Jewish Kazimierz using a paraphrase of the Christian prayer for the dead: ‘And may the light eternal spread over the murdered Jews.’!*

In his work Spotkania z Kazimierzem (‘Encounters with Kazimierz’, 1965), Konrad Bielski describes the atmosphere of the town in the 1920s and 1930s from the point of view of a holiday visitor. He attributes the fact that the local Jews were ‘unlike other Jews’”° to their status as ‘royal Jews’. Thus his story focuses on the distinctive features of the town and the old tales of King Kazimierz and Esterka. He

treats the stories favourably, remarking that they are ‘full of poetry and based ona special mythology’.*! One of the reasons for the author’s idealization of the Jewish world is the memory of the Holocaust: ‘Someone who saw and knew [the Jews of Kazimierz], so rooted in that town, is looking at Kazimierz today with a dead eye, as if it were an empty town’, he writes about the post-war years (p. 10). The novels written during or soon after the war by Maria Kuncewiczowa, Zmowa nieobecnych (‘A Plot of the Absent’, 1946), and Hanna Mortkowicz-Olczakowa, Swiattocienie (‘Chiaroscuro’, 1957), provide an additional dimension to the works

about Kazimierz begun during the inter-war period. Although referring either directly or indirectly to the Holocaust, both continue to write about the town in pre-war style. The distinctive features of this style are clear references to the life of the artistic circles connected with Kazimierz, autobiographical elements, and a particular self-referential aspect. _ The focus on the town’s intimate relationship with art in the pre-war literary style faithfully reflected the local colour, since, after all, Kazimierz owed its popularity in the twentieth century to art. After hundreds of years of oblivion it became

famous thanks to the painters who towards the end of the nineteenth century ‘discovered a poor town on the Vistula . . . reduced to the role of a shabby estate’”? and began to make it a subject of their art. Kazimierz appears in the inter-war works of Kuncewiczowa and Rudnicki as an object of fascination for both Jewish and non-Jewish painters. Both are concerned with the question, discussed by other writers as well, of whether art has the right to

discover picturesque qualities in destruction and poverty. A recurring scene in | their works 1s one of artists, charmed by the exotic character of poverty, asking poor Jews to sit for them. The plot of one of the novellas in Kuncewiczowa’s Dwa kigzyce

revolves around the conflict between a painter who comes to the town and his relative who lives there and is indignant at the artistic ennoblement of dirt and ugliness. In one of her pre-war essays the author analysed the arguments in favour of maintaining the town, against the interests of tourists, as ‘an experimental place for art, an arena of embarrassing eccentricities’.**? Kuncewiczowa revisits the issue of Kazimierz art in her later work, where it becomes ironic and tragic. A portrait of a

‘8 Ibid. 74. 19 Tbid. 75. 20 Bielski, Spotkania z Kazimierzem, 10. 21 Tbid. 2 A. Lauterbach, ‘Przysztos¢ Kazimierza Dolnego’, Wiadomosci Literackie, 2 (1939), 3. 23M. Kuncewiczowa, ‘Rezerwat dzikoéci’, in her Odkrycie Patusanu (Warsaw, 1983), 97.

240 Eugenia Prokop-Janiec Jewish pauper, which once marked the amorality of artistry, becomes after the Holocaust a remembrance of the murdered people and a testimony to their lives.?+

_ The relationship between art and the Holocaust is represented symbolically in a novel that Mortkowicz-Olczakowa started writing before the war had ended. Although its plot focuses on a pre-war plein-air painting session, premonitions of the catastrophe appear in the ghastly visions of one of the Jewish painters: [Jews], hunched and crooked, walked in circles on the canvas. In their robes, which had turned russet, they trotted among the black trunks of trees, on white snow stained with longish footprints. Under the visors of their flat caps they would lean towards one another with their sharp, greenish profiles and fiery, bloodshot eyes. ... And through the sky rolled , the red and violet sun, the spectral sun of mad paupers. In other places the black Jews were starting up and flying under the sky like crows over the crooked roofs of towns. The arms of trees would wind and interlock like octopuses, while the snow would blow with a bloodereen geyser of sparkles.”°

These ‘bitter and provocative’ works, permeated with an aura of weirdness (p. 129), did not find buyers; the audience had a taste for solid, realistic portraits and sentimental ritual scenes. Even the non-Jewish characters in S‘wiattocienie, wandering through the town on a Friday evening looking through windows at the Jews at their

sabbath prayers, discuss the value of realistic art concerned with the theme of rituals.

: Mortkowicz-Olczakowa introduces into her novel one more motif related to art—one that is absent from the works of other authors. This is the motif connected

with the influence of art on the life of the shtetl and the changes in the lives of simple people brought about by the artists and their works. After modelling for painters, a Jewish girl from the town finds herself briefly in these artistic Bohemian circles. Afterwards, rejected and disappointed, she returns to her Orthodox home and without protest accepts the traditional role of the Jewish daughter. Bohdan Czeszko’s novel Przygoda w kolorach (‘An Adventure in Colours’, 1959) represents probably the last echo of the inter-war stories of the artists of Kazimierz.

However, this partly autobiographical work describes a different epoch in the history of Kazimierz.?° Rebuilt after the destruction, depicted by a new generation of artists and visited by Jewish painters who survived the Holocaust, the town looks quite unlike the Kazimierz of the past. Its lost character cannot be restored even by

the most detailed reconstruction. The carefully reconstructed building of the kosher yatke is ‘blind like a coffin and quite useless’ (p. 7), and the marketplace is

cobbled with “gravestones that were taken from the Jewish cemetery on Nazi orders’.?” 24 M. Kuncewiczowa, Fantomy (Warsaw, 1982), 241-2. 25 H. Mortkowicz-Olczakowa, Swiattlocienie: Historia jednego pleneru (Krakéw, 1957), 128. 26 Czeszko’s autobiographical text entitled ‘Moje Kazimierze’, published in his collection of short stories Nostalgie mazurskie (Warsaw, 1987), can serve as a commentary to the novel.

27 B. Czeszko, Przygoda w kolorach (Warsaw, 1959), 7. ,

Kazimierz on the Vistula 241 In summary, it should be emphasized that the literary pictures of Kazimierz recalled here partly comply with and partly transcend Polish conventions of writing

about the shtetl. The Jewish world of the town is presented from a Polish perspective, the culture is recorded fragmentarily and selectively, and the characters are seen in the context of their participation in Polish life. This perspective, focused

on difference and otherness, is sometimes overcome, at least partly, by those authors who reside in the Polish Jewish grey zone and who show this world from within. On the other hand, the selectively presented culture is commonly considered an integral element of the former character of the town, a part of the whole that today no longer exists. In the development of the unique picture of Kazimierz, elements taken from the local historical and, in particular, artistic traditions have

undoubtedly played the most important role. And it is this alliance of artistic Bohemia and the shtetl that seems to be the most original feature of Polish portraits of Kazimierz. Translated from the Polish by Ewa Basiura

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Imagining the Image: Interpretations of the Shtetl in

7 Yiddish Literary Criticism | MIKHAIL KRUTIKOV | THE real shtetl may not be easy to define in historical, social, or geographical terms,

but as a symbol the shtetl is a constant feature of the Jewish literary imagination. The first modern Yiddish critic, Bal-Makhshoves,! made this observation in the Opening statement of his seminal essay ‘Dray shtetlekh’ (“Three Shtetls’, 1913): “As one can sense the scent of the grass of the Russian village that comes from Russian literature, or hear the voices of big industrial and commercial cities that fill Euro-

, pean literature, so one can perceive in our Yiddish literature the hushed, subdued, and muffled sound of life in a small Jewish shtetl.’? Although the shtetl served as the

primary backdrop in nineteenth-century Yiddish literature from Israel Aksenfeld to Y. L. Peretz, it was not until the beginning of the twentieth century that Yiddish critics became aware of its existence as an aesthetic phenomenon. Until then, literary

representations of the shtetl were usually perceived as ‘true to life’ depictions, realistic representations of Jewish life in its most concentrated form. The realistic conventions of shtetl fiction were broken most obviously by Sholem Asch in his romantic poem in prose, A Shtet/ (1904), which not only brought fame to its young author but also initiated a critical discussion that continues even today. Ironically, the work that provoked so much insightful criticism has fallen into complete dis-

regard. By contrast, the inevitable counterpart to Asch’s poem, the naturalistic novella A Shtetl by Yitzhak Meir Weissenberg, has acquired canonical status among

- contemporary critics and scholars of Yiddish because of its appeal to modern critical sensitivities. Bal-Makhshoves’s essay deals with the image of the shtetl in the works of three leading Polish Yiddish writers: Asch, Weissenberg, and Peretz. Acknowledging the centrality of the shtetl as the primary locus of Yiddish literature, Bal-Makhshoves ‘ Bal-Makhshoves was the pen-name of Israel Isidor Elyashev (b. Kaunas, 1873; d. Kaunas, 1924), medical doctor and literary critic, supporter of cultural Zionism, and champion of Yiddish—Hebrew bilingualism in modern Jewish culture. * Bal-Makhshoves, Geklibene verk (New York, 1953), 262.

244 Mikhail Krutikov points out that the real shtetl is rapidly losing its dominant position in Jewish life. The decline of the shtetl across the entire territory of the Pale of Settlement in the Russian empire is evident to him, although in Congress Poland this process moves somewhat less speedily than in the western provinces (guberniyas) of Russia (which now constitute, roughly speaking, Ukraine, Belarus, and Lithuania); the slower pace there is due mainly to the strong attachment of Polish Jews to their hasidic _ leaders—tsadikim—who are usually based in small shtetls. The stream of life flows no longer through the shtetl but through the city instead. As a result, the shtetl is dying away, gradually turning into a stagnant swamp, so that within a few generations the old shtetl will be relegated to historical memory. This is the diagnosis pronounced by a literary critic whose way of thinking and expression was informed by his background in medicine. And yet even those Yiddish authors who are fully aware of the deterioration of the real shtetl are unable to liberate themselves from its spell, Bal-Makhshoves continues. He finds the new, estranged attitude to the shtetl of Peretz, Asch, and Weissenberg particularly remarkable. Peretz is the first Yiddish writer to look at the shtetl as an outsider, in contrast to Sholem Yankev Abramovitsh or Sholem Aleichem. Asch’s romantic portrait of the shtetl can only make sense in a situation where the shtetl has ceased to be a living reality and is transformed into a sweet memory, ‘like a beloved grandfather who has already parted with the world’. Weissenberg shows how the new radical revolutionary ideas penetrate the shtetl and tear

apart its already threadbare social fabric. In his naturalistic representation, the powerful ‘general stream of life’ washes away the specifically Jewish meaning of the shtetl, leaving behind an empty vessel that is fully dependent for its existence on the

politics and economy of the big city.? What Bal-Makhshoves detects in the writing of his contemporaries is an artistic effect that Russian formalist critics called ostranenie—‘making it strange’, or defamiliarizing the habitual and presenting it as if it were seen for the first time. _ The use of this device ‘enables us to see things instead of merely recognizing them’,

explains the historian of Russian Formalism Victor Erlich. Thus, the deliberate ‘estrangement’ of the shtetl achieved through the variety of literary techniques employed by Peretz, Asch, and Weissenberg enables the modern urban reader to see the shtetl anew, as an aesthetic object rather than as a piece of reality. The narrator in Peretz’s series ‘Bilder fun a provints-rayze’ (‘Impressions from a Journey

through the Tomaszéw Region’, 1891) is a member of a statistical expedition who comes down to the Tomaszow powzat (district) like a ‘wealthy and educated

relative’ from Warsaw for the purpose of investigating ‘what is really going on in small shtetls—what people hope for, what they live from, and what they do there’.° He arrives there with a desire to help backward shtetl Jews, but his well-meaning

8 Bal-Makhshoves, Geklibene verk, 263-4. , 4 V. Erlich, Russian Formalism: History, Doctrine (New Haven, 1981), 76. ° Bal-Makhshoves, Geklibene verk, 266.

Imagining the Image 245 disposition quickly evaporates as he realizes that an abyss separates him from them.

Peretz’s shtetl ‘decays in the sun like a dead horse’,° Bal-Makhshoves tells us. Whereas Abramovitsh depicted the shtetl as a community imbued with a rich old culture that the narrator, Mendele Mokher Seforim, shared with his characters and his readers, Peretz depicts the shtetl-dwellers as a collection of disoriented and ignorant individuals united by common misery rather than by common values. Unlike those of Abramovitsh and Sholem Aleichem, Peretz’s attitude towards the shtetl is objective and detached, free of specifically Jewish sentiments. He experiences the mixture of pity, concern, and frustration that a ‘civilized’ person experiences when he encounters a mass of ‘primitive’ people who are condemned by the cruelty of history and society to a slow death.

Both Peretz, who wrote his series of travel sketches in 1891, and Asch, who composed his ‘poem in prose from Polish Jewish life’ thirteen years later, approach the shtetl as outsiders. Asch’s romantic shtetl (based on the picturesque old town of Kazimierz nad Wista—Yiddish: Kuzmir—and Kutno, the writer’s native town in central Poland) is already a fantasy, a dream, a childhood memory. While Peretz comes to the shtetl as a realistic observer, Asch appears there in the person of an imaginary wanderer. This wanderer wants to hear only of harmony, not of discord. His poetic imagination has no room for any serious conflict. In Asch’s shtetl Jews live in harmony with nature (which encompasses peasants as well as fields, woods, and rivers), and hasidim peacefully coexist with mitnagedim. Only in this utopia could a hasidic rebbe move into a shtetl and peacefully depose the established rabbi,

allowing this normally sharp social conflict to be depicted as child’s play. Here again, Bal-Makhshoves makes good use of his experience in neurology and the advanced theories of his time, detecting in Asch’s idyllic characters a juvenile, ‘halfplayful, half-awoken’ erotic desire that finds its expression in hugging and holding

hands. This is not a serious spiritual unity of adults; Asch’s shtetl is, as BalMakhshoves puts it, ‘a shtetl of children with beards and peyes [sidelocks]’, a sweet childish dream that is offered to the adult reader.’ Unlike his predecessors, Weissenberg focuses neither on the misery and poverty nor on the beauty and harmony of the shtetl. His shtetl (based on the author’s native Zelechéw) is no longer an autonomous community, a centre of Jewish life and local

trade, but is rather a production outlet for distant city markets. The shtetl 1s increasingly dependent for its sustenance on Warsaw, from which local tanners receive raw leather and to which they deliver finished products. This economic dependence affects the shtetl’s way of life, so that it is determined not so much by the cycles of the seasons and the Jewish calendar as by the cycle of supply and demand. The changes have a particularly powerful effect on the younger generation, which falls under the spell of radical socialist propaganda, an ideological by-product of proletarianization. The attention to generational conflict also distinguishes Weissenberg from his predecessors:

6 Ibid. 267. T Tbid. 273-5.

246 Mikhail Krutikov Peretz shows us the complete degeneration of the shtetl, with no sign of any conflict between old and young. Asch presents an idyll where everything flows quietly like light-gilded clouds in the clear sky on asummer evening. By contrast, Weissenberg demonstrates to us, perhaps

involuntarily, that the only kind of life still possible in the shtetl is a life under the city’s control, in both the material and the spiritual sense.®

The only way the young people can survive is by leaving the shtetl for the city. This analysis leads Bal-Makhshoves to conclude that in future Yiddish literature, as in life, the prominence of the shtetl will gradually fade away. Medical metaphor dominates Bal-Makhshoves’s criticism: he interprets Peretz’s sketches as an amnesia of the terminal illness of the shtetl and Asch’s fantasy as a childish dream produced by awakening sexuality. In this scheme Weissenberg

is the only author who not only describes the symptoms, but also suggests an operational cure: the healthy, young elements can be rescued by severing all their material and spiritual ties with the dying shtetl organism. A sympathizer of cultural Zionism, Bal-Makhshoves was also a moderate optimist with regard to the future of European Jewry and believed that it could develop its own cultural and social identity within the framework of urban European civilization. The shtetl, however, belonged entirely to the past. Bal-Makhshoves introduced the idea of the binary opposition of the idealistic (Asch) and the naturalistic (Weissenberg) visions of the shtetl, and this idea was further elaborated by following generations of Yiddish critics according to their times and ideological orientations. Thus, Shmuel Niger saw the artistic strength of Asch’s representation precisely in the fact that it was a beautiful fantasy divorced from grim reality.? He praised Asch for placing the idealized shtetl not in a fictional Jewish past, but in the here and now, ina parallel reality, whose imagined existence defied the misery of the shtetl as the naturalistic school saw it. In his review of the poem Niger especially emphasized the communal character of Asch’s shtetl: The shtetl that looks so peaceful, so sabbath-like, is not just an idyll; it is a family idyll. All inhabitants of the shtetl—the poor and the rich, the old and the young—are relatives, and they form one community and one family. They have one Heaven over their heads and one Father in that Heaven. Even the Gentiles who live there belong to the shtetl; they do not disturb the peace of the idyllic home.?°

Asch ‘chased away the shadows that were not necessary for the artistic picture’,

_ Niger wrote later in his book on Asch, celebrating the writer as the harbinger of change from the old literature of ‘doubt’ to the new literature of ‘faith’. Asch rejected the ‘old medical maskilic’ approach of nineteenth-century writers—who saw Jewish 8 Bal-Makhshoves, Geklibene verk, 279. 9 Shmuel Niger was the pen-name of Shmuel Charny (b. Minsk province, 1883; d. New York, 1955),

who was a Yiddish critic, journalist, and scholar. Charny was close to the revolutionary movement in Russia. In America (to which he emigrated in 1919) he became an advocate of traditionalism in Jewish

culture. 10 S. Niger, ‘Sholem asch’, in his Vegn yidishe shrayber (Warsaw, 1914), 11. 9.

Imagining the Image 247 life as one big ‘hospital in the time of plague’ and in desperate need of radical remedies—in favour of a ‘present-day romanticism’.'! Yet Niger agreed with BalMakhshoves that A Shtet/ was still artistically and ideologically immature because it lacked a central character. This problem was solved in Asch’s next shtetl poem, Reb Shloyme Noged, in which the shtetl received an appropriate patriarchal hero. Niger’s anti-positivist and anti-maskilic stand was part of his ideological project of regenerating Jewish Diaspora life through cultural creativity nurtured by hasidism, Jewish folklore, and romantic aestheticism. Niger’s view was echoed, although in a less idealistic tone, by Nachman Mayzel, who emphasized the ‘elemental’ aspect of Asch’s image.!2 According to Mayzel, the shtetl was the natural habitat of the Yiddish writer and the eternal source of his artistic inspiration. Contrary to BalMakhshoves, Mayzel found the ‘wanderer’ figure pretentious and alien to Asch’s style. He read the poem not as ‘an observation from above, but rather [as] a perception from within, a song, a poem born from the depths of one’s heart. The shtetl is

Asch’s elemental core, his soul lives there.’!* In this interpretation the shtetl appears as part of the aesthetic and ideological complex of the Jewish primitiv, the source of inspiration for poets, artists, and critics associated with the Kiev group and Kultur-lige. Not surprisingly, Soviet critics took a strongly critical attitude towards Asch in general and towards his Shtet/ in particular. This position was most forcefully articulated by Max Erik,'* whose book on Asch remains one of the most powerful examples of Marxist Yiddish criticism. Erik focused not on the natural beauty and idyllic harmony of Asch’s image, but on his deliberate misrepresentation of the economic and social reality of the time: The entire poem is a statement against the sociopolitical reality of 1904. Trade is dead, big industry is in a fix, middle-sized and small businesses are desperately struggling with need and a severe crisis—and Asch opens wide the doors of Yekhezkl Gombiner’s house, and there comes out the steam of the red beet borscht, which is offered to everybody who comes in. Banks collapse, credit runs out, people die for want of a penny—and Yekhezkl Gombiner generously divides his money among the children, takes out a big pack of hundreds from his , back pocket, and every Passover eve they sum up the big profits.

Erik’s analysis mercilessly exposes the capitalist ideological message projected by Asch’s celebration of absolute unity and stability based on the natural economy: 11S. Niger, Sholem ash: zayn lebn, zayne verk (New York, 1960), 58-62. ‘2 The Yiddish critic and journalist Nachman Mayzel (b. Kiev, 1887; d. Kibbutz Alonim, 1966) was one of the organizers of Kultur-lige and a leading Yiddish left intellectual. He was editor of the Warsaw weekly Literarishe bleter and of the New York monthly Yidishe kultur (he emigrated in 1937). ‘8 N. Mayzel, ‘Sholem Asch’, in his collection of essays Noente un vayte (Vilna, 1926), ii. 46.

‘4 Max Erik was the pen-name of the Yiddish critic and literary historian Zalmen Merkin (b. Sosnowiec, 1898; d. Soviet prison, 1937), who emigrated to the Soviet Union from Poland in 1929 and worked in Yiddish cultural institutions in Minsk and Kiev. '® M. Erik, Sholem asch (1g00—-1930) (Minsk, 1931), 31.

248 Mikhail Krutikov ‘Unity reigns between God’s nature and the Gombiners, and its expression is faith. Faith ... can be bought and sold. And Yekhezkl Gombiner buys faith for himself,

gives a small offering to his God, makes him his third partner.’’® Erik rejects Niger’s view that Asch’s shtetl is a neutral romantic fantasy suspended outside the real time and place of Poland. He points out that the entire economic picture of A Shtetl is, in fact, a specific and consistent denial of the real economic situation on the eve of the revolution of 1905. Erik reads .A Shtet/as an expression of the ‘ideology of the middle-class trade bourgeoisie in the period of its final decline’, when it was

_ losing its position as a result of industrialization. ‘Already in the framework of the capitalist society, trade capital is deprived of its former independent existence, and functions as a mere agent of industrial capital,’ he writes;*” it tries to compensate for this loss by representing its class ideology in terms of absolute values, such as nature

and God. It was precisely this reactionary ideological position that made Asch so original and different from his predecessors. Erik points out: ‘Asch makes a revi-

| sion of the dominant type of petit-bourgeois Yiddish literature, which did not spare dark colours for depicting the decline, destruction, and hopelessness of shtetl life.’® Erik agrees with Niger that no other Yiddish writer prior to Asch had managed to create a positive image of the shtetl, but he interprets this inability as a strength rather than as a weakness. The frustrated attempts of Sholem Aleichem and Mordkhe Spektor to find virtue in the shtetl led not to the rehabilitation but to the condemnation of the shtetl, and thus ushered in the genuinely critical-realistic trend in Yiddish literature. Yehiel Yeshaia Trunk enriched the Yiddish literary discourse, which until then had revolved around the relativist ideological axes of national and class struggle, with new essentialist concepts of myth and archetype borrowed from Jung’s theory of the collective subconscious.'? The shtetl was reinterpreted as the mitos fun klal, the myth of the community.”° Trunk traced the generic origin of Asch’s shtetl image back to the idyllic elements in Peretz’s Folkstimlekhe geshikhtn (‘Folk Tales’),

but with a shift of focus from the individual to the collective. Whereas Peretz, inspired by Nietzsche, believed that a creative personality should liberate itself from the captivity of the mediocre, stagnant environment, Asch saw the main source of creative energy in the idealized community. A Shtetl is located in the depth of the sacred teaching, in the land of the eternal shades (sabbath). This shabes

is a symbolic collective possession, which unites all residents of the shtetl. By contrast, Peretz believed that the drive for redemption was an individual attribute and looked for a heroic character, such as the hasidic Reb Shloyme in the drama Di goldene keyt (“The Golden Chain’, 1907), who attempts to bring about the redemption—symbolically represented by his desperate effort to keep the sabbath

16 Erik, Sholem asch, 35. 17 Tbid. 36. , 18 Tbid. 30. 19 Yehiel Yeshaia Trunk (b. near Lowicz, 1887; d. New York, 1961) was a Yiddish and Hebrew novelist, memoirist, and critic, as well as an active Bundist. He emigrated to the United States in 1941. 20 YY. Y. Trunk, [dealizm un naturalizm in der yidisher literatur (Warsaw, 1927), 38.

Imagining the Image 249 for ever—despite the indifference, if not open resistance, of the collective. Asch, for his part, believed that the autonomy of the individual was an illusion. To achieve salvation, one had to abandon individualistic hopes and ambitions and fully subordinate oneself to the will of the collective. This was, for Trunk, the message of many of his works—a message that found its supreme manifestation in Asch’s celebration of the act of kidush hashem, martyrdom on the part of an individual for — Judaism and the Jewish people. But where does one find this redeeming collective shabes, ‘Trunk asks. Asch

has created an imaginary guide in the figure of an archetypical simple Jew—a wanderer—who leads us into the shtetl utopia. Asch’s narrator is a Jewish Parsifal, a naive poet who simply depicts what unfolds before his eyes without reflection or

criticism. He follows the wanderer into the idealized world and accepts poverty with love and understanding, without being shocked and puzzled—as Mendele and Peretz were—by the misery of the Jewish condition. Nothing is ‘real’ in his image; everything is transformed into the ‘subjective’ realm. Even nature 1s Judaized: ‘a community of Jews—a community of trees’. Jews go about the shtetl as if it were Jerusalem. Trunk agrees with his predecessors that A Shtet/ is still the immature work of a young artist, that its characters and images are fragmented, and that, as a whole, it lacks focus or a central theme. A Shtet/ is an exercise in collective escapism, depicting a community of /uft-yidn Jews without any clearly defined source of income) who ‘esn kest baym riboyno shel oylem’ (‘receive their sustenance from God’).?! Asch’s second shtetl idyll, Reb Shloyme Noged, is the most accomplished work of the writer’s early period, in Trunk’s opinion. We find here the same idealized shtetl atmosphere, but with a more sustained main character, who introduces form into what had earlier been chaos. Reb Shloyme personifies the quintessential Jewish

qualities of gloybn un bitokhn, belief and trust. He is a simple and healthy Jewish old-timer, a stark contrast to Peretz’s weak contemporary types who are incapable of doing more than small deeds. According to Trunk, Asch’s shtetl fiction highlights an important quality of the Jewish race, which can also be found in Sholem Aleichem’s two archetypical heroes, Menakhem Mendl and Tevye: its ability to rise above mundane reality. But whereas Sholem Aleichem represents the Jitokhn as a conscious effort, for Asch it is simply a Jewish sixth sense, a natural mode of the collective existence of the shtetl. In the character of Reb Shloyme, Asch unites the individual and the collective. In Trunk’s view, Asch, along with Sholem Aleichem, contributed to the artistic representation of the archetype of ditokhn, which 1s part of the core of the Jewish collective subconscious.

According to Trunk’s dualistic scheme, the idealistic trend represented by Sholem Aleichem, Peretz, and Asch had to be offset by the opposite naturalistic ~ trend. Asch’s symbolic shtetl could exist only if dressed in a shabesdike kapote 21 Ibid. 54.

250 Mikhail Krutikov (sabbath clothing): without its idealistic wrap, it turned into mundane reality and lost its character. Whereas idealism succeeded in producing a festive shtetl fantasy

that would compensate for the misery of reality, naturalism—represented by Weissenberg—did not quite live up to the challenge and remained, in terms of creativity, ‘In diapers’, merely fixated with reality, Trunk asserted. Weissenberg , did not elevate his representation of the habitual class hatred in shtetl society to the symbolic level of heroic class struggle, which would have endowed both fiction and reality with the higher meanings of hope and faith.” The genuinely revolutionary achievement was the sustained idealistic image of Asch’s shtetl,?? while Weissen_ berg’s image remained an isolated island in the sea of the universal revolutionary

| uproar. His story is ‘merely a series of very weak sketches about what occurred “in those days” in our shtetl’, in which Trunk could not find anything deeper than a chronicle of events from a provincial perspective.2* Weissenberg’s Shtetl is a portrait of Jewish reality devoid of any powerful internal idea and lacking an aspira-

tion to the essential being-in-the-world.*° In other words, Trunk says that Weissenberg’s image of the shtetl, unlike that of Asch, is lacking any existential meaning. It was Oyzer Varshavsky, in Trunk’s view, who expanded the naturalistic trend

in shtetl fiction beyond Weissenberg’s limited scope. In his novel Shmuglars, Varshavsky shows us the tragedy of the destruction of the shtetl by the world in its - most brutal and animalistic form. Neither the idealistic element of the shtetl nor the

| naturalistic one is able to withstand the aggressive pressure of the outside world. But the reason for the decline of the shtetl is internal rather than external: ‘The _ shtetl could not fight for its life: the shtetl simply did not know what to live for.’”® Cynicism is the opposite side of faith, Trunk tells us, and the shtetl, as Varshavsky portrayed it, had long lost its faith and trust in God and turned into a spiritually empty vessel. “The Jewish collective is no longer a people [fo/k] or a race, it is a gang,’ he continues.?’ But by rejecting the values of the idealist tradition, Yiddish naturalism effectively denied Jewish life any meaningful future, and Varshavsky’s novel was the best example of this thesis.2° In fact, Trunk argued, the Yiddish idealist tradition could exist only as long as it remained within the self-imposed ‘magic circle’ of the shtetl, which represented the ‘elementary symbol of Jewish historical psychology’;”’ the rift between idealist fiction and reality was therefore bound to grow. Trunk believed that the historical mission of the Jews, or, as he put it, ‘the destiny of the Jewish race’, consisted in achieving the existential condition of ‘being-in-the-world’.°° The task of Yiddish literature in this historical project was to portray to the readers the shtetl as the Jewish formative past, an existential and spiritual point of departure rather than a port of call.

22 Trunk, [dealizm un naturalizm, 109. 23 Tbid. 120. 24 Tbid. 129-30. 25 There is an interesting possible correspondence between the concept of velt-dozayn and the concept of Dasein developed by Martin Heidegger in his magisterial Sei und Zeit, which was coincidental-

, ly published 1n the same year. 26 Trunk, [dealizm un naturalizm, 139.

27 Tbid. 143. 28 Ibid. 145. 29 Ibid. 163. 30 Tbid. 172.

| Imagining the Image 251 | To redress the balance, we should now turn to Yehoshua Rapoport, a contemporary of Trunk’s who carried on the positivist tradition in Yiddish criticism.** -Rapoport’s approach, especially during the inter-war period, was informed by prerevolutionary Russian populist criticism, which paid primary attention to the literary representation of social contradictions. Not surprisingly, Rapoport favoured David Bergelson to Sholem Asch; he praised Penek, the first volume of Bergelson’s autobiographical novel Baym Dnieper (‘At the Dnieper’), as the writer’s best achievement since the post-revolutionary crisis of his Berlin period. The novel was artistically successful because Bergelson returned to the environment he knew best—his native shtetl—but approached it from a new perspective.®? “The classical depiction of the shtetl is the idyllic one, the shtetl of Sholem Asch,’ states Rapoport. He elaborates: — True, even in Asch’s shtetl there is a deep rupture between the two parts of the population. . . between the ‘synagogue street’ [shu/-ges/] and the ‘butcher street’ [koyler-ges/]. But this division is organic. It does not destroy the harmonic wholeness of the shtetl; the partition between the poor and the well-off is a kind of a dimple on the respectable face of the Jewish shtetl [a min kheyn-gribl oyfn laytishn ponem funem yidishn shtetl].°°

That is, there is a tension between the rich and the poor in Asch’s shtetl, but it does not rise to the level of class antagonism. In contrast to Asch, Bergelson shows us a shtetl divided along class lines. The artistic novelty of Penek is in its point of view: the division of the shtetl society is

seen through the eyes of the autobiographical child protagonist. By endowing Penek with ‘super-childish’ sensitivities and positioning him on the border of the two antagonistic classes—the child of a wealthy family, he is increasingly drawn to his poor friends—Bergelson enables his protagonist to observe the contradictory

picture comprehensively rather than as a set of accidental details. Bergelson’s powerful counter-image of the shtetl is far superior artistically to Asch’s flat idyll, Rapoport believes. Bergelson ‘dug up the harmonically embalmed [harmonishbalzamirte| shtetl, tore off the soft veil from its surface, and lit it up with the reflector of class struggle’, he comments.** This innovative, class-conscious perspective produces new symbolic meanings. Bergelson transformed the well-to-do house of ~ Yekhezkl Gombiner from Asch’s A Shtet/ into the ‘nest of robber knights’ of Penek’s _ family. The reader may not recognize the old, familiar, cosy shtetl in this repellent image, but this is only natural, Rapoport argues, because ‘every new generation needs to re-format [zbergeshtalikn] the life of the preceding generation according to the new concepts and views in order for history to exert a creative influence on our °1 The Yiddish literary critic and translator Yehoshua Rapoport (b. Bialystok, 1895; d. Melbourne, 1971) was one of the sharpest universalist and analytic voices in Yiddish. He fled Poland and escaped to the Soviet Union; from 1941 to 1946 he lived in Shanghai, and in 1946 he emigrated to Australia. 82 'Y. Rapoport, Tsvishn yo! un neyn! Kritik un esey (Warsaw, 1937), 15-27.

83 Thid. 18. 34 Tbid. 19.

252 Mikhail Krutikov future life’.°° Thus, Bergelson’s novel satisfied the need of the inter-war generation to see the shtetl from a position shaped by its own ‘pain and hope’. Bergelson made

Asch look anachronistic, and from now on the shtetl will be seen only through Bergelson’s eyes, Rapoport asserts. This shtetl is not only part of the past but also a foundation of the future: Penek, together with his poor working friends, will leave the dying shtetl and join the Russian revolutionary movement. Rapoport concludes his essay in Bergelsonian style, with a poignant image that recodes a religious refer-

ence by estranging it from its traditional context: ‘Penek will not barge into the revolution like a Russian policeman into a sukkah [Penek vet nisht aropfaln in der revolyutsye vi a youn in suke] because he comes to it well prepared.’®° That is, the shtetl has been being reconceptualized by Bergelson as a ‘heder of the revolution’. In his 1961 article provocatively titled ‘On Weissenberg’s Underrated Shtet/: On

Liberating a Masterpiece from its Author’s Biography’,?’ Uriel Weinreich called for a revision of the tradition of Yiddish criticism’s engagement with social and

national concerns. Until now, Weinreich argues, ‘Our criticism was too preoccupied with social problems and largely ignored the aspects of form, style, and composition.’** It was unusual for Yiddish critics to analyse one particular text as a work of art; instead they preferred to analyse the entire ceuvre of a certain author in a biographical context. In the case of Weissenberg, this approach led to a complete misunderstanding of his early masterpiece. Beginning with Bal-Makhshoves, all

critics read A Shtetl as a polemical response to Asch’s idyll. Conceding that historically this might have been true, Weinreich argued that Weissenberg’s novella could be properly understood and evaluated only outside its biographical

and literary-historical context. Neither Weissenberg’s background as an unedu- | cated, boorish apprentice in Zelechow, nor his later trashy literary production, offers any assistance in appreciating this flawlessly composed and meticulously implemented work of art. Weinreich approaches the text by using the analytical methods of Russian Formalism and American New Criticism, which was unusual for Yiddish criticism of his day. Exploring the structure of the text, he discovers three carefully designed ‘springs’ that push the action forward: revolution, nature, and the Jewish religious calendar. The traditional shtetl lives according to two synchronized temporal

cycles: that of nature and that of religious observance. The story begins in the spring, coinciding with the eve of Passover, when the river frees itself from its icy captivity, and ends in the late autumn after Sukkot, when nature prepares itself for its winter slumber. Revolution breaks into this cyclical order as a linear force and destroys its stability. The shtetl in this interpretation appears not as the literary

representation of a socio-historical phenomenon or a mythological symbol of

85 Rapoport, 7svishn yo! un neyn!, 22-3. 36 Tbid. 27. 37 *Y_-m. vaynsbergs nit-dershatst “Shtetl”: Vegn bafrayen a maysterverk fun zany mekhabers biografye’, Di goldene keyt, 41 (1961), 135-43. The linguist and literary scholar Uriel Weinreich

(b. Vilna, 1926; d. New York, 1967) was a professor at Columbia University. 38 Tbid. 135.

| Imagining the Image 253 Jewish existence, but as an elaborate literary metaphor that can be best appreciated when separated from its socio-historical and literary contexts. Weinreich’s line of thinking was developed further by his disciple Dan Miron. The ideological thrust of Miron’s essay ‘The Literary Image of the Shtet/’*® is directed against the sentimental-nationalist reading of Jewish literature, which in his view was informed by the critics’ ‘sense of guilt’ as well as by their ‘growing awareness of the problematic status of Jewish modernity’. Miron’s starting point 1s his disagreement with the position that he perceives to be dominant in Yiddish criticism: ‘Literature was nominated as the official custodian of the national collective memory, guaranteeing the accessibility of the recent past to those who had drifted away from it. It had to enable one to be in the shtet/ and at the same time be away from it, to maintain emotional ties with the past and yet belong to the present.”*° It is easy to discern in this formulation Shmuel Niger’s notion of shtetl fiction as an idealized parallel reality that coexists with everyday life.

Following Uriel Weinreich, Miron calls for a new reading of the classics (Mendele, Sholem Aleichem, Peretz) with emphasis on the aesthetic rather than historical aspects: ‘We should not only become more aware of them but also be intrigued and puzzled by them, encountering them as problematic in their own right."*! The word ‘problematic’ is key in Miron’s approach. He sees the task of the critic in exploring the problems inherent in texts rather than in celebrating their extra-literary significance. Criticism of Jewish literature should engage in the analysis of textual organization and poetic mechanisms rather than in discursive reading (which aims at non-narrative contents) or metonymic interpretation (which focuses on descriptive details and connections rather than style and composition). This analytical approach assumes that each shtetl story is based on ‘a single extended

metaphor that consists of many sub-metaphors or partial metaphors’. In his two essays devoted to the image of the shtetl Miron explores three particular ‘submetaphors’ that constitute the comprehensive shtetl metaphor: 1. the fire motif—an everyday danger of shtetl reality that actualizes the historical and religious memory of the destruction of Jerusalem;

2. the motif of departure from the shtetl as a reference to the permanent state of galut (‘diaspora’), the alienation and uprootedness of Jewish people;

3. the figure of the unexpected visitor or symbolic wanderer, which bears mes-

Sianic connotations. |

Miron interprets the comprehensive shtetl metaphor in mythological terms: ‘The shtetl was Jerusalem in her fallen state, and yet it was still Jerusalem—the Jewish polity par excellence.’*? The shtetl is remembered in Jewish collective 39 This essay was first published in Yiddish as Der imazh fun shtetl (Tel Aviv, 1981); rev., Eng. trans. as ‘The Literary Image of the Shtetl’, Jewish Social Studies, 1/3 (1995), 1-43; repr. in D. Miron, The Image of the Shtetl and Other Studies of Modern Jewish Literary Imagination (Syracuse, NY, 2000).

40 Miron, The Image of the Shtetl, 8. 4) Ibid. 11. 42 Tbid. 33.

254 Mikhail Krutikov memory as a living organism, a functioning body. As a polity, the shtetl possessed communal institutions, the three most important of which were the synagogue, the bathhouse, and the cemetery.*® The integrity of this metaphor is safeguarded by special protective mechanisms, one of which is the intentional use of a ‘naive’, childish perspective. The memoirs of Abramovitsh offer an example: ‘When he created the mythical images of Kabtsansk and Tuneyadevke, the author, it seems,

decided to draw on what his Shloyme [1.e. he himself] had known prior to his | puberty and not on his expanded and more mature vision. He chose to re-create the dream world . . . rather than the wakeful one.’44 As we can see, Miron echoes here Bal-Makhshoves’s observation about pre-pubescent eroticism as a basis of Asch’s

shtetl fantasy. This discovery can also help us to appreciate Bergelson’s radical artistic innovation in Penek, in which, as Rapoport noted, the child’s point of view is used not to uphold but to destroy the stereotype of the traditional shtetl. Insisting on the autonomy of the artistic text from the social and ideological context, Miron draws not only on the methodology of Formalism and New Criticism. His conception of the image of the shtetl draws on a variety of critical theories. For

example, his use of the Jungian concept of the archetype refers us back to Trunk, as well as to the insights of Soviet Marxist scholars of the 1930s—most notably Meir Wiener. Indeed, like Bal-Makhshoves and Trunk, Miron believes that the myth of the shtetl is a basic feature of Jewish literature as a whole: “There actually existed in Jewish literature an influential tradition, a potent norm, that demanded a radical Judaization of the image of the eastern European shtet/; it had to be presented as purely Jewish.’*° The ‘post~classical’ authors, among whom Miron counts Berdichevsky, Weissenberg, and Bergelson, were aware of this principle and deliberately challenged it, albeit, as Miron adds, ‘not for the purposes of historicity but rather in order to highlight, by means of juxtaposition, their own visionary insight’. In their fiction they stressed ‘discontinuity, duality, and internal strife’*°—the divided shtetl as opposed to the united one. As the Jewish pols par excellence, the shtetl of the literary classics possessed a myth, a sacred story that explained and justified its existence, legitimized its current conditions and structure, and foretold its future. The post-classical authors sought to ‘demythologize’ the shtetl, which at the artistic level meant the replacement of the metaphorical way of representation with a metonymical one. Miron substitutes for Trunk’s metaphysical opposition between idealism and naturalism a poetic dichotomy between metaphor and metonymy. “The metaphoric shtetl waxed hyperbolic’ in Sholem Asch’s poem, he argues; ‘shtet/ life was not only idealized but also excessively metaphorized’. To counter this vision, Weissenberg

recoiled from metaphor and hyperbole, replacing them with the ‘poetics of — metonymy’ in his image of the shtetl: ‘Vaysenberg intentionally described events and actions that were “by definition” metaphorical, such as the Yom Kippur ritual, 43 Miron, The Image of the Shtetl, 35-6. 44 Tbid. 47. 45 Tbid. 4. 46 Thid. 4-5.

| Imagining the Image 255 as if they consisted of aggregates of objects, gestures, close-ups, and fragmentary pictures that had no cultural meaning and no supraliteral overtones.’*’ Among

followers were Oyzer Varshavsky in Poland and David Bergelson and Perets Markish in the Soviet Union: “The antiklastker lived by metonymy, based their art on metonymic poetics and deliberately deflated the metaphorical shtet/ image’.*®

But, crucially, they were able to create merely a ‘foil’ rather than convey the whole ‘truth’ about the shtetl. In the end, Miron comes back to celebrating the ‘masters’—klasiker Abramovitsh, Sholem Aleichem, Peretz, Agnon—who ‘knew that the shtet/ was more than what met the eye—that it could not be summed up by the mere accumulation of metonymic physical, social, and behavioral “truths” ’.*° They ‘created an image that combined the observed metonymy with the intuited metaphor’.°° The 1995 English version of Miron’s essay differs from the earlier (1981) Yiddish version in its interpretation of the klaszker’s image of the shtetl: in his Yiddish book Miron attributes to Peretz the crucial role in the ‘breakdown of the classical shtetl image’. More specifically, it occurred in Folkstimlekhe geshikhten, where ‘mythos and ideology completely drove out mimesis, because mimesis was too frightening, and put their existence too much in danger’.®! Whereas Miron concludes the English version of the essay by returning to the comprehensive classical

shtetl metaphor, the Yiddish version had a more open, programmatic ending, call- , ing for ‘complementing the shtetl image with a broader study of the system of images that play against each other’.°? However, not much has been done in this direction for the past twenty years, and we are still awaiting a comprehensive study of the role of the image of the shtetl in the poetic system of post-classical Yiddish literature. In his recent book David Roskies explores the myth-making potential of the shtetl image and its use in contemporary Jewish mythology. The opening phrase of Roskies’ essay “The Shtet/ in Jewish Collective Memory’ resonates with the voice of Bal-Makhshoves: “The shtetl. . .is arguably the greatest single invention of Yiddish literature. What the Western is to American popular culture, the shtet/ | novella is to the Jewish imagination.’°® In his analysis Roskies crosses the methodological borders of the autonomous literary analysis set up by Miron and returns to the traditional perspective of Jewish criticism by asserting that ‘the shtet/ would emerge not only as one of the great inventions of the Jewish literary imagination but also as a key to modern Jewish self-understanding’.** For his case-study, Roskies focuses on the modern phenomenon of American shtetl nostalgia, which he calls ‘memorial production’. “Che more estranged these Jews became, the more they © were drawn back to the shtetl; even to a shtet/ they never knew,’ he writes. This nostalgia is rooted in the need to ‘read their individual experience in the light of

47 Ibid. 43. 48 Thid. 45. 49 Ibid. 50 Ibid. 46. 5! Miron, Der imazh fun shtetl, 116. 52 Tbid. 131.

4 Ibid. 44. ,

°3 D.G. Roskies, The femish Search for a Usable Past (Bloomington, Ind., 1999), 41.

256 Mikhail Krutikov historical archetypes.’”°° Roskies elaborates on the familiar opposition between two

literary perspectives on the shtetl, designating one static and synoptic, and the other dynamic and deconstructive. He identifies a paradox at the core of the vision of the shtetl that made the mythologization of the shtetl possible and indeed neces-

gary: “Out of its very destruction and long before its end had come, the shtet/ was reborn as myth.’°® Contrary to the traditional interpretation of Asch’s Shtetl, which highlights its Jewishness, Roskies reads the poem as an early example of Asch’s ~ ‘ecumenism’, which manifests itself in the ‘emphasis on the cyclical, almost mystical forces of regeneration emanating from within the shtet/’s very soil’.°’ Asch’s Shtetl signalled the ecumenical direction of his future writing by creating an imagined

| ‘earthly paradise’. | Roskies elaborates on the familiar Asch—Weissenberg opposition: _ Adopting the perspective of the Other, Asch and Weissenberg arrive at opposite conclusions. Asch remythologizes the shtet/ by turning it into a mutually reliant Holy Community of Christians and Jews. Weissenberg revisits the shtet/ and finds nothing to salvage in the present, much less in the past. . . . Once visited from the outside, the Holy Community shatters into fragments, and the Jewish body politic is revealed to be helpless before the potentially deadly alliance of Christian Jew-hatred and Polish patriotism.5°

Interestingly, but not surprisingly, Bal-Makhshoves’s contemporaneous interpretation of Weissenberg’s Shtet/ was somewhat more optimistic and did not dwell on the dangerous aspects of the Polish—Jewish relationship. Roskies takes the vision of the shtetl as a barometer of Jewish political confidence. A bright and optimistic shtetl reflects hope, while a gloomy one augurs ill: ‘so long as writers believed in a brave new world, the image of the shtet/as a small, homogeneous and self-sufficient community could still be very inviting. .. . But once the political horizons began to - contract and to split, the very same image underscored how powerless the Jews had become... . The presence or absence of Goyim likewise became more fraught with meaning.”°” Two novels by the Polish Yiddish author Mikhl Bursztyn, [ber di khurves fun ployne (Over the Ruins of Ployne’, 1931) and Bay di taykhn fun — Mazovye (By the Rivers of Mazowsze’, 1937), can serve as illustrations. Roskies __ writes: “The more real and pervasive the presence of Poles and Polish culture in these novels, the more the physical and spiritual horizons of the shtet/ population were seen to contract.’©? Thus, the literary image of the shtetl turns into a correlative of the Jewish sense of security, a reflection of the Jews’ perception of themselves in relation to the ‘other’. It was in Israel and America that the image of the shtetl, finally and completely

_ separated from reality, received its most perfect artistic treatment in the novels of the two Nobel prizewinners, the Hebrew author Shmuel Yosef Agnon and the

°° Roskies, The Jewish Search for a Usable Past, 43. 56 Ibid. 46.

&7 Tbid. 51. 8 Ibid. 52. 59 Tbid. 54. 60 Tbid. 55.

| | Imagining the Image 257 Yiddish writer Isaac Bashevis Singer. In his major works, written during the 1930s, Agnon re-created the shtetl in a variety of ways, now as ‘Canterbury, a dazzlingly rich backdrop for a gallery of disparate, traditional types’ (Hakhnasat kalah (“The

Bridal Canopy’), 1931), now as ‘Middlemarch, a traditional town in a time of intense change’ (Sipur pashut (‘A Simple Story’), 1935), now as ‘The Magic Mountain, where the permanent spectre of death casts its pallor over all social and theological discourse’ (Ore’ah nata lalun (‘A Guest for the Night’), 1939).°! In the last of these, Agnon restored the ‘shtet/-to-Jerusalem line. . . in the most literal way imaginable’, by entrusting the key from the old beit midrash to the narrator, who,

in a symbolic gesture, took it with him back to Jerusalem. Bashevis used the ‘reimagined shtetl’ as a repository of old folk life and a playground for religious passions. It was in America that the shtetl was ultimately re-created as the ‘Covenantal Landscape’, Roskies writes; ‘a new covenant was needed precisely because the old one was no longer viable’.®* The transformation reached its culmination in yizkor books. Writing from a privileged, post-mortem perspective, Roskies discovers the teleological evolution of the image of the shtetl: “The literary image of the shtet/, as we have seen it, was deliberately fashioned from the very outset to incorporate the shtet?’s demise into its physical landscape, its mythic structure, and its ideological

message.’ All of the concepts of the image of the shtetl outlined above share two major premises: first, that the image of the shtetl is the core feature of Yiddish literature; and secondly, that the image of the shtetl is not a mimetic but a symbolic, metaphorical, or metonymical construction. But different critics treat these aspects of the shtetl image in various ways: while the ‘relativists’, like Bal-Makhshoves, Erik, and Rapoport, highlight the fragility of the image of the shtetl and its dependence on the changing reality, the adherents of ‘essentialism’, which also has roots in

Bal-Makhshoves’s criticism and runs through the works of Niger, Trunk, and Roskies, are preoccupied with the search for a stable, archetypal mythological core. Miron endeavours to bring the two trends together, although he seems to be shift-

ing focus from ‘relativism’ to ‘essentialism’ as he translates the earlier Yiddish version of his essay into the later English one.

So far, the theoreticians of the image of the shtetl have concerned themselves little with the implications of their ideas for the wider body of Yiddish literature. The problem of ‘the country and the city’, that is the relations between the shtetl and the city, the shtetl and the lands of emigration, remains largely unexplored in _ Yiddish criticism. Another area for investigation is the nature of the relationships between image and reality. Having established the autonomy of the artistic image of the shtetl, we can now turn to a careful examination of its details, bearing in mind the achievements of historical, anthropological, and ethnographical research, but without confusing reality and image. Such an interdisciplinary approach could

61 Tbid. 6 Tbid. 56. 63 Tbid. 57. 64 Thid. 64.

258 Mikhail Krutikov yield an illuminating, multidimensional portrait of Jewish life in and around the shtetl, in which the literary concepts of symbol, metaphor, and metonymy can be used to illuminate and interpret facts of social, cultural, economic, and religious

history. ,

Shtetl Codes: Fantasy in the Fiction of — Asch, Schulz, and I. B. Singer | KATARZYNA WIECLAWSKA THE east European shtetl has entered the world’s literature as a symbolic space associated with a specific culture and with specific ideas, traditions, customs, characteristic heroes, and topography.’ It has assumed the status of a myth rooted in writers’ experiences and memories. As David Roskies notes, “The shtet/] . . . is arguably the greatest single invention of Yiddish literature. What the Western is to American popular culture, the shtet/ novella is to the Jewish imagination.” As an archetypal literary image, the shtetl theme often encompasses the sphere of fantasy and fairy tale, reshaping the historical image of this place and its people in accordance with the writer’s main artistic aims. This is precisely the case in the works of Sholem Asch, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and Bruno Schulz: the element of the fantastic assumes a great variety of forms and fulfils diverse functions. The role of fantasy and fairy tale in literature is at least twofold: it can serve to paraphrase reality, revealing those parts of it that are hidden beyond the reach of reason; alternatively, it can fulfil the magical function of modifying the real world and enriching it with the qualities the author seeks. Whatever the case may be, fantastic elements modifying the image of the shtetl and its community remove the shtetl motif from a mere sociological or historical context and redirect the reader’s attention to the themes and ideas it symbolizes. For Asch and Schulz, the magical function of the fantastic in the shtetl image is the most important, though it has different sources and is demonstrated 1n different ways. Singer, on the other hand, uses fairy tale and fantasy to highlight certain truths about man’s nature and to supplement the realistic sphere of existence presented in his works. The heroes and background of the shtetl merely place those ideas in a specific ethnic context and lend credence to the stories in accordance with Singer’s dictum, “The more a writer is rooted in his environment, the more he 1s 1 The term ‘shtetl code’ alludes to Hannah Wirth Nesher (City Codes: Reading in the Modern Urban Novel (Cambridge, Mass., 1996) ), who developed a methodology of the literary presentation of city space (referred to as ‘cityscape’). This space can be divided into human, built, natural, and verbal environments. 2 D. G. Roskies, ‘The Shtetl in Jewish Collective Memory’, in his The Fewish Search for a Usable Past (Bloomington, Ind., 1999), 41.

, 260 Katarzyna Wiectawska understood by all people.’® The explicit implementation of fantasy in the artistic works of each of the three writers provokes some questions: What messages are conveyed by means of fantasy in each case? What impact does the use of fantasy have on the reader? Why does Asch depict the shtetl as Paradise on Earth, while Singer needs demons and dybbuks in his shtetl, and Schulz searches for demigods

and magicians in his home town of Drohobycz? , Asch’s shtetl is perfectly in keeping with the general mode of presenting this motif in Yiddish literature in the classical period (from the 1870s to the 1920s). Namely, the image of the shtetl was supposed to convey a common Jewish heritage and to preserve the bond between the past, which was associated with a traditional way of life, and the Jewish society contemporary to the author, which was threatened with assimilation on the one hand and social, economic, and cultural isolation on the other. This literary aim obviously requires unity and generalization in the depiction of the shtetl and its community. Asch’s novella A Shtetl (1904) therefore provides the reader with an idealized picture of a small town, probably Kazimierz Dolny (Kuzmir), infused with a spirit of ecumenism and harmony, where the Jews’ and non-Jews’ lifestyles and beliefs are complementary and the communities coexist peacefully.

Asch points to the shtetl inhabitants’ intimate contact with God as one of the most important sources of unity. The shtetl world is permeated with prayer and governed by religious laws. The pace of life and the customs of the shtetl-dwellers are determined by religious festivals. It is God who safeguards the shtetl’s peace and very existence: ‘Lord of the Universe, everything about us obeyed and fulfilled what thou hast ordained since the first day of creation... . The little birds built their nests upon the old synagogue wall, just above the window of the women’s balcony, and all day long they hopped about in the holy little street of the temple where the voice of Torah echoed.”* All everyday, mundane activities are dedicated to God, who becomes involved in minor conflicts between the inhabitants of the shtetl and removes obstacles to peaceful relations and productive work. An apparent example of this is the scene of flood, in which Jews and non-Jews fight together to stave off disaster and perceive their ultimate success as a miracle of God. This unification | with God gives the shtetl a quality of sacred community, as well as a sense that it has

an ancient legacy and is rooted in everlasting truths. Descriptions of shtetl Jews often include references to the mystical atmosphere surrounding them: “The rabbi and the plain folk walked a little to one side. They saw how the Chassidim were linked together, how they had become one with heaven and earth. ... And they could not help the feeling of awe before the Chassidim, who were enfolded in unity,

, who sang in ecstasy.”° This idealized contact with the Creator obscures the flat existence of the shtetl inhabitants and their often dull provincial lives. 3 J. B. Singer, Stories for Children (New York, 1985), 335. 4 S. Asch, ‘The Little Town’, in his Tales of My People, trans. M. Levin (New York, 1970), 50. > Tbid. 61-2.

Shtetl Codes 261 Another source of unity in the shtetl world is the community’s deep immersion in nature. All aspects of life—work, rest, love, conflict—are related to natural phenomena that closely accompany the events and reinforce their meaning in the plot of the novella. Nature is frequently personified, and is shown in an intimate relation with the people. It shares their feelings, expectations, and even daily activities or prayers: ‘The river observes the Sabbath and the holy days. She is quiet. One wave gently kisses the other, and the ferryman and his wife sit by their door. He recites the Sabbath prayer, and his wife reads from the women’s portion, and they speak of God’s wonders to the waves. And each wave picks up a word and says amen.”© The shtetl is rooted in the cycle of nature, and can thus be reborn just like the natural world: ‘At last came Lag b’Omer, the day of rejoicing which commemorates the

holy Rabbi Shimon bar Jechua. And the good Mother Earth, who bore the entire village, houses, barns, and all, upon her generous breast, now was rejuvenated according to the will of God; she is newly arrayed from head to toe in budding leaves and grass.’ The deep bond between shtetl and nature emphasizes once again

its ancient, almost mythical origins. , Asch’s literary vision of the shtetl is likewise full of the traditional metaphors that appear in the classics of Yiddish literature, and which contribute to the fantastic atmosphere surrounding the small town.® One of those metaphors is that of a fire destroying the local synagogue. This motif recalls the great burning of the Temple in Jerusalem, and is meant to imply a sense of everlasting threat or danger to the Jewish community. Another vision of this kind is the figure of the mysterious wanderer who appears in the prologue and epilogue of the novella, and who might represent the author and his search for inspiration in traditional shtetl culture. ‘The metaphors used in Asch’s novella, like those used in other classical depictions of the | shtetl, bring the little town and its people close to the image of Jerusalem. As Dan

Miron puts it, the shtetl was ‘a tiny little Jerusalem .. . the low downtrodden Jerusalem in exile as opposed to the lofty, royal, independent ancient capital graced

| by the presence of God in His Temple. The shtet/ was Jerusalem in her fallen state, and it was still Jerusalem.’? This portrait of the shtetl endows the Jews with a sense of national unity and of their glorious past. The shtetl community of Asch’s novella is presented as a unified group. Asch focuses on the types of people living there rather than on individuals. He presents

a picture of a poor yet dignified and pious community, deeply rooted in Jewish tradition and history. But the image is removed from its strictly realistic dimensions. The author diverts the reader’s attention from economic, political, or cultural divisions among Jews at that time and from the conflict between the shtetl world and the world of non-Jews. His excessive use of metaphors and fantastic idealization allows for the creation of the myth of the shtetl.

6 Tbid. 18. , 7 Tbid. 50. 8 D. Miron, The Image of the Shtetl (Syracuse, NY, 2000), 32-4. 9 Ibid. 33.

262 Katarzyna Wiectawska The fantastic plays an equally important role in Bruno Schulz’s artistic vision of the shtetl and its inhabitants—especially in his collection of stories entitled Sklepy cynamonowe (‘Cinnamon Shops’).!° However, his image of this place is ultimately

completely different from Asch’s. One of the main differences is that Schulz’s shtetl is almost devoid of any direct references to the Jewish character of the town; the shtetl is rather his personal fantastic projection. Singer saw this as a weakness in Schulz’s fiction. In a 1963 article in Forverts, he states that Schulz’s main fault was that he deprived his fiction of a strong cultural and national context. Asa result, he felt, the writer paid too much attention to parodying and discrediting literature, and not enough to developing his literary talents to their fullest: ‘A Nazi bullet killed a man who embodied the powers and whims of a master. If Schulz had not been or had not wanted to be alienated from the Jewish environment, uprooted from _ Judaism, he would not have wasted so much energy on mocking, parodying; he would not have had to create literature on the basis of other literature.’!! Yet this

remains a minority view. To most readers, the manner in which Schulz trans_ formed Drohobycz into an imaginary, exotic, mysterious land of strange figures and unpredictable events justifies his unique vision of this place.

The ultimate artistic aim of the writer is to return magically to the epoch of childhood. This purpose shapes all elements of Schulz’s fiction. According to Jerzy ~ Ficowski, ‘Schulz manifests his longing; he does not look at childhood from a dis-

tance but enters into it.’!* The fantastic is essential in achieving this aim, as it demands that the writer adopt a way of presenting the surroundings that isappropriate to the different stages in a child’s maturation. The child narrator, with his freshness and dynamism, becomes a medium through which the adult reader can observe the miraculous characters, as well as the unpredictability and strangeness

hidden in that world. Sklepy cynamonowe therefore lacks generalizations and _ emphasizes the unique. The narrator focuses on those inhabitants of Drohobycz whose occupation, appearance, or behaviour would fascinate a child. Hence the vision of the cinnamon shops and their old-fashioned patriarchal owners, who attract the attention of the narrator because of the atmosphere of mystery and magic surrounding them. The child narrator perceives certain characteristics that are easy to magnify. Qualities such as Aunt Agatha’s excessive eroticism and motherliness,

Uncle Charles’s shabbiness and boredom, Cousin Emil’s perversion, and Aunt - Perasia’s fits of anger are what he notices in his relatives.

Moreover, a childlike imagination establishes new, incongruous relations between elements of reality and allows for the strange metamorphosis of people

and surroundings. For example, the narrator discovers that the inhabitants of Drohobycz’s ugly industrial district, the Street of Crocodiles, are similartodummies 10 B. Schulz, Cinnamon Shops and Other Stories, trans. C. Wieniawska (London, 1963). 11 C,. Shmeruk, ‘Isaac Bashevis Singer on Bruno Schulz’, Polish Review, 2 (1991), 163; quoted in M. Adamezyk-Garbowska, Polska Isaaca Bashevisa Singera: Rozstanie i powrot (Lublin, 1994), 31.

, 12 J. Ficowski, Regiony wielkiej herezjt (Warsaw, 1992), 33.

Shtetl Codes 263 because of their inhuman character and lack of originality. His immediate response is to transform them into dummies. A similar dynamic is at work in the case of the father’s metamorphosis into a cockroach. The boundary between the inner world of

the narrator’s imagination and the outside world is abolished. Another example of the combination of two realities, the fantastic and the material, is the scene of the narrator’s return to his former school building, which smoothly connects with the adjacent street while stuffed exhibits populate the school playground. The events approach a fairy-tale imagery in which anything 1s possible. As a result, the whole world of Sklepy cynamonowe is extremely unstable. As Schulz underlines in one of his essays, ‘Shape does not penetrate the essence, it is only a role adopted for a moment, an outer skin soon to be shed.’!° Another characteristic of Schulz’s writing on the shtetl is his considerable focus on shoddiness, ordinariness, ugliness, imperfection, and deformity. The author poeticizes this aspect of reality, which opens the way. for him to introduce fantasy into the stories. He looks for imperfection in people; hence the poetic descriptions of Touya the idiot and the local vagabond, and their metamorphosis into ancient gods—rulers of wild nature. The essence of shoddiness in the shtetl is the Street of Crocodiles, which is presented as a cheap copy of American urban space. First described as dark, gloomy, and impersonal, the street cannot escape the power of the narrator’s imagination. He catches its temporariness, as well as the falseness and fragmentariness that contribute to its surrealistic character. The whole setting— buildings, streets, and vehicles—finally falls apart: ‘At times one has the impression that it is only the small section before us that falls into the expected pointillistic picture of a city thoroughfare, while on the other side, the improvised masquerade is already disintegrating and, unable to endure, crumbling behind us into plaster and sawdust.’!4 Thus, Schulz’s shtetl is a unique projection of the writer’s imagination, a picture of the world as he experienced it in his childhood, now returning to him in literature. This is his private homeland, his private shtetl myth, and not a national legend, as in the case of Asch. In Singer’s shtetl the sphere of fantasy and fairy tale complements the material

and realistic world. Singer depicts demons and dybbuks, witches and prophets, devils and angels in the same terms as his ‘real’ protagonists. Nevertheless, the fantastic is not aimed at transforming the portrait of the shtetl community; rather, it is used to describe the inexpressible and to symbolize man’s hidden nature—his innermost recesses of mind. Two main patterns of correspondence between the protagonists and the fantastic elements can be traced within Singer’s stories. The first has to do with the motif of the temptation or even possession of characters by evil spirits, and the second involves contact with prophets and angels sent to earth by God.

The motif of man’s temptation or possession by the forces of evil recurs in a number of stories, such as ‘Der shpigl’ (“The Mirror’), ‘Zaydlus der ershter’ (‘Zeidlus the Pope’), and ‘Der roye ve-eyn nireh’ (‘The Unseen’), as well as in ‘8 Quoted ibid. 115. 14 Schulz, Cinnamon Shops, 99.

264 Katarzyna Wrectawska novels such as Satan in Goray. The common theme of all these works is the rejection of values like love and respect and of the search for the true meaning of life by

protagonists who are lured by devils’ promises. No matter how vague such a promise may be, individuals and even entire shtetl communities cling to it, seduced by evil. The temptation of the shtetl folk obviously reflects the human inclination to evil, self-destruction, and sin. But the reader may wonder why the author insists on the physical presence of evil forces. Why is it not enough to point to the fallibility of human nature as the source of all these troubles? Why does Singer need demons? One answer might lie in his desire to underline the fact that man is naively unaware |

of the evil within himself. People do not treat sin as the natural result of their inclinations, but rather as something they are forced to commit. The devils, demons, and imps of Singer’s fiction portray the human tendency to reject the sinful side of their own nature. The inclination to evil is only one part of the truth about the people of the shtetl. The protagonists also seek contact with and guidance

from God. This is the case in stories such as ‘Elijah and Slave’, ‘Hershele and Hanukkah’, and ‘A Tale of Three Wishes’. In all of these, the characters experience

, direct contact with divine figures—prophets, angels, and other mysterious creatures—who are ready to instruct and aid human beings. Undoubtedly, the relations between the shtetl folk and God’s realm represent the human longing for

| the divine order of the universe, for absolute love, for good and wisdom. However, the question of why the values man dreams of are personified in Singer’s work may be raised again. Why must the prophet Elijah be brought down to the shtetl, where by means of miracles or magic objects he saves people from oppression and poverty? It may be that Singer wants to underline how real—almost tangible—God’s pres-

ence is in human life. Such a vision might be quite surprising for the modern reader, who tends to believe in concepts of love or good rather than in the personal existence of God. In Singer’s shtetl, however, God does exist. His presence, as well as that of his servants, is as natural as the presence of the human protagonists. The supernatural freely intervenes in the material world, making the struggle between man’s good and evil inclinations all the more visible. The most original of Singer’s fairy-tale characters is his version of the Wise Fool. Funny and naive as this protagonist seems to be, he fulfils a crucial role in conveying Singer’s system of assessing man. The analysis of a character like Gimpel provokes serious questions about human morality. What should be more important in life: the ability to govern others, the art of suffering without hatred, or the maintenance of naive faith in people despite their weaknesses? Moreover, Singer emphasizes the relativity of what is sane, good, and wise in the context of the entirety of human life. Though the motif of a Wise Fool touches upon serious problems, the fairy-tale grounding of the stories and the humour surrounding the figure allow for some subtlety and distance from the moral issues at hand. While constituting a part of Jewish culture, beliefs, and imagination, the fantastic and fairy-tale elements in Singer’s stories place his works in the sphere of

Shtetl Codes 265 concrete tradition. The whole supernatural machinery of Singer—his demons, dybbuks, imps, prophets, and angels—is derived from Judaism and Jewish folklore. Moreover, the fairy-tale characters of his stories, like the Wise Fool or the Fools from Chetm, are also deeply rooted in Jewish storytelling and constitute a

, recurrent motif in Yiddish literature. This cultural and national background serves as a point of reference for the beliefs and customs of the protagonists. As Singer explains: “The tragedy of modern adult literature is that it completely divorced itself from folklore. Many modern writers have lost their roots. ... They are afraid of being called clannish, nationalistic or chauvinistic. ... Without folklore and deep roots in a specific soil, literature must decline and wither away. This is true 1m all literature of all times.’!° Thus, in Singer’s fiction, the shtetl, which is so Jewish and at the same time so supernatural, is not transformed into a new, completely unique and weird place as it is in Schulz’s fiction; nor is it idealized, as it is in Asch’s novella. The fantastic dimension complements the realistic, material dimension of the fictional world. The multiple ways in which Asch, Schulz, and Singer—writers of different artistic, linguistic, and social backgrounds—describe the shtetl demonstrate that the scope for creating one’s own modified world of the Polish Jewish small town is virtually unlimited. Irving Howe’s statement concerning Singer’s fiction can be applied to all three writers: the protagonists of their works move upward or downward, to Heaven or to Hell, stopping for a while in the shtetl, which is simply a locale between the two places.!© The shtetl inhabitants of Asch’s novella are surrounded by a heavenly aura, while Singer’s characters are pilgrims in between, torn by their own opposing desires, and Schulz’s strange figures are never easy to define, with their beauty and ugliness permeating each other. 15 Singer, Stories for Children, 334-5. 16 Quoted in I. Malin (ed.), Critical Views of I. B. Singer (New York, 1969), 1009.

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Returning to the Shtetl: Differing Perceptions SHIMON REDLICH

THE longing to ‘return’ to one’s past, to the sights and smells of one’s childhood and youth, is as old as human culture. The yearning for paradise lost, the homecoming of Odysseus, and the artistic return of Proust to his childhood are some of the most appreciated versions of this universal phenomenon. When speaking of modern Jewish ‘returns’ in particular, Shmuel Yosef Agnon comes immediately to mind. In his autobiographical novel Ore’ah nata lalun (‘A Guest for the Night’) he dwells on the protagonist’s return to his invented home town of Shibosh—the actual Buczacz in eastern Galicia. Agnon made his own return to Buczacz in the summer of 1930, more than twenty years after he had left it. Not surprisingly, what he encountered there was quite different from what he remembered. Agnon’s stay in Buczacz was both euphoric and traumatic. On the one hand, he experienced the excitement of revisiting the sites of his childhood, and on the other, he endured the trauma of witnessing the disintegration of the Jewish shtetl. Indeed, Agnon’s description of Shibosh—Buczacz captures above all the deterioration of Jewish life in Poland on the eve of the Holocaust. One can also sense in the work the vague and strange presence of an impending catastrophe. Emuna Yaron, Agnon’s daughter and the compiler and editor of many of his works, visited Buczacz sixtysix years later. When she arrived, there was nothing left of the bustling Jewish life and culture that had once existed there. Of the thousands of Jews who had lived in Buczacz, only two or three were left, and these were not keen to be identified as

Jews. For Emuna, as for her father back in 1930, it was both a sentimental and a depressing experience. However, she did find some solace in locating tangible traces of her ancestors’ lives there; she was satisfied to walk down the streets and recognize the sights that her father had so eloquently described.” Czestaw Mitosz has noted that ‘An enormous exodus of populations from East

to West occurred as a result of the Second World War.’ Indeed, no previous period | in modern history has witnessed such a massive displacement of people from their homelands and birthplaces. The trauma of relocation, whether by choice or by D. Laor, S. y. agnon: Hebetim hadashim (Tel Aviv, 1995), 154-74. 2 E. Yaron, ‘Buczacz 1996: Impressions of a Journey’, Ha’aretz, 27 Dec. 1996.

— 268 Shimon Redlich force, affected many lives, including that of Mitosz himself. Both in his prose and in his poetry Mitosz returned more than once to his native Lithuania. Whether in his essay ‘Miejsca utracone’ (‘Lost Sites’) or in some of his latest poems, published recently in Jo (‘This’), he often recalls his native Szetejynie (Lithuanian: Seteiniai) as well as Vilnius, the town of his youth. His actual return occurred in the rggos. In his recently published ‘Mitosz’s ABC’ he wrote: ‘My return after more than half a century to my birthplace and to Wilno was like the closing of the circle. I could

appreciate the good fortune that had brought me such a rare encounter with my past.’? Another Polish poet who comes to mind is Adam Zagajewski, whose poem

| ‘Jechaé do Lwowa’ (‘To Travel to Lwéw’) is bursting with the sights, sounds, tastes, and emotions that recall pre-war Lwéw.* When J arrived in Lwow (Lviv) for

the first time, in the summer of 1991, I remembered a story I had been told some time earlier about a man who burst into tears upon arriving in his native Lwo6w after many years of absence. Once a jewel in the crown of the Habsburgs, a lively multi-

cultural community, Lwow has been reduced by Communism to a huge, grey provincial town.

The longing for and recalling of one’s home and home town are essential elements of the human condition. Individual identities are shaped, at least to some extent, by emotional ties to a ‘native realm’, to the intimate world of one’s childhood, to the place where one’s life has been formed. The changing political situation of modern times has made possible the physical return to areas that were |

previously closed. Each such return is, of course, unique. There are, however, ‘returns’ that assume a wider social, psychological, and symbolic significance.

- I have in mind specifically the return of people from central and eastern Europe to their birthplaces following the Second World War, the Holocaust, and the end of the Soviet and Communist domination of the region. Although travelling there had already been possible for some in the 1960s and 1970s, it was only after the collapse

of Communism that individual and group pilgrimages to those places became a mass phenomenon. The war, the Holocaust, and the forty-odd years of nearly closed borders turned these places for many into something remote and inaccessible, into an imaginary world of dreams and nightmares. Since eastern Europe was a place where normal and happy lives were once lived, as well as the site of tremendous suffering and loss, human nostalgia assumed in this case a unique and at times conflicting quality. There was often a feeling of simultaneous attraction and repulsion. Decades of physical, political, and cultural distance intensified the emotional encounter with the landscapes, the places, and the signifiers of this past. In most

cases, the realities of the 1990s hardly resembled the mythologized images of the 1920s and 1930s. Juxtaposing the present with the real or mythologized past often

2000).

3 C, Miltosz, ‘Miejsca utracone’, in his Szukante ojczyzny (Krakow, 1992), 187; id., To (Krakow,

4 A. Zagajewski, ‘Jechaé do Lwowa’, in his Jechaé do Lwowa i inne miersze (London, 1985), 35-7.

Returning to the Shtetl 269 evokes a sense of alienation, disappointment, sadness, fear, or anger. Still, few of the returnees, it appears, regret their journey to the past.° Although the return of Poles, Ukrainians, and others to their native lands could be quite ambivalent, the return of Jews is particularly complex. This stems, of course, from the extremely tragic dimensions of their loss, trauma, and displacement. The first Jewish return after the Holocaust to catch my attention and imagination was that of Elie Wiesel in the mid-1960s. One day, while browsing through some journals, I came across ‘The Last Return’, Wiesel’s account of his first postwar visit to his home town of Sighet.® His persisting desire to go back was mixed with fear. The actual return, twenty years after his deportation from Sighet to the death camps, indeed brought about a sense of nearly total estrangement. “The only place where I felt at home’, he wrote, ‘was the Jewish cemetery.’ Wiesel summed up

his twenty-four-hour visit to Sighet: ‘My journey to the source of all events had been merely a journey to nothingness.’ Wiesel’s return and his reactions both

moved and disturbed me. Sighet somehow reminded me of my home town, Brzezany. And although at that time I hadn’t even dreamed of returning, Wiesel’s return encouraged me to imagine such a possibility. The first time I became aware of the real prospect of returning to Poland and, perhaps, to Brzezany, was in the mid-1g8os. In January 1985 I read in an Israeli newspaper a short and highly emotional poem by a very unlikely author, Professor

| Shlomo Avineri. He had just returned from his first visit to his home town of - Bielsko-Biata in Poland. Avineri wrote: “To come to the town of your birth and feel like landing on Mars. To come to the town about the existence of which you were never sure. And to discover that it’s not really there, but only in your imagination. It’s not there, even if it once had been.’ Yehudit Hendel, the Israeli writer whose parents left Warsaw for Palestine before the Second World War, travelled to Poland

in the autumn of 1986. She told the story of her visit in a series of radio talks in February—March 1987. Her book Leyad kefarim sheketim: 12 yamim bepolin was to follow. I was fascinated by the description of her torn emotions and the strong urge

that ultimately prevailed. :

I was scared [she wrote], and my first impulse was to refuse. But suddenly it all began to move and soon I couldn’t think about anything except going to Poland. Suddenly I felt I had to go to Poland and yet, at the same time, I felt a tremendous hesitation. All the baggage we drag around with us from Poland. Suddenly I was plunged into a vortex of dread and regret, and memory, and longing to forget, and hatred.®

> |. Kabziriska, ‘Przestrzeih—Pamie¢—T ozsamosc¢: Elementy przestrzeni (miejsca) we wspomnieniach ekspatriantow z bytych Kresow Wschodnich’, Literatura Ludowa (Mar.—Apr. 2000), 3-23. ° E. Wiesel, “The Last Return’, Commentary, 39 (Mar. 1965), 43-0.

S. Avineri, ‘A Jewish Boy from Poland’, Ma’ariv (Jan. 1985). 8 (Tel Aviv, 1987); quoted in J. Kugelmass, ‘The Rites of the Tribe: The Meaning of Poland for American Jewish Tourists’, YIVO Annual, 21 (1993), 396-7.

270 Shimon Redlich _ [should like to discuss the experiences of a few Jews who have returned to their

past: Yaffa Eliach to her Lithuanian home town of Eishyshok (Lithuanian: Eisiskés), Henryk Grynberg to his childhood village in the Mazovian (Mazowsze) region of Poland, and Aharon Appelfeld, who went back to his native village in Bukovina. I shall conclude with remarks on my own return to Brzezany. All of us are about the same age. Our respective returns took place in the 1990s, when we were in our sixties. It is rather telling, of course, that these journeys took place at a

time when most people tend to reflect on their lives and to long for some kind of closure. The journey of Yaffa Eliach to Eishyshok has been almost exclusively a return to

her Jewish past. In her voluminous, elegiac, yzkor-like and album-like book, she | intended to erect a lasting monument to Jewish Eishyshok and to ‘restore a vanished past’.? Her ambitious, obsessive book project extended over seventeen years, during which she collected every bit of information on her home town she could find. The numerous interviews she conducted over the years with surviving E:ishyshok Jews, who were scattered around the globe, were a major source of information. She was accepted by most of them ‘as an insider and entrusted with material and information’.!° Eliach also created a monument to Jewish life in Eishyshok through her now world-famous “Tower of Life’ at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Housed in a three-level, chimney-like structure, it is a photographic exhibit depicting the lives of Eishyshok’s Jews prior to the war and the Holocaust. It is not inci-

Eishyshok Jews."2

dental that on her visit to her home town in 1997 she was accompanied by surviving

-Yaffa Eliach, then Sheindl Sonenson, was 6 when the Germans occupied her home town in 1941. She left it in 1945, at the age of 9 or ro. In the introduction to her book she remarks: ‘In August 1979... flying south of Vilna... I became aware that somewhere beneath the clouds lay the town of Eishyshok, home to the early years of my brief, interrupted childhood.’!* She returned there for the first time in 1987 during a research trip to eastern Europe. ‘As part of my tour ofthe town’,she __ wrote, ‘I went to one of the mass graves, which had been both killing field and burial ground to thousands of Jewish women and children.’!* She returned there once more in 1997, this time with her family. It was during this visit that she went to see the house where her family lived immediately after the liberation, in the

summer and autumn of 1944. This was where Polish partisans murdered her mother and infant brother in October 1944. Yaffa, her father, and an older brother survived. We may assume that the traumatic event that Yaffa Eliach witnessed as a child must have affected her personal as well as her historical perception of the past. This, together with her strong religious and ethnic ties, 1s, apparently, the reason 9 Y.Eliach, There Once Was a World: A goo- Year Chronicle of the Shtetl of Eishyshok (Boston, 1998), 3. |

10 Tid. 14. 11 There Once Was a Shtetl (New York, 1999).

12 Eliach, There Once Was a World, 3. 13 Thid. 4.

Returning to the Shtetl 271 why there is hardly an objective presence of non-Jews in her history of Eishyshok.

In most cases, when non-Jews are mentioned, they appear in the context of antisemitism and pogrom-like acts. Eliach’s head-on confrontation with the ‘goyish world’ is clearly rendered in the documented exchange between Eliach and the descendants of Eishyshok Poles during her 1997 visit. Eliach’s perception of the Poles as perpetrators assumes special significance following Gross’s recent findings on the murder of the Jews of Jedwabne by their Polish neighbours.'* In her book Eliach attempts, rather strangely, to detach herself from her own history. The description of the most traumatic event in her life, which she witnessed as a child, is rendered in the third person. This was, perhaps, her way of separating Eliach the person from Eliach the historian and chronicler. Her emotions are clearly revealed, though, in a film sequence documenting her return to the house where her mother and infant brother were murdered. She breaks down and cries.'° The message of both the book and the film is one of Polish and non-Jewish hostility towards Jews and the perennial victimhood of the Jews of Eishyshok. A bitter exchange on Polish—Jewish relations in Eishyshok and 1n Poland in general during and after the German occupation, centred around Eliach’s opinions, erupted in the media in the United States and Poland in the mid-1ggos.*° Henryk Grynberg, born in Warsaw in 1936, survived the German occupation in the countryside of the eastern Mazovia district north-east of Warsaw. His books, both fiction and non-fiction, deal almost obsessively with the Holocaust and with Polish—Jewish relations. Grynberg has been a stubborn and untiring searcher for truth, particularly as it is revealed in concrete deeds and emotions. This is the focus of one of his latest books, Drohobycz, Drohobycz.*" In his unique style, which mixes belles-lettres with the recording of history, he collects and presents information from across the entire spectrum of attitudes and behaviours: the evildoers, the victims, the passive evil-wishers, as well as the very few who cared and helped.'®

One of the central events that appears repeatedly in his writings is the death of his father. Grynberg returned to the area where his family hid during the war ona fact-finding mission almost halfa century after his father had been killed. Although Grynberg had lived in Warsaw until his departure for America in 1967, he returned to his wartime sites only in 1992. Some time earlier he had spoken to his surviving relatives in order to gather information on his family’s whereabouts during the war. In the afterword to Dziedzictwo (‘Inheritance’), the slim volume in which he documented his search for the past, Grynberg wrote ‘I couldn’t run away. Early on, 4 J. T. Gross, Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland (Princeton,

2001). 15 There Once Was a Shtetl. 16 Y.Eliach, The Story of Two Shtetls: Bransk and Ejszyszkt, pt. 2 (Toronto, 1998); Z. Krasnodebski, ‘Przywracanie pamiecti: List z Tel Avivu’, Znak, 6 (2000), 19-21. YH. Grynberg, Drohobycz, Drohobycz (Warsaw, 1997).

18 J. Brach-Czaina, ‘Kompleks’, Tygodnik Powszechny, 20 Feb. 1994.

272 Shimon Redlich when I distanced myself, time seemed to soothe. Time is, however, circular. Once [ve completed my circle I had to go back, to return to that hell from which nobody could redeem me.’!®

Grynberg’s return was recorded both in writing and on film.?° The reader or viewer is struck by the immediacy and authenticity of the meetings and conversations with the locals, conducted in a somewhat rough and seemingly laconic peasant dialect. Grynberg travels from village to village, knocks on doors, asks to be let in, and interrogates. ‘The most repeated and important question is: ‘Do you remember?’ Some answer with indifference, one or two are friendly, and others are outright hostile. Finally, Grynberg succeeds in establishing the identity of his father’s murderer, a deceased Polish neighbour, and the location of his father’s burial site. A lengthy, dramatic exhumation follows. After many hours the diggers recover bones | and a skull, as well as the old milk bottle that Grynberg’s father, a milkman, always carried with him. Dztedzictwo concludes with these significant lines: ‘I cannot forgive. I’m not entitled to. Let the murdered forgive, if they could. I sensed a chilly shudder facing evil. However, in some eyes and words I found some warmth as well. It is essential for life.’??

Aharon Appelfeld was born in 1932 in Bukovina, in the border area between Romania and Ukraine—once part of the multilingual and multicultural Habsburg empire. His life changed abruptly when his mother and grandmother were murdered in the village of Drachinets (Romanian: Dracinet; Ukrainian: Drachynets). Appelfeld was 8’ at the time. Appelfeld’s writings, which contain a rich tapestry of biographical materials, do not usually deal directly with the Holocaust. The wound remains mostly untouched while he attends to its periphery. Only in his latest books, such as Mikhreh hakerah (“The Ice Mine’, 1997) and Sipur hayim (‘The Story

of a Life’, 1999), does he give authentic autobiographical details and describe specific Holocaust situations.’*? Appelfeld’s relationship to the past is mostly Jewish-centred. And although he does describe the non-Jewish world surrounding the Jews, he usually does so from a Jewish viewpoint. Even in his most ‘non-Jewish’

book, Katerina, he deals with the unusual and extraordinary life of a Ukrainian woman who identifies with Jews. Appelfeld’s attitude towards non-Jews is mostly negative, though not in the crude, forthright manner of Yaffa Eliach. Appelfeld has been quite ambivalent about his desire to return to the sites of his childhood. He told a journalist in 1986 that he didn’t contemplate going back.?® However, in an account of his actual return, published twelve years later, he wrote: ‘For years, I dreamed about going back to my childhood home.’ Like most, he both 19H. Grynberg, Dziedzictwo (London, 1993), 11. 20 Tbid.; Miejsce urodzenia, dir. Pawet Lozirtiski (Studio Filmowe ‘Kronika’, 1992). 21 Grynberg, Dziedzictwo, 90. 22 A. Appelfeld, Mikhreh hakerah (Jerusalem, 1997); id., Sipur hayim (Jerusalem, 1999). 23H. Mitgang, ‘Writing Holocaust Memories’, New York Times, 15 Nov. 1986.

, Returning to the Shtetl 273 yearned for and feared such a return: ‘I gradually realized’, he wrote, ‘that returning home after a long period of separation was not a simple matter.’ In 1998, more than fifty years after he had left, Appelfeld returned to his ‘model’ childhood village of Drachinets and to his ‘model’ childhood town of Czernowitz, as he referred to them. The return, as he had anticipated, was not a simple matter at all. It centred, as in Grynberg’s case, around death, loss, and mourning. ‘In 1996 it became clear to me’, he wrote, ‘that I could no longer put off my return home. An old feeling of guilt, which I had repressed for many years, floated up. Its essence was a mass grave in the village of Drachinets, in which my mother and grandmother were buried. The thought that one day I might stand by that grave in silence would not leave me.””°

, Appelfeld’s first reaction upon approaching his childhood village was near-total estrangement: ‘For years, that village lay within me, and now I was approaching tt. I couldn’t find anything recognizable about it.’ He insisted, first and foremost, on locating the burial site of his murdered kin. ‘Suddenly the sob of the slaughter rose within me—the sob I hear at night—and it made me dizzy.’?° The locals didn’t _ offer information. A sense of mutual suspicion and mistrust between the Jewish visitors and the peasant crowd prevailed for a while. Then one person, who recognized Appelfeld, showed the way. When Appelfeld told him about himself and his present family the man burst into tears. Then an eerie scene followed at the gravesite. Appelfeld, with some others of his Jewish entourage, recited kaddish, the prayer for the dead. ‘I looked at the peasants. They stared back, as if wondering what I was going to say. Some of the women began to weep, but no one approached me.’ There is no question that a certain uneasiness, mixed with possible guilt feelings, affected the crowd. I wonder, however, whether Appelfeld’s own estrangement might have resulted in the distance between them. The only local person with

whom Appelfeld could identify and share his emotions with was a Jew from Czernowitz, who as a boy used to live in Drachinets and recalled in detail Appelfeld

and his family. ‘He remembered my house and my parents better than I did, Appelfeld wrote. ‘Now I stood in front of him like an empty vessel that asked to be filled.’

Appelfeld’s recounting of his return ends with a clear-cut conclusion: ‘Until recently, I had thought that there existed a childhood home far from me and another childhood home within me. Now I know: what there was dwells only within me. Outside is an alien land.’ I left Brzezany in the summer of 1945, asa boy of ro. I returned there for the first time in the summer of 1991.7’ After leaving Brzezany, I lived for a number of years in $.6dz, and then settled in Israel, where I’ve lived ever since. My own mental and

25 Tbid. 50. 26 Thid. 52. , 24 A Appelfeld, ‘Buried Homeland’, New Yorker, 23 Nov. 1998, 48.

27 For my return to Brzezany, see S. Redlich, Together and Apart in Brzezany: Poles, Jews and

Ukrainians, 1919-1945 (Bloomington, Ind., 2001).

274 Shimon Redlich emotional process of returning was a gradual one. It started sometime in the 1960s or 1970s and was prompted by the Eichmann trial and by my experience in teaching courses on the Holocaust. Then, in the 1980s, I succeeded in tracing and locating Tanka and Karol, the Ukrainian peasant woman and the Polish man who helped us , to survive. Both became acknowledged Righteous Gentiles. I invited Karol to Israel in 1986 and went to see T'anka in Rai, near Brzezany, in 1991. My return was very much part of a massive Jewish return, a kind of pilgrimage to eastern Europe. My perception, however, seemed to differ from the prevailing view, which saw that part of the world almost exclusively as one huge Jewish cemetery. My return was not only to the dead. It was also a return to a landscape, a culture, a language, and, most significantly, to people. I did have some fears about what might happen, and I

_ took my family along. I was very tense when we set out from Lviv to Brzezany. I had a very strong urge to recover familiar landscapes and architecture, but only a few places really looked familiar. I recognized the Ratusz, the Ukrainian Church, and the half-ruined Great Synagogue. I walked around town and looked for familiar sights. It was impossible to pin them down. I wanted to fly back in time, but there was nothing to hold on to. The groomed, pre-war Polish Brzezany had become a dilapidated Ukrainian Soviet

town, although its former Habsburg grandeur could still be detected in the run| down facades of some of the buildings around the Ratusz. What used to be the ageold Jewish cemetery on the outskirts of town, on the way to Rai, the Okopisko, was now full of weeds and leaning and broken tombstones. This is where my father was shot and thrown into a mass grave on 12 June 1943, following the liquidation of the Brzezany ghetto. I have often considered writing my memoirs, but my own first-hand authentic memories were too few. After a while I decided that the only feasible way to return to the past would be to weave the bits and pieces of my childhood memories into a larger tapestry of my home town. A central goal of my return to Brzezany would be to meet and talk with older people from the town. This would be my way of reviving and sharing a common past. My perception of that past wasn’t exclusively Jewish, although a return to one’s roots is, usually, a mono-ethnic experience. My intent was to revive and describe the multi-ethnic community of a town in which Poles, Jews, and Ukrainians lived both together and apart. I wanted to know and understand each community ‘from within’, as well as its attitudes to the other parts of the Polish—Jewish—Ukrainian triangle.

The interviews were the most meaningful and moving part of my research. Somehow, an immediate bond emerged with most of the interviewees. Not only with Jews, but also with Poles and Ukrainians. Was this related to Karol and Tanka,

| my saviours? Perhaps. I have returned several times to the Okopisko cemetery. _ Thoughts about my murdered family recurred from time to time. However, my private loss and mourning did not become the all-encompassing experience of my return, as was the case for Eliach, Grynberg, and Appelfeld. There is a world of

Returning to the Shtetl 275 difference between recovering the past as death, and recalling the past as life. I have chosen the latter, not least, perhaps, because of a need to incorporate some normality into a life that was so suddenly and tragically ripped apart. An examination of survivors’ testimonies shows that Holocaust memories are different not because every personal experience was utterly unique. Each ‘story’ is

affected not only and exclusively by what actually happened. Recollections are modified by actual conditions and by the amount of suffering and loss, as well as by personal and moral attitudes and by the overall Weltanschauung of the survivor.?° This seems to be the case, in my opinion, in the various narrations of return. Each story contains its particular blend of nostalgia and trauma, its exclusively narrow

Jewish conclusions or its ability and willingness to understand and have compassion for the others whose lives and behaviour were affected, though to a lesser extent, by the abnormality, evil, and brutality of an unprecedented past. 28 J. E. Young, Writing and Rewriting the Holocaust: Narrative and the Consequences of Interpretation (Bloomington, Ind., 1988), 159-60.

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PART II

New Views

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A Jewish Russifier in Despair: Lev Levanda’s Polish Question BRIAN HOROWITZ

Lev LEVANDA (1835-88) is commonly regarded as a leading advocate of the Russification of the Jews of the Russian empire, but in fact his ethnic attitudes were far more complex and conflicting than this stereotype allows. One source of internal conflict was his ambivalence towards the Poles—a people unwillingly subjected to Russian rule and, like the Jews, often the object of Russian state oppression. Levanda’s writings on Poland (four novels, one historical study, and more than twenty short essays) appeared after and, I believe, in response to major defeats in his Russification programme.! They constitute a kind of literary wishful thinking: unable to attain the goal of equal rights for Jews in the Russia of his time, Levanda searched the region’s past for moments of harmony and integration between Jews

and non-Jews. At the same time, he had a high regard for Polish literary culture, : which had informed his development as a writer. His ‘Polish’ texts are part of a dialogue with his other writings, providing idealistic visions of a world he dreamed

of creating but was unable to realize.

, Vilna, the capital of Lithuania, was Levanda’s home from the time he moved there in 1859 until his death in 1888. In 1875 the city had a total population of 82,668, of which the 37,909 Jews thus comprised nearly 46 per cent.” In the 1860s Jews and certain non-Jews—mainly Lithuanian peasants, along with the smaller classes of Polish nobles and Russian administrators—were segregated socially. Contact was limited to business and administrative affairs. V.O. Garkavy, a Jewish intellectual, describes his experience as a youth in Vilna in the 1860s as follows: Jewish life was sheltered from the outside world, thanks to the ‘ghetto’ even physically. Of course, there was interaction between Christians and Jews in daily life, but they were often This chapter was written with the support of the Alexander Von Humboldt Foundation and the Yad Hanadiv Foundation, Jerusalem. I should like to thank Professor Ezra Mendelsohn of the Hebrew University for his helpful comments.

| Between 1879 and 1884 Levanda published over twenty articles on Jewish life in Poland in the ‘Privislyanskaya khronika’ section of the weekly newspaper Russki evret. 2 Entstklopedicheskii slovar' , 82 vols. (St Petersburg, 1890-1905), vi. 381, s.v. ‘Vil’na’. For more on Vilna’s Jewish life during this time, see I. Cohen, V/na (Philadelphia, 1943), 283-303.

280 | Brian Horomitz — related to business, and, of course, were restricted to the public sphere by preference. The Christian world appeared foreign and antagonistic, not so much because of the legal constraints upon us that emanated from it, but in particular because it threatened our spiritual

world. Therefore, any novelty in dress or habits which came from that world seemed , dangerous, and wearing German dress, a short frock, was considered a great sin and permitted only to merchants who had business abroad and in Moscow.?

In this environment, for Levanda to write in Russian in itself implied various political and literary affiliations, symbolizing a conscious alliance with Russian power and with the goal of Russifying the peoples of the territory. In addition, if a -_ writer identified himself as Jewish but wrote in Russian, he was inevitably marking himself out as a proponent of secular knowledge and an enemy of Orthodox Jews.

| Thus, as can be imagined, during the Polish uprising of 1863 Levanda’s views were considered dangerous; according to the historian Simon Dubnow they even drew death threats from ‘Polish informers’.* However, by the 1880s the image of _ Levanda is of a harmless eccentric—the object of gossip. We have the following picture from Mordechai (Max) Rivesman, at the time an aspiring young writer: While he was being shaved, he talked to the men waiting in the queue. He spoke in Polish,

Russian, and Yiddish. He spoke really excellent Polish, or so it seemed to me at the time. I | already knew that he wrote a column in Vilensky Vestnik and that people considered him a heretic [apikores] and even. ..aJudaeophobe. .. . He earned that reputation after forcing the hero of his best novel, Goryachee vremya (‘Ardent Times’), to preach the need to destroy ‘the

fig trees and vineyards’ in order to plant the seed of Russian enlightenment in their place.° , Like his contemporaries, later readers perceived Levanda as a passionate proponent of Russification.®

The Russification programme in the north-west had begun in the 1840s, when _ the government opened the first Russian-language schools; the state rabbinical seminary in Vilna was founded in 1847.’ This policy of encouraging cultural life to flourish in the Russian language was designed to win over the political allegiance of the Jews to the Russian state. After the suppression of the 1863 Polish uprising the

question of what to do with the Jews of the north-west territories became more challenging. But their treatment was only one part of a broader policy towards the ~ region as a whole. 3 V.O. Garkavy, Otryvki iz vospominanii (St Petersburg, 1913), 7. 4S. Dubnow, Kniga zhizni, vospominaniya i razmyshlentya: Materialy dlya istorit moego vrement (St

Petersburg, 1998), 130. | , © M. Rivesman, ‘Vospominaniya i vstrechi (1877-1915), Evreiskaya letopis' , 3 (1924), 74. 6 The influential writer Lucy Davidowicz calls him a ‘Russian journalist and novelist who advocated

, Russification as the solution for Jewish problems’ (L. Davidowicz (ed.), The Golden Tradition: Femish Life and Thought in Eastern Europe (New York, 1967), 31).

’ Evreiskaya entsiklopediya, 16 vols. (St Petersburg, 1906-13), v. 588-90, s.v. ‘Vil’na’. Admittedly, instruction in the seminary was given in German until 1864, but the orientation was pro-Russian. For more on the seminary in Vilna, see Yu. Gessen, ‘Ravvinskie uchilishcha v Rossi’, in Evreiskaya entsik-

lopedtya, xitl. 258-63. ,

A fewish Russifier in Despair 281 In 1863 the Russian governor Mikhail Muravev introduced policies designed to de-Polonize these provinces. Muravev was extremely brutal in his methods and came to be known as Muravev the Hangman, recalling Muravev the Hanged, the Decembrist who was executed in 1826. In addition to mass hangings, Muravev exiled thousands of Polish noblemen to Siberia and confiscated their lands. Russian was established as the official state language. Although the Poles were the primary

target of repressive measures, the Jews of the north-west territories were also adversely affected, the government’s policy bringing more restrictions than privileges to the Jewish population.® Nevertheless, some influential Russian journalists and government officials viewed the Jews as a potentially pro-Russian force in the region and held out the possibility—albeit a slim one—of granting privileges to the Jews as a means of winning their affections.? Levanda was not alone in siding with Russia. Many Jews in the 1840s and 1850s Saw an opportunity for social advancement in the Russian educational system and

| little room for social mobility within Polish culture. Levanda, who was born into a poor family in Minsk in 1835, entered a state-sponsored school for Jews in 1846, the first year of its operation. Three years later he entered the state rabbinical seminary in Vilna, from which he graduated in 1854. In 1860, while working as a teacher in

Minsk, he was appointed to the position of ‘learned Jew’ in the office of Vilna’s governor-general, a post he held until his death. Learned Jews received a government salary and often acted as official censors. In general, they advised the tsarist government on policies towards the Jewish people and religion. Needless to say, their advice was not always heeded. Levanda’s literary career reflects his interest in issues of importance to Russian

Jews. A key pioneer of the Jewish press in the Russian language, he was a major contributor to Rassvet (1860-1), the first Jewish newspaper published in Russian, and to Sion, Rassvet’s successor, and during the 1880s he wrote for Russki evre: and Voskhod. He also published a large number of novels and stories, among the best

| known of which are Delo bakalemykh tovarov (“The Grocery Affair’, 1860-1), Goryachee vremya (‘Ardent Times’, 1871-3), Ocherki proshlogo (‘Sketches of the Past’, 1875), Bol’shot remiz (“The Big Fraud’, 1880-1), Lyubitel’ski spektakl’ (‘An Amateur Performance’, 1882), Gnev 7 milost’ magnata (“The Magnate’s Anger and Mercy’, 1885), and Avraam Iezofovich (1887). At the beginning of his literary career, in the 1860s, Levanda ignored Poland and the Polish theme in his fiction and journalism. Absorbed by his political programme of modernizing the Jews for integration into Russian society, he focused on criticizing Russian Jews for their backwardness and encouraged them to adopt the changes promoted by supporters of the Haskalah: to exchange the traditional Jewish kaftan for modern clothes, to reject the traditional Heder and enrol in secular schools, and 8 J. Klier, ‘The Polish Revolt of 1863 and the Birth of Russification: Bad for the Jews?’, Polin, 1

(1986), g1—106. 9 S. Tsinberg, Istoriya evreiskoi pechati v Rossii (Petrograd, 1915), 116.

282 Brian Horowitz to use a ‘Western’ language, preferably Russian or German. Simultaneously hoping for full emancipation for the Jews of Russia, he praised the tsarist government’s first efforts in this direction.!°

, Levanda’s first novel, Delo bakaleinykh tovarov, published in Rassvet in 1860-1, _ captures his views at the time.!! The novel, which one critic has called ‘a textbook of the Haskalah’, covers the cardinal principles of the movement.’” Levanda uses

: the plot, which is loosely structured around the attempt of the hero, Arnold, to open a grocery shop in the Belarusian town of N, exclusively as a forum for criticiz-

ing ‘Jewish vices’: namely, arranged marriages, isolation from the non-Jewish world, and the greed that goes with speculation for profit. Arnold, by contrast, is the embodiment of progress. He has a German-sounding name and a European university education, dresses in modern clothing, and is clean-shaven. He promises to bring happiness to the town by offering good wages to all the workers, supporting

secular education for young people, and fighting for marriage based on love. _ Levanda’s explicit advice to Russia’s Jews is to emulate Arnold, turning away from the habits and beliefs characteristic of traditional Jewish life. Surprisingly, Levanda does not criticize the government for limiting the Jews’ legal rights, including their right of residence outside the Pale of Settlement and rights to land ownership. Apparently convinced of the validity of the so-called ‘emancipation contract’—according to which the Russian government would extend full civil rights if the Jews modernized and integrated—Levanda concentrates only on the fulfilment of the Jewish side of the bargain. Admittedly, in the 1860s most modernized Jews were convinced of the sincerity of the Russian assurances. Levanda’s earliest treatments of the topic of Poland were written in the 1870s in

the context of growing Russian antisemitism. Although critics have perceived Goryachee vremya as an apology for his pro-Russian attitude, the author undercuts that viewpoint in the novel in various ways.!? In particular, by showing the political 10 In 1859 Alexander II permitted Jewish merchants of the first guild permanent residence in the capital, and in 1861 he extended this right to Jews who graduated from institutions of higher education. From 1865 select categories of Jewish artisans were permitted to live within Russia proper. In his work on the reform period Benjamin Nathans calls these reforms ‘selective emancipation’. For more on the reform period and tsarist rule, see B. Nathans, ‘Beyond the Pale: The Jewish Encounter with Russia, 1840-1900’, Ph.D. thesis (University of California at Berkeley, 1995), go—160.

‘1 The first instalment of Delo bakaleinykh tovarov (kartiny evreiskogo byta) v dvukh chastyakh appeared in Rassvet, 10 (1860), and the last appeared in vol. 12 (1861).

, 12 Sh. Markish, ‘Stoit li perechityvat’ L’va Levandu? Stat’ya pervaya: Posyl’, Vestnik Evretskogo Universiteta v Moskve, 3/10 (1995), 101. 13 A Russian scholar, Laura Salmon, wrote in 1998 that the book’s ‘ideological direction is beautiful-

ly expressed with the words of the main hero, Arkady Sarin: “Our programme consists of extricating our co-religionists from the vicious cycle into which unfortunate circumstances have squeezed them, and setting them on the path towards Russian citizenship. In brief: our programme consists of making the Jews Russians”’ (L. Salmon, ‘Krizis evreiskoi samobytnosti 1 roman: Manifesty G. I. Bagrova i L. O. Levandy’, in D. Elyashevich (ed.), Trudy po iudaike: Istortya i etnografiya, 5 vols. (St Petersburg, 1993-8), v. 287).

A Jewish Russifier in Despair 283 failures of Sarin, the author’s ideological mouthpiece, and by drawing the Poles as fully developed characters as opposed to the one-dimensional Russians, Levanda subverts the positive message of Russification. Set in Vilna in the two years before the Polish uprising of 1863, the novel presents the choice facing the Jews of Poland: to join the Poles, remain neutral, or support Russia.'* While Polish nobles pressure Jews to join the rebellion, Arkady Sarin, a young Jewish intellectual, argues against any solidarity with them, claiming that the

Poles have never fulfilled their promises. Sarin, apparently with the narrator’s assent, proposes instead the Russification of the Jews. He is given such dialogue as: We have thought it over and have decided to turn to the right and link ourselves with Moscow. Instinct, considered thought, and finally, feelings of gratitude lead us there. We should never forget that it was barbaric Russia and not civilized Poland that first began to worry about our education and development. We are obliged to Russia and not to Poland for the awakening of our self-consciousness.!°

And: We should not concern ourselves with which civilization is higher... . For us the issue is not about civilization, but about belonging to a people, i.e. about spirit and language. We live in Russia and therefore we must be Russians. 1®

Despite such declarations, a countervailing view manifests itself in the structure of the novel itself—in the development of the plot, the characterization, and the viewpoint of the narrator—casting doubt on the author’s commitment to the programme of Russification. For example, the fact that a Russian official sentences Sarin to two months in prison raises questions about Levanda’s attitudes towards Russian rule. In the early pages, when the narrator asks Sarin what he will do if the Russians reject the Jews, he does not answer directly, but reiterates that the Jews should prepare themselves for Russian citizenship.’” And yet Levanda exposes the Russian officials’ negative attitude towards the Jews and his hostile treatment of them. When Poles denounce him to the Russian authorities, Sarin is gaoled for ‘criminal propaganda’, that is, for speaking out in favour of the Russification of the Jews. Sarin’s offence, we learn, is related to the activity itself, not to its message. It makes no difference that he supports the Russian effort; the fact that he acts at all is suspect. The dialogue between Sarin and the Russian official reveals Levanda’s stark awareness of the distance between the Russian and Jewish views: ‘4 A discussion of Levanda’s treatment of the political views of the Jews towards the uprising can be

found in S. Breimann, ‘Hamifneh bamahshavah hatsiburit hayehudit bereshit shenot hashemonim’, Shivat tstyon, 2-3 (1952-3), 180-4; Y. Slutsky, Ha’itonut hayehudit-rusit beme’ah ha-1g (Jerusalem, 1970), 95-6. ‘S The allusion is to the Russian government’s creation of special Jewish schools, which were opened in the 1840s. 6 L. Levanda, Goryachee vremya: Roman iz poslednego pol' skogo vosstantya (St Petersburg, 1875), 77. 17 Tbid. 78.

284 Bnian Horowitz ‘Since when have the kikes started to worry about their usefulness to Russia?’ ‘Since they stopped being kikes and started to feel like Russian citizens.’ ‘Citoyens? the official became enraged. “There are no citizens in Russia, citoyens, but

there are subjects, do you understand? What did they imagine—citizens! Do we have a republic? We will beat that literature out of your head. We do not need citizens, we need faithful subjects, and whoever does not understand this, we will make him understand; that _ is why we are the administrators, in order to make people understand.’!®

With this conversation Levanda outlines the conflict between the Russian administrators and the Jewish intelligentsia. The intelligentsia dreamed of emancipation, with the same rights that Jews in the West enjoyed, but the Russian government was not prepared to grant these rights.’9 In reality, participation in politics, while not forbidden, held certain dangers for Jews regardless of which side they took. For example, the first Jewish newspaper in Russian, Rassvet, closed in 1861 after only a year because its content did not please Stroganov, the governor-general of New Russia.?° Although Sarin’s prison term does not destroy his faith in Russia, it makes the reader wonder whether Jews would be able to make Russians love them. In truth, Sarin’s experience demonstrates that Levanda was not sure whether Russia would treat Jews any better than the antisemitic Poles had treated them. While he depicts Russians negatively, Levanda offers many positive figures

among the Poles.*24 He has Sarin fall in love with the Polish aristocrat Julia Staszycka, the niece of Count Teczynski, the Polish rebel leader. Not only does she | return his love, but she is his equal in every way. Not just physically beautiful, she is morally courageous as well. Having discovered a plot by the Polish underground to kill Sarin, whom the Poles consider to be a Russian agent, she warns him of the danger. Although this might be interpreted as a betrayal of the Poles, the author justifies it as a sacrifice for the sake of love. Here Levanda clearly breaks away from

the many novels of the period in which unrequited love develops between a Pole 8 Quoted in I. Sosis, ‘Period obruseniya: Natsional’nyi vopros v literature v kontse 60-kh godov i nachale 70-kh godov’, Evreiskaya starina, 2 (Apr.—June 1915), 144. 19 For more on the legal liabilities facing the Jews of Russia during the reign of Alexander II, see Yu. Gessen, /storiya evreiskogo naroda v Rossit, 2 vols. (Petrograd, 1916), il. 156—2o1.

_ 20 Yu. Gessen, ‘Smena obshchestvennykh techenii’, pt. 2: ‘Pervyi russko-evreiskii organ’, in Perezhitoe: Sbornik, posvyashchennyt obshchestvennoi i kul' turnot istorii evreev v Rossii, iii (St Petersburg,

tg11). Gessen has convincingly argued that Rabinovich closed Rassvet after a little over a year, not only—or even primarily—because of the small number of subscribers, but also because he resented the fact that the paper’s fate hung on whether New Russia’s general governor Stroganov ‘digested his food well or not’. 21 As John Klier notes, ‘For a novel devoted to the theme of Russification, Russians in the flesh play a very minor role. ..and most of the Russian characters are negative ones. The exception is P. A. Dubov,

a young idealist forced into a military career by family pressure, who dreams of devoting himself to public service. He is the only Russian who sees the potential of recruiting Jews to the Russian cause’ (J. Kier, “The Jew as Russifier: Lev Levanda’s Hot Times’, MS, 24).

A Jewish Russifier in Despair | 285 and a Jew. According to Israel Bartal and Magdalena Opalski, such a successful relationship is meant to symbolize the unity of the two peoples with regard to their co-operation during the uprising, despite their religious differences.?* Nevertheless, Levanda reverses the schema. By having the Pole rather than the Jew sacrifice for love, he shows that a Jew, too, can inspire higher feelings.

In giving the Polish characters dramatic depth, Levanda invites the reader’s sympathy for them. Even the negative Polish figures are depicted vividly. The dense descriptions of these characters can be juxtaposed with the portrait of Sarin, who comes across as little more than a mouthpiece for the author’s propaganda. For example, one may contrast the depiction of Sarin with that of Stanistaw (Stas), a Polish rebel and a common murderer. In love with the princess Jadwiga, Stas had

earlier seduced Marcisa, who is now pregnant and threatening to inform the | Russians about his participation in the Polish underground government. While Sarin mechanically utters his programmatic lines, Stas’s psychology is depicted through his body language, snippets of consciousness, and sentence fragments. — With his head lowered and his hands folded across his chest, Stas began to pace back and forth across the room, while Prakseda [a well-known salon hostess], bending over her favourite instrument, strummed several rich chords and started to play a song and then the hymn ‘Boze cos Polske’. Having finished the hymn, she rested awhile, tuned her guitar, and _ began to play again, but Stas continued to pace the room. His face was pale, disappointed. It was clear that he was thinking, considering some weighty thought. ‘So’, he said to himself.

‘So... . Still, how can that be? Impossible. .. . Meaningless! Stupid! And such selfimportance!’ ... A moment later, ‘And of course .. . it’s better, than... After all, the father-

land...the Count... Jadwiga. ..’.?°

I am not the first to notice the paradox that those characters who embody proRussian ideology are poorly drawn in comparison to the Polish aristocrats. In his article on Levanda written in 1913 the historian Yuly Gessen says, ‘Sarin is too schematic, but alongside him one finds in the novel living images—for the most part from Polish society.’24 22 Tn their exceptional book on Polish and Jewish treatments of the Jewish issue, Israel Bartal and Magdalena Opalski point to the iconoclastic use of Polish symbols by Jewish authors. Moreover, they note differences in the use of romantic themes by Jewish and Polish authors: ‘Despite striking similarities in their treatment of secondary sociological and psychological detail, Polish-Jewish love stories, in both literary traditions, reflect conflicting worldviews. While the Polish romances are instrumental in illustrating the idea of brotherhood and providing an example of social relations in a more inclusive, democratic society, Jewish love stories focus on prejudice and deception. Whereas Polish authors elevate their Jewish heroes by assigning them a place in the highly exclusive fabric of national history, Jewish writers use interethnic love stories to launch an attack on the romantic value system’ (I. Bartal and M. Opalski, Poles and Jews: A Failed Brotherhood (Hanover, NH, 1992), 96). 23 Levanda, Goryachee vremya, 225.

24 Yu. Gessen, ‘Lev Osipovich Levanda’, in Evreiskaya entsiklopediya, x. 61. In an article on the novel John Klier writes, “The Poles, in the midst of the preparations which will culminate in the 1863 uprising, are the most differentiated characters. They provide the most negative actors in the plot: an

286 Brian Horowitz While the conflict between the novel’s message and the depiction of its characters does not require us to repudiate the traditional view that the novel is a defence of Russification, it does raise questions about Levanda’s unconscious intentions. _ His individual treatment of Poles certainly reflects sympathy for and engagement with them. Furthermore, by having Sarin fall in love with Julia Staszycka, Levanda shifts the novel’s focus from its message that ‘we Jews must become Russians’ to other issues, such as love between enemies and the tragic fate of the Poles. Why did Levanda undermine the main ideological message of the novel? An examination of the historical background against which the novel was written can help us to answer this question. Although the plot unfolds in the period of the Polish uprising of 1863, the novel first appeared in the first three issues of Evreiskaya biblioteka in 1871-3, and was presumably written about this time. In the years lead-

ing up to the novel’s publication Levanda had served on the Vilna Commission, which was set up to elicit Jewish reactions to Jacob Brafman’s plan to turn the Jewish masses from urban dwellers into peasants.7° The commission submitted its | final report in 1870, and, to quote John Klier, ‘with the governor-general’s blessing, not only rejected plans to subordinate Jews to the peasant village administration, but also sent a recommendation to the central government that the Pale of Settlement be abolished and Jews permitted to reside throughout the Russian Empire’.?6 Unfortunately, in the late 1860s and early 1870s the government shifted its position

from support for Jewish reform to open hostility to it, and the Ministry of the Interior rejected the commission’s proposals. Symptomatic of the change 1n policy was the government-financed publication of Jacob Brafman’s anti-Jewish tract Kniga kagala (‘The Book of the Kahal’), which

went through four printings between 1867 and 1881. Arguing that the Jews had _ actually retained their kehalim (autonomous Jewish administrations) despite the fact that they had been abolished by tsarist law in 1844, Brafman claimed that the Jews were bent on world domination. Furthermore, foreshadowing tragic times to come, the government did not provide aid to the victims of the Odessa pogrom of March 1871 or seriously pursue the culprits.?” intolerant and hypocritical Catholic priest, Father Kwiecinski, who runs a home for orphans that supplies employees for a high-class brothel; a variety of debauched and arrogant aristocrats; flighty and dissolute Polish women; and a gallery of drunken and vicious commoners. These negative Polish characters are somewhat balanced by the portrait of the revolutionary circle, the “National Rzad”, and its members, Count Boleslaw Teczynski and his niece Countess Julia Staszycka. The Count must pursue

, the Polish national goal with the assistance of the less than admirable agents described above. He does so with dignity and a modicum of honour, sincerely motivated by patriotism and love of the fatherland.

In the mouths of other Polish characters, the expression “love of the fatherland” acquires a satirical effect, being used to justify a whole range of heinous acts, including murder of a mistress and prostitution’ (Klier, “The Jew as Russifier’, 19).

2° Perezhitoe, iii. 385-02. | 26 Klier, “The Jew as Russifier’, 25. 27 See S. Zipperstein, The Jews of Odessa: A Cultural History, 1794-1881 (Palo Alto, Calif., 1986), TI4—15.

| A Jewish Russifier in Despair 287 In this context, Levanda’s contradictory treatment of the ideas of Russification and Russian antisemitism is understandable. While he still hoped for the integration of the Jews into Russian society and gave Sarin the role of sermonizer, he was not blind to the obstacles. Moreover, it is worth noting that he had already displayed admiration for various Poles, and that he invoked the Polish theme to outline the deficiencies of the Russian treatment of the Jews, as well as Polish shortcomings. In his novel of 1880-1, Bol’shot remiz, Levanda uses the Polish theme to criticize Jewish society in Russia. Setting the plot in the provincial Galician city of N, he chronicles a Jewish merchant’s attempt to cheat his investors by falsely declaring himself bankrupt. The sub-plot, which becomes increasingly important, concerns Jewish—Polish relations and provides a moral antithesis to the primary story. Here we see the Jewish merchant’s son, a violinist, fall in love with a Jewish innkeeper’s daughter, a singer. ‘They meet through the intercession of a music teacher, an elderly Polish aristocrat who embodies wisdom, dignity, and tolerance. Near the end of the story a younger, unscrupulous Polish nobleman tries to steal the innkeeper’s daughter from the young Jew. It turns out that this nobleman had once seduced her and feels that he has proprietary rights. The older Polish aristocrat intercedes, and ~ inamelodramatic confrontation demands that the rogue desist. Although the characters of the nobleman and the music teacher are not of equal

weight in the drama and the sub-plot is set in the broader context of the community’s economic ruin, Levanda’s image of the Polish aristocrat is instructive. The values of culture, dignity, and honesty are embodied in the music teacher, who serves as a contrast to the greedy and heartless Jewish merchant, while in his dress and education the Polish rogue also represents high culture. The values of the dignified Pole win out in the end, and the teacher and his students leave for western Europe, where they are certain to find artistic and financial success. The novel, which was written in the late 1870s, touches on important issues concerning Russia’s Jews at the time. Capitalism was taking hold in Russia, and Jews were among the most energetic businessmen in the country. Levanda condemned their swelling ambitions, fearing that their success would lead to increased antisemitism. In two of his other writings of the period, ‘Nashi domashnie dela (pis'‘mo iz severo-zapadnogo kraya)’ (Our Domestic Affairs (Letter from the North-West Territories)’**) and the novel Jspoved' del'tsa (‘Confessions of a Wheeler-Dealer’, 1880), Levanda criticized the new Jewish youth, who, indifferent to morality, religion, and tradition, threw everything aside in order to become millionaires.7° Levanda’s criticism of capitalism in Bol'shoi remiz can be found in his treatment

of the Jewish merchant who seeks to become rich by defrauding his fellow Jews. | The author offers a positive alternative in his depiction of the two young musicians, who set themselves worthwhile goals. Significantly, the key to their success hinges 28 The first half of the novel was published with the title ‘Pokhod v Kolkhidu’, Evreiskaya biblioteka,

7 (1879), 1-79. 29 Evreiskaya biblioteka, 6 (1877), 113-27.

288 | Brian Horowitz on the figure of the Polish teacher. The aristocratic Pole serves as a model for the two young Jews, who are encouraged to rid themselves of their provincial Jewish

manners and become cultured. Strangely, the novel features no Russians. The Polish teacher fills the role of patron. Jewish artists, writers, and musicians needed the support of an aristocratic patron in order to succeed in Christian society; as, for example, in the cases of Mark Antokolsky and Anton Rubenstein, who were both befriended and supported by Vladimir Stasov. During the period of the pogroms in 1881-2 Levanda held up the Polish issue as a mirror to reflect Russia’s deficiencies. When violence against Jews broke out in Warsaw in 1881, he wrote an article in which he contrasted the pogroms in southern Russia with the recent pogrom in Poland.®° While he was enraged by the violence in Russia (which the government defended as an expression of the people’s wrath against Jewish exploitation), he was somewhat heartened by the condemnation of the violence in the Polish press. The Poles, he wrote, behaved ‘in knightly fashion, refusing to kick a man when he was down or to applaud bestial behaviour’. One could live in such a society, he claimed. As for Russia, he wondered whether one could ‘live in a society whose chance leaders and self-proclaimed councillors,

dressed in a triple armour of lies, deceit, and unbounded arrogance, overturn _ the most elementary rules of honour, conscience, justice, and human community, taking this for a highly patriotic feat’.2! Levanda’s conciliatory attitude towards Poland did not last long, however, for in Poland, just as in Russia, the Jews continued to be blamed for the violence directed against them. The change in Levanda’s attitude towards Poland after the pogroms of 1881-2 can be seen vividly in his shifting views of the writer Eliza Orzeszkowa.*" Before the pogroms Levanda heralded Orzeszkowa’s novel Eli Makower as the first attempt in Polish literature to depict a Jewish character, Jewish daily life, and the attitudes of Jews towards the peoples among whom they live, without the conventional prejudices of the Polish criticisms or contempt for the humiliated and oppressed person of the Jew, but seriously, objectively, and with a very noble aim. This goal is the reconciliation of the two peoples by means of common understanding and respect, the reconciliation of equals with one another not in the name of some archaic tendencies or illusions, but in the name ofa more rational economic modus vivendi. . .°° 80 L. Levanda, ‘Pis’mo iz provintsii’, Russkii evrei, 3 (15 Jan. 1882), 48-50. The pogrom was the result of events that took place in Warsaw’s Holy Cross Cathedral on Christmas Day 1881. Someone falsely cried ‘Fire!’, causing a stampede that led to several deaths. It appears that pickpockets committed the crime in the hope of practising their craft during the commotion. But the event was blamed on the Jews, and the Poles took revenge by conducting a pogrom that lasted two days. 31 Levanda, ‘Pis'mo iz provintsii’; quoted in Klier, ‘The Jew as Russifier’, 28. 82 Eliza Orzeszkowa (1841-1910). 33 L. Levanda, ‘Tri pokoleniya (iz romana “Eli Makover” g[ospo]zhi Elizy Orzheshkovoi)’, Russkii evret, t (1880), 32. Orzeszkowa’s two Jewish novels are Eli Makower, 2 vols. (1875), and Meir Ezofowicz (1878).

A Jewish Russifier in Despair 289 Orzeszkowa’s achievement was all the more startling, Levanda writes in his introduction to his own translation of the last part of Eli Makower, because the conventional treatment of Jews in Polish literature was so stereotypical.*4 Every Polish author, Levanda lamented, felt the need to include at least one Jew, either a moneylender, an estate manager, or a tavern-keeper. Even the great Mickiewicz could not

resist inventing Jankiel, “whom he suddenly remembered in the last moment of his wildest leap onto his unbridled Pegasus, who, it seems, had no head or legs, but only wings’.®° Levanda claims that Jankiel was merely an artistic inspiration, a symbol that never came alive as a full character. Orzeszkowa, however, was a happy exception. Levanda’s positive attitude to Orzeszkowa evaporated after the publication in

1881 of her article ‘O zydach 1 kwestyi zydowskiej’ (‘On Jews and the Jewish Question’).2° While Levanda conceded that her proposal that Jews and Poles be forced to study together and ultimately intermarry was not objectionable in itself, he was angered by her accusation that educated Jews were responsible for the failure of Jewish integration.*’ He could not help noticing a paradox: only a few decades earlier, when Jews had resisted integration, they had been left alone. As soon as they responded to the call to integrate, the violence began. This paradox revealed the real attitude of Christians towards the Jews.®® But, writes Levanda, Jews should not be fooled by these accusations and threats: They are fake threats aimed at scaring us off the common path. . . so that we will crawl back into the nooks and crannies from which we emerged when we became attracted to the rays of light that shone upon us, too. This only proves that the alarmists are scarcely acquainted with the natural history of our tribe. It is a fact that we are made up in such way that we can only move forward, not backward, and for their part it would be a great deal more sensible if they would reconcile themselves to the indisputable fact of the weakening of our tribal isolation and our acculturation to the civilized world, for they will not achieve their aims: we will not crawl back into our abandoned nooks and crannies no matter what you do, whether you attack us or not!*”

In Levanda’s view, Orzeszkowa revealed the same callousness as those who were

openly hostile to the Jews. Although she encouraged tolerance, she refused to countenance real Jewish equality; she called instead for further concessions from the Jews as a condition for their becoming full citizens. Levanda’s polemic against

Orzeszkowa did not end here, however, as we shall see. | Indisputably, the pogroms of 1881—2 led Levanda into an ideological cul-de-sac. In many articles after 1881 he lambasted Russia for its treatment of the Jews and for

refusing to accept the Jews as equal citizens. At times his articles became highly 54 Levanda serialized his translation of part of E/i Makower as ‘Tri pokoleniya’, in Russkii evrei, 1-4,

, 6-8, 11-12 (1880). 35 Tbid. 31. 86 Published as a pamphlet (Vilna, 1882).

38 Ibid. 1909. 39 Tbid. 37 L_.L. [Levanda], ‘Privislyanskaya khronika’, Russkii evret, 48 (1881), 1906-9.

290 Brian Horomitz emotional. For example, in 1882 he wrote: ‘The fact is that now our enemies do not demand any proof [of our allegiance], they demand our lives. We are Semites, and

, with this enough has been said to justify our death sentence.’4° At the same time he began to rethink his views on Jewish integration in Russia. In particular, he was dismayed by the moral disaffection brought out in the younger generation by the achievements of integration: In the education of our children we have straightforwardly pursued a single aim: let our sons become doctors, lawyers, and engineers. ... We see how the organic bonds tying our children to us and the [Jewish] people become weaker every day. . . . There will come a time, and it is not too far away, when these attenuated home-made bonds will break entirely. Then our children, these cherished, doted-on, and pampered doctors, lawyers, and engineers, for

, whose education we have worked so hard, given up nights of sleep and crumbs of food, our children, you will see, will become alienated and distant, and will reject us as ‘kikes’ with whom they do not have or want to have anything in common. In truth, what binds our , children to us? Religious tradition? They are certainly unacquainted with it. The historical past? But they live in the present, imbued with brilliant hopes for the future. Our experience of suffering? But they haven’t suffered at all and do not suffer. Solidarity with the people’s

interests? They are privileged doctors, lawyers, and engineers, and we are uneducated ‘kikes’; it follows, therefore, that there cannot be any talk about a unity of their interests with ours.*?

Such reflections on the flaws of integration and the permanence of antisemitism propelled Levanda towards a nationalist position in which Jews would not turn to the Russian government for help in solving the Jewish question, but would look to themselves for succour. He expressed his new views in an article in Palestina, a ‘volume of articles and information about Jewish settlements in the holy land’, which appeared under the editorship of Vasily Berman and Akim Flekser in 1884.*” In ‘Sushchnost’ tak nazyvaemogo “palestinskogo” dvizheniya (pis’mo k izdatelyam)’ (‘The Essence of the So-Called “Palestine” Movement (Letter to the Publishers)’),

Levanda expressed his attraction to the proto-Zionist movement, seeing in it a ‘practical solution’ to a ‘vicious cycle’. In fact, he explained that the movement made perfect sense in its historical context as ‘a natural consequence of the preceding causes’ and as a ‘symptom, demonstrating that the process of resolving the so-called Jewish question is entering a new phase’.*° But Levanda wavered in his commitment to the nationalist position. Perhaps

Palestine appeared too far away or the possibility of colonizing the land with 40 L. Levanda, ‘Fel’eton’, Rassvet, 52 (1882), 324—5. This article was written in response to the first international antisemitic conference in Dresden, which took place that year; quoted in Markish, ‘Stoit li perechityvat’ L’va Levandu?’, 125. 41 1. Levanda, ‘Russko-evreiskoe religioznoe obrazovanie’, Russkii evret, 11 (1880), 2031; quoted in

B. A. Goldberg, L. 0. levanda kapublitsist (Vilna, 1900), 28-9. 42 L. Levanda, ‘Sushchnost’ tak nazyvaemogo “palestinskogo” dvizheniya (pismo k izdateliam)’, in V. Berman and A. Flekser (eds.), Palestina: Sborntk statet t svedenti o evreisktkh poselentyakh v Sv[yatoi]

zemle (St Petersburg, 1884). 43 Tbid. 9.

A fewtsh Russifier in Despair 291 millions of Russian Jews seemed implausible. In any case, ultimately he refused to surrender his ideal of the cultured Jew who combined secular and traditional qualities, hoping against hope that the Jews could find a homeland in the Diaspora: ‘Jewish nationality . . . is such a unique phenomenon in history that, in contradiction to logicand theory .. .a definite territory would likely be more harmful than

useful. The Jewish nationality began to harden and crystallize precisely at the

moment when the Jewish people lost their territory.’*+ | In the 1880s, for him a period of ideological disappointment and vacillation, Levanda wrote extensively on the Polish theme. He wrote three novel-length prose narratives and a short history of Poland. As Russia showed itself unwilling to give the Jews rights of citizens (as they were understood in western Europe), he looked to Poland’s past for a model of relations between Jews and non-Jews. Furthermore, _ inhis fiction he depicted an image of the past in which Jews lived happily in a Polish society that, while deeply flawed, reflected the humanist sensibility that was absent in Russia. At the same time he created positive Polish characters—representatives of virtues such as sensitivity to culture, kindness, and lack of prejudice. Equally striking is the absence of Russian figures endowed with these qualities. In 1882 Levanda published Lyubitel’skit spektakl’ (vospominaniya shkol'nika pyatidesyatykh godov) (‘An Amateur Performance (Reminiscences of a Student in the 1850s)’). In what is apparently a roman-a-clef, he features a first-person narrator who closely resembles himselfas a young man, and he states explicitly that the story is indeed based on fact, recalling events from his own life.4°

In chronicling events surrounding the illegal performance of a student play written by the narrator, Levanda presents a broad description of life at the Vilna Rabbinical Seminary. The government of Nicholas I opened this seminary along with its sister institution in Zhitomir in 1847 as an alternative to the traditional yeshiva. The goal of these schools was to create modern rabbis who would spread enlightenment in the Jewish communities. Although unsuccessful in meeting their narrow practical goal, the institutions played a vital role in the formation of a Jewish intelligentsia that would struggle later for equal rights for the Jewish people in Russia.*6

In the novel the narrator confesses that Polish literature serves as the inspiration

for his own development as a writer. He praises the senior supervisor of the seminary, a ‘veteran of the former Polish army’ who is ‘considered the best teacher “4 L,. Levanda, Nedel'naya khronika voskhoda, 38 (1885), 1020-4; quoted in Markish, ‘Stoit li pere-

| chityvat’ L’va Levandu?’, 135.

83-104. .

45 The first instalment of Lyubttel' sku spektakl’ (vospominaniya shkol'nika pyatidesyatykh godov)

appeared in Russki evret, 11 (1882), and the last appeared in issue 23 (1882).

46 M. Stanislawski, Tsar Nicholas I and the Jews: The Transformation of Jewish Society in Russia, 1825-1855 (Philadelphia, 1983), 102—5. For information on the Vilna Seminary, see V. Dohrn, “The Rabbinical Schools as Institutions of Socialization in Tsarist Russia, 1847-1873’, Polin, 14 (2001),

292 Brian Horomitz of Polish language and literature’ in the city. Although receiving high fees for teaching in the girls’ boarding school and in the foremost aristocratic homes, the senior supervisor teaches the hero these subjects ‘gratis and with remarkable zeal’, granting “free access to his rich Polish library, which he treasure[s] like the apple of

his eye’.*” |

When the authorities find out about the play, the hero is summoned to the senior

supervisor. Giving little thought to his own fate, the hero worries about having harmed the one person who taught him to love Polish literature as native Poles love it. Twice a week I was obliged to come to his home, where I was received in his family as if I were one of them, a member of the family—an honour not accorded to any other student. Usually we greeted one another like relatives, 1.e. he kissed me on the forehead and I kissed his hand. Just a few days before, he had gone quite out his mind and wept like a child, almost crushing

mein his embrace, when I, wanting to give him a surprise offering as my benefactor and _ knowing what a passionate Polish patriot he was, had recited by heart in front of his family , two long passages from Mickiewicz’s Konrad Wallenrod and Malczewski’s Maria. But now, _ despite what our relations had been, he had to reprimand and judge me, and for my part I felt that I was almost the chief cause of the danger that was threatening my benefactor! You can — easily imagine what we both must have felt on that occasion!48

While the performance is ultimately written off as a harmless prank, the hero’s acknowledgement that writing the play contributed to his literary progress makes — the story an example of the genre ‘a portrait of the artist as a young man’. If we recall that the story was based on fact, we can understand the powerful effect that Polish literature, as introduced by his Polish mentor, had on Levanda’s development as a writer.

, In 1885 Levanda published Gnev 1 milost' magnata (‘The Magnate’s Anger and Mercy’). Setting the story in eastern Poland in the middle of the eighteenth century, he focuses on the life of Jewish peasants living on the estate of the Polish prince Radziwitt. Levanda does not give the prince’s full name, but he resembles ~ Karol Stanistaw Radziwitt (1734-90), who was one of the wealthiest landowners in the Polish—Lithuanian Commonwealth. In Levanda’s story the Jews of the region

have been suffering through an economic depression brought about by the fact that the magnate has not visited the town for more than two years. The Jews pray for their benefactor to come with his court and make merry, since his revelries stimulate the local economy. The magnate’s visit, however, yields mixed results. Radziwitt orders his chief of

police to have him transported to his castle on a sled, although it is the middle of summer. The Jewish leader and magnate’s bailiff, Rabbi Sakhno, devises a plan to make a road of salt on which the sled can be pulled, and it succeeds. However, things go very badly when the Jews fail to greet Radziwilt on his arrival because they are praying in the synagogue. The magnate calls for the death sentence for 47 Levanda, Lyubitel’skii spektakl' , in Russkii evrei, 23 (1882), 888. 48 Tbid. 880.

A Jewish Russifier in Despair 293 those responsible. But Radziwilt has another reason for enacting this extreme measure. Having discovered that the government in Warsaw is planning to interfere with his absolute control over what he considers his Jewish property, he is prepared to demonstrate his unlimited power. The story, however, has a happy ending. Not only does the magnate spare his Jews, but in the novel’s final scene, amazed at the beauty of Rabbi Sakhno’s daughter, he offers to grant any wish she makes. Instead of asking for money, she asks only

that the magnate come to her wedding. Radziwilt, touched by her devotion and -_- respect, agrees to come with his entire court. Rather than focusing on the horrible examples of the magnate’s cruelty, the omniscient narrator emphasizes his mercy, as shown in this dialogue between Radziwitt and his servant, mediated by the narrator: ‘And another thing,’ added the Prince, already taking up his hat; ‘in the evening send Tramontano to the square with his musicians, actors, magicians, bears, and all the rest of those devils. Let them give a performance under the open sky and let the Jews enjoy them-

selves, watch, and have fun. Do you hear?’ , ‘I hear, your highness.’ ‘And tell them that, just as before, Radziwilt will be their lord in the future. A better lord they will never have for ever and ever. I'll tell those upstarts from Warsaw where to go and they won’t touch my Jews. Let the Jews live in peace until they die a natural death...

Here the narrator joins in with an allusion to the book of Esther (8: 16): ‘And everything was done as it was supposed to be. “The Jews became bright, happy, joyous, and solemn.” ’*

The reader cannot help but be struck by the idyllic tone of the ending. Such language conveys the view that this is a harmonious world. To be sure, there is a hierarchy, with the magnate at the top, but each member of the community willingly accepts this. At the same time one recalls that the hierarchy consigns the Jews to a low status, with their very lives and livelihood fully dependent on the goodwill of a capricious landowner. Moreover, it is striking that Levanda wrote Gnev 1 milost' magnata in the year after the publication of Palestina, the collection of articles in support of proto-Zionist ideas in which he spoke out in favour of plans to transfer the Jews to Palestine. The use of the style called byl’, which is characterized by mock-epic language, to describe Jewish life in pre-partition Poland seems entirely out of keeping with any proto-Zionist leanings. Gnev 1 milost' magnata reflects Levanda’s historical nostalgia. He gave his imagination a choice and it chose to go back to a ttme when Poland was independent and

the Polish aristocrats and the Jews supposedly lived in a kind of symbiosis. He seems to be saying that Polish rule was better than Russian rule because, although Jews were not always treated well, they nevertheless felt happy and were fully aware of their privileges and liabilities in traditional Polish society. 49 L. Levanda, Gnevi milost' magnata: Byl’ XVIII stoletiya (1885; Odessa, 1912), 74.

294 Brian Horowitz Although it might seem paradoxical, Jewish authors of the nineteenth century often depicted the Polish nobleman in warm and sympathetic tones. According to Israel Bartal, the nobleman, despite his wantonness, might be treated positively as a friend of Jewish enlightenment and as an instrument for good.” In fact, the Polish nobleman’s excesses are two sides of the same coin: the arbitrariness and caprice

_ that presage misfortune in one instance can also bring salvation in another. According to Bartal, the positive depiction of the nobleman emerges from the Jews’ need for an ally in Polish society.**

A year after the publication of Gnev 1 milost’ magnata Levanda continued his | ruminations on the history of the Jews in the region with his ‘Sud’by evreev v pol’skoi Rechi Pospolitoi (istoricheskii ocherk)’ (‘Fates of the Jews in the Polish Commonwealth (A Historical Sketch)’).°* Dividing Jewish history in Poland into

three parts corresponding to three different sources of power, he describes the reign of the powerful kings, the rule of the Sejm, and the dominance of the Catholic clergy. In the first period he features the kings’ extension of ‘special’ privileges to the Jews. In the second he describes the rule of the Sejm, lauding this parliament of

nobles for its heightened sense of humanism. Finally, he outlines the increasing

that the Jews had acquired. | domination of the Catholic clergy, who manage to roll back the rights and privileges

But this is not an objective history. At several points Levanda’s description

becomes an anthem of praise. For example, of the Jewish reforms of the Four-Year Sejm he writes that this was ‘the first legislative act in modern Europe that in prin-

ciple claimed for the Jews civil and political rights equal to those of the country’s | other subjects. This reform preceded by several years the great French revolution, | which one usually credits with first proclaiming the equality of all creeds before the law and in the state.’°? In addition, Levanda acclaims the original privileges granted by Kazimierz the Great, who ‘in his enlightened tolerance and amazing humanism was far ahead of his time’.**

What is surprising is not Levanda’s tone but his system of values. While Simon Dubnow and other Jewish nationalists glorify the system of Jewish self-rule in 50 J. Bartal, ‘The Porets and the Arendar: The Depiction of Poles in Jewish Literature’, Polish Review, 4 (1987), 357-8. Bartal writes, ‘Along with a sense of alienation from and revulsion due to the licentious and violent behavior associated with Polish nobility, one also finds strains of identification with this economic and political class with which the fate of the Jews was linked. Thus, one finds side by side deep fears of violence and persecution, and a feeling of affinity and even desire to assimilate to

bonds’ (p. 357). 51 Tbid. 366. some of the traits of the nobility. Other social classes in the Polish state were not the object of such

52 LL. Levanda, ‘Sud’by evreev v pol'skoi Rechi Pospolitoi (istoricheskii ocherk)’, Voskhod, g—12 (1886). According to Simon Dubnow, Levanda’s book is based on Ludwig Gumplovich’s Prawodawstvo Polskie wagledem Zydéw (Krakow, 1867); S. Dubnow, O86 izuchenit istorit russkikh evreev 1 ob uchrezhdenti russko—evreiskogo istoricheskogo obshchestva (St Petersburg, 1891), 27.

53 Levanda, ‘Sud’by evreev v pol’skoi Rechi Pospolitoi (istoricheskii ocherk)’, Voskhod, 11 (1886), 57.

54 Tbid. 9 (1886), 174. ,

A Jewish Russifier in Despair 295 Poland—the Va’ad Arba Aratsot and the efficient local kehalim—Levanda is largely indifferent to internal Jewish life.°° He focuses rather on examples of the successful

integration of the Jews and on displays of tolerance and generosity on the part of Poland’s rulers. It is not a coincidence that the goal of integration, which is embodied in this perspective, is the original aim of his modernization programme for the Jews of Russia. Levanda saves his most biting criticism for the clergy, who, although they were rulers neither in name nor in law, began to wield power as early as the seventeenth century. Levanda notes sadly that, while the politics of the Sejm and the Crown ‘more or less strove for the integration of the Jews with the Polish people, [the clergy] pursued a diametrically opposite aim: synodal regulations simply struck down the royal and Sejm statutes’.°© With the clergy antagonistic to Jewish emancipation, the Jews were ultimately left as alienated and isolated from Polish society as they had been when they first arrived in the thirteenth century.*’ The Polish theme becomes the backdrop for Levanda’s last work of fiction,

Avraam Tezofovich, which deals with the growing influence of the clergy in Poland.°® Apparently written at the same time as his historical sketch (it appeared a month later, in January 1887), this novella provides a realistic depiction of Polish

rule in the early sixteenth century, at the height of Polish prosperity and might. Avraam lezofovich, a young and talented Jew, is invited to serve as the king’s financial adviser on the condition that he convert to Catholicism—which he does. The conversion creates an uproar among the Jews of Krako6w, who send Moshe Galevi

Lando, the chief rabbi of the city and previously Avraam’s personal teacher, to beseech him to return to Judaism. During the conversations between the two men the story takes a psychological turn. Avraam begins to understand what he has forsaken and feels the need to return to the religion of his fathers. Deciding to live in effect as a marrano, he appears to everyone to be a good Christian, but in the privacy of his home he secretly performs the Jewish rites.

With Passover nearing, Avraam prepares his home for the seder dinner. The local Catholic clergy, who have been jealous of his success from the very beginning,

decide to unmask him. Learning of their intention, he and his brothers succeed in removing any sign of Jewish affiliation before the king arrives. Soon after, he resigns his post and goes to Germany to live openly as a Jew. Sadly, he does not find peace there either, but dies of a tormented conscience. The key passage explaining Avraam’s world-view lies in his repentance of his conversion:

°° See S. Dubnow, ‘Avtonomizm kak osnova natsional’noi programmy: Pis'ma o starom i novom evreistve, 7’, Voskhod, 12 (1901). °© Levanda, ‘Sud’by evreev v pol’skoi Rechi Pospolitoi’, Voskhod, 11 (1886), 65.

°7 Tbid. 12 (1901), 15.

58 L. Levanda, ‘Avraam Iezofovich: Istoricheskaia povest’ pervoi poloviny X VI-go veka’, Voskhod, I-2 (1887).

296 Brian Horomitz Ever since I betrayed the holy faith of our fathers, I have not had a peaceful minute. I do not sleep at night, my conscience troubles me, and I am not happy with life. All the honours that have been showered upon me by the king gave me no satisfaction; they burn me and I am ready any minute to give up everything and run to the ends of the earth. One should remain in the religion of one’s birth until one’s last breath. In betraying my religion, I made a mistake for which I will repent until my grave. Here Satan meddled and clouded my reason. And therefore I have to correct what I mistakenly did in an unfortunate hour. Otherwise it would be better not to live at all.°°

While the story can certainly be read as a protest against the phenomenon of religious conversion from Judaism, which had grown to serious proportions in Russia, Levanda underscores the dilemma facing the Jew who seeks integration. Forced to choose between integration and his religion, Avraam makes a fateful choice that leads to his death. At the same time the image of Poland is ambiguous at best. While Levanda exonerates the king of antisemitism, he portrays the Catholic clergy as an evil force. Pressuring the king to force Avraam to convert, the clergy persecute him, seeking his downfall at every turn. Not surprisingly, the situation

portrayed in the novel corresponds exactly to the views about the clergy that Levanda expresses in his article ‘Sud’by evreev v pol’skoi rechi pospolitov’.

The character of Avraam in many ways resembles Levanda himself. Desiring acclaim at the highest level of his adopted society, Levanda also encountered resistance because he was Jewish.®! He understood that his literary success would be enhanced if he converted, as did his colleague Grigory Bogrov.® Clearly the psychological dilemma Avraam experienced was one that Levanda could easily © imagine. It is also likely that Levanda wrote his novel in response to Eliza Orzeszkowa’s historical epic Meir Ezofowicz (1878). Levanda had good reason to want to correct aspects of her portrayal, especially since Orzeszkowa’s novel had come out before the pogroms and was widely seen as a realistic portrait of Polish Jews. It may be

for this reason that Levanda gave the hero of his novel the same surname as Orzeszkowa’s hero. Although the stories treat different historical periods—Meir Ezofowicz takes place in the early nineteenth century—the issue of integration with the host nation is the main theme in both. Orzeszkowa’s hero, Meir, is punished with a herem (excommunication) by the narrow-minded religious obscurants who 59 Levanda, ‘Avraam Iezofovich’, 48. , 60 Conversions from Judaism were rising in the 1880s. For a short description of this phenomenon, see G. Sliozberg, Dela minuvshikh dnet, 3 vols. (Paris, 1933), ii. 94.

61 Levanda did not have a degree from an institution of higher education and therefore could only gain the right to live in Russia proper by converting to Christianity, becoming a legally certified artisan, or being registered as a servant to a merchant of the first guild.

62 In letters from 1878 Bogrov advised Levanda to move to St Petersburg and write on general _ themes for a Russian audience—and thereby to escape the unpleasantness associated with journalism on the Jewish question. See Goldberg, L. 0. levanda ka publitsist, 19-20.

A Jewish Russifier in Despair 297 keep the people in poverty and ignorance. In Orzeszkowa’s account the religious fanatics are responsible for hindering the Jews’ progress towards integration.

In opposition to Orzeszkowa, who contrasts progress with obscurantism, | Levanda treats the issue of Jewish identity in subtle and troubling ways. Instead of

progress versus obscurantism, Levanda juxtaposes self-realization and loyalty. , Although Avraam would like to be of use both to Poland and to its Jewish citizens, the conditions of his service, set by the Poles, prohibit him from serving without betraying Judaism. In addition, even after he has converted to Christianity, he is still an object of persecution. Thus, it is not the Jews who need to change but the Poles. Polish intolerance harms not only Avraam but also the interests of the Polish state, since it causes Avraam to leave his position in the chancellery, where he had

managed to revive the economy. Although Levanda does not give usa consistently positive image of Poland, it seems safe to say that his engagement with Poland asa literary theme in the last years of his life reflects his search for a time when the Jews of eastern Europe were integrated, happy, and well treated. Having rejected Palestine as a potential home for the Jews,

Levanda needed something to believe in, somewhere to build a future for the Jewish people. Although this ideal could not be contemporary Poland, as his debate with Orzeszkowa shows, he emphasized the few happy times in Polish history— inevitably contrasting them with the unhappy situation in contemporary Russia.®°

It is important to consider, however, that Levanda needed to stretch the truth in | various ways to interpret Poland as he did. After all, Karol Radziwitt was in fact one

of the most rapacious noblemen in a period famous for aristocratic excesses.° Moreover, the Polish reform of the Four-Year Sejm, so exalted by Levanda, died © stillborn, incapable of overcoming the resistance of the Catholic clergy. And that poignant image in Bol'shot remiz of two Jewish musicians leaving Galicia with their Polish teacher to begin brilliant careers in western Europe is hardly credible. In a study of Levanda’s fiction Akim Volynsky notes ironically: ‘For double effect, the intrigue begins with cruel violence against a Jewish girl who, from a tavern buffet, later lands on a concert stage and wins abundant laurels.’® But it would be wrong to ,

consider Levanda an incorrigible idealist. After all, he wrote Avraam Iezofovich 63 Tevanda expressed his dismay over the situation of the Jews in Russia following the pogroms in a series of articles published in Voskhod and Nedel'naya khronika Voskhoda in 1881 and 1882 under the titles ‘Mimokhodom (letuchie mysli nedoumevayushchego)’ and ‘Mimokhodom (skromnye besedy o proshlogodnem snege)’. 64 According to Professor George J. Lerski, ‘basically uneducated and an excessive drinker, [Karol

Radziwill] found a place in the Polish national tradition as a symbol of the backward and corrupt magnates, who brought about Poland’s destruction’ (G. J. Lerski, Historical Dictionary of Poland (Westport, Conn., 1996), 493-4). 6° A. Volynsky, ‘Bytopisatel’ russkogo evreistva: Kriticheskii obzor belletristicheskikh proizvedenii L. O. Levandy’, Voskhod, 1 (1889), 25.

298 Brian Horomitz precisely for the purpose of showing the difficulties of achieving Jewish equality in medieval Poland. Although Levanda tried to create various positive images of Poland, the modern reader will probably find Avraam Iezofovich the most realistic depiction of all. And precisely because Levanda’s images diverge from reality, they provoke questions about his motives. If he really felt close to Poland, why did he not write in Polish, a language that he spoke fluently, and devote his efforts to achieving equal rights for Jews there? Or, conversely, why did he not move to St Petersburg and set himself up as a model of integration, depicting in his fiction images of Jews successfully living together with Russians?©* Why did he write in Russian for a Jewish audience about a Poland that no longer existed? Although it 1s impossible to be sure, the chronology suggests that in the 1860s Levanda was convinced that Russia would embrace its Jews, granting them equal

rights. When that did not occur, he turned to historical Poland as a model for relations between Jews and non-Jews. In the Poland of the past he discovered moments when Jews lived in harmony with Poles—although he was careful not to overlook the times of persecution. He also expressed his admiration for Polish mentors, such as the senior supervisor in Lyubitel’skii spektakl’ and the music teacher in Bol’shot remiz who supported and encouraged Jews in their desire to become creative artists. Similarly, he expressed a love of Polish literature, consider-

ing it more highly developed than either the Russian or the Jewish literature of

, his day.

| In many ways Levanda’s evolution makes sense in the context of his political programme. His indifference to Poland before 1870 is explained by his faith in ~ Russia. We recall that the promise of Alexander II’s Great Reforms had a spellbind-

_ ing effect on the Jews. It also makes sense that when the Russian government turned to reaction, Levanda retreated into history, after expressing his anger in a few articles following the pogroms. In the Polish past he discovered unrealized pos-

, _ sibilities for relations between Jews and non-Jews. At the same time he saw much that was worthy of acclaim in contemporary Polish culture and its representatives. By telling stories about near-misses in the past, and consoling himself with depictions of Polish Judaeophiles, Levanda tried to lighten the weight of the obvious failure of his political programme—a failure that, according to witnesses, ultimately caused his death.®” 66 See the 1861 letter to Levanda from his friend and the former editor of Vilenskii vestnik M. F. de ~ Poulé published in Goldberg, L. O. Levanda ka publitsist, 31-2.

°” ‘The patriotism of Lev Levanda and many other Jewish “Russophiles” significantly grew cold _ [after 1881]. One has to consider that the crack in his argument in favour of “unity” with the Russian people, who were groaning under the yoke of autocracy, shook his whole spiritual world, and he even

became a proto-Zionist, dying from a serious mental illness at the age of 53> (Rivesman, ‘Vospominaniya i vstrechi’, 75). Dubnow confirms this view with his own description of a mentally broken Levanda awaiting death in a mental asylum in Vilna (Dubnow, Kniga zhizni, 131).

Like a Voice Crying in the Wilderness: ‘The Correspondence of Wolf Lewkowicz MIROSELAW WOJCIK

‘WHO DOESN’T KNOW CAN’T UNDERSTAND’ THE portrait of any nation’s history is largely a function of memory. Here I speak not of history understood as a collection of facts connected by a network of apparent interdependencies. Rather, what I have in mind is something that could be called the objective, supra-individual criterion of a person’s identity: the secret place in which the peculiar contradictions of human fate commune, where paradoxes shed their illogicality, and variations turn out to be nothing more than different pages from the same book. Out of this memory individuals may draw the sense of their own existence. During dramatic historical moments this memory may become the ultimate point of reference—the Buberian pegs allowing us to erect a tent out in the open field of earthly existence. Unfortunately, this knowledge often comes too late. Such an idiosyncratic understanding of history is demanded by the reading of an

uncommon document that has survived in spite of the logic of history: a collection | of letters written between 1922 and 1939 by Wolf Lewkowicz, a Jew from L6dzZ, to his sister’s son Sol Zissman (Shlomo Ya’akov Zissman), living in the United States. Apart from its irrefutable historical value, this correspondence from the inter-war years has special significance. It captures the Jewish community of 6dz from the perspective of an individual; it paints a picture of the life of 16dz Jews as seen through the eyes of someone who, unknowingly, was becoming living history. The drama of a nation read from the perspective of the individual prevents our understanding of the real suffering of concrete people from being dissipated. For this reason it is impossible to treat the letters of Wolf Lewkowicz as just another document on the ignominy of European civilization.

Holocaust historians do not complain of a lack of documents. Rather, the problem is how to animate the memory and imagination of people today, and this purpose appears to be served better by the intimate exchange of words between

| 300 Murostaw Wojcik ordinary people than by impersonal statistics and inventories of facts. We are incapable of truly empathizing with the suffering of millions of people—the tenth or twentieth person becomes an emotional abstraction for us. From the information sprinkled throughout the letters of Wolf Lewkowicz the patient reader is able to piece together a precise portrait of the characters in this

correspondence, the places in which they lived, the circumstances of their existence, and a psychological portrait of the author. But what is the sense of such a reconstruction? The people described in these letters vanished into the chasm of the Second World War, the places described exist no more or have been changed beyond recognition, and as for the language in which the letters were written, the contemporary world (especially the non-Jewish one) learned about it only thanks to the Nobel Prize awarded to I. B. Singer. The subjects touched upon in this correspondence are often of a personal nature; hence the value of the observations may easily be questioned as too subjective.

Paradoxically, this is exactly why Wolf Lewkowicz’s correspondence is an exceptionally valuable document, presenting the sort of personal information that would be impossible to find in historical syntheses. Only this type of document is capable of bringing us closer to the way past events were experienced by the people who lived through them. Just as the best psychological novels are ones in which

there is not a word about psychology, the best sources for comprehending the essence of history and penetrating into the consciousness of the participants in past events seem to be those that were not specifically created for the documentation of history. For this reason private letters hold a special place among the many and varied materials on the life of Jews in Poland.

The letters of Wolf Lewkowicz are not only an uncommon psychological document; they also constitute a rare lesson in humanity for the modern reader. Contemporary study of these letters takes place under specific circumstances in that today’s reader has historical knowledge at hand that was unavailable to Lewkowicz. Thus the reader looks at the world of inter-war L6dz or Opoczno from

a double perspective: on the one hand, his or her thoughts accompany the consciousness of the letters’ author; on the other, he or she observes Lewkowicz’s world from a distance created by time and with the memory of the fate of Jews during the Second World War. The reader realizes that, just as in a Greek tragedy, the hero is doomed to defeat. With this knowledge we follow the course of the singular existence of a tragic hero—a person inevitably drawn to his own destruction. Still, Wolf Lewkowicz did not struggle with fate. The factors involved in

, the tragic fate of the Polish Jews were human ignorance, antipathy, and finally hatred.

Like a Voice Crying in the Wilderness 301

, THE CORRESPONDENCE The compiled correspondence consists of 192 letters encompassing the period from 5 August 1922 to 8 August 1939.’ The vast majority were written by Wolf Lewkowicz; a few were written by members of his family. They are all addressed to Lewkowicz’s nephew Sol Zissman, who had emigrated when he was 11 years old

and lived in Chicago. Lewkowicz was 36 years old when he began the correspondence. A few weeks after the last letter was sent to Chicago, he arrived in the Opoczno ghetto, from which, on 7 December 1942, together with other Jews from Opoczno, he was transported to Treblinka. There his fate was sealed. Lewkowicz’s letters were usually more than a dozen pages long. The author was aware that the length of his letters was atypical. He writes: ‘I would consider myself very fortunate if I could leave my devoted nephew alone, not bother him with any

long letters, but rather write short, matter-of-fact, American-style letters: “My family and IJ are fine and all right. How do you feel and how’s business???” (no. go).

For the contemporary reader of this exchange, however, it is truly fortunate that he wrote letters that were long, open, and rich in the details of life in the Jewish community in inter-war Poland.

“EVERY TIME I WRITE YOU A LETTER, I WRITE YOU MY

BIOGRAPHY IN DETAIL’ ,

Wolf Lewkowicz was born on 15 April 1886 in Konskie, a small town situated midway between Piotrk6w Trybunalski and Kielce.2 Kinsk—as Lewkowicz called it, using the Yiddish name—was inhabited at the time by a few thousand Jews; in 1921 there were 5,037 and in 1939 about 6,500.° On 6 February 1909 Lewkowicz married

Malke Rotberg. After their wedding he and his wife lived with her relatives in £,6dz: I lived in £.6dz; I dealt in barrels and waste; I rented two shops and didn’t open either one; I moved to Kinsk. 1911: I opened a glass shop in Kinsk; went along with a partner to the marketplace with blue dishes; I dealt in panes of glass until 1913. Then I went bankrupt and liquidated everything. I went back to #6dz. Although the decision was to go to America, fate ‘ Written in Yiddish, the letters were translated into English after the war and are currently available

on the internet (http://web.mit.edu/maz/wolf), in the library of Harvard University, and in the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC. The owners and copyright holders of the letters are Marshall Zissman and Sol J. Zissman, the author’s relatives. A growing selection of the letters may be found in Polish on the internet (http://strony.wp.pl/wp/mswojcik). Letters 8, 36, and 175 were published in the Polish monthly Midrasz, 6 (1997), 40-4. Minor changes to the English translation have been made

for publication in Polin. oe

2 Letter 92, L6dz, 18 Sept. 1928; in a different letter (no. 143, £6dZ, 7 Oct. 1934), however, Wolf

Lewkowicz states that he was born on 7 Oct. , 3 P. Burchard, Pamigtki i zabytki kultury zydowskiej w Polsce (Warsaw, 1990), 139.

302 Mirostaw Wojcik decreed that I remain in £.6dZ and open an oats and food shop. I operated [it] for a year, and the war broke out. 1914: everything is stolen, and all falls into ruin. We become poor; we suffer from hunger and need; we sit in the dark; we live in fear of death. (no. 139)

Lewkowicz found himself in Konskie at the outbreak of the First World War; the famine in 4.6dz had forced him to return to his home town. He became a baker without a licence until the authorities decided to bring an end to the illegal production of rationed bread. For engaging in illegal business Lewkowicz landed in gaol for fifteen days. He was rescued from his hopeless situation by the Hochbergs, the owners of the foundry in Konskie, who arranged the licensing of his bakery. Lewkowicz’s clothing when he went to the Hochbergs for aid testified to his need: I didn’t find Mr Hochberg in when I arrived, but all his wife had to do was to take one good look at me, and she could see the whole story written in large letters. First of all, I was wear-

ing a pair of boots with wooden soles. Secondly, my coat was made out of a dyed sack. Thirdly, I had bought my pointed hat from my Uncle Yankl for 5 kroner, and it must have looked it. (no. 3)

Lewkowicz summarizes the next few years of his life as follows: 1915: L returned to Kinsk rejected, disowned; I began to do business with partners making panes of glass; I became gravely ill and remained lying in bed in Kinsk until 1916. Then I became a baker, where I had dealings with a very low class of people; I suffered enough from their abuse and shameful acts; I baked matzohs in a partnership until 1921. Then I returned to £.6dz; I went into the trouser business with a brother-in-law of mine. 1922: I became a partner of another brother-in-law. 1923: we all entered into a partnership, i.e. my father-in, law, my two brothers-in-law, and I. 1924: we become pedlars. In 1926 I became a miller in Opoczno. 1929: I worked as a salesman for my brother-in-law in Opoczno. 1930: I became

a worker in a factory, having lost whatever money I had . . . 1931: I return to work in the factory and work there until 1933. At the start of the year I was thrown out of the factory because of the unemployment situation. I wandered about for four months without work, without any way of making a living. Before Passover I went to Opoczno and became a partner in the baking of matzohs. In May 1933 I began to work again, although under very adverse conditions. In July I burned my foot at the factory, lay in bed for seven weeks, and went back to work at the factory, where I continue to work until this very day, although not more than three or four days a week. (no. 139)

The year 1919 came and Poland reappeared. ‘From that time on, a new epoch started for us,’ Lewkowicz wrote. When he was beaten up by his Jewish com, petitors as he was entering the synagogue on the sabbath, Lewkowicz withdrew from the bakery profession. It was this incident that he had in mind when he wrote of ‘a very low class of people’. His attempts at bootleg production of alcohol, and then soap production, also ended in fiasco. In the depths of despair Lewkowicz drew on the remainder of his bitter irony: ‘As it turned out, God hadn’t forgotten me completely. He couldn’t stand to let things go as smoothly as all that, and I was struck down by typhus’ (no. 3).

Like a Vowce Crying in the Wilderness 303. In 1920, during the Polish—Soviet war, Lewkowicz ended up in the army; the draft included all men between the ages of 19 and 35. The youngest were sent to the front. Lewkowicz was released after two months of service. The following year, with no prospect of earning a living in Konskie, and under pressure from his wife and in-laws, Lewkowicz decided to move to Lodz: , Not having a choice, I bowed my head in shame and arrived in the big city of Lodz with a broken spirit, impoverished, naked, barefoot, blackened by fate, encumbered by a broken dresser, a table with only three legs, an iron cot, some bedlinen, rags, and tatters of clothing,

two uneducated girls of 7 and 9, and a nursing infant to top things off. (no. 3) ,

The money brought from Konskie lasted three months. Wolf tried hard to earn a living selling agricultural goods; later he tried his luck in the tailoring profession. Although he shared cramped living quarters with his in-laws—he lived in the kitchen—life in $6dz made him happy. In letters sent to America he gave his | address as $.6dz, Wolczanska 168, at the Rotbergs.* His comments on the changes taking place in his life are significant: ‘Here, I send my two children to school, and I am able to dress better. I now wear a short coat, and my wife, Malke, has taken off her shaytl [wig]. Slowly we are becoming Germans—although poor ones’ (no. 3). Lewkowicz hoped that life in the big city would increase his chances of earning | money. After all, he now bore the responsibilities of a husband and a father: in 1912 his first daughter, Balcia, was born; in 1916 his second, Rifka; and five years later his son, Joseph. Although he tried many things, his hopes of earning a living were soon dashed. Succumbing to depression, he even considered suicide: At that time, I had a stand in the marketplace with ready-made trousers and suits, where I dealt for a year and accomplished nothing. . . . These were the saddest two years of my life. I didn’t have a place to live, but stayed with my wife’s parents with two iron beds. Life was unbearable, as you already know from my long letters. Therefore, I constantly thought only of either freeing myself of the world or freeing the world of me. (no. 50)

Not for the first time, or the last, a relative in Chicago came to the rescue, send-

ing Wolf $160—the equivalent of 829 Polish zlotys. This made it possible for Lewkowicz to rent an apartment. From 1924 until 1939 the return address on the letters to America reads ‘ulica Lipowa 44’ (‘44 Lipowa Street’). Lewkowicz had to be satisfied with the independent living quarters, because apart from this nothing

had changed. His family was still suffering in poverty; Lewkowicz still strove to | earn a living: I began to deal with selling on payments, i.e. for example, I would buy a suit for 100 gulden. I would give the merchant 50 gulden in cash and 50 gulden in a two-month note. Isold it toa customer on payments. I earned 30 per cent, 1.e. I sold it for 130 zlotys; the customer handed me 20 to 30 zlotys immediately, and the balance was to be paid out over a period of ten to twelve weeks. (no. 50) 4 Wolczariska is the street that another Jew from L6dz, Julian Tuwim, mentions in his long poem Kwiaty polskie (Warsaw, 1977), 147.

304 Miurostam Wojctk As Lewkowicz notes, this type of business was eliminated by Wtadystaw Grabski’s _ stabilization of Polish finances, which Lewkowicz described pithily as creating ‘a mess of the entire economy’ (no. 50). The year 1926 brought a rare—for Lewkowicz—improvement in his financial situation. Yitshak Eliezer Chmielnicki, his brother-in-law from Opoczno, offered him a partnership ina mill, and Sol in Chicago gave Lewkowicz $200 to invest as his share. The letters from 1926 provide many details of this undertaking. Work in the mull started at the beginning of May 1926. Lewkowicz had counted on earnings

reaching 50 zlotys weekly. The partners agreed to divide the profits according to the percentage of their initial investments; Lewkowicz was to get 20 per cent. Wolf summed up the first year of work in the mill this way: ‘Our business is too small for us to be able to produce everything that we require. Seventy-five per cent [of

the gross income] is eaten up by wages, taxes, interest, and refurbishing, and four families are supported by the remaining 25 per cent’ (no. 74). The mill went bankrupt at the end of 1927. There were several reasons for this: _ the grain available in the region was of poor quality and the partners were forced to

bring in grain from Poznan, which raised production costs; high taxes and their meagre investment capital precluded expansion; strong competition held down _ profits; and their traditional hydraulic mill was unable to compete with the modern steam-powered mills functioning in the area. As Lewkowicz reported to his nephew,

‘We eventually had to shut down the mill completely because from Sukkot to December we lost about $1,000’ (no. 78). In 1929 Lewkowicz worked as a simple labourer in a factory. Although he had often repeated that it was better to earn less and be an employer, he no longer had any choice in the matter. He saw the opportunity to work five days a week as a blessing. His working day began at 6 a.m. and lasted until 8 p.m. His daily earnings were the equivalent of 8o cents.

The year 1930 brought tragedy to his family: on 23 April, at the age of 109, Lewkowicz’s elder daughter, Balcia, died.

In 1931 Lewkowicz worked only three days a week and earned 2 dollars a week; at the end of the year he lost this job too. ‘Iwo years later, on 1 June 1933, he started work in a dye-house. A month later he suffered an accident in which, whether as a result of inattention or perhaps the cruel joke of a Catholic co-worker, boiling hot dye poured over his foot. The sulphuric acid ate deep wounds into it: “The doctor removed the skin from my foot just as a calf is skinned,’ he wrote later

(no. 135). | |

On 12 March 1935, after three months of enforced unemployment, Lewkowicz started to work four days a week, but the following year he had another accident at work; this time he fell, breaking a rib. He had to spend several weeks in bed. His

subsequent unemployment lasted until 15 January 1937. Six years after the death of his daughter Lewkowicz experienced another personal tragedy: after many months of illness his wife, Malke, passed away.

Like a Voice Crying in the Wilderness 305 In the first days of September 1939, upon news of the encroaching war, Lewkowicz left 6dz together with his children, 23-year-old Rifka, for whom he could not provide a dowry (and therefore marriage), and 18-year-old Joseph, who was unable to emigrate to his cousin in Chicago. Lewkowicz’s last surviving letter is dated 8 August 1939. In its final words the author envisions his sad fate: ‘I have a sort of premonition that I will not achieve the age of 75 of my father, may he rest in peace, nor the age of 65 of my mother, may she rest in peace. In Poland these days one is considered an old man at the age of 55, and every year that one lives longer than that is considered a prize’ (no. 178).

Wolf Lewkowicz was granted only one year beyond the age of 55. During the war the Lewkowicz family, along with the remaining Jews of Opoczno, was resettled in the ghetto. There they lived for over three years, until 7 December 1942. On that day the inhabitants of the ghetto were transported to Treblinka.

‘EVERY WORD A PEARL, EVERY LETTER A DIAMOND’ Jewish letters crossing the Atlantic from Poland were certainly not rare in the interwar period. As we gather from observations in Lewkowicz’s letters, complaints about poverty and pleas for financial support were common: ‘I convinced myself... that I should write less in the letters that I write to you, i.e. that I should not conduct

myself as all the Polish Jews who always write sad and complaining letters to America’ (no. 88). In one of his letters Lewkowicz cites the opinion of Sol’s former teacher Rabbi Todros of Konskie, according to whom 15 per cent of Poland’s Jews were supported by American relatives. Although Lewkowicz, too, requested material assistance

in exceptional circumstances, his letters do deviate from this pattern. He often repeated that the words of his American nephew, which were a sign of his care and sympathy, were more precious than the money. Lewkowicz had the opportunity to familiarize himself with many letters written

by wealthy American Jews to their poor relatives in Poland. In none of those, however, did he find what Sol’s letters contained: true empathy. Evidence of the importance of his nephew’s letters for Lewkowicz may be found in nearly all the surviving letters. From his reflections we may reconstruct the character of the correspondence: the writing, sending, receiving, and reading of the letters. This was a correspondence not so much realized as celebrated.

The composition of Lewkowicz’s letters attests to the literary talent of their author as well as the significance he placed on these words sent across the ocean. He had a talent for description; today’s reader of his letters will gain not only a precise

image of Lewkowicz’s circumstances, but also an insight into the state of the author’s soul. We may thus make both intellectual and, more crucially, emotional

contact with the contents. Lewkowicz does not conceal his emotions from his

306 Mirostaw Wojcik addressee: ‘I write you this letter not with ink, but with tears,’ he confesses in a letter from 1932 (no. 133).

: This description is typical: ‘Today, Tuesday, or more correctly Monday night, I am answering. Dear brother, I sit now in the mill, quite alone. It is exactly 2 a.m. The sky 1s already showing the first signs of day. Tonight is a lovely summer’s , night; the air is fragrant, and I am strolling around and standing guard; today is my turn to stand guard. We are four partners; each of the partners stands guard one night to prevent our being burgled’ (no. 72). An enormous amount of information is contained in this seemingly fleeting communication: the temporal, spatial, and personal circumstances in which the author finds himself. All of these elements serve to convey the uniqueness of the -moment within the banality of the passing hours. This is the way a person writes who is capable of tasting life, who, in his words, strives to overcome the time and space separating him from his correspondent. As Lewkowicz himself states: ‘I will relate as much as I [can] in a letter so you will be able to picture [everything] just as if you had witnessed the scene yourself here on the spot’ (no. 99). Lewkowicz usually begins his letters with this sort of description. He prefers to write when he can concentrate solely on his letter. This concentration also makes it possible for him to penetrate the depths of his own soul: ‘When I sit down to write a letter to you, my devoted one, I would like to reveal everything to you, not only what troubles me on the surface, but even what the underlying pain is’ (no. 139). In a similar manner, Lewkowicz describes the circumstances under which he receives letters from his nephew in America. Here again we have specifics of time and place and information about the subtler aspects of atmosphere, mood, and the elements of the author’s religious imagination. He approvingly sets forth his brother-in-law’s opinion regarding Sol’s role in his life: ‘It is nothing other than an

act of God that you are a messenger from heaven to provide me with food and rescue in my time of need. . . just like the sainted Joseph provided food finally for his father, his brothers, etc.’ (no. 40). | It would be difficult to deny the genuineness with which this L.6dz Jew, standing on the brink of destitution, writes of letters (and often of money) from America in

terms of divine intervention. He describes his prayer on Rosh Hashanah in an |

, Opoczno synagogue in 1926: engaged in this way with my prayers and my pleas, I think to myself, ‘And who came forward on my behalf in my most critical moments, who was the first to respond to my call, if not you, my devoted Sol?’ I do not know what compelled you to act in this way, my tearful letters or your kind-heartedness, or merely the fact that you are a mensh [decent person]. Perhaps it was decided in heaven that you should be my deliverer. And you are not out of my mind for one minute, for one second. I am praying for you just as I am praying for myself, ‘Our Father, our King, inscribe us in the book of happy life. Our Father, our King, inscribe us in the book of maintenance and sustenance. . . .’ I exert my strength and pray like a small child, ‘Our Father, our King, remember your mercy and withhold your rage and

Like a Voice Crying in the Wilderness 307 avoid problems, sword, and hunger. .. .’ At that moment I heard the postman shout ‘Chmielnicki’.° I was, as it were, confused. Right away I thought that it is certainly a letter for me from my devoted and beloved one. The letter arrived just as if it were a guest who is awaited. He is talked about, preparations are made to receive him. Believe me, Sol, that not one second passed during the two-day holiday that I didn’t have you in mind, and suddenly your letter was here. (no. 60)

Strikingly similar to the account cited above is one found in a letter from 1928: I received your short letter of 20 August on the eve of Rosh Hashanah. It’s worthy of note how fittingly timed your letters to me are. I remember that I was in Opocznoa year ago. I was reciting the Musaf service. I was in the midst of the ‘Unasaneh tokef’ prayer, just finishing ‘who will live and who will die’, when suddenly I heard the postman call ‘Lewkowicz. A letter from America’. You can imagine how happy your letters made me and my sister. It was

exactly the same this year. It was the day before Rosh Hashanah, Friday afternoon. We were about to light the candles, preparing to go to the synagogue, and I said to Aunt Malke, ‘I’m really surprised that Sol hasn’t sent a letter for such a long time.’ It wasn’t five minutes until [heard a shout, ‘Lewkowicz. A letter from America’. So, Sol, you can gather that your letter was on my mind during the whole holiday, both when I was praying and when I was eating. (no. 92)

It is difficult to say whether this is a wishful interpretation of the facts, or an uncanny coincidence. However, even if there is no way of verifying such descriptions, their content sometimes becomes—regardless of intentions of the author—a universal metaphor for the Jewish fate: a sign read only after the facts of a particular situation have become recollections of the past. The fragment below is an example

of such a description. In a letter from 1937 describing his son Joseph’s dream, Lewkowicz tries to convince his nephew that a supernatural power reigns over their exchange of letters: It was approximately two weeks after Passover on a Saturday morning when I awoke my Joseph from sleep in order for him to go to synagogue to say kaddish. My Joseph said to me, ‘Father, I happened to be dreaming a pleasant and sweet dream, and it’s too bad that my father woke me up because I would have liked to experience such a dream for as long as possible.’ I anxiously asked him what sort of dream he had been dreaming, and he told me that, while he doesn’t know you personally, nor does he know your wife or your son, nonetheless with his own eyes he had seen the door in our home open one fine morning and you, your Esther and Leonard came into our home. You didn’t find anyone at home except

for him, Joseph. You asked whether he recognized you, but instead of answering he embraced and kissed you. He was so excited by the happiness and surprise that he wanted to run to tell me the news of your arrival, but I woke him up in the midst of the dream, and he was very saddened that the dream hadn’t gone on to its end. This was at about 8 a.m., and the postman knocked on the door an hour later and handed mea picture of all of you. Well, Sol, how do you relate my Joseph’s dream to the picture that you sent? Is there a connection, or is ° During his stay in Opoczno, Lewkowicz used the address of his brother-in-law Eliezer Chmielnicki for correspondence (ulica Katuzna 11).

308 Muirostaw Wojctk it just a coincidence like other coincidences? I note for the second time that everything that I write to you here is the exact and pure truth, not a word of exaggeration. (no. 162)

In Lewkowicz’s metaphors, characterizations of Sol’s letters hold a special place.

The sphere of associations is rather broad: sustenance for the soul, nourishment, water for the thirsty, jewels, a mirror. For example: “To me, your letters are just like food for the spirit. I nourish myself with your letters just as one who is starved stills his hunger. Your letters satiate me, but the more I read of your writing, the greater my desire to read more’ (no. 62); ‘I read your letter very carefully, and every word is a pearl for me and a mirror for my wife’ (no. 54); ‘Every word a pearl, every letter a diamond’ (no. 73). Evidence that this kind of formulation should be treated as more

than just metaphor lies in Lewkowicz’s actual behaviour: he would often forgo breakfast to save money for sending letters to America (no. 130). Lewkowicz found the strength to joke even in the most tragic moments of his life. He himself was well aware of this talent, and considered it a family trait. His mother’s humorous sayings were still being repeated 1n all of Jewish Konskie. Irony served him as a way of expanding the significance of a point. With a joke one can speak of vital matters without arousing pathos: ‘in each of my jokes lies a trace of

seriousness’, he wrote (no. 148). He even speaks of God with a gentle irony: ‘it appears that the Master of the Universe hadn’t forgotten about me. He has a great love for me and, because of His love, He punishes me with the sort of pain that even the greatest hero could not bear’ (no. 113). Wolf associates the deeper meaning of the joke with the essence of the Jewish nation, which has also been able to survive because of this skill, despite the adversities of history: ‘Yet, surely, itis always a part of our nature to joke with each other now and then, because if we didn’t laugh out loud once ina while we would long ago have ceased to exist in this sinful little world’

(no. 8o). |

‘I STOOD BY THE GRAVE, SAID A FEW WORDS IN YIDDISH’ On the question of the language used in the correspondence, one important caveat must be made: all my remarks apply only to those linguistic aspects that can be analysed on the basis of an English-language translation and on Lewkowicz’s own reflections on language. Language has become a reliable element in the characterization of human mentality and cultural belonging; it speaks of the psyche, the philosophy, the religious and social convictions of its user, and testifies to the individual means of interpreting reality. This exchange of letters took place on the borders of three languages: Yiddish, Polish, and English. At the start of their correspondence Sol Zissman had lived in the United States for over a decade; English was the language in which he conducted business and spoke with his family. He had left Poland as an 11-year-old boy, but took with him to America a knowledge of Yiddish; however, his Polish was

Like a Votce Crying in the Wilderness 309 poor. Lewkowicz, on the other hand, did not know English; naturally, he knew Yiddish and Polish. His son, Joseph, spoke only Polish, though he started to learn Yiddish a few years before the war. Lewkowicz’s daughter Rifka knew Yiddish, but knew Polish much better; she began to learn English at the age of 19. The relationship between Joseph and Sol was characteristic of the linguistic situation of those days: two Polish Jews were not able to communicate in the same language; one knew Polish too poorly, the other Yiddish. |

As a result of this linguistic predicament, Wolf Lewkowicz becomes the gobetween in exchanges of information between Sol and his family living in Poland; Sol, on the other hand, keeps his uncle informed about what is happening with relatives in America. The tie that binds Wolf and Sol in this relationship is the language in which they explain to each other two mutually foreign worlds. Sol repeatedly stresses the significance of the Yiddish language, associating it with the

issue of Orthodoxy, of faithfulness to the Jewish tradition and religion. He reproaches Lewkowicz for failing to educate Joseph and Rifka in the Yiddish language. The ‘accused’ replies: I beg you, dear Sol, not to blame your uncle because you ought not to think that, during the eighteen-year-period in which you haven’t seen him, your uncle has completely assimilated. No, [he is] the same uncle, with the same Jewish heart, even with the same little Jewish hat. However, the circumstances are completely different. The children go to a public school where Polish, not Yiddish, is taught. I can’t enter my Joseph in a Hebrew school because [ don’t want to send him to an old-fashioned school where they teach ‘V’yoymer . . . and he said’, ‘V’yedaber . . . and he spoke’, and a reformed Hebrew school would cost as much as 70 cents a week. Besides that, he doesn’t have spare time to study. So, I teach him something every day. Over a period of time [ also want to teach him Yiddish. For example, my Rifkele is already able to write a Yiddish letter, but she is not able to read well yet. In a word, Sol, they are still young children and will be able to speak Yiddish eventually. First of all, they have to be familiar with the language of the country . . . (no. 127)

Knowledge of the Polish language, so the Jew from £.6dz attempts to explain, is a practical necessity rather than a sign of cultural identification. Nonetheless, among the younger generation especially, fluency in the tongue of Mickiewicz was not always accompanied by fluency in that of Peretz. What is the Yiddish language for Wolf and Sol? It is the language in which they write heartfelt letters, in which they relay not only events but also subtle feelings and moods. Yiddish appears to be a tongue made specifically for prayers for assist-

ance, for accepting complaints, and for expressing pain and despair: | As to your writing that my last letter, written on the eve of Yom Kippur, touched you to tears, let me make it clear to you that a person experiences moments when he is so bewil- | dered, so pressured, that one’s heart becomes heavy, one’s eyes flow with tears and, at such a time, the pen doesn’t need to wait for material. The pen writes by itself, without any dictation, without any forethought. (no. 39)

310 Muirostaw Wojctk Yiddish is also the language in which one speaks with the dead or marks ceremonial occasions. Recalling his visit to the cemetery in Opoczno, where his mother was buried, Wolf recognizes the necessity of accenting this event: ‘I stood by the grave, said a few words in Yiddish’ (no. 83). In celebrating the Jewish holy days, one cannot use Polish: ‘I am sitting here at the table,’ writes Balcia, Lewkowicz’s eldest daughter, ‘dictating to my father a [Rosh Hashanah] greeting to you. I would write you myself, but somehow Polish is not suitable on such an occasion and I am just ~ now learning Yiddish’ (no. 13).

Finally, Yiddish is a language that had the power to save a life. Lewkowicz’s efforts over the course of many years to leave for America came to nothing. A few years before the war the despairing father tried to send his son Joseph to Chicago. Sol could have justified his need for Joseph as an assistant by saying that he needed

, a translator who spoke fluent Yiddish, and in this way the family could have overcome the many restrictions on immigration. Unfortunately, Joseph did not know the language of his forefathers. A separate issue is Lewkowicz’s use of the Polish language tn his letters. I have already noted Lewkowicz’s lack of interest in the non-Jewish community. The language of this correspondence proves, however, that the Polish language and Polish customs were not foreign to him. Polish appears in the letters in various forms. Most frequently, single, phonetically written Polish words are injected: for example, przednéwek—‘from the days before Passover until 1 August we have what

is known as Pszednowek [the period before harvest when peasants were at their hungriest]’ (no. 73); or months of the year, as in: ‘Pazdziernik [October], we had to pay for the renovation... And this month, Listopad [November|’ (no. 63). More rarely there are Polish sayings and popular phrases, always prefaced with an introduction such as ‘there is a saying going around here’ (no. 87), or ‘there is a - popular saying in Poland’ (no. tor). Sayings, parables, quotes, mottoes, aphorisms, and allegories are Lewkowicz’s true passion. Only one Polish saying is relayed in the original: ‘Jak ma byé kwasne, niech bedzie jak ocet’ (‘If it’s going to be sour, let

it be like vinegar’) (no. 87). The remainder are translated into Yiddish: ‘You don’t know a person until you do business with him or live with him’ (no. 48); ‘A drowning person will try to save himself by grasping for the sharp end of a razor’

(no. IOr). | Lewkowicz’s use of Polish in his letters exemplifies the linguistic habits of the traditionally oriented Jew who, nevertheless, lives in a Polish-speaking milieu and works with Poles. Very typical, for instance, is the fact that he uses the Polish names ~ of the months—a linguistic practice stemming most likely from his work at the mill, which was so closely tied to the seasonal labour of Polish peasants. The use of language in Wolf and Sol’s correspondence is a profound sign of the cultural changes that were taking place among Jews on the two continents. Asa sign of the new historical, social, and cultural reality, it was reflected in the mirror of language perhaps more accurately than in ideologies, convictions, and aspirations.

Like a Voice Crying in the Wilderness 311 The Yiddish language acted as the last bridge across an ocean dividing a community of one tradition, one language, and one God.

‘LET OPOCZNO BE OPOCZNO’ I noted at the outset that Lewkowicz’s attention is directed, above all, towards the Jewish community. The towns described in Wolf’s letters are Jewish towns. The people recalled are, as a rule, members of the same faith as the author. ‘Our’ customs, ‘our’ poverty, are Jewish customs and poverty. Certainly, this selectivity is not evidence of a particular aversion on Lewkowicz’s part to the non-Jewish community. Rather, it is a reflection of the actual conditions of the coexistence of Poles

and Jews in the inter-war period: Jewish isolation may have been as much an expression of the lack of interest in people on the other side of the cultural and religious divide as of the need to strengthen community ties in the face of threats

against the group. In helping his American nephew to envision Polish towns, Lewkowicz devotes a great deal of space to his own home town. His words lead us down the streets that no

longer exist in Jewish Opoczno, Konskie, or 6dz. They register facts, names, colours, situations, and jokes; they strive to capture the dynamics of the street in suggestive images, and delve into the etymology of place names. The charm of these descriptions is the emotional involvement of the writer, even where the dominating emotion is antipathy or aversion. Opoczno—currently a city of 20,000 people—lies midway between Radom and Piotrkow Trybunalski, and has been inhabited by Jews since its very beginnings in the fourteenth century. At the onset of the Second World War about 3,000 Jews lived in the city. Lewkowicz spent many months, at various points in his life, in Opoczno and its environs; hence this city holds a significant place in his letters. His sister lived there, and, with his brother-in-law, Eliezer Chmielnicki, he conducted business here. Generally speaking, though, Lewkowicz did not accord Opoczno much sympathy. The town was for him almost synonymous with the countryside, with boredom, and with cultural and social backwardness. According to Lewkowicz, even the etymology of the town’s name testified to the aptness of such convictions: [have been ina variety of towns and villages, but such a backward town as Opoczno I have never seen in my life. It was no accident that King Casimir ITI ran off with a Jewess, Esterka, and gave this forsaken town the name of Opoczno, because it was here that they spocznie, rested.° It is quiet, silent as the inside of an ear. If it weren’t for the fact that once in a while an accomplished speaker comes to the House of Study and makes a good speech, the whole town would fall asleep. (no. 74) ° Lewkowicz presents here the historically unauthenticated, though eagerly spread, tale of the Polish

king’s Jewish mistress Esterka (mentioned in, among other places, the chronicles of Dlugosz). It is worth noting that this is one of the rather rare instances in which, while writing in Yiddish, Lewkowicz writes Polish words and ponders their meanings.

312 Mirostaw Wojcik Compared with .6dz’s busy streets, and for Lewkowicz’s lively temperament, small-town life must have seemed sleepy and stagnant. Lewkowicz put it succinctly: it was a cemetery for living people. He wrote: “The life is no life; the people are not people’ (no. 104); “95 per cent of the people are poor, naked and barefoot. .. . The town looks like a cemetery; the people resemble corpses; the houses look like tomb-

stones’ (no. 134). Reprehensible behaviour, cheating in trade, and unfair business practices he calls ‘the methods of the Opoczno Jews’ (no. 71).

His description of an Opoczno street is tempered with irony—a sign of the writer’s distance from this reality: Here in Opoczno the sun has finally come out and we see in the street broken beds, straw, colourless yunk, chalk-covered chests. Women are running around helter-skelter. One is scraping a noodle board in honour of Passover. A second is running with a brush in her hand. A third is already carrying matzohs covered with a white pillowcase. In a word, we can see that the beloved, pure kosher Passover is coming, in which all the slovenly dressed women

two weeks from today will be queens and their husbands kings. (no. 83) In a letter penned on 8 October 1926 in Opoczno, Lewkowicz includes the most thorough characterization of this town and its inhabitants. The wealth of detail, the peculiar language, and the bitter irony make this fragment worth citing in full: Your father-in-law, Mr Anker, remarked about the town of Opoczno that it is a cemetery with graves and there is a dead body in every grave, i.e. the marketplace and the streets are dead, like a cemetery, and in each of the shops, that is, the graves, stands a dead body, an owner. I think, Sol, that if you examined the nature of an owner, you wouldn’t laugh, but you would cry at the sort of creature God has in his little world. All week long, not enough is taken in to buy cigarettes, but Thursday, on market day, they wait until the peasants come into town; they take advantage of them however they can. Practically everyone in town is observant; on the other hand, it’s hard to find a good person. The main streets of Opoczno are named Pudding Street, Mud Street, Shoemaker’s Street, Yiddish [Zydowska] Street. Katuzna is also muddy where your uncle lives. The principal businesses here are lime and stones. The fields are stony; the earth is stony; even the people are like stones. They have hearts of stone. For one to inform against his neighbour is of no consequence. One of them observes what another does, and immediately imitates him. One wants to tear the bread out of the mouth of the other. If someone here earns a living, his life is not safe; they talk about him in the chapel of the synagogue, at the ritual bath, at the court, etc. You can imagine the sort of contentment in which the town lives merely from the nicknames by which they address each other, instead of using real names. So, for example, I was able to record several names on my radio memory and write them out for you. Read carefully and perhaps you will remind yourself of the sort of land you were in. Here, in Opoczno, can be found a Shmiel Pipik (Belly Button), an Avraham Maygel (Neck), a Yankel Bochenek (Small Loaf), and a Meyer Petzke (Small Penis); a Nutan Kvoke (Rooster) and a Mordechai Hokeh (Hook); Yisroel Sralash (Defecator) and a Moishe Mik and an Avraham Bik (Bull); Mendel Yak, Shia Mooz, a Yankel Koysa (Drinker), a Nachman Dralik, a Kookeh Bosteh, a Faygel Pesses and Yente Pesses, and so on. There is not one person to be found in the town whois called by his first name; rather, it’s a Moyshe Movches and a Pinya Dovches; a Chaim

Like a Voice Crying in the Wilderness 313 Latek (Patch), a Shmiel Tramze, a Yarachmiel Grapler (Grabber) and a Pyerge, and so on. It’s simply terrible to live in a town where everyone has a nickname. Only I, for the time being, am called Reb Wolf. Even though I don’t have anything to do with anyone here, nevertheless I have acquired a few enemies. But what do you think, Sol? It seems to me that it’s better to have enemies than friends. .. . Isn’t that so? (no. 61)

Wolf dedicates significantly less space in his correspondence to his birthplace. Konskie. He recalls Jewish Kinsk only occasionally, reminiscing about his father’s and grandfather’s graves in the Konskie cemetery and recalling the names of local Jews from the end of the nineteenth century: Akiba Freundlich, Itche Przednowek, Yerachmial Zinger, Yosel Tsuker, and Yankel Lewin (no. 145). The description of the approach of Passover in Opoczno cited above is typical of

the author’s musings on the forms of culture in contemporary Jewish circles. Generally speaking, in his bond with the past and with strict custom, Lewkowicz is a traditionalist. He does not praise the new world order and does not tie his hopes to the modern movements arising out of Judaism. On numerous occasions he sentimentally recollects ‘the old days’, when religious traditions were observed with piety in Jewish homes. Now the situation looks entirely different: living in constant fear and uncertainty and lacking the means for proper observance cannot foster tradition: J am sitting and remembering what Yom Kippur in a small town used to be like in the old days, twenty-five years ago, when you were still a child. These days, the old-time fear, the terror, the weeping, the fright, the traditional observance are missing, although if you go out in to the street, you can tell that today is the eve of Yom Kippur. (no. 118)

Lewkowicz asks his nephew about the details of holy days spent in Chicago: ‘Write to me about how Purim was there. .. . Do you also eat kreplach [meat-filled dumplings] during Purim? Do you also hit Haman?’ (no. 67). He himself longs for times past as he observes the secularization of life that is taking place before his eyes: ‘Write to me about how Yom Kippur looks there at the time of Kol Nidre [the service on Yom Kippur eve]. In Lodz, it’s also less religious than it once was in the small towns about fifteen years ago. Remember, Shloyme. . . eh?’ (no. 36). In Poland, as Lewkowicz writes, the religious are those with sufficient imagination and those lacking the means for an honourable existence: To your question as to whether we go to Kol Nidre with the same fear that we did fifteen years ago, I can write, my devoted one, ‘No’. It has decreased by 50 per cent. The handful of young people don’t want to pray at all. The only ones who pray are the middle class, the poor, and the aged! As far as that’s concerned, Sol, I’ve heard that the Master of the Universe is a bankrupt. (no. 94)

Some customs are observed, however, in an extraordinarily scrupulous manner. A real problem for Lewkowicz, as the father of the maturing Rifka, is the necessity of ensuring a dowry. He comes back to this topic in his letters with a stubborn

314 Miurostaw Wojcik consistency increasing in direct proportion to Rifka’s age. The wealth of details regarding the dowry is explained by the fact that this custom is entirely foreign to Sol: if man works, why does he need a dowry? Polish reality looks completely different: ‘Just as was the case thirty years ago, the father of a daughter must provide a dowry for a young man, and it’s very sad for the father or the young woman who has no dowry ... and what father wants his daughter to wither away and not to make a

wedding for his daughter at the right time?’ (no. 170). | Lewkowicz notes further that, ‘here in Poland, we don’t yet have a practice under which a young man would marry a poor girl without a dowry’ (no. 174). An exception is those young people who actually fall in love, yet this is not a frequent occurrence: ‘we dare not wait for miracles’ (no. 174), he bitterly admits. The following fragment speaks profoundly on the intricate connection between emotions and money in the age of inflation: Shmiel Lewin, Uncle Yankl’s son, got engaged a year ago in Czestochowa to a decent girl with 2 million marks of her own. It so happened that the value of the Polish mark fell, and the 2 million marks became worthless. He broke that engagement and soon became engaged in Tomaszow to 8 million. Now he’s engaged for the third time to someone with 15 million

marks. He’s racing with the commodities market; as the dollar raises the value of all the goods in the country, such as bread, herring, onions, garlic, his value also rises. Our young fellows think, ‘if prices of perishable goods go up so much, how much more so should ours!’

(no. 8) , Three years later Wolf returns to the engagement of his relative: ‘Aunt Breindel’s Shmiel is a shoemaker. He wants a dowry of $300; “If not, let it rot”, he declares’ (no. 56). The wishes of the young would-be groom were fulfilled: ‘Shmiel Lewin entered into an engagement contract [ with a family] from Mielec, in Galicia, which is now part of Poland. He received a dowry of $1,000 and the assignment of one-half of a building’ (no. 64). The problem of a dowry for Wolf’s daughter remained unsolved. In the last of the surviving letters (8 August 1939) Wolf declares, ‘My only wish from life is that I

be deemed worthy of giving my only daughter’s hand in marriage’ (no. 178). Despairing and forced to overcome his embarrassment, he asks Sol for money. This request will not be met. The war breaks out three weeks later.

A MENSH | Typical of the way in which Lewkowicz perceives others is his division of people in two categories—and these categories are not at all connected to national or religious belonging. According to him, a person is either a mensh or a shlimazel. He uses the

, first to refer to people who are honest, truthful, and loyal. In Lewkowicz’s letters this term is most often connected with his American nephew. The term for a failure

in life, however, he applies more than once—and humorously—to himself: ‘I

Like a Voice Crying in the Wilderness 315 consider myself, as my . . . [wife] calls me, a sh/imazel, a ne’er-do-well, a good-fornothing lazy bum’ (no. 94).

In all certainty Lewkowicz was aware of the traps of xenophobic, racial, and ethnic prejudices. This is understandable in a person who had experienced in his own life the effects of the nationalistic prejudices of those around him. When Sol entered into a partnership with a Greek, Lewkowicz wrote: it makes no difference what his nationality is. The important thing is that he be a mensh and understand what business 1s. By chance, I have had many occasions in my life to speak to

Greeks. The Greek people are very intelligent. Culturally, they are on a par with other European peoples. ‘They have an admirable history. There is less antisemitism experienced among them in Greece than in other European countries. (no. 150)

| But Lewkowicz’s enthusiasm waned somewhat when Sol informed him of his Greek partner’s dishonesty. Forgetting his praises of the Greeks, he warns his nephew, ‘be careful because Greeks have a reputation for being clever swindlers’ (no. 162). This amusing inconsistency does not in the least reflect upon Lewkowicz’s open, friendly, and tolerant attitude towards others. The letters reveal much about Lewkowicz’s cognitive culture, his intellectual horizons, and his curiosity about the world (although the books and authors he mentions testify to an interest primarily in the literature and culture of the Jewish world). Among the famous Jewish writers and poets Lewkowicz mentions are Yitshak Leibush Peretz, S. An-Ski, Mordkhe Spektor, and Israel Joshua Singer (he praises the novel Chaver nakhman). He kept abreast of literature and current events by reading issues of Forverts, which Sol sent from Chicago. The fairness and cred-

ibility of this newspaper, Lewkowicz asserts, made it unnecessary for him to describe the conditions of the Polish Jews; the editors of Forverts already did this very well. Also thanks to Forverts, Lewkowicz was up to date on American affairs. He asks for Sol’s impressions of the landing of a German Zeppelin in the United States in 1928, bemoans the inability of American forces of justice to deal with the criminal activities of Al Capone, asks about details of a 1927 flood in the United States, and takes an interest in the presidential elections of 1928 and 1932—despite the fact that the election results are of no practical significance in his life: ‘I am certain that neither one of them will let me into the Golden Land’ (no. 88). Wolf Lewkowicz led the life of a pious Orthodox Jew. His traditional connection to the eternal, unchanging course of Jewish life caused him to look uneasily upon the accelerating assimilation movements, the gradual secularization of traditions, and the propagation of Zionist or—‘has v’cholilah [heaven forbid]’—communist ideas among Jewish young people. A sign of antipathy towards converts in his circles can be found in this comment: ‘We feel so lonely in $6dz. No one ever comes up to visit us, no one in the family, no friend, no neighbour, just as if we were converts, may God forbid’ (no. 115). He is glad that Sol is raising his son in the

316 Murostaw Wojcik Jewish spirit. In the first letter he wrote to Sol’s very small son, Lewkowicz justifies

| the need for the young to preserve Jewish identity: One of the Ten Commandments you are able to grasp, and you will find it in your Khumesh [Pentateuch], 1.e. Honour thy father and thy mother. Treasure and honour your father and mother, and you will be treasured and honoured. Remember that you were born a Jew; become familiar with your national background and history. Study and acquire knowledge. The more you study, the more you will know. The Torah makes one wise and opens the eyes of all who study it. (no. 155)

Lewkowicz recollects the past with deep feeling, and sees in it the ideal of a decent, peaceful, and simple life. The rhythm of his reflections on life is marked by the prayers in the synagogue on Rosh Hashanah.

‘LIKE CLAY IN THE HANDS OF THE POTTER’ The letters he wrote to his nephew in Chicago gave Lewkowicz an opportunity for reflection and for posing questions about the future. The anniversaries of his birth and of the deaths of dear ones, visits to family graves, and holy days in particular put him in a reflective mood. In his references to the detailed self-assessment that takes

place during the annual prayers at Rosh Hashanah, which Lewkowicz calls ‘a _ balance sheet’ (no. 157), one can trace the abrupt increase in pessimism among Polish Jews in the 1930s. Lewkowicz undertook his most extensive self-assessment, however, on his fiftieth birthday 1n 1936. He estimates that two-thirds of his life has

, passed. With his typical affection for visual metaphors, he writes: ‘Iam stuck in the midst of the climb up the mountain, like a horse’ (no. 151).

| Of his hopes for a better future Lewkowicz writes only in the earliest of the letters: ‘I want to live with the hope that the time will yet come when I will be a person equal to other people, that the time will yet come when I will reminisce on my troubles and sufferings from a position of happiness’ (no. 15). Later he sees his private life in consistently dark shades. In one of the letters written in 1923 he depicts his circumstances as follows: I was an unfortunate and still am. I have become worthless, not respected. I have no initia- , tive, no courage; [ am dependent on someone else; I am subordinate to another. I can’t , achieve anything better. I can’t reach my goal. To speak plainly, each day I sink a bit deeper, like that other seaman. I stumble about and can’t find the right road in business, and I am , also alone, and I have no one to pull me out of the swamp, no one to steer me onto the right path. In a word, Iam vanquished and powerless. (no. 37)

Sadly, little would change in Lewkowicz’s future. Along with poverty, oppression, and loneliness, as a sign of his intellectual maturity would come irony and the ability to rise above the piercing pressures of life. In accordance with the saying

‘things will be bad until the 15th of the month . . . and then they'll get worse’

Like a Voice Crying in the Wilderness 317 (no. 29), he does not expect radical changes in his circumstances. He is conscious of the fact that his life full of sufferings constitutes good material for an epic illustration of human fate. On his twenty-sixth wedding anniversary he writes to Sol: ‘Twenty-six years are not twenty-six days. Twenty-six years is a piece of a lifetime, a piece of history, and such a tragic twenty-six years to boot... A writer, a poet, would be able to compose a whole series of books respecting these twenty-six years

of lifeand torment...’(no.145). Although Lewkowicz does not express hope for a better future in his letters of the 1930s, the way he appraises the torment of his private life and that of his compatriots is significant. The Jewish nation has suffered enough, he states, finally to bring a change of fortune. Moreover, he writes in 1931, the very fact of the existence of Jews despite their misfortunes is the best proof that miracles do happen. A few years before the war Lewkowicz ties his hopes to his children. He feels his life is settled: ‘I still thought about being able to rescue a few years of my life, but I have become convinced that I was in error; my life is played out. My principal concern is that my children will be able to support themselves, that they will not have to struggle and be tormented like me...’ (no. 156). In his Rosh Hashanah prayers in 1936 he pleads only on behalf of his family, not for himself: ‘when I stand in the synagogue this Rosh Hashanah and offer an account to the Heavenly Court, I will try not to mention my name, but [only] the children and family. I will pray for my family and friends near and far to be inscribed and sealed for a good year’ (no. 156). A letter from July 1939 brings a dramatic call in which Lewkowicz includes a metaphorical image of his life as a sinking ship: I have been travelling for my whole life on a broken, sinking ship that is constantly on the verge of going under. I would not be terribly sad if the waves swept our ship aground. .. . The problem is that our broken ship, whose name is ‘Life and Torment’, may be able to last for God knows how many years. Therefore, from time to time, it’s necessary to send out calls for help, flares, telegrams, radio messages: SOS. . . . Help is needed as quickly as possible. . . (no. 177)

| In one of the last letters, written three months before the war broke out, a yearning for change—change at any cost—takes precedence over fear. In the face of the interminable wait for the worst to happen, which was draining all his strength, even war seems desirable to Lewkowicz: ‘In the event that a war is going to break out, let it break out now. In a word, Sol, I no longer pray or hope for good times. However,

| if things are to be bad, let them be very bad’ (no. 176). Lewkowicz’s awareness of the oncoming tragedy becomes clearer at the beginning of the 1930s. ‘I feel that the world is closing in on me from day to day and from hour to hour,’ he writes in 1932. Later comes only a momentous profession of faith

and acceptance of the incomprehensible workings of God: ‘I am, after all, very much like clay in the hands of the potter. He makes whatever he wants to with the clay...’ (no. 134).

, 318 | Mirostaw Wojctk ‘LET ME IN’ The wealth of subjects covered in the correspondence between Wolf Lewkowicz and Sol Zissman precludes a comprehensive presentation of the material. This exchange of letters encompasses numerous colourful details of life in Poland before the Second World War: an epidemic of cerebral atrophy in Poland (no. 78); an explosion in a chemical factory in .6dz (no. go); a general strike in that city (no. 94); uncommonly cold weather in 1929, with temperatures sinking to —50°C (no. 99); the funeral of the Bund leader Yisroel Lichtenstein, who died in New York but

| _ whose body was taken to £.6dz for burial in 1933 (no. 135); the performances of Lucy and Misha German in £6dz (no. 168); and so on. Many themes in this correspondence are worthy of a separate inquiry; among them would be, for instance, the unrealized emigration plans of Lewkowicz, who exhausted nearly all means—legal and illegal—to find a way across the ocean separating him from Sol

and a safer world. ,

I close this characterization of human lives set down on paper with an image of a

very special nature. On 15 February 1925 Sol Zissman and Esther Malke were married in Chicago. In addition to heartfelt wishes, Lewkowicz sent Sol a letter containing the description of a dream that could be interpreted as almost prophetic: Having read through your letter . . . the image presented itself to me that I, your uncle, was also invited along with the other guests (and why not, indeed?). I mustered all my energies and journeyed forth—TI don’t remember the details of the journey to convey them to you— whether with a visa or without. I only know that I grabbed my shabdes [sabbath] suit and a

wedding gift and ran, taking one train, then another, and a third; then, finally, I’m in Chicago, I ask directions to your address, 2954 [Lincoln Avenue], but I find the shop closed. I ask a second, a third passer-by, a tenth one. ‘People! Rascals! I’m a stranger! Why won’t you point out where my nephew lives? His wedding is today!’ But no one pays any attention whatsoever; no one has any compassion. I see crowds of thousands of people rushing, running, each one trying to surpass all the others, as I stand and cry out, ‘Have pity on me. Take me to my nephew, who is getting married today.’ One person stops and asks me, ‘Why is it so important for you to be at his wedding?’ I do not answer him a word, but merely point to my heart, saying, ‘See, look in here.’ ... it is a winter’s day, and it starts to get dark. I walk along and weep. My heart is sad, when suddenly I hear music. Yes, perhaps this is the place. I come closer and listen carefully, and see that it really is here. Yes, my heart trembles with joy. Now, any minute, I will have the honour of seeing you and your beloved before my eyes and be able to give you my blessing. But I wait an hour, two hours, and every minute more guests arrive bedecked with flowers; the cars fly by like demons and none of the guests gives me so much as a glance. I know each one of them, but they don’t know me; or else they do know me, but don’t want to acknowledge me because they’re embarrassed by a poor man—this is an old story. But I grow impatient; too much time is passing. I send word into the hall to you, with one of the people, saying, ‘Your Uncle Wolf is waiting outside and wants to come in; he also has a Kiddush cup for a wedding present that he brought with him; he has come unexpectedly, without a wedding invitation.’

Like a Voice Crying in the Wilderness 319 But I wait an hour, two hours, and I see nothing and hear nothing. I wander around. I turn here and there like a worm. I beg the guests, the doorman, saying, ‘Have mercy, let me in to the szmcha [family celebration]; this is, after all, my semcha, my nephew, my...my...’, and the tears choke me up so that I remain mute. I stand and wonder what, after all, should I do now in order, at least, to set eyes upon my dear, beloved nephew on the most important and interesting day of his life? I look about me; perhaps I'll see an acquaintance or a familiar person who might take me into the hall. As I looked around, I saw a young woman of about 35 years of age, with a black veil covering her face, and she suddenly embraced me and began kissing me and hugging me. ‘Wolf,’ she said, ‘you are here, too?’ “Yes, of course,’ I said. I look closely at her face and discover that I have the honour of speaking to my sainted sister, Sarah. Yes, that’s how it was. Both of us weeping, good and proper. ‘Why aren’t you inside, in the hall?’ she asks me. I reply, “The poor are considered as dead.’

I stand and look at her, your sainted mother, my still-unforgotten devoted sister, and notice that she is wiping her eyes. And she says, ‘Never would I have imagined, after so much anguish, until I gave him birth, until I raised him, until I brought him to America. . . , and now, to have to stand apart. And do you think, my brother, that I can rest peacefully in my grave? I worked very hard for the orphans I left behind. Especially did I have my heart and soul set on my one and only son, Shloyme, marrying his Esther Malke, whose name was called out in heaven as his mate for a match made in heaven.’ ‘And why did you come here?’ J asked her. ‘In order to give my son my blessing before the chupa [wedding]... And you?’

“The same.’ |

‘But what will come of this? They won’t let us in. If they don’t admit me as the mother, they certainly won’t let you in as an uncle.’ ‘But you’re dead and I’m alive,’ I say. ‘But my spirit 1s alive,’ was her answer. She takes me by the hand, leads me in through a back door, and says to me, ‘Observe

everything, but say nothing whatsoever.’ | I am inside; the hall is lit up, the music plays, the guests enjoy themselves. I see you, my child, standing under a canopy, the cantor reciting the E/ mole rachamim memorial prayer, and with the words ‘may she rest in peace’ your sainted mother gives you her blessing and. . . disappears. Confused, I went back into the hall to convey my blessings to you. I still remember my benediction to you. In the Talmud Berachos there is a passage about a sage who once saw

(and benefited from) a beautiful tree. Wanting to bless the tree, he said these words to the tree: “O tree, what can I wish you? Your fruit is sweet, your branches widespread, you couldn’t be more beautiful. So, I will wish you this—May it be God’s will that what issues from you will take after you.’ Just about at these words there came a knock at the door, and I awoke. Upon awakening, I felt very weak and covered with sweat. I felt so tired and faint .. .as though I had been ona distant journey, or perhaps at a wedding! Yes, it was merely a dream, but this dream I will long remember. So deeply is it engraved in my memory that I will not forget it soon. (no. 28)

320 Murostaw Wojctk Sol Zissman was able to read this description of his uncle’s dream on the day of his wedding because his uncle in Poland had taken care that the mail be delivered to his nephew in Chicago precisely on 15 February 1925. In this way Lewkowicz realized his dream of going to America. He had already decided to leave Poland at the beginning of the 1920s. His letters are witness to the difficulties, the dreams, and the hopes tied to that emigration. Sadly, as in the dream, he was able to bea guest among his more fortunate compatriots only as a ghost, a dreamlike apparition. In July 1939 he asked for help for the last time. Did he really think there was still a chance? ‘I had no alternative other than to approach you with my call for help in my

time of trouble hoping that my request would not be like a voice crying in the

wilderness...” (no. 177).

, “ON THE BRINK OF DISASTER’ As noted above, Lewkowicz concentrated his attention on the Jewish community, though he certainly did not bear irrational prejudices towards non-Jews. It would

| be impossible to accuse him of xenophobia or a lack of religious tolerance. His rather unfavourable description of the Jewish residents of Opoczno is the best evidence of the fact that he did not deduce the most essential value of human nature

from ethnic, religious, or social belonging. : In 1923 Lewkowicz remarks: ‘Living in Poland lately is very difficult’ (no. 14). This comment will reappear often in his letters. At first, the reasons he gives for it are primarily to do with poverty, unemployment, inflation, and lack of housing. It is

only later that antisemitism joins this list of woes. Lewkowicz’s observations on the economic situation in Poland in 1925 are bleak: ‘The situation is not good here in Poland. This is a wretched and depressing time’

(no. 29); ‘merchants are jumping off the fourth floors; tradesmen have become beggars’ (no. 36). In 1926 he comments: ‘Ninety per cent of the Jews in Poland find themselves in a difficult situation’ (no. 44). The year 1928 yields these observations:

' ‘Business 1s very weak in Poland. There are a great many bankruptcies. £.6dzZ is overflowing with goods, but there is nowhere to send it. There is no demand. Competition 1s fierce’ (no. 86). In 1929: “The crisis in Poland is intensifying from day to day. Factories operate two days a week; massive unemployment; no commerce; no income’ (no. gg); ‘Recently the bankruptcies have taken on such a catastrophic character that there’s already talk about such firms as Poznanski, Hebler, Gompe, Herman being bankrupt’ (no. 1o1); ‘6dz is 100 per cent crooked; (no. 104). The following year: ‘Currently, there’s a terrible crisis in 6dz. The statistics indicate 50,000 unemployed. Ninety per cent of the factories have gone bankrupt, and it’s still going on. There is no business being conducted, no earnings’ (no. 114). In 1932: “The suicide epidemic has not halted. ... Huge companies that have been in business for 80—100 years go broke and disappear. ... However, one gets used to

Like a Voice Crying in the Wilderness 321 all the things that one observes. The most important thing is that it gets worse every day and there is no prospect of improvement’ (no. 131); “There are now 150,000 unemployed wandering around £4.6dz. Almost 75 per cent of the factories are closed or have gone bankrupt. The economy has gone to hell, and it looks as if the whole world is on the brink of disaster’ (no. 133). In the 1930s Lewkowicz begins to complain in his letters of a rising antipathy towards Jews in Polish society. He now answers Sol’s questions with reports of the

multiplying antisemitic incidents. In a letter in 1935 we find a shocking picture of Jews praying in a synagogue, conscious of the threat that has relegated their material worries to the shadows: Yes, Sol, this year at Rosh Hashanah Jews in Poland shed more tears than during other years. Somehow, every person came to synagogue to pray with a downcast attitude, and with

tight-lipped feeling, and when we came to ‘Our Father, Our King, remember Your compassion and suppress Your anger, bring an end to pestilence, bloodshed, famine, captivity, destruction (iniquity, plague), evil mishap, every illness, every obstacle, every strife, every sort of punishment, every evil decree and baseless hatred from upon us and from upon all the members of Your covenant,’ rivers of tears were shed by the congregation. One could clearly see how our faces were flushed with shame because a world full of enemies has pounced on us and wants to destroy us, to kill us, to push us back to the ghetto of thousands of years ago; a sea of decrees, of antisemitism, storms towards us from every part of the world and will kill us, destroy us. Hitlerism on the one side, Communism on the second side, anti-

semitism on the third side. . . (no. 149) :

Lewkowicz laments the antisemitism spreading throughout Poland at the inspiration of the Nazis. He also sees German interests being served by the pamphlets calling for boycotts of Jewish shops that were distributed on the streets of £,6dz (he sends two such leaflets to Chicago in 1935). He had already written about a boycott of Jewish goods a few years earlier, but at that time he blamed the Polish press for arousing antisemitic feelings: “Surely you read there in the newspapers about what the Polish students wrought, what sort of deeds of mockery they carried out, in Warsaw, Vilna, Krakow, Lviv, etc. The fever of excitement [surrounding] the boycott hasn’t abated to this very day’ (no. 127). Polish Jews cannot count on effective protection from the state: “The government is powerless to stand up against the many parties that spring up like mushrooms after the rain in order to do battle against Jews, in order to snatch away the last bit of bread from Jews’ (no. 149). Wolf holds no illusions about the politicians of the front pages: ‘A bunch of bandits. Each one just like the others’ (no. 143). Wolf expresses apprehension about the future as early as 1933: The Inquisition being conducted in Germany by the actions of Hitler is indescribable. ‘The epidemic is slowly spreading to Poland. Violent acts take place, unrest in the streets. Jews are

- being physically attacked here and there. Thanks to the capable police that we have in Poland, every excess is stopped in its tracks. Nevertheless, people are selling their buildings; businessmen are liquidating their businesses, manufacturers their factories; and they leave

322 Muirostaw Wojcik for the Land of Israel and settle down to a primitive form of life. A new stage in lifeisnow __ approaching. Jews are going through terrible times. A wholly new epoch in life is arising. _ Germany threatens the world with war. (no. 135)

Hitler’s actions and his intentions leave no room for illusion: _ Hitler’s programme is one of ‘purification’, slaughter: ‘. . . for all Jews to be destroyed, to be slain, and to perish. . . .” In Poland, Jews are driven out of business, they suppress us, they : don’t permit us to work, government jobs are completely out of the question. Hitler’s agents are moving about, footloose and fancy-free, sowing hatred between Jews and Poles. In a word, the economy is paralysed, manufacturing is limping along. (no. 141)

Although Lewkowicz notes that, in the context of escalating antisemitism, ‘to be silent is another way of speaking’ (no. 165), the letters written after 1930 are dominated by descriptions of the activities of nationalist parties, the criminal acts

committed by their members, the humiliation of Jews, the economic and social boycott, the development of the political situation in Germany, and the world’s reaction to the endeavours of the modern Haman. In one of his letters Wolf quotes the humour of the streets of L.6dz, reflecting the increasingly threatening situation of the Jews: ‘Shloyme says to his friend: “Moshe, what advantage do I have from being granted the good year that I prayed for . . . when it’s not safe for me to go out

of the house?”’ (No. 165). It seems to Lewkowicz that the most rational Jewish _ response in the face of persecution is silence—the same silence in which Jews have walked through centuries and through countries, bearing with a pious humility the

oppression, pogroms, persecution, and repressions. , The incidents cited below are striking proof that Lewkowicz met with antisemitism in his own life—the life of a man who constituted a threat neither to the Polish economy nor to the Polish national character. This was a person who displayed no excessive economic ambitions, and whose moral standards, supported by heroic efforts, should have brought him the title of honoured citizen of the Second

Republic of Poland rather than the fear, resentment, and resignation that they earned him in reality. He relays his experiences in a letter from 1938: Incident No. 1 [took place] when, several months ago, we went out to the cemetery to set up a headstone for my late wife. Joseph and I were set upon by two knife-wielders who attacked Joseph and me. Seeing that we could become victims, I searched for a place to escape, but one of them stabbed Joseph in the back with a knife. We fled and wound up just being frightened. This is how we saved ourselves from two bandits, by a miracle. The second incident took place when another worker and I went to look for a job. In the centre of the city two [Endeks] approached us and began to attack us for no reason. I fled, but my friend didn’t manage to get away. They tore his overcoat, threw him down to the ground,

and beat him up. This time my friend didn’t make a report to the police because in many cases the police are powerless or come too late!!! So we are not able to do anything about the hateful and taunting Haman. Shouting and complaining no longer help. We realize now that we have been abandoned and that they can do what they want with us. (no. 173)

Like a Vowce Crying in the Wilderness 323 Life in Poland becomes increasingly difficult. Lewkowicz calls the Poland of his times simply hell (no. 164), a place where one cannot think of the future, of peace, or of work. The wealthier emigrate to Palestine; Jewish merchants and factoryowners try by any means to rescue fortunes accumulated over a lifetime. Resigned to his fate and in despair, Wolf only dreams of one thing now: that change may come, whatever it may be, so long as it is a change: the world—a world in which

a person’s life is of no great value—is not worth saving. A middle-aged man, Lewkowicz returns in his memories to the days of his childhood; perhaps subconsciously he is seeking the formula that would make sense of his existence, that would justify his sufferings, worries, and penury. From that distant time in which a small heder pupil was learning about the divine order of the world and the sense and integrity of life, he calls forth a story that is perhaps an answer to the question of the purpose of survival: ‘My rabbi in heder once translated a Hebrew expression as

follows: The entire world is hanging by a thread. If this were so, I would cut through the thread and, once and for all, let there be a conclusion, an end, to the | whole world with its brutality—gruesomeness—insolence—ete.’ (no. 173).

May itcometoanend...

BLANK PAGE

Jewish Prisoner Labour in Warsaw After the Ghetto Uprising, 1943-1944 GABRIEL N. FINDER

On 5 August 1994 a plaque inscribed in Polish and Hebrew was mounted on an external wall of a nondescript apartment building on 34 Mordechai Anielewicz Street in Warsaw. It reads: ‘On 5 August 1944 the “Zoska” scouts’ battalion of the “Radostaw” unit of the Armia Krajowa [Home Army, AK] captured the German concentration camp of “Gesidwka” at this very spot and liberated 348 Jewish inmates, citizens of various countries in Europe. Many of them fought and fell in the Warsaw uprising.’ This modest plaque marks the site of an almost forgotten concentration camp whose official name was initially Konzentrationslager Warschau (Warsaw Concentration Camp) and subsequently Konzentrationslager Lublin—Arbeitslager Warschau (Lublin Concentration Camp—Warsaw Labour Camp), after it was annexed to the Majdanek concentration camp in Lublin. But its common name in Poland is Gesiowka because it stood at 45 Gesia Street (now Mordechai Anielewicz Street) in the yard of the former ghetto prison of the same name.

Although the purpose of the plaque is to save the memory of this camp from oblivion, Gesidwka continues to recede into history, eclipsed quite naturally in Jewish collective memory by the Nazi annihilation of Warsaw’s Jewish community in 1942-3 and the Warsaw ghetto uprising in April and May 1943; and in Polish collective memory by the Polish uprising of August—October 1944 and the staggering suffering of Warsaw’s inhabitants in the aftermath of the defeat of the revolt, when the Germans razed the city to the ground in retaliation. The existence of this camp 1s hardly ever mentioned in standard accounts of the

Holocaust. Gesi6wka was undoubtedly a minor camp in the grander scheme of things, but it dispensed its fair share of suffering. Thousands of Jews fell victim there to the Nazi policy of prisoner labour. In my estimation 4,000—5,000 of the 8,000—-9,000 inmates who were impressed into prisoner labour in this camp between the summers of 1943 and 1944 perished in the innards of the beast. In the normal course of the camp’s existence hundreds died from malnutrition, mistreatment, execution, or sheer exhaustion. In the winter of 1944 typhus devastated the inmate population, and in the wake of the epidemic scores of debilitated prisoners

326 Gabriel N. Finder were selected and transferred to the gas chambers at Auschwitz. In a death march | and subsequent death train to Dachau in July and August 1944 hundreds died from fatigue, dehydration, and shooting. Finally, a couple of hundred men died either in battle or in hiding after the liberation of the camp.! Among the survivors of this ordeal were my father and late grandfather, Herbert (b. 1929) and Heinrich Finder (1896-1989). My father was one of the youngest inmates, if not the youngest. I can still see my grandfather, a veteran of several camps, recall their torment in Warsaw whenever friends, invariably Holocaust survivors, met ostensibly to socialize but in reality to reprise their sorrows over tea and sponge cake. In his memory Auschwitz, Dachau, and the rest paled in comparison to Warsaw. The tribulations of this camp are no less impressed in the mind of my , father, whom I interviewed for this chapter. Gesidwka is part of the background of my life, which has been shaped in large measure by their memory of this place.

ESTABLISHMENT OF THE CAMP Established in the summer of 1943, Gesiowka was part of a large system of Jewish forced labour camps and ghettos in Poland. The Germans made the decision to exploit Jewish labour in Poland in 1941, but this policy of economic pragmatism was always vulnerable to ideological pressure to destroy the Jews expeditiously. In the summer and autumn of 1943 the Germans systematically liquidated several 1 Four transports of 3,683 Jews arrived in Warsaw from Auschwitz in August, October, and November 1943. For documentation of these transports, see D. Czech, Auschwitz Chronicle, 1939-1945

(New York, 1997), 475, 501, 502, 535. [he mortality rate in the camp was high, but it is difficult to assess how many inmates were still alive in the spring of 1944. According to a report dated 19 April 1944 by the SS engineer in charge of the demolition of the former ghetto, the camp contained 2,180 prisoners, but the report does not indicate when this tally was taken (Report from Heinz Kammler to Heinrich Himmler, Warsaw, 19 Apr. 1944, in T. Berenstein, A. Eisenbach, B. Mark, and A. Rutkowski (eds.), Faschismus-Getto-Massenmord, 2nd edn. (Berlin, 1961), 424-6). The assessments of surviving inmates tend to be lower. According to the estimate of one prisoner, which correlates roughly with those of other prisoners, by March 1944, 75% of the camp’s inmates had died, with approximately

1,000 men still alive (Ichak Dawid Mehl, memoir, Feb. 1948, Archiwum Zydowskiego Instytutu Historycznego, Warsaw (AZIH), 301/3352, 7). Transports of Hungarian Jews from Auschwitz after

mid-May 1944 replenished the camp’s inmate population. In the absence of documentation it is diffi- | cult to establish accurately the total number of prisoners in these transports, but it must have been relatively large—-I estimate 4,000—5,000—because when the death train of prisoners from Warsaw finally

arrived in Dachau on 6 August, 3,954 prisoners were accounted for (see the log entry in ‘ZugangNummern vom 6.5.1942 Nr. 29912 bis 13.4.1945 Nr. 153268 Dachau 3K’, KZ-Gedenkstatte Dachau,

Archiv-Nr. 31765). According to survivors’ testimonies, innumerable prisoners died between the arrival of the Hungarian deportees and the end of the war: a few hundred Hungarian prisoners died between their arrival in Warsaw and evacuation of the camp; the Germans killed a couple of hundred incapacitated prisoners on the eve of the camp’s evacuation; several hundred prisoners died in the death march and death train to Dachau; and a couple of hundred died in the aftermath of the camp’s liberation. These rough figures form the basis for my estimate of the probable death toll of Gesi6wka’s inmates.

Jewish Prisoner Labour in Warsaw 327 work camps and work ghettos in eastern and central Poland, murdering virtually the entire Jewish labour force in the region by November of the same year. From this date until the advance of the Red Army forced the Germans to evacuate their prisoners westward in death marches, only the major camp in Ptaszow, with its 20,000 Jewish inmates, and a few minor camps remained in existence in this area.’ Gesiowka was one of these minor camps.

The plan to build a labour camp on the ruins of the Warsaw ghetto coincided

with the ghetto’s liquidation. In February 1943 the head of the SS, Heinrich Himmler, ordered the complete destruction of the ghetto, and after the deportation of the last of Warsaw’s Jews, the Jewish quarter was to be razed, but not before all usable building materials from the ghetto had been recovered. To the chagrin of the Germans, the Warsaw ghetto uprising in April and May 1943 waylaid the smooth

implementation of this plan. The Germans’ scorched-earth tactics under SS General Jiirgen Stroop to break the Jewish armed resistance reduced the area of the ghetto to rubble. After the suppression of the uprising the Germans could now proceed to salvage significant quantities of construction materials, especially bricks and

scrap metal, from the debris in support of the German war effort. For this task Stroop suggested the deployment of Jewish prisoners, who would be incarcerated in a concentration camp converted from the former ghetto prison.* The Germans doubtless also expected to uncover large caches of secreted valuables belonging to Jewish deportees, including currency, merchandise, and jewellery. Since fugitives from the German assault on the ghetto hid in cellars, bunkers, and dugouts, clearance of the rubble would facilitate the effort of Germans patrols to discover their hiding places and apprehend them. Finally, it was in the Germans’ interest to erase all traces of their annihilation of Warsaw’s 400,000 Jews. The impression of Jewish concentration camp inmates into forced labour for these purposes made perfect

sense under the circumstances. The execution of this massive and dangerous salvage operation required an inexhaustible pool of dispensable Jewish prisoners, who could be delivered from Auschwitz, which was to evolve into a major link in the distribution of Jewish prisoner labour to the entire concentration camp system. This distribution policy was inaugurated by the transport of 500 Greek Jews from Auschwitz to Warsaw on 31 August 1943.4 2 See C. R. Browning, Nazi Policy, Jewish Workers, German Killers (Cambridge, 2000), ch. 3; D. Pohl, Nationalsozialistische Jfudenverfolgung in Ostgalizien 1941-1944, 2nd edn. (Munich, 1997), 348-62.

3 See T. Berenstein and A. Rutkowski, ‘Ob6z koncentracyjny dla Zydow w Warszawie (1943-1944)’, Biuletyn Zydowskiego Instytutu Historycznego (BZIH), 62 (1967), 3-5; A. Rutkowski, ‘Le Camp de con-

centration pour Juifs 4 Varsovie (19 juillet 1943-5 aout 1944)’, Le Monde Juif, 49/147-8 (1993), , 189-90; R. Domanska, ‘Obozy w getcie warszawskim’, Biuletyn Glowne Komisjt Badania Zbrodm Przeciwko Narodomi Polskiemu, Instytutu Pamiect Narodowe], 32 (1992), 127-8; E. Kossoy, “Gesiowka

(KL Warschau)’, Leszyly Historyczne, 94/110 (1994), 63; P. Matusak, ‘Ob6z koncentracyjny dla Zydéw w Warszawie’, BZIH, 86—7 (1973), 253.

, See F. Piper, Arbeitseimsatz der Haftlinge aus dem KL Auschwitz, trans. R. Malcher and U. Swierkosz (Oswiecim, 1995), 64-5.

328 Gabriel N. Finder , Himmler must have endorsed Stroop’s proposal because in June 1943 he ordered Oswald Pohl’s Wirtschafts- und Verwaltungshauptamt (Economic and _ Administrative Main Office, WVHA), in co-ordination with units of the Sicherheitspolizei (Sipo: the Security Police combining the Gestapo and the Criminal Police, Kripo) and the Sicherheitsdienst (Security Division within the SS, the SD) in the General Government, to set up a concentration camp on the site of the destroyed ghetto. It was Himmler’s wish not only to salvage building materials from the rubble, but also to seal its cellars, bunkers, and dugouts, flatten it to the ground, and planta park in its place. This was destined to be a massive undertaking,

with roughly 424 million cubic feet of the remaining buildings designated for demolition in an area of 445 acres. The camp opened on 19 July 1943 with 300 prisoners, German inmates from Buchenwald, both political opponents of the regime and common criminals, who would act as the camp’s de facto administration. The WVHA oversaw the demolition of the ghetto in co-operation with SS forces in

Warsaw under Stroop’s command. The camp’s first commandant, Wilhelm Goecke (sic), came from Mauthausen; he had two successors, Nikolaus Herbet and Friedrich Wilhelm Ruppert, the second an officer transferred from Majdanek after

that camp absorbed the Warsaw facility. Four German construction firms were contracted to implement Himmler’s order with the assistance of the German railway in the occupied eastern territories, which laid track to convey the salvaged building materials from the former ghetto to the Umschlagplatz, from which Warsaw’s Jews had been deported to Treblinka.° The camp was situated between Gesia Street to the south, Okopowa Street to | _ the west, Gliniana Street and its extension, Wotynska Street, to the north, and Zamenhof Street to the east. A brick wall surrounded the camp, with watchtowers along it overlooking the camp. The wall of the destroyed ghetto, which remained more or less intact and demarcated the perimeter of the area in which the prisoners _ worked, enclosed the camp proper. The camp’s interior was primitive. The prisoners lived in barracks on stacked sleeping boards three abreast. In front of the parallel rows of barracks there was a large roll-call yard. Opposite this yard stood the camp’s

administrative office. One washroom hut served the needs of the entire inmate population. Jewish inmates from Auschwitz made up the prisoner labour force for the execu-

tion of this project. Important criteria for the Germans in the selection of these prisoners were their non-Polish origins and their relatively good physical condition: they had to be fit enough to perform demanding labour. Although the majority of them were in tolerable physical condition when they were selected in

| Auschwitz for forced labour in Warsaw, hundreds perished under the brutal conditions in the camp, in all likelihood because there were many white-collar workers 5 See Berenstein and Rutkowski, ‘Ob6z koncentracyjny dla Zydéw w Warszawie’, 5—7; Rutkowski, ‘Le Camp de concentration pour Juifs a Varsovie’, 190-1; Domanska, ‘Obozy w getcie warszawskim’, 129-30; Kossoy, ‘Gesidwka’, 63; Matusak, ‘Ob6z koncentracyjny dla Zydow w Warszawie’, 254.

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Jewish Prisoner Labour in Warsaw 331 among them. The German authorities did not want to use Polish Jews for this job in case their fluency in Polish enabled them to fraternize with local civilians employed in the work area and plan their escape into familiar terrain, in which command of the language would be an invaluable asset. ‘The Germans therefore selected Jews from France, Germany, Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Greece. My father and grandfather, for example, came from Austria. However, despite German inten-

tions, several Jewish prisoners in Gesidwka, my grandfather among them, had migrated before the war from Poland westward and therefore spoke Polish.® In the

November 1944 transport, moreover, the Germans were forced to include fifty Polish Jews because there were not enough prisoners to fill the quota of 1,000 men.

There were no Jewish female prisoners in Gesiowka until the last days of its existence, when Jewish men and women from adjacent Pawiak were transferred into the camp. (Pawiak was the notorious prison for Poles suspected of underground activities, whose inmate population also included Jews either discovered in hiding on the ‘Aryan’ side of Warsaw or temporarily spared from destruction on account of their manual skills.) A couple of thousand paid Polish civilian workers and dozens of salaried German technicians and machinists augmented the Jewish labour force in the camp.‘

INTERNAL GOVERNANCE The presence of the SS in Gesiéwka could afford to be minimal in part because of the ghetto wall, which provided an extra impediment to flight, and in part because of the active collusion of the German prisoner—functionaries in the camp. Thus, the primary security assignment of the SS was to monitor traffic in and out of the _ ghetto through a main gate in the ghetto wall. (Ukrainian conscripts into the SS manned the watchtowers overlooking the camp.) Although the SS unit was small, the camp’s Jewish prisoners were nonetheless subject to oppressive tactics from the SS, who never recoiled from acts of violence. They unleashed a brutal torrent of verbal and physical abuse on the disoriented prisoners when their transports arrived in Warsaw. They manhandled debilitated and incapacitated prisoners and not infrequently killed prisoners who had been wounded at work in the camp. They liberally punished prisoners suspected of even

the slightest infraction of camp rules. An SS man nicknamed Holzkopf would ferociously beat prisoners who were discovered to be in possession of smuggled goods. The SS exulted in public executions of captured escapees, and SS officers would torture prisoners during interrogation. When the SS received an assignment to execute prisoners from Pawiak, inmates from Gesidwka would be led to the ©

execution site within the ghetto and ordered to construct wood pyres for the 6 See Herbert Finder, interview with the author, audiotape, 8 Mar. 1999, in my possession.

7 See Berenstein and Rutkowski, ‘Ob6z koncentracyjny dla Zyd6w w Warszawie’, 7-8, 11; Rutkowski, ‘Le Camp de concentration pour Juifs a Varsovie’, 192, 196.

332 Gabriel N. Finder incineration of the corpses, but after the SS men had carried out their assignment,

they would shoot the Gesidwka inmates and throw their bodies into the same flames. When the camp was evacuated, the SS ruthlessly herded the prisoners on the death march and subsequent death train from the camp, and were poised, in the tense atmosphere of the Polish revolt, to kill the prisoners left to dismantle the camp if Polish insurgents had not rescued them in the nick of time.°® The motives of the SS not only in Gesiowka but throughout the concentration camp system are a matter of vigorous historiographical debate. The motivations of the SS unit assigned to Gesidwka have to be distilled primarily from its actions, which appear to lend credence to the argument of the historian Karin Orth. She suggests that the motives of the SS in concentration camps should be attributed to an unreflective ‘healthy common sense’ or ‘everyday understanding’ that Jewish concentration camp inmates were enemies of the state whose execution—in the second half of the war largely through work—yjust seemed appropriate to the mindset of the Third Reich in general and the organization of the concentration camp in particular.? In Gesiéwka SS violence was doubtless prompted in addition by

prospects of personal enrichment. SS men were enticed not merely to plunder valuables discovered by prisoners in the debris of the ghetto during demolition. When the prisoners arrived in Warsaw, their mouths were inspected, and those in possession of gold teeth were threatened with execution if their teeth were missing in subsequent inspections. In principle, the dual objective of this order was to deter prisoners from trading their gold teeth on the black market with Polish civilian workers and, in turn, to enrich the coffers of the Reich with the extracted gold from prisoners’ corpses. Nevertheless, not a few SS men achieved their ambition to line

their own pockets with the gold teeth of Gesidwka’s inmates. Felicjan Loth, a physician imprisoned in Pawiak who was familiar with conditions in Gesidwka, was

ordered by the commandant of the camp to register and extract the gold teeth of living prisoners. When he somehow managed to evade this gruesome assignment, the infuriated commandant took matters into his own hands; with the help of an assistant he escorted prisoners outside the camp, shot them, and removed the gold teeth from their corpses with pliers.!° The recollection of a surviving prisoner also 8 For details of inmates’ encounters with the SS, see anon., ‘My Journey to Hell and Back’, memoir,

n.d., Archives of the Leo Baeck Institute, New York (ALBI-NY), Henry Pachter Collection (HPC), ME. 496, 37, 44; A. Eisenhandler, ‘Bericht tiber das Konzentrationslager Warschau’, memoir, Dec. 1967, AZIH, 301/6401, 3; O. Paserman, “Die Geschichte des Konzentrationslagers Warschau’, memoir, Oct. 1947, AZIH, 301/2919, 13; Noé Vilner, memoir, July 1952, Yad Vashem Archives, Jerusalem (YVA), 033/1317, 8; Ch. E. Goldstein, Zibn in bunker (Warsaw, 1962), 235-7, trans. as C. Goldstein, The Bunker (Philadelphia, 1970). See also the testimony of the Polish observer Ewa Krolikiewicz, quoted in Domanska, ‘Obozy w getcie warszawskim’, 130.

° See K. Orth, “The Concentration Camp SS as a Functional Elite’, in U. Herbert (ed.), National Socialist Policies: Contemporary German Perspectives and Controversies (New York, 2000), 306—36. 10 F. Loth, ‘Byltem lekarzem na Pawiaku’, in K. Bidakowski and T. Wojcik (eds.), Pamietniki lekarzy

(Warsaw, 1964), 329; quoted in Rutkowski, ‘Le Camp de concentration pour Juifs a Varsovie’, 194.

Jewish Prisoner Labour in Warsaw 333 sheds light on the motivations of the SS men assigned to the camp. In a brief exchange in the work area the prisoner, Oskar Paserman, surveying the ruins, lamented the destruction of life in the ghetto within earshot of an SS guard. The guard’s reaction was telling: ‘What are you thinking of? How many hundreds of my comrades gave their lives in battle with the damned Jews?’!! The ferocity of the Warsaw ghetto uprising must have served only to intensify the loathing of Jews

among the SS men in this unit. |

SS brutality notwithstanding, the day-to-day degradation of the prisoners was dispensed by the German prisoner—functionaries who essentially ran the camp: the senior camp prisoner (Lagerdltester), who oversaw its management; block leaders (Blockalteste), who were in charge of the prisoners in their barracks; and kapos, who

- supervised the labour details in the ruins of the ghetto. Jewish prisoners’ perceptions of these, their immediate German overseers, varied. The senior camp prisoner intimidated each transport of new arrivals with the terse admonition to ‘discipline, cleanliness, diligence!’ (‘Disziplin, Sauberkeit, Fleiss!’).1* Meanwhile, block leaders could be brutish and crude, but the overall behaviour of these particular underlings was generally unremarkable. Among the kapos, however, there were several thugs who regularly terrorized defenceless prisoners. A professional criminal named Becker would force prisoners to mount the unstable walls of dilapi-

dated buildings, from which many predictably fell, frequently to their deaths or incurring serious injury, and he was not unknown to beat to death prisoners under his supervision. When a kapo happened to notice a prisoner instructing his fellow

: prisoners how to streamline their movements and thus expend less energy, he severely beat him, and even after this prisoner had been transferred to another labour detail, the same kapo continued to bully him. Kapos viciously attacked ill prisoners lying in the hospital barracks for their gold teeth. They would take advan-

tage of their privileged status to settle scores with certain prisoners. One kapo inserted the name of a prisoner whom he disliked on a list of enfeebled, unproductive prisoners to be selected for the gas chambers of Auschwitz even though this

prisoner was relatively healthy. Kapos frequently increased the tempo of the already back-breaking labour, and, in a gesture of Sisyphean cruelty, they would force prisoners to carry several bricks on their shoulders when they returned to the camp in the evening and then restore them to the work area the next morning.!° ‘1 Paserman, ‘Die Geschichte des Konzentrationslagers Warschau’, 6.

‘2M. Mannheimer, Spates Tagebuch. Theresienstadt—Auschwitz—Warschau—Dachau (Zurich, 2000), 94. Mannheimer’s account was first published as “Theresienstadt—Auschwitz—Warschau— Dachau. Erinnerungen’, in W. Benz and B. Distel (eds.), Dachauer Hefie 1. Die Befretung (Munich, 1993), 88-128, and is available in ‘Von Neutitschein nach Dachau’, memoir, n.d., ALBI-NY, HPC, ME 419. ‘3 For details of prisoners’ encounters with kapos, see Finder, interview; anon., ‘My Journey to Hell and Back’, ALBI-NY, HPC, ME 496, 41, 44-6; Z. Brand, testimony, Aug. 1976, YVA, 03/4150, 9-10;

E1senhandler, ‘Bericht tiber das Konzentrationslager Warschau’, 3; Paserman, ‘Die Geschichte des Konzentrationslagers Warschau’, 9.

334 | Gabriel N. Finder | , 7 To be sure, there were some prisoner—functionaries who treated Jewish prisoners humanely. A kapo named Willy, who was a professional criminal, let a prisoner named Max Mannheimer write a letter surreptitiously to a relative under Willy’s name requesting a package with provisions, which Mannheimer was able to barter on the black market. For his part, Willy would not accept a gift from the prisoner when the package arrived. Another kapo shielded a prisoner named Yosef Shivek from a selection for the gas chambers. When Jewish women incarcerated in Pawiak were transferred to Gesiowka in the final days of the camp’s existence, kapos, for whatever motives, assuaged their hunger with relative solicitude, offering them

rations reserved for the German staff."4 | How does one assess, then, the behaviour of these ‘ordinary Germans’? Prisoner— _ functionaries in Gesidwka took pains to intimidate the Jewish prisoners under their

control using force and even wanton cruelty, especially the criminal elements among the kapos, whose feral instincts were intensely menacing to the prisoners’

welfare. But these German underlings exhibited no antisemitic imperative. Of course, they accepted the usual camp privileges, but in spite of their privileged position, even they occasionally ran foul of the SS. Several kapos even tried to escape. Unlike Jewish escapees, however, who were hanged after capture, apprehended Germans were temporarily confined in a punishment cell, after which they were reinstated in their supervisory positions. When push came to shove, the prisoner—functionaries put on military uniforms and bore weapons alongside SS forces when Polish insurgents besieged the camp, although their primary concern was probably self-defence. Because of their own status as inmates, foremost in the minds of the majority of these particular Germans was their own survival, to which

| end Jewish prisoners, if need be, were expendable. From the perspective of most of the prisoner—functionaries, the annthilation of Jewish prisoners was a necessary evil of camp life, if not a side issue. Overall, in the words of a prisoner, Jacquies Otidett, they ‘acted indifferently’ to the fate of Gesidwka’s Jewish inmates.’°

Within the Jewish inmate population of Gesiowka, unlike many other camps, there is little evidence of any hierarchy of privilege. There may be several reasons for this. Jewish kapos, who were central to the concentration camp system, were absent from Gesiowka. There was no basis for extortion, since Jewish prisoners arrived in Warsaw in possession of nothing more than their life. The absence of ~ women in the camp meant no organized prostitution. Since the vast majority of _ Jewish prisoners came from western Europe, feelings of cultural superiority among prisoners were diluted. Segregation in the barracks was determined for the most part by date of arrival. In short, there were hardly any grounds for the fomentation of institutional conflict among the prisoners themselves. Since the standard criteria ‘4 See Mannheimer, Spates Tagebuch, 101-3; Yosef Shivek, testimony, Aug. 1996, YVA, 03/ 10154,

20-1; Zofia Zamsztejn-Kamieniecka, quoted in Rutkowski, ‘Le Camp de concentration pour Juifs a Varsovie’, 210, which is available in ‘Moje wspomnienia’, memoir, n.d. [1946], AZIH, 301/478. 15 Jacquies Otidett, memoir, Dec. 1944, AZIH, 301/2033, 2.

Jewish Prisoner Labour in Warsaw 335 of power in camps among inmates—kapo status, extortion, sex, and perceived cultural superiority—were absent from the prisoner experience in Gesidwka, the security and survival of the Jewish prisoners did not depend on the distribution of power within the inmate population. Without a doubt, there were Jews who aspired

to the minor privileged status of assistants to the block leaders or foremen (Vorarbetter) delegated by kapos to oversee the labour of fellow Jewish prisoners. *® But even these minimally privileged Jewish prisoners do not appear to have wielded any appreciable influence. However, the absence of a hierarchy of privilege did not entail a political vacuum among Jewish prisoners. There is evidence of an organized political group whose members had belonged to a resistance cell formed in Birkenau and strove to maintain a degree of internal peace within the inmate population, preventing Gesidwka

from deteriorating, to borrow from a surviving prisoner, into a ‘jungle’.1” These leaders rapidly organized prisoners liberated by the Polish uprising into volunteer fighting units.'® Similarly, the Greek Jewish prisoners, former dockers who were used to hard physical labour, acquired a kind of street credibility in the camp. All the prisoners formed companionship networks on the basis of national origin, language, and cultural affinities, but the Greek Jews established a tightly knit fellowship based on not only ethnic solidarity but also negative integration, since they felt acutely their cultural and linguistic differences from the bulk of Jewish inmates, who came from the European continent. Thus, they would look after one

| another in continuation of their tradition of mutual aid. Their tough collective persona may have raised their standing, in the eyes of some inmates, to the rank of camp ‘aristocrats’, insulated them in large measure from the violence of kapos, and emboldened them to extract favourable terms on the black market from Polish civilian workers, who were afraid of double-crossing them. But their cachet did not immunize them completely from the brutality of camp life. When a Greek Jew in charge of dispensing laundered articles of clothing to the SS scuffled with an SS officer, he was hanged for insubordination. 9

PRISONERS’ EVERYDAY EXISTENCE Needless to say, the inmates of Auschwitz were elated to leave, even without knowing where they would be taken. Nevertheless, when they arrived in Warsaw, their first impressions of the desolation of the former ghetto stirred in many of them premonitions of what lay in store. Mannheimer writes, ‘Morning breaks. Everything , ‘6 See anon., ‘My Journey to Hell and Back’, 38—9, 42. '7 Vilner, memoir, 7; see also Goldstein, Zibn in bunker, 234-5. '8 See the testimony of Wactaw Micuta (Wacek), quoted in Rutkowski, ‘Le Camp de concentration pour Juifs a Varsovie’, 212. Micuta, a lieutenant in the forces of the Armia Krajowa (Home Army, AK), led a detachment of partisans in the liberation of the camp.

"8 On the Greek Jews in the camp, see anon., ‘My Journey to Hell and Back’, 33, 37, 41; Eisenhandler, ‘Bericht tiber das Konzentrationslager Warschau’, 4; Shivek, testimony, 22.

336 Gabriel N. Finder : looks so eerie. A vast silence. No human soul anywhere.’ In the eyes of Alois Eisenhandler the area of the former ghetto resembled a ‘dead city’. ‘To Maxi Librati the ruins brought to mind an image of the ‘apocalypse’.?° Before they arrived in Warsaw, the prisoners’ awareness of the destruction of the Warsaw ghetto and the uprising had been fragmentary. Partial accounts of these events had trickled piecemeal into Auschwitz. Other prisoners learned of them for the first time from Polish workers in the camp’s work area. In any event, the devastation spoke volumes. While knowledge of the ghetto’s destruction aroused great sorrow for the fate of their fellow Jews, it also inspired pride in the Jewish act of resistance. Prisoners occasionally discovered the corpses of Jewish inhabitants of

the ghetto and sought and uncovered material remnants of Jewish life in the detritus of the ghetto, from ceremonial objects to diaries, from cartridge shells to makeshift bunkers. In the autumn of 1943 prisoners caught a glimpse within the camp of a segregated group of fifty young Jews, presumably ghetto partisans, who were eventually shot after apparent interrogations. Jewish fugitives were occasion-

ally found in hiding and then brought into the camp and shot. A traumatic | reminder of the ghetto uprising was the discovery of a young woman still alive in the rubble. The Germans tortured her to wrest information from her, and when she refused to divulge anything they killed her in front of the assembled prisoners.”!

The bulk of the prisoners were assigned to the demolition of the ghetto. This was back-breaking and dangerous work. It entailed several steps: gathering bricks from the ruins of the ghetto—that 1s, recovering bricks already lying on the ground

and demolishing the walls of dilapidated buildings for their bricks; cleaning the bricks by scraping the mortar from them; and stacking them in piles for conveyance

to trains. The prisoners were forced to perform this task mostly using their bare hands and occasionally with primitive tools such as picks and shovels. In the spring

| of 1944 dynamite, often planted by prisoners, was introduced to demolish remaining buildings. Many prisoners were killed or injured throughout the course of the demolition process, performing these tasks daily from dawn to dusk regardless of weather conditions. They were ordered to climb high, unstable walls, from which

they routinely fell. The bricks were heavy, especially for men enfeebled from fatigue, malnutrition, and disease. The tempo was brisk, and kapos and foremen disciplined prisoners who were unable to maintain the pace or abandoned their 20 Mannheimer, Spates Tagebuch, 94; Eisenhandler, ‘Bericht tiber das Konzentrationslager Warschau’,

2; M. Librati, ‘Déblayer les ruines du ghetto’, interview by G. Bensoussan and M. Jabelot, Le Monde Juif, 49/ 147-8 (1993), 220. For similar impressions, see also Finder, interview; Brand, testimony, 8.

21 For prisoners’ awareness of the Warsaw ghetto uprising, see Finder, interview; anon., ‘My Journey to Hell and Back’, 47—8; Brand, testimony, 10-11; Paserman, ‘Die Geschichte des Konzentrationslagers Warschau’, 6; Shivek, testimony, 20; Yakov Weiss, testimony, Dec. 1970, YVA, 03/3444, unpaginated; Mannheimer, Spates Tagebuch, 94; Librati, ‘Déblayer les ruines du ghetto’, 220. The poetic passages in Goldstein, Zibn in bunker, 213-14, 218-19, which emphasize the heroic struggle of the Jewish partisans, resemble a palimpsest, engraving what the author seems to have learned of the uprising after the war on his own memory of events.

Jewish Prisoner Labour in Warsaw 337 labour for a brief respite. German civilian technicians frequently reported putative slackers to German prisoner—functionaries.”? In his account of the ghetto’s demolition, Eisenhandler writes, ‘Human life played no role whatsoever.’*® The stupefying lengths to which these prisoners were driven are attested to by the results of their forced labour. By June 1944 they had demolished an area of approximately 10 million cubic metres and collected 34 million bricks, 6,000 tons of scrap metal, 1,300 tons of iron ore, and 805 tons of non-ferrous metals.*4 Apart from demolition, prisoners were assigned to other onerous tasks. One prisoner detail had to carry heavy steel beams salvaged from the ruins to an open area in the Jewish cemetery, from which they were subsequently collected. On account of their weakened state, many prisoners could not support the weight and the beams would fall on their feet causing serious injuries. A contingent of prisoners was forced to remove and clean tombstones from the Jewish cemetery, which the Germans then used to pave roads. A small group of prisoners combed the debris for valuables.*° A burial detail disposed of prisoners’ corpses. Since the ground was too hard in the harsh winter of 1943-4 to dig mass graves large enough to accommodate the hundreds of corpses, and the Germans feared the spread of typhus into Warsaw proper, _ the camp’s authorities ordered the members of this crew to build a funeral pyre within the camp, which burned incessantly throughout the winter, producing a horrific sight and the miasmic stench of burning bodies. Not all of the corpses came from the camp. It was the routine task of a small detachment of the burial detail—my father was occasionally one of its members—to remove the corpses of Polish inmates and civilians shot in the courtyard of Pawiak to the funeral pyre. In the spring prisoners were required to build a crematorium within the camp, but it was not completed before the evacuation of the camp in July 1944.76

In return for their toil the undernourished prisoners of Gesidwka received miserably insufficient rations, usually ersatz coffee in the morning before departing for the work site and thin soup with a slice of bread after evening roll-call. Hunger reigned. Even the Jewish inmates of Pawiak, themselves no strangers to hardship, were tormented by the appearance of prisoners from Gesidwka when their paths

crossed in the ruins of the former ghetto. Julien Hirshaut, a Jewish prisoner in Pawiak, writes, “2 For details of the exploitation of prisoners in the demolition of the former ghetto, see Finder, interview; Eli Cohen, testimony, Apr. 1965, YVA, 03/2690, 14; Eisenhandler, ‘Bericht tiber das Konzentrationslager Warschau’, 2-3; Paserman, ‘Die Geschichte des Konzentrationslagers Warschau’, 7; Shivek, testimony, 20. 23 Eisenhandler, ‘Bericht tiber das Konzentrationslager Warschau’, 3. 24 Berenstein and Rutkowski, ‘Ob6z koncentracyjny dla Zydéw w Warszawie’, 11-12; Rutkowski, ‘Le Camp de concentration pour Juifs a Varsovie’, 195-6. “5 For details of the use of prisoners in these other tasks, see Brand, testimony, 9, 11; Paserman, ‘Die Geschichte des Konzentrationslagers Warschau’, 5; Shivek, testimony, 23. 26 On the burial detail, see Finder, interview; anon., ‘My Journey to Hell and Back’, 53; Cohen, testimony, 16; Librati, ‘Déblayer les ruines du ghetto’, 219.

338 Gabriel N. Finder Those Jewish inmates had at one time been dignified, self-respecting human beings. Today they were skin and bones, clad in striped blue and white prison uniforms with wooden shoes on their swollen feet. They no longer looked human. They wandered about among the piles of brick, rock, and wet sand and toiled at their tasks. Whenever the guards were not looking, they would edge closer to our building, until they were directly under the windows. When we saw the ‘stripes’ approaching, we would throw them down some bread. What else did we have except the dry crusts which we denied ourselves? It was torture to see these shadows of people fling themselves on these crusts. They tore the crusts out of each other’s mouths like dogs who have found a bone in a heap of garbage. I can still see those starving prisoners in their striped uniforms fighting over the bread. | This sight freezes the blood no less than that of women and children being led to slaughter.2”__

- Another Jewish prisoner from Pawiak named Czechowitz vividly recounts a heartrending encounter with prisoners from Gesiéwka: We observed them, all of them emaciated, exhausted people. .. . We recognized in them people living in very difficult conditions. From their faces one could read how much suffering and anguish they endured. From their wild eyes, which were deeply, deeply sunken in their famished cheeks, one could recognize how hungry they were.

The prisoners from Gesiéwka begged their fellow Jews from Pawiak for bread, and _ when one of them threw a piece into the band of bedraggled men, they pounced on it like wild animals and wrestled one another for it, even disregarding the blows of their guards until one of them fired a shot into the air. This scene haunted even the hardened prisoners of Pawiak: It was the first time in our lives that we had seen such an image, such a struggle for a piece of bread. ... We returned to work and for a long, long time could not forget the image of what

we had seen earlier. An image of our foreign brothers who had never dreamed that they would be thrown into Gesiéwka and labour in torment, starving so long until they wished to be fortunate enough to be shot, to be redeemed through death from their living anguish.”°

The starvation of Gesidwka’s inmates was no accident. The historian Christian Gerlach emphasizes the instrumental role played by starvation in Nazi occupation policies.”° Starvation was likewise integrated into the daily regime of Gesiéwka. Through starvation rations the German administration of the camp not only 27 J. Hirshaut, Jewish Martyrs of Pawiak (New York, 1982), 69-70. 28 Czechowitz, memoir, n.d., AZIH, 302/18, 66-7. 29 Gerlach argues that demands to deliver food from Nazi-occupied territories to Germany and nonJewish urban populations within the occupied territories accelerated the decision to annihilate unemployed—that is to say, the majority of—Jews in the General Government and Belarus. See C. Gerlach, ‘Die Bedeutung der deutschen Ernahrungspolitik fiir die Beschleunigung des Mordes an den Juden 1942. Das Generalgouvernement und die Westukraine’, in his Krieg, Erndhrung, Vilkermord. Studien zur deutschen Vernichtungspolittk un Zweiten Weltkrieg (Hamburg, 1998), 167-257; id., ‘German

Economic Interests, Occupation Policy, and the Murder of the Jews in Belorussia, 1941/43’, in Herbert (ed.), National Socialist Policies, 240-75.

Jewish Prisoner Labour in Warsaw 339 eradicated unproductive prisoners but also crushed the resolve of surviving prisoners to resist. And hunger helped to create conditions conducive to disease, which led to countless deaths.

To make matters worse, sanitation was primitive even by the standards of the concentration camp system. A washroom hut with only a couple of taps and a

few latrines had to serve the needs of a few thousand men. No showers were installed until the spring of 1944; so for the first few months of their incarceration prisoners were limited to washing their hands. After dark the inhabitants of a hut were forced to excrete into a common pail, which was emptied every night by a different prisoner. Prisoners did not receive fresh clothes until the spring. In the meantime, hundreds of them had to endure the fierce winter weather in threadbare © garments.°° - Qn account of the unhygienic conditions, lice spread like wildfire through the camp in the winter of 1943-4. Upon returning to their barracks in the evening, prisoners desperately tried to delouse their bodies and clothing, but they were fighting a losing battle, and in January and February 1944 a typhus epidemic struck the camp with a vengeance. Typhus was common in the concentration camp system

in 1941-2, then it abated until early 1944, when it raged once more in the overcrowded camps in the final phase of the war.*! It is a bacterial condition carried by lice. It induces high fever, diarrhoea, malaise, and poor appetite. Its victims usually

die of dehydration and malnutrition. Since the prisoners were already malnourished, with compromised immune systems, the majority had no reserves to sustain | them through multiple diarrhoeal episodes. Afflicted prisoners were placed in an isolation barracks, but in the main they just lay on soiled pallets, receiving no supplementary rations or antibiotics, until they either recovered or died. The lucky ones were tended by a relative or friend. Dozens of prisoners died in the isolation hut every day, and the dead from the previous night were stacked in front of the building the next morning. Mannheimer describes them in his memoir: ‘Skeletons with skin in folds. Skin with large black and blue spots.’®? The epidemic created a legion of walking skeletons—‘Muselmanner’, in the universal camp jargon—who, 30 Finder, interview. 31 See W. Sofsky, The Order of Terror: The Concentration Camp, trans. W. Templer (Princeton, — 1996), 208. Typhus played a key role in the destruction of the Jews in two complementary ways. Conditions conducive to the spread of typhus were pervasive in the camps, and hence a large share of deaths in camps was due to the disease. Moreover, eradication of typhus, argues the historian Paul Weindling, had become an obsession of German bacteriologists since the First World War. By the Second World War it had come to be considered in the German Weltanschauung a Jewish disease and

the most efficacious method of eradicating it was to kill its putative human carriers. See P. J. Weindling, Epidemics and Genocide in Eastern Europe, 18g0-1945 (Oxford, 2000). On the integral and insidious role of epidemics in the concentration camp system, see Sofsky, The Order of Terror, ch. 18.

32 Mannheimer, Spates Tagebuch, 98. Vivid descriptions of the typhus epidemic can be found in Eisenhandler, ‘Bericht tiber das Konzentrationslager Warschau’, 5~7; Paserman, ‘Die Geschichte des Konzentrationslagers Warschau’, 7-8, 10-11.

340 Gabriel N. Finder enervated by their illness, gave up and apathetically awaited death. Muselmanner ~ who somehow managed to survive fell victim to selection and were transported to the gas chambers of Auschwitz.?? The epidemic decimated the inmate population. Both my father and grandfather were stricken by typhus, but they were among the fortunate survivors of the disease. Given their plight, then, what stratagems of survival did the Jewish prisoners of Gesidwka employ? The prisoners’ most desperate option was to escape. In one audacious attempt, in exchange for gold discovered in the ruins by one of them, three prisoners were concealed in a truck driven by a Polish civilian worker transporting bricks from the work site. With the final days of the camp approaching, several prisoners of Polish origin fled in small groups; and amid the confusion a few prisoners escaped into the surrounding countryside during the death march to Dachau. But successful attempts were rare. Escaping prisoners faced many obstacles. They had to overcome two sets of physical barriers: the wall around the - camp proper and the ghetto wall, both of which were guarded. Cadaverous in appearance and debilitated, if they managed to reach the outside world they entered an inhospitable environment without knowledge of the native tongue. Recaptured escapees were hanged in the presence of the entire inmate population in an effort to deter others from even contemplating flight.°4 Since the camp’s authorities were able to limit the number of escape attempts, the prospects of flight posed no serious threat to camp discipline and did nothing to restrain the exercise of their power. Since escape was impracticable, survival for the prisoners demanded the ability to navigate breaches in the camp’s brutal regimen. Self-preservation necessitated what in the universal vernacular of the camps was called organisieren in German, organizirn in Yiddish, and organizowaé in Polish, which meant appropriating objects of value from various sources, often in small amounts, by surreptitious means, for personal use or exchange.*° In Gesiéwka this essentially entailed scavenging through the rubble of the ghetto for abandoned objects and then either selling them for cash to buy food or bartering them directly for food. An underground economy flourished between the prisoners and the Polish civilian workers. This frequently demanded ingenuity, not to mention bribing the German staff to turn a blind eye, and prisoners who were unsuited to it were at a distinct disadvantage, as they had to manage on the woefully inadequate camp 33 Finder, interview; anon., ‘My Journey to Hell and Back’, 41, 44-5. On the predicament of Muselmanner, see Sofsky, The Order of Terror, ch. 17.

34 For details, see Finder, interview; Eisenhandler, ‘Bericht tiber das Konzentrationslager Warschau’, 11; Paserman, ‘Die Geschichte des Konzentrationslagers Warschau’, 13; Vilner, memoir, 7; Weiss, testimony, unpaginated; Mannheimer, Spates Tagebuch, 99; Librati, ‘Deéblayer les ruines du ghetto’, 220-1. 8° In F. Karay, Death Comes in Yellow: Skarzysko-Kamienna Slave Labour Camp, trans. S. Kitai (Amsterdam, 1996), 103, the term is translated as ‘pilfering’. Karay herself was a prisoner and labourer at the Skarzysko camp.

| Jewish Prisoner Labour in Warsaw 341 rations. Aware of pilfering by prisoners, the camp’s authorities tried to prevent it; prisoners were searched—‘gefilzt’, in the camp vernacular—when they returned to the camp from the works site, and smuggled goods found in their possession were confiscated. Likewise, they were forbidden to possess cash. But they ignored this and other similar prohibitions because they were desperate to supplement their rations.*© Polish civilian workers always seemed to have bread to exchange for zlotys. A maxim of these exchanges was ‘nie ma pieniedzy, nie ma chleba’ (‘no money, no bread’).°" With time it became ever more difficult to find items of value in the debris. When the rubble of the former ghetto yielded no more objects for trade, many prisoners resorted to the commodification of their own bodies by selling their gold teeth for bread or cash.*° In spite of the SS injunction not to sell gold teeth upon pain of death, my grandfather had another prisoner extract his gold bridge with a set of pliers, which he then sold for zlotys. With this money he and my father were able to buy bread on the black market from Poles. This supplement helped them to overcome the debilitating effects of the typhus epidemic. Without it neither he nor my - father would probably have survived.?9 The significance of language in the world of the concentration camp, which is

such a prevalent theme in the work of Primo Levi, made itself acutely felt in Gesiowka. In this veritable Tower of Babel, a facility for language was vital to survival. It established communication between prisoners from different countries. Greek Jews isolated themselves largely because they felt distant from the speakers of the continental languages, but some of them did manage to communicate with prisoners from other countries in rudimentary Hebrew and French.*? Knowledge of either German or Polish yielded palpable benefits. Prisoners from Germany and | Austria often avoided routine beatings simply because, unlike their fellow prisoners from France, Belgium, Hungary, and Greece, they could understand orders and act upon them immediately. Native speakers of German might find shelter in the much safer interior of the camp’s administrative office performing filing tasks. Fluency in German even appears in rare instances to have created a human bond, however attenuated, between individual Jewish prisoners and German prisoner—functionaries. The block leader in my father and grandfather’s barracks took a liking to my father because he was able to converse with him, and when no one was watching he would slip him an extra piece of bread. Fluency in Polish was useful since so few prisoners had it. Prisoners who spoke Polish were able to negotiate more effectively with Polish civilian workers in the camp’s black market. Prisoners fluent in both °6 For details, see Finder, interview; anon., ‘My Journey to Hell and Back’, 39-40; Cohen, testimony, 14; Paserman, ‘Die Geschichte des Konzentrationslagers Warschau’, 7, 12; Shivek, testimony,

22; Vilner, memoir, 7; Mannheimer, Spates Tagebuch, 95. 387 Finder, interview. 38 See Librati, ‘Déblayer les ruines du ghetto’, 219; Cohen, testimony, 14. 89 See Finder, interview. 40 See Librati, ‘Déblayer les ruines du ghetto’, 221; Brand, testimony, 11; Cohen, testimony, 15.

342 : Gabriel N. Finder languages, like my grandfather, who had migrated from Galicia to Vienna, were often requested to interpret between kapos and Polish civilian workers, a service for which they were occasionally rewarded with an extra piece of bread. As in all the camps, in Gesiowka the work assignments ranged from dreaded to desired. To evade strenuous demolition work, prisoners sought a less demanding job in the workshop, laundry, or orderly room. The placement of a few prisoners in such labour crews, even if temporary, helped to preserve their stamina. Less fortunate prisoners took advantage of the desolate terrain and manifold underground cellars to slacken their pace and even find momentary respite out of the view of kapos and foremen.*!

Desensitization to pain and acceptance of death were vital to survival. This meant cultivating a certain mental discipline or—to be more precise—callousness to ubiquitous suffering. ‘One no longer had any emotions,’ recalls one prisoner.*” Veteran prisoners learned to adapt to the hardships of camp life. The Hungarian

Jews transported to the camp in the spring of 1944 died in droves, no doubt largely because they were still ‘soft’, since they had arrived after a brief interval in Auschwitz directly from the relative comforts of home. To ensure their own survival many Jewish prisoners developed a fractured identity, painfully aware of the violent rupture between their previous and present selves. In the present they were able to endure what they would never have imagined themselves capable

of enduring in their prior—or, if they were fortunate enough to survive, subsequent—lives. There is some evidence of cultural activity among Jewish prisoners. A few met in the barracks to pray together. Pages from books found in the rubble were smuggled into the camp and passed from hand to hand. A prisoner named Chaim Goldstein and his companion discovered a cache of Jewish classics in a basement, including stories by Sholem Aleichem, and read them aloud in the barracks, inducing a bit of laughter. A cabaret performance was organized once in one of the barracks. All of these activities lifted prisoners’ spirits, even if only evanescently.* A few fortunate prisoners were able to draw from a stable reservoir of emotional ~ sustenance. Human solidarity with someone, whether a friend or relative, helped prisoners to endure the brutality of camp life. Jewish prisoners from Greece found fellowship not only because they felt different from their fellow Jews from the continent but also because they shared a distinct cultural and communal tradition. One prisoner, Yosef Shivek, was inseparable from a close friend who came from the 41 For details, see Mannheimer, Spates Tagebuch, 97-8, 100o—1; Finder, interview; anon., ‘My Journey to Hell and Back’, 42—3; Vilner, memoir, 7. See also the account of a young Jewish laundress

living under a false name who crossed paths with Gesiowka prisoners assigned to the laundry detail, among them Mannheimer; Czestawa Glazer, testimony, AZIH, 301/5015, 2-3. 42 Librati, ‘Déblayer les ruines du ghetto’, 220. 43 On cultural activities in the camp, see Herman Zelovic, interview with the author, audiotape, 4 Oct. 2000, in my possession; Goldstein, Zibn in bunker, 214-16; Mannheimer, Spates Tagebuch, 96.

Jewish Prisoner Labour in Warsaw 343 same town. The Mannheimer and Zelovic brothers looked after each other.** My grandfather and father, then 40 years old and 15 years old, respectively, “learned to speak among the pains’, comforting one another each evening in the barracks after observing the other’s suffering during the day from exhaustion, hunger, and beatings. My grandfather probably would have given up had he not had a son to protect emotionally as well as physically. In this vein I borrow but intentionally invert the

meaning of the phrase ‘to speak among the pains’, taken from a poem by Yehuda | Amichai entitled “The Precision of Pain and the Blurriness of Joy’. In the vision of the poet, because happiness is so elusive a description of it requires ‘sharp pain’s precision’.*° But in this camp and all others, the grammar of pain induced muteness because the gravity of the suffering defied description. In their testimonies the remnant of survivors of Gesiéwka struggle to express their pain, mental and physical alike. Even father and son did not find it easy to give one another emotional support in the baneful atmosphere of the camp, but because they, like a few others,

somehow ‘learned to speak among the pains’, their faith in even an uncertain survival would not flag.

EVACUATION Although the Germans originally planned to complete demolition of the ghetto by 1 August 1944, the construction of a crematorium suggests plans to prolong the existence of the camp into 1945. To their chagrin, the camp’s operation was interrupted in July, when the Soviet advance to the east bank of the Vistula forced its closure. Hopes of liberation by the Red Army were dashed, however, when it was decided to evacuate the prisoners westward. This inaugurated the first in the large

wave of death marches in the terminal phase of the war in 1944-5, when the | Germans evacuated Jewish prisoners from camps in eastern and central Poland and the Baltic countries into Germany in response to the Soviet offensive from the east and the American and British invasion from the west.*© On 27 July 1944 the Germans informed the prisoners of the decision to close the camp and evacuate them in a long march. On the eve of the evacuation the camp’s inmate population was roughly 5,000. The Germans shot a couple of hundred of the most debilitated prisoners before the march, while approximately 300 prisoners volunteered to remain after the evacuation to dismantle the camp under German supervision. On 28 July approximately 4,500 prisoners were evacuated under heavy 44 See Mannheimer, Spates Tagebuch, 98; Zelovic, interview; Shivek, testimony, 20-1.

45 Y. Amichai, ‘The Precision of Pain and the Blurriness of Joy: The Touch of Longing is Everywhere’, in Open Closed Open, trans. C. Bloch and C. Kronfeld (New York, 2000), 105.

46 See Sh. Krakowski, “The Death Marches in the Period of the Evacuation of the Camps’, in Y. Gutman and A. Saf (eds.), The Nazi Concentration Camps: Proceedings of the Fourth Yad Vashem International Historical Conference, January 1950 (Jerusalem, 1984), 476-7.

344 Gabriel N. Finder SS guard, reinforced by dogs, in the direction of Kutno, 120 kilometres west of Warsaw.*!

This death march would become emblematic of all subsequent death marches.

, En route the Germans mercilessly shot anyone breaking ranks or falling behind. The prisoners had been given meagre rations before leaving the camp, but, march-

ing in scorching summer heat, they were quickly overcome by thirst. The Germans, however, denied them water along the way. When the first column of thirsty prisoners came across a river, they ran to its banks, only to be shot, and soon floating corpses filled the river. While the prisoners were encamped one evening

| in a open field surrounded by the SS, they began to dig with their spoons and discovered groundwater, with which, under the cover of darkness, they quenched their thirst for the first time in a couple of days. This event looms large in every account of the survivors of the death march; to a man they use the term ‘miracle’ to describe it. After three days of marching to Kutno a few hundred prisoners had perished.*8 On 2 August the surviving prisoners were loaded into freight wagons for a train

journey to Dachau, almost 750 kilometres away. Conditions inside the cars were abysmal. Approximately 100 men were compressed into each wagon without any rations. In retaliation for the escape of a few prisoners during the trek from Warsaw to Kutno, and in the confusion of loading the evacuees into the trains, the Germans also withheld water from those crammed 1n the cars, while just one pail had to serve all their elimination needs. Scores of prisoners died en route from suffocation and heat prostration. Since there was no way of disposing of the increasing number of

corpses, prisoners stacked them at the back of the wagon and sat on them. Some prisoners became mentally unhinged during this agonizing journey. In the words of one veteran of concentration camp life, “This was the worst of all transports I have been in.’ By comparison with this ordeal, Dachau, which the death train reached on 6 August, was likened in several survivor accounts to ‘paradise’, since the prisoners were finally permitted to wash, receive fresh clothes, and eat. Of the roughly 4,500 prisoners who were evacuated from Gesidwka, not quite 4,000

47 On the evacuation of the camp, see also Berenstein and Rutkowski, ‘Ob6z koncentracyjny dla Zydéw w Warszawie’, 17-18; Rutkowski, ‘Le Camp de concentration pour Juifs a Varsovie’, 199-200. Their estimates of the number of evacuees differ from mine because in all likelihood they rely on the

approximations of surviving prisoners and never consulted documentation from Dachau (see n. 1), which would render their estimate improbably low. For survivors’ accounts of the evacuation, see Finder, interview; anon., ‘My Journey to Hell and Back’, 54-5; Eisenhandler, “Bericht uber das

Konzentrationslager Warschau’, 10-11; Paserman, ‘Die Geschichte des Konzentrationslagers

Warschau’, 15. | 48 For vivid accounts of the march on foot from Warsaw to Kutno, see Finder, interview; anon., ‘My

Journey to Hell and Back’, 56-7; Cohen, testimony, 16; Eisenhandler, ‘Bericht tiber das Konzentrationslager Warschau’, 11; Paserman, ‘Die Geschichte des Konzentrationslagers Warschau’, 15—16; Vilner, MS memoir, 8; Weiss, testimony, unpaginated; Mannheimer, Spates Tagebuch, 104.

Jewish Prisoner Labour in Warsaw 345 survived the death march and death train to Dachau. Among them were my father and grandfather.*®

LIBERATION : On 5 August forces of the Armia Krajowa (the Polish underground Home Army, AK)—specifically the Zoska battalion, a detachment of the regiment of LieutenantColonel Jan Mazurkiewicz (Radostaw)—liberated Gesidwka with machine guns and grenades in a frontal assault supported by a captured German tank. In a fierce skirmish on 1 August, the first day of the Polish uprising, Polish fighters had already freed a contingent of fifty Jewish prisoners from the clutches of Germans who had led them to the Umschlagplatz to load booty onto a train waiting to leave Warsaw. Many of these prisoners assisted Polish forces in liberating the camp. The partisans’ plan to attack the camp was motivated by the strategic goal of reuniting underground forces in different sections of the city by conquering the terrain of the ghetto. But the dire straits in which the Jewish prisoners found themselves, liable to be killed by their German captors at any moment, were not lost on rebel leaders. Of the roughly 350 Jews rescued from the camp, dozens, including twenty-four Jewish women, had been transferred there from Pawiak on 31 July after the Germans had evacuated Poles from the prison.®° The liberated prisoners’ initial taste of freedom was sweet. Chaim Goldstein, a migrant from Poland to France before the war,

belonged to the initial group of freed prisoners: ,

We went wild with joy. ... I cannot describe this moment. All of us went into the yard where the partisans were standing. ... We embraced and kissed. . .. How beautiful it was to regard the brotherhood of people who could not even talk with one another, since the Hungarian Jews could speak only Hungarian and German. We hugged and smiled at each other. The expression on the radiant faces said more than any language.*!

The vast majority of liberated prisoners volunteered to fight in the uprising.*” They thus joined the ranks of other Jews participating in the revolt: a platoon of the *9 On the journey from Kutno to Dachau, see Finder, interview; Cohen, testimony, 16; Eisenhandler, “Bericht tiber das Konzentrationslager Warschau’, 11-12; Paserman, ‘Die Geschichte des Konzentrationslagers Warschau’, 16-17; Shivek, testimony, 25; Mannheimer, Spates Tagebuch, 105-6.

s On the AK’s liberation of the camp, see Berenstein and Rutkowski, ‘Ob6z koncentracyjny dla Zydow w Warszawie’, 18-19; Rutkowski, ‘Le Camp de concentration pour Juifs 4 Varsovie’, 200-1. Liberation of the camp from the perspective of Polish forces can be found in the testimony of Micuta, ibid. 211-12; Feliks Cywiriski, testimony, Nov. 1966, AZIH, 301/6297, 1. For impressions of liberated

prisoners transferred to the camp from Pawiak, see D. Fogelman, ‘Pamigtnik pisany w bunkrze’, BLIH, 52 (1964), 129 (also available in MS, AZIH, 302/35); and Zamsztejn-Kamieniecka, quoted in Rutkowski, ‘Le Camp de concentration pour Juifs 4 Varsovie’, 210. 1 Goldstein, Zibn in bunker, 237.

*? See Micuta, quoted in Rutkowski, ‘Le Camp de concentration pour Juifs 4 Varsovie’, 212;

Goldstein, Zibn in bunker, 236. ,

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348 Gabriel N. Finder Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa (Jewish Fighting Organization, ZOB) under the command of Yitzhak Zuckerman, and dozens of individual Jews in the various units of the Armia Ludowa (People’s Army), the Polish communist underground rival of the AK. Vengeance motivated most of the liberated prisoners. Goldstein articulates

a common sentiment: “To beat the Germans—this was their sole aspiration. To wreak revenge, and if one perished, then it was with a weapon in one’s hands. After

years of mass death, anguish, and humiliation, it was their paramount and most acute wish.”°? The AK’s view of Jewish resistance during the war was complicated and frequently negative,°* but several AK officers in the field, impressed by the

liberated prisoners’ fighting spirit, now welcomed them into the ranks of the uprising, even if the leadership equivocated. —

| The former prisoners served the revolt in various capacities. Several, not least of whom were the remaining Greek Jews, reported for duty into various combat units.°° Quartermaster Feliks Cywinski of the Wigry battalion enthusiastically _ formed a special Jewish platoon under the command of Stanistaw (Shmuel) Kenigswein, a former boxer in the Makkabi sports club of Warsaw and Polish army officer who until the uprising had been sheltered with twenty-five other Jews by

Cywinski. The liberated prisoners in Kenigswein’s platoon participated in the revolt in the second half of August after two weeks of basic training. This unit, which suffered heavy losses, fought valiantly until it was forced to surrender in the | final days of the uprising.*® But, for the most part, the commanders of fighting units were reluctant to issue arms to the liberated prisoners, arguing that AK forces had no extra weapons to spare.’ The more fortunate were able to arm themselves with

the abandoned weapons of dead German soldiers. Other liberated prisoners, including women formerly incarcerated in Pawiak, served in auxiliary capacities:

baking, laundering, sewing, and transporting the wounded to hospital.°® Mechanics among the former prisoners repaired captured German tanks for the battal-

ion under the command of Wactaw Micuta, sometimes even in the midst of skirmishes with the Germans. The majority of liberated prisoners were dispatched to erect fortifications, among them a Jewish brigade formed to construct barricades. Although the men in this unit were eventually equipped with arms to defend these 53 Goldstein, Zibn in bunker, 243.

54 For the perspective of activists in the Jewish underground, see Y. Zuckerman, A Surplus of Memory: Chronicle of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, ed. and trans. B. Harshav (Berkeley, 1993), esp. 359-04; A. A. Berman, Vos der goyrl hot mir bashert: Mit yidn in varshe, 1939-1942 (Lohamei Hagetaot, 1980), 207, 220. See also S. Krakowski, The War of the Doomed: Jewish Armed Resistance in Poland,

1942-1944, trans. O. Blaustein (New York, 1984), chs. 1 and 8; id., “The Polish Underground and the Extermination of the Jews’, Polin, 9 (1996), 139-46. 55 See Cywiriski, testimony, 3; Otidett, memoir, 2. 56 See Cywiriski, testimony, 1-2; see also Krakowski, War of the Doomed, 278.

57 See Micuta, quoted in Rutkowski, ‘Le Camp de concentration pour Juifs 4 Varsovie’, 212; Fogelman, ‘Pamietnik pisany w bunkrze’, 130. 58 See Cywiriski, testimony, 1-2; Fogelman, ‘Pamietnik pisany w bunkrze’, 130.

Fewish Prisoner Labour in Warsaw 349 positions, only a few survived the concentrated German attack on the barricades.*° However valiant the Jewish volunteers, Zuckerman, who monitored their fate, took a cynical view of their deployment by the AK: “The Poles didn’t know what to do with them and those Jews had a very hard time. They were saved by the AK, who would send them to the barricades as cannon fodder against the Germans.’°°

To the liberated prisoners’ dismay, antisemitism reared its ugly head in the fighting units.°’ The ambivalent perspective of Chaim Goldstein illustrates the corrosive effect of this antisemitism on the morale of Jewish volunteers. He was proud to be fighting Germans alongside Poles, but the murder of several freed prisoners in combat units by antisemitic Polish comrades tormented him. Jewish volunteers were advised by friendly Poles to conceal their Jewish identity. Goldstein recounts an incident in which several Poles intervened to save liberated prisoners who were constructing barricades from rebels who had already killed two

, of them, still in their camp uniforms, with a cry of ‘Death to the Jews!’© In the final analysis, the number of such killers, claims Goldstein, was small.®* But in the assessment of the historian Shmuel Krakowski, ‘Goldstein may be right, but the tragedy was that the majority who were loyal to the Jews and even encouraged them

in their bitter situation did not make the expected efforts to oppose the extreme nationalist elements who were responsible for murdering Jews.’®*

With the defeat of the uprising by superior German forces on 2 October, the liberated Jewish prisoners, desperate to evade German clutches, were compelled to flee or go into hiding. Whereas captured Polish partisans were deported to German prisoner-of-war camps, Jewish insurgents, among them dozens of liberated prisoners, were shot.© The more fortunate Jewish volunteers were able to flee through the sewers to the Zoliborz district of Warsaw. Led by Zuckerman, the ZOB, which had infiltrated into the heart of Warsaw during the uprising, succeeded in reaching a group of liberated Jews and attempted to help them escape through the sewers, but in vain because the former prisoners were attacked in the sewers and returned to the Old City of Warsaw, too apprehensive to try again. Many of these men were 59 For eyewitness accounts of the participation of Jewish prisoners from Gesiéwka in combat, see , Goldstein, Z2bn in bunker, 118-28; Micuta, quoted in Rutkowski, ‘Le Camp de concentration pour Juifs a Varsovie’, 212-13. Jewish prisoners’ participation in the uprising is also recounted in G. S. Paulsson, Secret City: The Hidden Jews of Warsaw, 1940-1945 (New Haven, 2002), 183-6; Krakowski, War of the

Doomed, 276~80; Berenstein and Rutkowski, ‘Ob6z koncentracyjny dla Zydéw w Warszawie’, 19-20; Rutkowski, ‘Le Camp de concentration pour Juifs a Varsovie’, 201-2. 60 Zuckerman, Surplus of Memory, 469. A similar view is expressed by another Jewish combatant in the Warsaw ghetto uprising, Simha Rotem (Kazik), Memoirs of a Warsaw Ghetto Fighter: The Past

Within Me (New Haven, 1994), 122-3. | 6! On antisemitism in Polish combat units, see Paulsson, Secret City, 173-83; Krakowski, War of the

Doomed, 282-7. 62 See Goldstein, Zibn in bunker, 125-8. 63 Tbid. 118. 64 Krakowski, War of the Doomed, 285.

65 See Berenstein and Rutkowski, ‘Ob6z koncentracyjny dla Zyd6w w Warszawie’, 20-1; and Rutkowski, ‘Le Camp de concentration pour Juifs a Varsovie’, 202.

350 Gabriel N. Finder subsequently killed. In the confusion that followed the collapse of the uprising roughly 500 Jews from Gesiowka, Pawiak, and the ‘Aryan’ quarter of the city were thrown together in search of refuge in Warsaw’s bunkers. Life in the bunkers was a gruelling ordeal, corroding physical stamina while straining the nerves. Foraging expeditions for water and food pushed the fugitives to breaking point because they

were forced to venture into unknown sewers or risk detection above ground by German patrols. Before the Soviet liberation of the city in January 1945 the Germans unearthed half of these bunkers. If the Jews wished to avoid giving in and to survive not only physically but emotionally intact, it was essential to keep up morale. After all, none of those who had endured so much suffering over the last

few years wanted to die in the waning moments of the war beneath the ruins of Warsaw.®’ When the Red Army finally entered Warsaw on 17 January 1945, only 200 Jews, among them several former prisoners from Gesidwka, emerged from their bunkers in the devastated city.

CONCLUSION | Christopher R. Browning has succinctly defined the Nazi doctrine of ‘destruction through labour’ (“Vernichtung durch Arbeit’): ‘Jews capable of labour were to work productively and die in the process.’©? Nevertheless, German views of the use of Jewish labour changed during the course of the war. Between the policy of ‘destruc-

tion through labour’ and the imperative to annihilate the Jews, Browning argues,a third approach to the exploitation of Jewish labour in Poland was introduced after November 1943 and lasted until the end of 1944, which happens to coincide with

the existence of Gesidwka:

With the war clearly lost and the labour shortage clearly insurmountable, a weak glimmer of economic pragmatism was belatedly tolerated. At least in some camps neither a regimen of ‘destruction through labour’ nor a regimen of ‘destruction of labour’ characterized this period. Rather, it was ‘work now, destruction later’ until the chaotic period of evacuations

and death marches set in...”

Even though a precarious stability prevailed in some of these residual labour camps in the terminal phase of the war, Gesiowka, where conditions remained

execrable, proved impervious to this trend. The regimen of ‘destruction through , labour’ continued to be enforced, with the debilitation of Jewish prisoners through back-breaking labour, protracted working hours from dawn until dusk, woefully inadequate rations, wantonly cruel treatment by their overseers, and abysmally 66 See Zuckerman, Surplus of Memory, 546.

67 For gripping accounts of life in bunkers by former prisoners in Gesi6wka and Pawiak, respectively, see Goldstein, Zibn in bunker, and Fogelman, ‘Pamietnik pisany w bunkrze’, 131—41; see also

Otidett, memoir, 2. 68 See Krakowski, War of the Doomed, 290-1.

69 Browning, Nazi Policy, 73. , Tbid. 87.

, Jewish Prisoner Labour in Warsaw 351 unhygienic conditions, all of which fatally eroded their stamina—both physical and

psychological—and resistance to infection. Prisoners who did not succumb to starvation, physical exhaustion, or disease stood a good chance of falling victim to individual killings. In brief, the conditions in the camp did not suggest plans to keep prisoners alive indefinitely. After all, the Jewish prisoner labour force was con-

stantly replenished by an almost uninterrupted stream of new transports. Despite the drastic shortages in Germany’s labour force, the destruction of Jewish prisoners in Gesiowka continued unabated because in this camp, even as late as mid-1944,

there was no tension between work and annihilation. ,

Under this kind of prolonged terror, the pressure on individual and collective morale was almost unbearable. Everyday existence in Gesidwka brings to mind Primo Levi’s description of the ‘grey zone’. The Germans’ purposive dehumanization of their victims created an ‘ill-defined sphere of ambiguity and compromise’ marked by endless gradations

of responsibility, human frailty, and moral ambivalence. ‘To resist’ National Socialism’s frightful power of corruption, says Levi, ‘requires a truly solid moral armature.”"? Gesiowka, this minor and obscure camp, forms in large measure the background

to my life because even in the perverse world of this camp a father and his son, no doubt imperfect, shared whatever they had, did their best under the circumstances to protect one another, gave each other emotional support, and somehow navigated their way through this inverted world morally intact. Surviving the death march and train from Gesiéwka to Dachau, my father and grandfather were sentto Allach, — a satellite camp of Dachau. The American advance forced the Germans to evacuate Allach, while they loaded its prisoners onto open boxcars in an attempt to move . them to Austria. However, on 30 April 1945 American soldiers under the command of General George Patton liberated this convoy of prisoners, among.them my father and grandfather, Herbert and Heinrich Finder. ‘The son and grandson of survivors of Gesiowka, I am alive because not even Nazism’s colossal degradation and distortion of human sensibilities could extinguish every glimmer of humanity in this camp and others. 1 P. Levi, The Drowned and the Saved (New York, 1988), 67-8.

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+‘

The Gesiowka Story: A Little-Known Page of Jewish Resistance EDWARD KOSSOY

| GESIOWKA COMMEMORATED THE almost obligatory Jewish itinerary in Warsaw begins at the Ghetto Fighters’

Memorial, takes you through the ruins of the Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa (Jewish Fighting Organization, ZOB) bunker at Mita Street, and ends at the Umschlagplatz, the starting point for the deportation trains to Treblinka. Having read inscriptions on several memorial plaques, visitors go on to the old Jewish cemetery at Okopowa Street. Leading to it is Mordechai Anielewicz Street, named

in memory of the ZOB commander. There, at number 34, just opposite the entrance to the devastated cemetery, another plaque is fixed to the wall. On 1 August 1994, attracting worldwide attention, Poland commemorated the

fiftieth anniversary of the 1944 Warsaw uprising, remembering the enormous losses among the insurgents, the wholesale slaughter of the civil population, and the total destruction of their city. Four days later, in a modest ceremony that drew less attention, the plaque on the house at 34 Mordechai Anielewicz Street was unveiled. Its inscription, in Hebrew and Polish, states: ‘On 5 August 1944 the “Zoska” scouts’ battalion of the “Radostaw” unit of the Armia Krajowa [Home Army, AK] captured the German concentration camp of “Gesidwka” at this very spot and liberated 348 Jewish inmates, citizens of various countries in Europe. Many of them fought and fell in the Warsaw uprising.’ This was a symbolic event commemorating a little-known chapter of common

Jewish—Polish fighting history in what used to be the very heart of the Jewish quarter and what became, after its destruction in 1943, the site of Gesiowka camp, in the ruins of the ghetto. Not one of the old houses remains, but at least the street honours the name of Mordechai Anielewicz, the fallen hero of the 1943 ghetto | uprising. It was here fifty years ago, on the afternoon of 5 August, that a voluntary force of two platoons of Polish scouts, led by a solitary Panther tank recently captured from the Germans, made a daring attack on Gesidwka camp and succeeded in capturing it.1 During the short battle two of the 350 Jewish inmates were mistakenly ' For more detailed reports of this and following events, see B.E. Anlen, ‘Memories of Pawiak and Gesiodwka Prisoners During the Warsaw Rising’, Jewish History Quarterly, 1 (2003); A. Rutkowski, ‘Le

354 Edward Kossoy taken for Germans and killed; none of the others were wounded. Almost all volun-

teered to fight in the uprising. |

Among the few survivors present at the ceremony was the only surviving officer

of the Zoska battalion, then a captain, now a retired colonel and senior United Nations official, Wactaw Micuta. Ina stirring address he deplored the antisemitism that still prevailed in Poland, and the backlash against it, the ‘antipolonism’ of certain Jewish circles. He expressed hope that finally the scouts’ motto, ‘All mankind brethren’, would prevail.

GESIOWKA: KONZENTRAZIONSLAGER WARSCHAU Who were the liberated Jews and how did they survive? The total destruction of the Warsaw ghetto was ordered by Himmler in February 1943 ‘as a measure of security and pacification for Warsaw’. Along with the destruction, the wholesale exploitation of everything of any value was also ordered. Faithfully following the orders of

his superior, after the suppression of the ghetto uprising of May 1943, General Jurgen Stroop and his henchmen destroyed all the houses in the ghetto with flamethrowers and deported the last of the surviving Jews, numbering over 50,000, to the Treblinka gas chambers. Then, in July 1943, a concentration camp for Jews, the Konzentrazionslager Warschau, was established in the ruins bordering the intact Pawiak prison and Gesia Street. Hence the nickname Gesiowka. Under the German master plan the 180 hectares of the ghetto ruins, after full exploitation, had to be levelled and converted into a park. Four German enterprises were charged with the execution of the project, budgeted at 150 million Reichsmarks. The machinery included twenty narrow-gauge steam engines, shunting 565 wagons on some 30 kilometres of track laid in the ruins, and nine large mechanical,

mostly steam-operated diggers. The technicians were hired Poles and a few Germans. All the menial work had to be done by Jewish prisoners. The first camp commandant, Goercke, from Mauthausen concentration camp, brought with him 300 German criminal prisoners to assist the SS guards in managing the Jews. Stroop suspected that up to 10,000 Jews could still be hiding in the ruins. To isolate them from the outside world and to prevent contact between the inmates and the employed Poles, he barred Polish Jews from the Gesidwka workforce. The 3,083 Jewish prisoners sent from Auschwitz to do this work in 1943 were therefore

Belgian, Dutch, French, and Greek nationals, although fifty Polish Jews were included on one occasion when the SS in Auschwitz was short of Jews of other nationalities. Among the ‘foreigners’, however, there were a number of men who Camp de concentration pour les Juifs a Varsovie’, Le Revue du CDJC, 119 (1985); T. Suminiski (ed.), Pamietniki zotmerzy Batalionu Zoska (Warsaw, 1986); A. Wyganowska-Eriksson, Pluton pancerny w powstaniu warszawskim (Warsaw, 1994); and my own ‘Gesiéwka (KZ Warschau)’, Zeszyty Historyczne, 110 (1994), and “The Gesiowka Story’, Yad Vashem Studies, 32 (2004).

The Gestowka Story 355 had emigrated at various times from Poland. One was Chaim (Charles) Goldstein, who had left Warsaw for Paris in 1929 and now returned there via Auschwitz. His book Zibn in bunker (‘Seven in a Bunker’), translated into many languages, relates his incredible experiences and his survival with his six companions. Because of the failure of the German stratagem, contacts with Poles employed on the site were established quite early.* Thanks to these contacts some of the hidden valuables found in the ruins could be exchanged for badly needed food. Generally the attitude of the Poles was rather ambivalent: there were some who obviously enjoyed the sight of Jews toiling under German kicks. Others were merely indifferent. But there were also some who tried to help. Goldstein tells how, hungry and sick with malaria, he was saved out of sheer compassion by a Pole who surreptitiously helped

him in his work and brought food and medicines. On another occasion young Polish pedlars, ignoring the threats of the SS guards, threw bread and apples to a passing group of Jewish prisoners. While the prisoners had to dig in ruins in search of hidden treasure, the camp commandant, Goercke, embarked on a much simpler scheme to collect gold. First he tried to order the visiting doctor to check the prisoners’ dentures and extract all the gold. Undiscouraged by his refusal, he took a short cut: every day his SS guards

would bring him a couple of prisoners with more valuable gold dentures. Then Goercke and one or two of his confidants led the group into the ruins to be shot there in cold blood as ‘trying to escape’. When these dental practices became too widely known, Goercke and two of his henchmen were arrested and sent to Germany.? It is unknown whether they had to face trial there. If Goercke did face trial, it was certainly not for killing Jews—an officially organized and encouraged activity—but for illegal appropriation of gold belonging to the Reich. In winter 1943—4 only one-third of the Jewish workforce survived an epidemic of typhus. The new commandant, Oberstiirmbahnfuthrer Umschmitz, asked Auschwitz for replacements. Soon he had at his disposal a new and still unused workforce of more than 4,000 young, mostly Hungarian Jews. In the next two months he could boast that 80 per cent of the projected demolition had been achieved and 34 million usable bricks had been extracted. A squad of twenty men (the Leichenkommando) had been busy round the clock burning corpses on wood pyres in one of the courtyards. Besides those who had died or been executed in the camp and the neighbouring Pawiak prison, hundreds were brought every day from the mass public executions in the town and from the clandestine executions by the Gestapo in the ruins of the burned-out ghetto. With

the ever-growing number of executions, it was decided to build a crematorium. Since every Gesidwka prisoner had to take four bricks to the construction site at the end of the day’s work, the crematorium was ready by the end of June 1944. Only 2 Ch. E. Goldstein, Zibn in bunker (Warsaw, 1962), trans. C. Goldstein as The Bunker (Philadelphia,

1970). 3 Quoted in F. Loth, Bytem lekarzem na Pawiaku (Warsaw, 1964), 359.

356 Edward Kossoy _ the outbreak of the Warsaw uprising prevented the Germans from putting it into

operation. |

THE EVACUATION In the face of the swiftly progressing Russian summer offensive, the evacuation of GesiOwka and Pawiak was ordered. On 27 July the prisoners were told to make themselves ready to march 60 kilometres a day. Those who wanted transport were ordered to report to the camp dispensary. The same evening 180 were taken to be shot, together with some 250 sick brought into the dispensary earlier. The next morning in sweltering heat the SS guards drove the thirsty and already exhausted prisoners westward. Whoever could not maintain the murderous pace was shot on the spot. After three days of marching, the decimated column arrived at the railway station in Zychlin. There the prisoners—roo to an open freight wagon—embarked on a four-day journey to Dachau concentration camp. Because of the inhuman conditions at least fifteen people died daily in each wagon. According to Dutch Red Cross statistics, out of 1,050 Dutch Jews sent in 1943 from Auschwitz to Gesidwka only fifteen survived to be liberated on 29 April 1945 in Dachau by the United States army. About 300 able-bodied prisoners were left in Warsaw. They were joined by ninety-nine Jewish men and twenty-four women transferred from the evacuated Pawiak prison. Their prime task was to gather all the items left behind in the camp and in stores and dispatch them to Germany; they would also be used to remove the more evident traces of German crimes. Once the work was done, in accordance

| with standing German concentration camp practice they would be shot. Here again the SS designs were thwarted by the Warsaw uprising.

THE LIBERATION The main body of prisoners left in Gesiowka was busy removing the corpses of executed inmates and cleaning and emptying the barracks and stores. A fifty-man squad was dispatched outside the camp, at the railway siding, to load goods heading for Germany. With the sound of cannon fire getting nearer and nearer, the tension in the camp was high. On 1 August steady gunfire could be heard all around. The

_ game evening the German kapos were clad in Wehrmacht uniforms and armed. The fifty-man squad did not return to camp that night. Those in the camp were confined to barracks and cut off from the outside world. Some bet that the Russians had arrived in the town, others that a revolt had broken out, some both. The initial operational plans of the Polish Uprising Command provided for the early capture of both Gesidwka and Pawiak. But on the first day of fighting only the outside perimeter of these strongholds fell to the insurgents. It was the good

The Gestowka Story 357 fortune of the squad of fifty outside to be inside that perimeter and to be liberatedin __ | the very first hour of fighting. Practically all of the liberated prisoners, including Chaim Goldstein, volunteered spontaneously to join the uprising. In the following days Gesiéwka was stormed on at least two occasions, but each time the attacks _ stopped short at its strongly fortified defences. The Polish area commander, mindful of losses, decided to hold off on the strongholds and leave their capture to a more propitious time. His tactically sound decision left the surviving 350 Jewish prisoners exposed to German rage and almost certain death. Knowing that this would be the situation, a group of Polish officers, all of them veteran members of the Zwiazek Harcerstwa Polskiego (Polish Scouts’ Organization), asked for permission to have

one more try. Reluctantly it was given on condition that the attacking force be

limited and entirely voluntary, and supported by one tank only. Taking the Germans by surprise, two platoons of the scouts’ Zoska battalion led by a solitary tank succeeded in capturing Gesidwka. The surprise, emotion, and enthusiasm of the liberated prisoners 1s difficult to describe but easy to understand. Captain Wactaw Micuta (Wacek), the officer leading the operation, was then taken by surprise: hardly had he left the turret of his tank than he perceived a military-style column of prisoners clad in the striped clothing of the camp. Then he heard in Polish: ‘Ensign Henryk Lederman presents the Jewish battalion ready to fight.’ Following Wacek’s report, permission was given to accept the volunteers. A dozen electricians and mechanics were recruited into the armoured platoon. Some skilled mechanics were absorbed into the rebels’ only arms-producing workshop in Grzybowska Street.* Others joined the Parasol, Wigry, and Zoska scouts’ battalions. A big group was absorbed into the logistical unit, led by Lieutenant Ludwik Michalski (Fil). Captain Feliks Cywinski (Rys), who had sheltered twenty-six Jewish men and women before the uprising, among them Shmuel (Stanistaw) Kenigswein, prize boxer of the Warsaw Makkabi, took several of them and about forty Gesiowka men and formed the Jewish Wigry platoon, with Kenigswein as its commander.° Their exploits are part of a less well-known history of Jewish fighting participation in the 1944 Warsaw uprising. To piece together the whole story the Jews who had earlier joined the Armia Krajowa and the Armia Ludowa (People’s Army, AL) need to be identified, as well as the many hundreds or maybe even more Jews who, after the outbreak of the uprising, came out of hiding and joined its ranks. Finally, last but not least, we need to add the part played by the revived ZOB

in the 1944 fighting.

4 Archiwum Zydowskiego Instytutu Historycznego, 301/5678. © Quoted in S. Krakowski, The War of the Doomed: Jewish Armed Resistance in Poland, 1942-1944 (New York, 1984), 278. After the AK command refused to let the ZOB fight as a separate Jewish unit,

Cywinski’s Jewish platoon was the only distinctly Jewish unit in the AK. Defending St John’s , Cathedral in the Old Town, only eighteen men from the platoon survived.

358 Edward Kossoy | GESIOWKA JEWS FIGHTING The stores captured by the AK in the Umschlagplatz included food, German uniforms, and helmets. Invited to help themselves to the treasures, Goldstein’s hungry squad, the first liberated Gesiowka prisoners, fell upon the canned food. They paid no attention to the fact that their striped garments made them particularly distinctive. Over the following week they fought in these garments at the barricades in the Wola quarter against the German armoured might, and strove to open up access to the Vistula bridges. When an AK officer commanding a unit of forty-two men, six

| of them Jews, was considering surrender in the face of murderous German fire, all _ $ix Jews jumped into the open in front of the barricade, firing with full force on the

| ~ advancing Germans. Taken by surprise, the Germans fled. Two of the Gesiowka Jews fell; one was wounded. After the insurgents’ retreat from Wola, and still in their striped clothes, Goldstein witnessed the cold-blooded murder of one of his comrades by an armed antisemite. Goldstein’s own AK officer did not intervene, claiming that it was outside his authority. But following that incident the Jews of his unit discarded their stripes and were issued with uniforms and helmets.

Only a small number of the liberated Gesiowka Jews had any military training and experience, which is why the bulk were assigned to logistical services. Under German fire they constructed barricades, manned munitions transportation squads, and served as stretcher-bearers, hospital personnel, and kitchen staff. The whole time the vast majority of them remained in their striped clothing—easy targets for German revenge. The toll was extremely heavy. Besides those who fell during the week of fighting at Wola, after the AK retreat from that neighbourhood the Germans executed about 120 striped Gesidwka Jews, alongside thirty Polish Redemptorist priests. The squad that joined the armoured platoon was constantly busy. The tanks, engaged in heavy fighting almost round the clock, received many enemy hits, and it was only thanks to the ingenuity, persistence, and not least the bravery of the Jewish

| technical squad that they were kept functioning. One such case is reported by platoon commander Micuta: during a fierce battle the tank cannon, because of current failure, stopped firing. The squad’s electrician, Corporal Jozef Filar, and another ~ Gesiédwka man, the young Hungarian ‘Kuba’, under heavy enemy fire, reached the

tank and with lightning speed repaired it, forcing the Germans to flee. Both were decorated with the Krzyz Walecznych (Bravery Cross). In mid-September both fell fighting at the Czerniakéw bridgehead. Covering the retreat from Wola, first one of the two tanks, then the other, was heavily hit and all disposable munition spent. Then Ensign Henryk Lederman (Heniek) set the tanks on fire, leaving only worth-

less carcasses for the approaching Germans. Retreating from Wola into the Old Town, the squad fought all the fierce battles in the AK ranks. Here again Lederman

was essential in establishing a vital munitions supply route through the under-

ground sewers between the besieged Old Town and the Zolibdrz district.

The Gesiowka Story 359 | Lederman, as well as two more Jews of the Armoured Platoon, were awarded the , Krzyz Walecznych. None of them survived the uprising.® Some 150 Gesidwka men rescued from the slaughter at Wola retreated with its last AL defenders into the Old Town. There the AL command formed them into the AL Auxiliary International Jewish Brigade. Along with the ZOB squad, which had already been incorporated into the AL, it was the second AL Jewish unit. Its members continued to be employed mostly in logistical services. It was their misfortune that among those responsible for logistics was a platoon of the virulently antisemitic Narodowe Sity Zbrojne (National Armed Forces, NSZ), which excelled in sending the Jews on suicidal missions at every opportunity. When it was discovered that Sergeant Bedek of the NSZ was shooting the advancing Jews from behind, one of the Greek Gesi6wka men executed him.’ On another occasion two ‘striped’ Jews fighting on the barricade at the entrance to Miodowa Street were shot by other NSZ men, who managed to evade revenge. During the final German assault on the Old Town the AL Jewish Brigade suffered such heavy losses that it ceased to exist. On 2 September the burned-out and destroyed Old Town was abandoned, and its defenders passed through the sewers first to the centre of town and from there

| to the Czerniakow bridgehead. There their commander, Wacek, was severely wounded and seven Gesiowka men fell: Jézef Filar, David Goldman (Gutek), Henryk Lederman, Richard Sutka (Rysiek), and three Hungarian Jews known only by their first names and pseudonyms: Koloman, Kuba, and Tibor. On the last days of fighting Wacek advised the Jewish soldiers to try to reach the Russian-held right bank of the Vistula. At least one did it swimming; he was Albert (Abraham) Giladi,

who after the war settled in Jerusalem. Others did not want to abandon their wounded commandant and carried him all the way to the last stand at Mokotow. By

that time the Germans had discovered the importance of the insurgents’ underground communications and were doing their best to prevent their use. After a patrol reported the canal leading to Mokotow blocked and impassable, David Gold-

man and Stanistaw Sieminski succeeded in digging out under German fire a passage in the barricade they had recently constructed. It was only thanks to the persistence, ingenuity, and indefatigable bravery of these two Gesidwka Jews that the remaining Czerniakow insurgents were saved from certain slaughter at the hands of the Dirlewanger murderers.® ° Among the forty-nine men and women who fought in the ranks of the Armoured Platoon in the uprising there were ten Gesi6wka men and one Jewish nurse. Only two of the men survived, giving a less than 20% survival rate. Of the remaining thirty-eight fighters, twenty-one, or almost 60%, survived (Wyganowska-Eriksson, Pluton pancerny, 451-7. ’ 'The execution of the NSZ sergeant was related to me by Greek survivors of Gesiéwka in Israel in 1960.

: It could be said that, by this twist of destiny, in which the two Gesidwka men saved hundreds of AK

fighters, they repaid them for the earlier rescue and liberation of themselves and their comrades. On

6 May 2003, Jewish Day in Warsaw, the president of the Zoska Battalion Survivors’ Association received from the Israeli ambassador and Yad Vashem president, Professor Shewach Weiss, a letter of

360 | Edward Kossoy In the Old Town, Goldstein and his group stayed with the Natecz AK battalion. When the commander called for twelve volunteers for a dangerous mission, he and | eleven other Gesidwka Jews rose immediately. T'wo received machine pistols and under that cover the remainder dug during the night a defence trench under the very noses of the attacking Germans. The Jews were cited for bravery. Another four of the Gesidwka Jews incorporated into the Parasol scouts’ battalion became widely popular within the ranks. They were Henryk Poznanski (Bystry) and his

wife, both veteran members of the ZOB, Dr Zoltan Safiyef (Dr Turek) and Dr Peter Forr6 (Pawel). Bystry was the most trusted organizer and guide to the complicated system of underground sewage canals. At the end of the Old Town battle he led the commander-in-chief of the AK, General Bor-Komorowski, and his staff to the new positions. Working around the clock, he even returned to the Old Town to bring the rear guards left there to relative safety. A week later he fell while firing at the enemy. His wife, serving in the same unit as a messenger, probably survived. Dr Turek was a surgeon, probably of Bukharan origin, sent by the Soviet authorities to work in the Ukrainian territory annexed in 1939, and deported from there to Auschwitz after the German invasion. He made a name for himself among the insurgents, operating on the wounded and changing their dressings under the most stressful conditions. Pawet, the Hungarian, though a physician by profession, dis-

tinguished himself from the start as a sniper. Armed with a British anti-tank weapon, the PIAT, he had to his credit the destruction of a large number of German armoured cars and tanks, which he did with unusual precision and sangfroid. Dr Turek and Pawet were both executed by Germans on 22 September. Immediately after the liberation most of the Greeks and some Hungarians, handicapped by their ignorance of Polish, joined the more tolerant, left-orientated AL.? In this company, among the ranks of the Czwartacy and Gustaw AL battal-

| ions, which participated in the defence of important places (the National Bank, Radziwilt Palace, Simon’s Mall, etc.), there were moments of glory that belong in the annals of bravery.

AFTER THE SURRENDER Contrary to the agreed conditions of surrender, many Poles—and all recognized Jews—were executed by the murderous Dirlewanger and Kaminski criminal bands. The Gesiéwka men with Auschwitz prison numbers tattooed on their forearms had little if any chance of escape. Mindful of this, their commanders advised them to try thanks from Yad Vashem recognizing the extraordinary merits of the ZoSka battalion’s action. It is the only such letter issued by Yad Vashem to a military unit. David Goldman fell in the last days of the 1944 uprising. Stanistaw Sieminski survived, and died in Warsaw in 1988. Their extraordinary bravery at the Czerniakéw bridgehead still awaits proper recognition by the Polish military. ° Quoted in A. Przygoniski, Powstanie warszawskie w sierpniu 1944r. (Warsaw, 1980), v/1. 166.

The Gestowka Story 361 and join the Russians holding the right bank of the River Vistula or to go into hiding. Some twenty AL Greeks were successfully led to the Russian-held bank by

AL guides. Other Jewish fighters, who had fought to the end in the suburb of Mokotow, were cut off from their escape route via the Vistula. Sixteen of them discarded their military uniforms and, dressed as civilians, escaped into the woods.

One group went into hiding in Nadarzyn, near Warsaw, where a peasant named Hajduk selflessly helped them to survive. With the eighteen survivors of Kenigswein’s AK Jewish platoon, they remained hidden in a large bunker in the ruins of the Old Town until the arrival of the Red Army in January 1945.

Goldstein, with two other Gesi6wka men and four more companions, one of them a young Polish priest, survived in a similar manner. In the last days of fighting in the Old Town, Goldstein’s commander advised them to go into hiding. With the help of some Polish comrades-in-arms they built a bunker connected to the underground canals, hiding there after the Old Town had been abandoned by the insur-

gents, in anticipation of the arrival of the Red Army. On the approach of the frequent German patrols, they would leave the bunker and go down into the canal. After about three weeks they came across an AK patrol there and learned that the fighting was still going on, whereupon Goldstein and another Gesidwka man joined

them and arrived at the AK Zolibérz command, ready to join the ranks again. There they enjoyed a very friendly reception but learned that the final surrender was only a matter of hours away and that the best thing they could do was return to their bunker, which they did. Sometime in December they were surprised to discover the existence of another bunker with ten Jews in hiding, all of them AL fighters. Unfortunately their joy was _ short-lived: the hiding place was discovered by patrolling Germans and all of the | men executed. Finally, on a cold day in January 1945, Goldstein and his companions, after four and half months of darkness, saw the sunlight of liberation.

Warsaw was occupied by the Red Army. Goldstein could return to Paris and

publish his memoirs, a best-seller translated into many languages. |

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PARTIII

Documents |

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Gomutka Writes to Stalin in 1948 | LECH W. GLUCHOWSKI

| INTRODUCTION CURRENTLY, even an exhaustive probe into the purge of east European Communists during the final years of Stalin’s rule cannot be conclusive. Many primary records are still inaccessible to independent scholars, but even unlimited access to the archives may prove to be inadequate. It is unlikely that the guardians of ideology and security in eastern Europe have preserved all of the relevant documents on the show trials of party activists, who were in fact dedicated to the victory of Communism in their respective countries. The most revealing and substantial documents, moreover, are located in Moscow and continue to be closely guarded. Although the purges of loyal east European Communists in 1948-56 were instigated and meticulously planned in Moscow, local party and security officials carried them out and put their own unique stamp on the process. The exact role of the Soviet security and counter-intelligence advisers in the region remains shrouded in mystery. In the late stages of Stalin’s rule, power was shifted to the vast apparatus of terror and repression, if only to mobilize eastern Europe for the coming Stalinist revolution. The east European show trials that followed were triggered by the internal logic of Stalinism, or what Zbigniew Brzezinski once called the totalitarian politics of the ‘permanent purge’.’ The purges were of course preceded by the onset of the cold war in Europe and Asia,” the Soviet—Yugoslav split,? and Stalin’s personal obsession with anti-Jewish conspiracies (which only increased after the founding of the state of Israel in May 1948*). They culminated in the infamous ‘Jewish doctors’ plot’ of January 1953,” in * See Z. Brzezinski, The Permanent Purge: Politics in Soviet Totalitarianism (Cambridge, Mass., 1956); id., The Soviet Bloc: Unity and Conflict, rev., enlarged edn. (Cambridge, Mass., 1981).

2 For some of the latest primary research on this period, see The Cold War International History Project Bulletin and the Cold War International History Project Working Paper Series, archived at

. (last accessed 8 July 2003). ® On the Soviet-Yugoslav split, see the classic by Adam Ulam, Titoism and the Cominform — (Cambridge, Mass., 1952). 4 See the interesting comments on this subject by the former Soviet archivist Arkady Vaksberg in his Stalin Against the Fews, trans. A. W. Bouis (New York, 1994), 175-7. © L. Rapoport, Stalin’s War Against the Jews: The Doctors’ Plot and the Soviet Solution (New York, 1gg0).

366 Lech W. Gtuchowskt which a group of doctors in Moscow, most of them Jewish, were alleged to have conspired to murder leading Soviet political and military figures by sabotaging their medical treatment. The Kremlin’s goal in instigating the purges was to establish complete dominion over its European satellites. In this respect, the causes of the purges were in large measure identical throughout the region, as were the methods employed during the campaign of terror. Only in the case of Poland, , where the pattern of the purge appears to have deviated from the standard model, did almost all the leading party officials who were arrested escape execution. ’ The first victims, usually middle- to high-ranking party officials, were carefully selected and charged with espionage on behalf of the United States or some other

Western country. There followed prolonged imprisonment and insufferable torture. Ata certain point the interrogators would suddenly become more lenient; they would appeal to the victim’s conscience as a Communist to persuade him to confess, and offer an honourable retirement in return. The broken prisoner would then name others and begin the lengthy preparation for his carefully choreographed trial. Not surprisingly, the interrogators’ promises were false; the accused received _. prison terms or death sentences. The leaders of the satellite regimes in 1948-9— Enver Hoxha of Albania, Georgi Dimitrov of Bulgaria, Klement Gottwald of Czechoslovakia,? Walter Ulbricht of East Germany, Matyas Rakosi of Hungary, Bolestaw Bierut of Poland,? and Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej of Romania!°—appear to have been untouched by the purges, at least until Stalin’s death in March 1953. _ Albania’s Hoxha suggested that Dimitrov, Gottwald, and Bierut did not die of natural causes. Dimitrov died in July 1949, in the midst of the east European 6 One of the most important studies on the east European purges remains G. H. Hodos, Show Trials: Stalinist Purges in Eastern Europe, 1948-1954 (New York, 1987).

7 On the purges in Poland, see Z. Blazynski, Méemi Jozef Swiatlo: Za kulisamt bezpteki t parti (London, 1986); S. Marat and J. Snopkiewicz, Ludzie bezpieki: Dokumentacja czasu bezprawia (Warsaw, 1990); and B. Fijatkowska, Borejsza 1 Rézanski: Przyczynek do dztejow stalinizmu w Polsce (Olsztyn, 1995). In a category all its own is H. Field and K. Field, Opégntony odlot: W okowach zimnej wojny, with a compelling afterword by Andrzej Paczkowski (Warsaw, 1997); and the English-language version Trapped in the Cold War: The Ordeal of an American Family, with an afterword by Norman Naimark (Stanford, Calif., 1999). Hermann was secretly arrested and imprisoned in Stalinist Poland, while his brother Noel suffered a similar fate in Hungary. Noel was a major link in many of the east European purges, and his role was further complicated by his wartime relationship with Allen Dulles (who later became director of the US Central Intelligence Agency). On Noel Field, see F. Lewis, Red Pawn: The Story of Noel Field (Garden City, NY, 1965); and on related matters, see L. W. Gluchowski, ‘The Defection of Jozef Swiatto and the Search for Jewish Scapegoats in the Polish United Workers Party, 1953-1954’, InterMarium On-Line Journal, 3/2 (Apr. 1999), archived at (last accessed 8 July 2003). | 8 On the Czechoslovak purges, see K. Kaplan, Report on the Murder of the General Secretary (London, 1990). Kaplan’s appraisal of the Stalinist Rudolf Slansky is rather sympathetic. ® On Bierut, see A. Garlicki, Dzteje PRL: Bolestaw Bierut (Warsaw, 1994).

: 10 For an extensive biography of one of the victims of the purges in Romania, see R. Levy, Ana Pauker: The Rise and Fall of a Jewish Communist (Berkeley, 2001). Levy’s failed attempt to turn Pauker

into a tragic figure should not deter readers. |

Gomutka Writes to Stalin in 1948 367 purges; Gottwald died in March 1953, just after Stalin’s state funeral; and Bierut died in March 1956, shortly after Stalin’s successor, Nikita Khrushchev, gave his secret speech denouncing Stalin at the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in February 1956. As Hoxha later wrote: ‘Dimitrov, Gottwald, and Bierut all died in Moscow. What a coincidence!’!! In any case, Stalin’s death was the most important factor in the eventual collapse of the post-war east European show trials. The purges began with secret proceedings against the Albanian interior minister Kogi Xoxe in May 1949. Archival evidence found in Poland now indicates that Bierut continued to support the purges and trials until his own death.’ In particular, he supported the long-delayed case against his arch-rival, Wtadystaw

Gomutka, who managed to avoid trial and who emerged in October 1956 as Poland’s new party boss.!° Why, then, was the Polish case an anomaly? Why was Gomutka never put on trial in Poland? Did Stalin spare his life or was something else planned for him? The answers to these questions may lie in a letter, reproduced below, sent by Gomutka to Stalin on 14 December 1948.'* However, before the details of Gomutka’s letter to Stalin are discussed, a short review of the events that led to Gomutka’s fall from power in 1948 is in order. In early 1946 extensive organizational and personnel changes took place within the Soviet regime and its security apparatus. Lavrenty Beria was replaced as the head of the NK VD, which had split into two separate ministries in March of that

year, by S. N. Kruglov and V. S. Abakumov, neither of whom had been closely associated with Beria. By the end of 1946 the NK VD security cadres appointed by Beria, or the ‘Georgian mafia’, as Amy Knight calls them, had largely been replaced

by men closer to Andrey Zhdanov or Georgy Malenkov.’° | Also in 1946 Zhdanov launched the campaign against ‘decadent’ Western influences in the arts and letters that came to be known as the zhdanovshchina. ‘Two important points emerge here. Gomutka appears to have become associated with the virulent antisemitism of Zhdanov, who was a prime mover in the 1946 campaign against the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee.’® It appears that Khrushchev, too, had his hand in the anti-Jewish campaign of 1946—9.!’ Gomutka also became 1! FE. Hoxha, The Khrushchevites: Memoirs (Tirana, 1980), 148. 12 See esp. M. Turlejska, Te pokolenia zatobami czarne: Skazani na smieré 1 ich sedziowe 1944-1954 (London, 1989). ‘38 On Gomutka, see P. Machcewicz, Dzieje PRL: Wiladystaw Gomutka (Warsaw, 1995).

\4 The letter was published in Poland by A. Werblan, ‘Ostatni sp6r Gomutki ze Stalinem: Nieznana korespondencja z 1948 r.’, Dzis, 6 (1993), 105-10. I would like to express my appreciation to Professor Werblan for sending me a copy of Gomutka’s original, handwritten version of the 1948 letter to Stalin. 15 For further details, see A. Knight, Beria: Stalin’s First Lieutenant (Princeton, 1993), 140—2.

16 Ibid. 143-50; and the documentary study by J. Rubenstein and V. P. Naumov (eds.), Stalin’s Secret Pogrom: The Postwar Inquisition of the Fewish Anti-Fascist Committee (Annals of Communism),

trans. L. E. Wolfson (New Haven, 2001). 17 Knight, Beria, 141-2.

368 Lech W. Gtuchowski closely associated with Zhdanov’s pro-Yugoslavia position, and therefore with Josip Tito, and thus appeared to oppose Stalin’s attempt systematically to strip the Soviet bloc states of their natural and other resources. In 1947, after a number of deliberations between Stalin and various European Communists on the need to ‘facilitate the co-ordination and exchange of views among communist parties’, Gomutka invited delegates from eight other Communist parties for a series of meetings in late February.'® The meeting was attended by Zhdanov, who gave the major speech, and by Malenkov. The delegates resolved to push forward with an accelerated programme of Sovietization. In the course of these meetings, which were officially called the Information Conference of Representatives from Nine Communist and Workers’ Parties, the Cominform was established. The participants included delegates from the USSR, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Yugoslavia, France, and Italy.‘* Talk of multiple roads

to socialism was soon replaced with the rhetoric of a single, Soviet-directed | campaign of industrialization and the militarization of the Soviet bloc economies. With Zhdanov’s star rising, Gomutka eclipsed Bierut in Poland. However, Bierut maintained close relations with Beria and the Soviet foreign minister, Vyacheslav Molotov, two Kremlin insiders who, among other things, tended to | support national minorities in the leadership of the east European Communist parties.2? Gomutka’s short-lived ascendancy came to an abrupt end when a speech he - gave at the Polska Partia Robotnicza (Polish Workers’ Party, PPR) Central Committee plenum in June 1948 precipitated a crisis. At about the same time, Zhdanov suffered a marked physical decline. In July 1948 he was incapacitated by heart disease, and he died in late August. Polish historians and publicists have generally argued that the crisis began soon after Gomutka defied Stalin and voiced his opposition to the policies of the Cominform.?! They emphasize Gomutka’s refusal to accept Stalinist methods for the future development of Polish Communism. But Gomutka’s 1948 letter to Stalin suggests that he was a far more willing servant of Stalinism than many had previously believed. The main subject of Gomutka’s address to the June plenum was the historical

traditions that should guide the soon-to-be-formed Polska Zjednoczona Partia 18 For details, see K. Kersten, The Establishment of Communist Rule in Poland, 1943-1946, trans. and annotated by J. Micgiel and M. H. Bernard (Berkeley, 1991), esp. pt. 3.

19 Poland’s delegates included Gomutka, Jakub Berman, Hilary Minc, Stanislaw Radkiewicz, Aleksander Zawadzki, and the conference secretary, Roman Zambrowski. Marian Spychalski and _ Poland’s president, Bierut, at the time a secret member of the Politburo, also attended the meetings. For details, see A. Werblan, Wladystaw Gomutka: Sekretarz Generalny PPR (Warsaw, 1988), 505-6. Werblan’s interrupted biography contains much that is useful, but his enthusiasm for Gomutka is too obvious. 20 On Soviet leaders, see V. Zubok and C. Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War: From Stalin to Khrushchev (Cambridge, Mass., 1996). 21 See e.g. B. Brzeziriski, ‘Gomutka a Kominform’, Zycie Literackie, 4-5 (1982).

Gomutka Writes to Stalin in 1948 369 | Robotnicza (Polish United Workers’ Party, PZPR) which would absorb the PPR and the Polska Partia Socjalistyczna (Polish Socialist Party).22 Gomutka provided a highly critical assessment of the revolutionary workers’ movement in Poland, and particularly of its traditional hostility to Polish independence. He maintained that

the post-war Polish Communist movement should repudiate the pre-war line, which steadfastly opposed Polish independence, and move to assimilate the constructive traditions of the Polish Socialists on the question of Polish independence. Gomutka added that there was a direct relationship between the anti-independ-

ence position taken by Poland’s Communists during the pre-war period and the narrow social base of the PPR after the Second World War. Moreover, he unequivo-

cally denied the relevance of large parts of the Soviet experience for the future development of Polish Communism. In the ensuing debate he was sharply attacked for these views.7? Immediately after the June plenum, at the Politburo meeting on 4 June—which

Gomutka was not invited to attend—Bierut launched his counter-attack. Every Politburo member was to submit his own comments on Gomutka’s speech so that a

composite criticism could be put together. Collectively, the Politburo members accused Gomutka of succumbing to a ‘rightist deviation’ when he advocated the adoption of the ‘nationalist and opportunist’ traditions of the Polish Socialists as a programme for the new party.2*

Bierut’s Politburo maintained, among other things, that Gomutka’s ‘simple view’ of Polish Communism as an ‘agent of Moscow’ blindly accepted ‘legends disseminated by class enemies’. Gomutka ‘incorrectly focused’ on those ‘tendencies’

within Polish Communism that opposed Polish independence. In light of ‘the evidence against Comrade Gomutka’, it was concluded, his interpretation of the workers’ movement fell into the category of ‘bourgeois nationalism and reformism’.

Gomutka responded to the Politburo on 15 June in a long letter.2° He endeavoured to correct the Politburo’s historiography and warned the leadership against succumbing to ‘the sectarian errors’ of the inter-war Communists; at the same time he began to isolate himself from the leadership. Just as the Polish internal dispute became acute, relations between Stalin and Tito also worsened. Gomutka had not offended the Soviet dictator directly—after all, it was Stalin who had had the 22 Gomutka’s speech to the June plenum has been published: ‘Przeméwienie tow. Wiestawa na plenarnym posiedzeniu KC PPR w dniu 3 czerwca 1948 roku’, Zeszyty Historyczne (Paris), 34 (1975), 54-71; and Gomulka, ‘Referat na Plenum KC PPR 3 czerwca 1948 r.’, ed. A. Werblan, Miesiecznik Literackt, 2 (1983), 77-87. 23 For further details of the debate, see B. Syzdek, Spér mw kierownictwie partii o tradycje polskiego ruchu robotniczego: Zbidr dokumentéw (Warsaw, 1983); and his article in Z pola walk, 1 (1983), 71-90.

24 'The entire document has been reprinted under the title ‘Stanowisko Biura Politycznego KC PPR Ww sprawie referatu Wladystawa Gomutki wygtoszonego dnia 3 VI 1948’, in J. Andrzejewski [A. Paczkowski], Gomutka i innit: Dokumenty z Archiwum KC, 1948—1g82 (London, 1987), 13-16.

25 “Odpowiedz Wtadystawa Gomutki z dnia 15 VI 1948 na stanowisko Biura Politycznego KC PPR’, ibid. 16-28.

370 Lech W. Gtuchowski inter-war Polish Communist movement officially expelled from the Comintern in 1938—but he still refused to submit himself to the demands of the collective leadership.

| The confrontation in Poland came to a head at a Cominform conference held in Romania at the end of June 1948. Conference resolutions approved the total collectivization of agriculture and the liquidation of the kulaks, and called for the intensification of the class struggle in the construction of socialism. ‘The Cominform also attacked all forms of ‘rightist-nationalist deviations’, demanding that the Yugoslav Communists purge Tito and install an ‘internationalist leadership’. Bierut himself drafted the resolution outlining the struggle against the ‘rightistnationalist deviation’. The resolution was presented at the August-September plenum, where Gomutka was forced to submit a thorough and public self-criticism. _ _Bierut argued that the ‘rightist deviation’ was in complete contradiction to the party line. He accused Gomutka of rejecting the Soviet model of development and _ the leading role of the USSR among all socialist states. Thirty-seven Central Committee members followed Bierut in attacking Gomutka. The resolution against the ‘rightist deviation’ was passed unanimously, and Bierut replaced Gomutka as PPR General Secretary.2° However, Gomutka was not yet forced to resign from the Politburo or the Central Committee; in fact, his name was included in the leadership list. But it was Gomutka who now refused to join the leadership of the new party.

The response offered by Gomutka to Stalin regarding his removal and his , refusal to remain in the leadership was to follow him until his spectacular return to power in October 1956. The long, handwritten letter of 14 December was prepared

_ after Gomutka had returned from a meeting with Stalin, Molotov, and Beria in Moscow on 9 December. By that time Gomutka had already voiced his opposition ~ to the new leadership of the Polish party. He carefully explained his reasons why he could not work with the Bierut group.

_ In short, Gomutka insisted that the party’s cadre policies were incorrect because some Jewish comrades insisted on placing too many Jews at senior levels of the party and state apparatus. He added that this situation created hostility in Poland, and that the party would suffer if it did not move to change its policies to reflect the new realities. Gomutka did not reject his earlier self-criticism, but emphasized that it was the nationalities question and cadre problem that poisoned the atmosphere in the Central Committee. This same letter was held up to Gomutka by the Soviet leader, Anastas Mikoyan,

during their heated exchange at the Belvedere Palace in Warsaw on 20 October 1956. Mikoyan remarked: ‘Now [Gomutka] will be pulled to the top by the Jews

and then again they will drop him.’2’ | 26 For details of the debate, see Nowe Drogi, 11 (Sept.—Oct. 1948) (special issue devoted to the 31 Aug.—3 Sept. 1948 conference of the Central Committee of the Polska Partia Robotnicza, PPR).

, 27 For details, see L. W. Gtuchowski, ‘Poland 1956: Khrushchev, Gomutka, and the “Polish October”, Cold War International History Project Bulletin, 5/1 (Spring 1995), 1, 38-49.

| Gomutka Writes to Stalin in 1948 371 Although Gomutka was arrested on 12 August 1951 and interrogated, he was never tortured. One of his interrogators in fact later claimed that the Polish leadership lacked the ‘courage to cope with him’.?® Documents in Polish archives do not explain why Gomutka was not forced to confess to being an ‘agent of American imperialism’, but one thing is clear: his usefulness to Stalin, either as a target of the anti-Titoist purge, or as a link to other members of the Polish Politburo, appeared obvious to all those engaged in the process. And if Gomutka was to become a willing victim of the purges in Poland, he left no doubt that the targets of its own wrath

, were the Jewish Communists in the Central Committee. This fact could not have escaped the notice of his enemies inside the party.

Furthermore, Gomutka must have been aware that anti-Jewish conspiracies would begin to play a larger role in shaping Stalin’s views in the near future, since it was he who had raised the question of ‘Jewish nationalism’ in the 1948 letter. The infamous trial of Rudolf Slansky in Czechoslovakia, which began with his arrest in November 1951, had strong antisemitic overtones. Slansky’s arrest appears to have troubled a number of the leading Polish Communists of Jewish origin as well. The charges against Slansky and the other Czechoslovak Communists included allegations of illicit arms dealings with Israel, ‘cosmopolitanism’, and ‘Zionism’. A revealing five-page report on the Slansky trial, which discusses Polish matters taken up at the show trial and how they related to Gomutka, was recently uncovered in the Polish archives. The report, dated 1 December 1952, was prepared by two security functionaries, Colonel Jerzy Siedlecki®® and the future head of the Polish security apparatus Edmund Pszczotkowski. The authors were critical of the trial on a number of grounds, the most important of which were the prosecutors’ excessive focus on ‘Jewish nationalism at the opening stages of the trial’ and the lack of attention to ‘Slovak nationalism’ and ‘Czech nationalism’ .*° It may still be too early to determine what it was that the Poles expected to gain from the Slansky trial, but it appears that they were on a collision course with their Soviet masters. The Poles could not guarantee that a trial of Gomutka and his associates would not quickly move from a focus on Polish nationalism to a focus on Jewish nationalism, especially since targeting Jewish nationalism was also in accord

with Gomutka’s personal preference—as clearly indicated in his 1948 letter to Stalin. Bierut must have understood that a trial of his rival for the leadership of the Polish party could not be controlled from Warsaw alone. Even a slight shift towards

a focus on Jewish nationalism by the Soviet advisers in Warsaw or in Moscow 28 “The Swiatto Story’, News from Behind the Iron Curtain (Munich), 4/3 (1955), 19. 29 Jerzy Siedlecki was director of cadre affairs in the Public Security Ministry and closely associated with the notorious colonel Jozef Rézariski, who was director of the ministry’s investigative department. For details, see Fijatkowska, Borejsza 1 Rozanskt.

30 J. Siedlecki and E. Pszczétkowski, ‘Notatka uzupetniajaca do ustnego sprawozdania z przebiegu procesu Slansky’ego i jego wspolnikow, Warszawa, dnia 1. XII, 1952 r.’, Archiwum Akt Nowych, Warsaw (AAN), PZPR 2910.

372 Lech W. Gtuchowski would eventually have led investigators to a number of the Polish Jews in Bierut’s Politburo, including his two closest collaborators among the leadership, Jakub Berman and Hilary Minc.?! This may help to explain why Bierut was so slow in preparing a case against Gomutka until after Stalin’s death. In a self-criticism officially submitted on 5 May 1956 to the PZPR Politburo,

Berman acknowledged that there was friction between Warsaw and Moscow regarding the purges. Berman also used the occasion to cover up his own odious past as a key member of the purge process in Poland. Other evidence indicates that Berman had fully supported all of the major investigations, including those directed at Polish Jews. It appears that the Kremlin used its long-standing ‘struggle’ against Trotskyists as a pretext to target Polish Jews. As Berman put it in his selfcriticism, In 1953, together with the Soviet advisers, Comrade [G. M.] Popov [the ambassador to Poland] prepared a special and thorough study of former Trotskyists in the party. The tenth department [of the Public Security Ministry, responsible for enemies inside the Party] then furnished very wide-ranging plans on this subject. On the recommendation of Comrade Bierut I became familiar with these plans and voiced my opinion that they be markedly constricted. In any case, the plans were not realized.* 31 Jakub Berman was born into a highly educated bourgeois family in Warsaw in 1go1. His father, who had been a prominent member of Warsaw’s Jewish community, and an older brother, a surgeon, died in Treblinka during the Holocaust. His only sister held a Ph.D. in Germanic languages and was killed during the war; another brother, also a communist, survived the war in the Soviet Union, while his brother Adolf, a psychologist and active Zionist who fled Warsaw’s Jewish ghetto in 1943, became a leading member of Zegota (the Armia Krajowa’s Council of Aid to Jews). Berman received a Ph.D. from Warsaw University before the war and appears to have had a promising career in the field of politi-

cal economy. He joined the youth wing of the Polish communist movement in 1924 and became a member of the Communist Party of Poland in 1928. He died in Warsaw in 1984 after a couple of failed

appeals to have his party membership restored and with absolutely no regrets for his past actions in Stalinist Poland. See further biographical data on Jakub Berman in T. Toraniska, Ont: Stalin’s Polish Puppets, trans. A. Kolakowska, introd. H. Willetts (London, 1987), 203-4. In the biographical dictio-

nary of the Polish workers’ movement (edited by the Muzeum Histori Polskiego Ruchu Rewolucyjnego) Sfowntk biograficzny dziataczy polskiego ruchu robotniczego (Warsaw, 1978) Berman is not even listed. Hilary Minc was born in Warsaw in 1905 to a middle-class family. He joined the Polish communist movement in 1922, the year his future wife, Julia Heflich, was imprisoned in Poland for illegal political

| activities. Minc met and married Julia shortly after her release in 1924. After he withdrew from his studies at Warsaw University, they left for France, where they joined the Communist Party of France and Hilary resumed his studies in economics. In 1926 they were expelled by the French authorities for their communist activities and moved to the Soviet Union, returning to Poland in 1928. Minc worked

at the Main Statistical Bureau of Poland and as a scholarly consultant to the Ministry of Finance. In 1939 he and Julia left for the Soviet Union, where he lectured in economics at the university in

Samarkand until 1943. He became a founding member of the communist-controlled Zwiazek Patriotéw Polskich (Union of Polish Patriots) and later held senior economic positions in all the postwar governments, emerging as one of the most powerful figures in Stalinist Poland. 32 ‘Ogwiadczenie tow. Bermana do protokolu BP, dnia 5. V. 1956 r., Protokét Biura Politycznego’, AAN, PZPR 325/Jakub Berman—archiwum.

Gomutka Writes to Stalin in 1948 373 Whether or not Gomutka’s letter—more precisely, Gomutka’s willingness to participate in the purge process as a willing subject so long as the focus was shifted towards Jewish nationalism—had an impact on Stalin’s decision-making with regard to the purges, or on the nature of the investigations conducted by the Soviet advisers in Warsaw, remains an open question. But, if Gomutka understood that it , would take a very carefully prepared case by Bierut and his group to put a former general secretary, who blamed the Jews in the party for his predicament, on trial for treason, there is little doubt that the other key players engaged in the purges were also aware of what Gomutka was trying to do. At the very least, everyone understood that any treason charges against Gomutka would probably have further added to Gomutka’s mystique as a nationalist—albeit a Communist one. Stalin’s and Molotov’s official response to their 9g December meeting with Gomutka, which was sent to Bierut on 16 December 1948, makes reference to the 14 December letter, but also notes that Moscow had not yet received a translated version of it.2? The most significant aspect of the Stalin-Molotov message to Bierut, which gave the new Polish party boss the green light to proceed with an investigation of Gomutka, read: Even now, based on the impression of our talk with Comrade Gomutka, we can say that in our opinion he has not unburdened himself completely of his errors, and precisely on these grounds he rejects entering the ranks of the leading party organ, the Politburo of the Central Committee. All of this leads us to the conclusion that Comrade Gomutka’s relationship to the party, and his sincerity, demand further investigation.

During a discussion in January 2000 on the web site H-Antisemitism,** I observed that there is no archival evidence whatsoever to suggest, even remotely,

that the ties between the Jewish community (at any time throughout the Com- | munist period), and the Communists in Poland—Polish, Jewish, or the Soviet advisers of mixed nationality, including Soviet Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, and Jews—were substantially different on important matters from the ties between Communist functionaries and other sub-groups in Polish society. More precisely, during the Stalinist and immediate post-Stalinist periods, for instance, the ties that

bound Communists to anti-Communists and non-Communists in Poland were almost exclusively based on the threat or actual use of terror.®° There is also no archival evidence to suggest that anything remotely resembling

a so-called ‘Jewish-dominated’ Communist government in Poland ever existed. Furthermore, there was no ‘Jewish-dominated’ Communist Party in Poland. Still, 33 Also published by Werblan, ‘Ostatni sp6r Gomutki ze Stalinem’, 110-11. Again, I would like to thank Professor Werblan for sending me a copy of the Russian-language cyphergram from Stalin and

Molotov to Bierut. , 4 Archived at (last accessed on 8 July 2003).

°° L. W. Gtuchowski, ‘Schatz/MacDonald: The Final Round’, in H-ANTISEMITISM, , archived at 12 Jan. 2000 (last accessed on 8 July 2003).

374 Lech W. Gtuchowskt especially at the centre of power in Communist Poland, there were many ambitious Communists who used theories of a Jewish conspiracy to take over the party as a weapon against their political opponents. Even functionaries of Jewish background used this tactic to get ahead. Berman, one of the most notorious and powerful figures in the immediate post1948 period, had no objections to purges directed at Polish Jews in the party, and he upheld the prosecutions of so-called ‘Zionist agents’. Later, long after his forced retirement, Berman apparently enjoyed taunting his interlocutors by bragging that he, a Jew, belonged to Poland’s Stalinist troika together with Hilary Minc (chairman of the State Council for Economic Planning) and Bolestaw Bierut. It appears that Berman enjoyed indulging in criminal acts as a leading Politburo member and had a particularly vicious sense of humour. He also tried to give the impression, without explicitly saying so, that there was

something to the myth of zydokomuna. On the other hand, after his own fall in 1956, Berman largely blamed Moscow’s Beria and his old friend Bierut (both dead

by then) for the ‘errors’ that led to his fall. For his actual removal from power,

played a role.*° |

, naturally, he blamed Khrushchev and Gomutka; but he insisted that antisemitism No one knows what Berman had planned for his defence.*’ Two possibilities come to mind. First, Communists, particularly those with Stalinist pasts, enjoyed using what might be called the ‘nationality card’ to go after their rivals in the party. Sooner or later most Communists in eastern Europe learned Stalinist methods of rule. Secondly, in its audacity, Gomutka’s 1948 letter to Stalin rivalled Berman’s self-serving excuses, especially the claim he made in his 1956 self-criticism that he had in some way put brakes on the purges in Poland. Gomutka may already have had suspicions that he was being prepared by his colleagues and their Moscow friends for a major fall. It would not have taken much imagination, particularly for Gomutka, to conclude further that 1t would only be a matter of time before he became the prime target of a campaign against ‘rightists’ in the party and society. The pattern was almost always the same. In his letter to Stalin, which he wrote ostensibly to admit his previous ‘errors’ and to respond to the offer to join the Politburo of the new party, Gomutka argues that his predicament (that is, the fact that he was accused of being a ‘nationalist’®*) | was the result of a power struggle inside the Central Committee. Since it did not 36 See Berman interview in Toranska, Oni, 201-55.

37 For background details on the factional struggles, see L. W. Gtuchowski, “The Collapse of Stalinist Rule in Poland: The Polish United Workers Party, from the XX CPSU Congress to the VIII KC PZPR Plenum, February—October 1956’, Ph.D. thesis (Cambridge University, Sept. 1991). 38 ‘Nr 60 1948 kwiecien 5.—Memoriat kierownika Biura Informacji KC WKP(b) Leonida Baranowa oraz instruktorow KC WKP(b) Nikolaja Puchlowa i Wladimira Owczarowa “O antymarksistowskie} orientacji w kierownictwie PPR” ’, in G. A. Bordiugow, A. Kochanski, A. Koseski, G. F. Mawiejew, and A. Paczkowski, Polska—ZSRR: Struktury podlegtosci. Dokumenty WKP(B) 1944-1949 (Warsaw, 1995), 204-17.

Gomutka Writes to Stalin in 1948 375 take much to feed Stalin’s dictatorial desire to turn rumours and innuendoes into potential investigations and, if necessary, mass party purges, it could hardly have been a stretch for Gomutka to outline this defence. And while his motivations will always remain unclear, we do know that he was never brought to trial. It may simply have been a plot by Gomutka to save his skin. Stalin did, after all, select many of his victims from the ranks of the international Communist movement in order to have them ‘confess’ their ‘crimes’ and implicate others at show

| trials. Gomutka, I would suggest, offered Stalin that same opportunity. He would ‘confess’, and his confession would be at the expense of ‘nationalists’ of Jewish origin.

At the very least this might help to explain why Gomutka, and later Berman, avoided a Communist court. A show trial with a strong anti-Jewish component (unlike the more cloaked version in Prague) during the Stalin years or, for that matter, a show trial of Berman by Gomutka after the latter returned to power in 1956, in which Berman could accuse Gomutka and anyone else he cared to mention of antisemitism, was not on the cards. The archival evidence does not support the falsehood that appears to be a part of the defence adopted by Gomutka and Berman (though with different emphases),

according to which the Communist government was dominated by Jews. Gomutka’s 1948 letter to Stalin, in my view, amounts to what might be called the - ‘Gomutka defence’, which he presented to Stalin some eight years before Berman made his case. In short, this defence involved pointing your finger at anyone you wished and yelling, as loudly as possible, ‘Jewish nationalism!’ Finally—and here I must admit that at this stage I can only pose the questions— when did Washington become aware of Gomutka’s letter to Stalin, and what did the Americans do about it? Clearly, Moscow and Warsaw knew about the 1948 letter soon after Gomutka had sent it to Stalin. Lieutenant-Colonel Jézef Swiatto, who had defected to the United States via Berlin in December 1953, had in fact been the security official in charge of Gomutka’s arrest and the subsequent search of his apartment. From what I can piece together, Gomutka had placed a copy of his Stalin letter behind the mirror of his dresser, and it was found by Swiatto. To answer these and other questions about the United States’ reaction, we need access to CIA documents, and particularly the volumes that must have been accumulated during Swiatto’s debriefing.

376 Gomutka Writes to Stalin in 1948

DOCUMENT I , Wladyslaw Gomutka’s Letter to Stalin of 14 December 1948

To Comrade J. V. STALIN?° , In regard to the proposition by the Politburo of the Polish United Workers’ Party, supported by You, Comrade STALIN, in your talk with me on g December of this year on the matter of introducing me into the composition of the Politburo

of the United Workers’ Party, I feel obliged, once again, to present to You the motives that directed me in beseeching You for advice to the Polish Comrades,

| so that, consistent with my desire, they would resign from their intention to put forward my person on the list of candidates to the Politburo elections of the United

Party.

, Earlier, in direct talks with All of You, I attempted to give the reasons for my position regarding the above matter, which, however, as a result of poor familiarity with the Russian language, may have emerged somewhat confused and inadequate. That is why, in this direction—in keeping with the statement made via telephone ~ to Comrade MOLOTOV on 10 December of this year—I desire to express myself

_ further in a manner more well ordered, and to present to You the causes that dictated my decision not to seek candidacy to the Politburo of the United Party.

There is absolutely no doubt that the errors that I in fact committed during the recent period, while occupying the post of General Secretary of the Party, demanded sharp criticism and comprehensive self-criticism. This has been done. In my opinion, there were two roads available for conducting a criticism and

self-criticism of my errors. | The first—which I imagined to be the most proper—was criticism and self-

_ criticism carried out on principle only at those party institutions in front of which I had expressed the erroneous views or, in discussions with Comrades, had formu-

lated my thoughts incorrectly while deliberating on certain issues. ‘These were restricted to two party institutions: the Central Committee and the Politburo. This road made it possible for me to remain in the composition of the Politburo after stepping aside from the post of Party General Secretary. As is well known, this

| road was rejected. There was also another road on which it was possible to carry out the criticism and self-criticism: the one that was chosen by the Politburo. This road—which involved publicly formulating my errors (with a clear tendency to exaggerate them),

_and standing me before the whole Party like an accused, regardless of the fact that the incorrect and false opinions I had stated were made only in the company of members of the highest party institutions, and that my errors did not weigh 89 The (handwritten) document is held in a private collection. I should like to express my gratitude to Henry Dasko for his suggestions and corrections to an earlier draft of my translation.

Gomutka Writes to Stalin in 1948 377 fundamentally on the general political line of the Party, including the tolerance of the Politburo for numerous slanderous attacks on me by Party members—brought with it as a result, and it had to bring with it, the moral shattering of my image and undermined my authority to such a degree that holding a leadership position in the Party was made impossible for me, at the very least, for a long period of time.

I do not intend to submit a critique of the decision by the Politburo on the matter of selecting this second road. It is possible that travelling on this road was the easiest way to shift the entire Party to a new political track, which included the execution of a sharp turn inside the Polish Socialist Party in the face of the United Congress. However, in choosing this road, the Politburo should have understood that it is, as a result, crossing me off the list of leading party activists. This is the first reason why I could not agree to being nominated as a candidate in the elections to the Politburo of the United Party. As I have already stated in my talks with All of You, I continue to disagree with point 5 of the resolution accepted at the August [1948] Plenum of the Central Committee of our Party. I gave the basis for my negative position on point 5 of the resolution at the discussed Plenum in my first self-criticism.*° That self-criticism

was recognized as insufficient and ranks of comrades submitted very sharp criticism of my position on point 5 of the resolution. From the substance of the speeches made by certain members of the Politburo, as well as by members of the Central Committee, I realized that they do not have in mind the task of conducting

an objective analysis of the situation during the [German] occupation period, which is indispensable to the correct appreciation of the political moves by the Party leadership at that time. Indeed, they are steered by a different purpose, which is, for example, to discredit completely my activities as the Party General Secretary at the time. It is possible that this, too, was necessary in the face of the election of anew Party General Secretary or a Chairman of the United Party. At the August Plenum, I was actually given the following alternative: either I admit to the errors formulated in point 5 of the draft resolution, or, by not admitting to them, I provide evidence that I do not agree with the Party and am planning

to destroy the unity of its ranks. This view found particular expression in the speech by Comrade MINC, who, in the name of the Politburo, already on the first day of the session, defined the tone of the whole discussion.*! In accordance with the intention of the Buro, at the August Plenum I was stripped of everything that “0 Before Gomutka was finally accused of being a nationalist, all of the previous charges against him

were summarized in point 5 as a lack of faith in the party’s victory in the struggle for state power. Gomutka explained that his past words were now being taken out of context, and that his strategic goal had always been the same as the present party line. He argued further that different tactics, at that time, were necessary to gain wider popular support for the party. “Nowe Drogi, 11 (Sept.—Oct. 1948), 55-7. Among other things, Minc accused Gomulka of failing

to take full political responsibility for all past decisions, including those on organizational or cadre matters.

378 Gomutka Writes to Stalin in 1948 could have constituted even a shadow of my contributions during the [German] occupation period. Not wanting to create even the appearance that the accusation | against me—that I intended to destroy Party unity—had any kind of foundation, I saw myself forced to recognize as correct the accusations contained in point 5 of the resolution. * A natural consequence of this state of affairs was the accusation made against me at the National Conference of Party Activists, which took place in Warsaw a few days after the August Plenum, that I was seeking to return authority in Poland to the London government-in-exile, which would result in bringing to the country a forest of gallows for communists. This slanderous, demagogic campaign did not

provoke any reaction, notwithstanding the presence at said conference of all members of the Politburo. Likewise, in his summation of the discussion, Comrade

| BIERUT did not see fit to comment on this kind of ‘appraisal’ of my activities. I, too, kept quiet, since every objection would be widely read as a desire to destroy Party unity. Thus all the elements were there to make the delegates from the whole country accept as gospel the voiced accusation. If, therefore, during meetings and party conferences throughout the entire country, organized to carry out the resolutions of the August Plenum, I was routinely accused of betrayal, and demands for my arrest were being put forward, there is nothing strange about it. This was only a consequence of the particular line passed down from the top with the aim of destroying in the eyes of the working masses everything that I can justly consider to be my contribution to the Party, the working class, and my homeland. Realizing that renewing the dispute about point 5 of the resolution would only sow confusion among the party ranks, I did not reveal, and I do not have any intention of revealing, that I continue to reject the accusations placed before me in point 5 of the resolution. For this reason, too, I was unable to express agreement to my

candidacy to the Politburo. An agreement of this kind would have meant my acceptance of the correctness of the accusations contained in the referenced point of the resolution, and of what was said on the issue at the August Plenum and also during the reporting campaign throughout the entire country. Entering the ranks of this kind of institution, the Politburo, whose members jointly uphold the highest responsibility for the entire policy of the Party, and, therefore, for the party’s opinion of its historical past (the [German] occupation), I would not have been able to conceal my negative position to point 5 of the August resolution, which out of necessity would have had unwelcome and harmful consequences for the Party’s unity and its leadership. That is the second factor preventing me from standing for the Politburo of the United Party. All members of the Politburo are aware of my position on the subject of the

Party’s personnel policy as it relates to the Jewish comrades. Indeed, I have 42 Nowe Drogi, 11 (Sept.—Oct. 1948), 58.

Gomutka Writes to Stalin in 1948 379 explained it on more than one occasion at meetings of the Buro, and in individual conversations with Buro members. Personnel appointments to the higher echelons of the state and party apparatus, seen from the perspective of nationality, create, in my own opinion, a serious barrier hindering the expansion of our base, especially among the intelligentsia, as well as in the countryside, and also to a certain degree in the working class. It is indeed possible to make even me responsible for the high

percentage of the Jewish element within the leadership of the state and party apparatus, but the primary responsibility for this state of affairs falls, above all, on the Jewish comrades. As the Party General Secretary, I did not find among them

understanding and support for my position on the matter of personnel policy, which the Party ought to cultivate; on the contrary, the systematic practice of their personnel policy revealed that they do not agree with my position. It is not true that only a serious deficit of Polish party cadres precludes the authorization of a personnel policy that would be different from the present one. Our cadres will never mature as long as the party does not create the appropriate conditions for it; i.e. as long as it does not put forward for responsible positions the most competent comrades from the available pool. On the basis of my numerous observations, I can confirm with complete responsibility that some of the Jewish comrades do not feel tied by any bonds to the Polish nation or therefore to the Polish working class. They take a position that can be designated by the label of national nihilism. Attitudes like this, however, are not

- taken into consideration at all when candidates for various high positions are selected. I have considerable evidence that the existing state of affairs in the area of senior

appointments within the Party and within the state apparatus provokes bitterness and discontent. Moreover, in the atmosphere that has developed within the Party, particularly after the August Plenum, no one has the courage to express criticism of the present personnel policy out loud. Discontent vents itself, therefore, in the corridors. I am deeply convinced that my position on the matter of the Party’s personnel policy, in large measure, although in a latent manner, determined the forms and the methods of resolving the latest crisis in the party leadership. There is also no doubt on my part that if I found myself within the Politburo, it would bring about,

in all certainty, fresh divisions and disputes between myself and other Buro members, resulting from my views on the nationality of appointees to leadership positions in the state and party apparatus. I actually consider it necessary to discontinue any further increase in the percentage of the Jewish element within the State as well as the party apparatus, but also to decrease progressively this percentage, especially within the higher echelons of that apparatus. On the basis of the experience I gained during the period when I occupied the post of Party General Secretary, I am convinced that given the situation in which I find myself, I could not take the smallest step in that direction without risking various kinds of open or

380 Gomutka Writes to Stalin in 1948 surreptitious campaigns targeted to ultimately ‘finish me off? within the Party. As a Politburo member, I would not be able to treat passively the matter under discussion.

That is the third reason why I cannot, and should not, be placed among the Politburo members of the United Party. It is also difficult for me to picture the kind of consistent, collective, and direct collaboration that ought to exist in the Politburo, considering the still-fresh distaste that has remained with me as a result of certain methods employed by the Politburo for removing me from the position of Party secretary. (It should also be remembered that I willingly submitted a request to be removed from that position to the Politburo in June 1948, and have further reiterated it in discussions with Buro members.) Passing over the matter of the Politburo’s choice of venues and forms of criticism of my errors, it is difficult for me to understand and to explain to myself the aim of such methods employed by the Politburo, such as, for example,

the fact that I was approached during the first week of August 1948 by three Politburo members, with Comrade Bierut at their head, with an offer to travel with the entire Buro to see You, Comrade STALIN. While I gladly accepted the offer, and with this aim I arrived to see the comrade members of the Politburo, who were at the time on the Baltic Coast, I was asked to accept the draft resolution prepared at the August Plenum of the Central Committee of the Party. I was also told that the trip to see You was superfluous, since the Buro members had already come to an understanding with You on the matter of resolving the crisis in the party leadership. There are many more similar facts. It is sufficient to recall the accusation that I slandered the name of Comrade [Pawel] FINDER;** the story of the letter sent by Comrade BIERUT to Comrade [Georgi] DIMITROV [the head of the Comintern] during the [German] occupation period; the declaration by Comrade [Jakub]

BERMAN that already in 1944, after arriving in Lublin, he was informed by Comrade BIERUT that during the occupation period the Party was under the threat of rupture owing to erroneous policies cultivated by me as Party General Secretary; the Politburo’s communication to me after the August Plenum, but before the National Conference, that the only self-criticism to be turned over to the press for publication would be the one I presented at the National Conference of Party Activists. In reality, though no one had asked my opinion, the self-criticism I presented at the August Plenum was also turned over for publication. There are other similar facts. These and similar methods can only be applied to people who seek a fight with the Party, aiming to destroy the unity of its ranks. That I did not desire this was well known by the Politburo of the Party. Such methods cannot but leave me with a feeling of bitterness. The existing facts are too fresh to allow me to have straightforward and direct relations with the , 43 Pawel Finder was a member of the First Initiative Group that parachuted into Nazi-occupied | Poland from the Soviet Union in December 1941 to organize the PPR. He became the first general secretary and held the position until he was arrested by the Gestapo in Warsaw and executed in October 1943. Gomutka replaced Finder.

oe Gomutka Writes to Stalin in 1948 381 Politburo members, or to engage in the unrestrained formulation of ideas at Buro meetings. I would not like to have every one of my doubts that may arise as various problems are considered to be taken to a public forum; or all my expressions to be | ‘yes’ in cases where I would consider that it is correct to say ‘no’. To always say ‘yes’, independent of convictions, would be impossible for me. That is the fourth factor preventing me from standing for the Politburo of the

United Party. ,

Furthermore, party work at present, and especially the last ordeal, has ruined

my nervous system. In my present state of health and frame of mind, which are the results of the latest events, Iam not capable of leadership work in the party. This is an additional factor forcing me to leave this kind of position. *

I am a worker by origin. My whole life I fought for the cause of the working people, faithfully serving my class and my nation. I have always seen and still see in the Soviet Union Poland’s best friend, and in

the All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik), and especially in You, Comrade STALIN, a wise teacher of our party. Regardless of what kind of position I find for myself, I will be faithful for the rest of my life to the ideas for which I have fought until now.

, [Signature | Wi[adystaw].GOMUELKA

Warsaw, 14 December 1948

P.S. I am sending the above letter not translated into the Russian language out of necessity, since I do not have at my disposal a confidential translator.

| Translated from Polish by L. W. Gtuchomski DOCUMENT 2 Cryptogram from Stalin and Molotov to Boleslaw Bierut Comrade BIERUT We had a rather long talk with Comrade GOMUELKA. He declared that he completely agrees with the line of the PPR CC [Central Committee], but he is unable to remain in the Politburo considering the harm that has been done to him. He complains that certain Party members at gatherings

_ labelled him a traitor, and members of the PPR CC did not recognize it to be appropriate to disavow such expressions. To our declaration that his rejection of work as a Politburo member is for us incomprehensible, if in fact there are no

382 Gomutka Writes to Stalin in 1948 _ differences between himself and the Central Committee, and that he has no right to reject entering the ranks of the Politburo, Comrade GOMULKA was unable to respond with anything reasonable and continued to refer to the harm done to him. We pointed out to him that as an outstanding Party activist he should love the _ Party more than himself; that he should consider the interests of the Party before _ the interests of his own resentful self-love. Comrade GOMULKA replied to this that in the extreme case he could remain a member of the Central Committee, and fulfilling its recommendation, but that he still does not see his entering the ranks of the Politburo as a possibility. We developed the impression that disagreements with the CC have remained ~ with Comrade GOMUELKA, but that he hides them, concealing them with talk of offences, and that he was not entirely candid in his talk with us. Today, [ Viktor] LEBEDEV [the Soviet ambassador to Poland] informed us that he received from GOMUELKA a letter to Comrade STALIN, in which he presents , his position in writing. We have not yet received this letter. However, even now,

_ based on our impressions from our talk with Comrade GOMULKA, we can say that in our opinion he has not entirely freed himself of his errors, and for precisely this reason refuses to enter the ranks of the leading Party organ, the Politburo of the Central Committee. All of this forces us to conclude that Comrade GOMULKA’s relationship to the Party, and his sincerity, demand further investigation.

| STALIN

MOLOTOV |

16 December 1948 Translated from the Russian by L. W. Gtuchowski

PART IV

The Sixty-Fifth Anniversary of Events in Przytyk: A Debate

BLANK PAGE

If Not a Pogrom, Then What? JOLANTA ZYNDUL

IN ariot in Przytyk sixty-five years ago two Jews and one Polish farmer were killed, several dozen Jewish apartments and shops were destroyed, and more than twenty people were severely beaten. Historians usually call this event a pogrom. In Piotr

Gontarczyk’s opinion, this label is not correct. ,

In Przytyk, a small town several kilometres from Radom, go per cent of the 3,000 inhabitants were Jews. The town served as a trade centre for neighbouring hamlets. Farmers sold their produce and stocked up on items manufactured by local Jewish artisans. The boycott proclaimed by the Partia Narodowa (National Party), with its slogan ‘Buy from your own kind’, was gaining momentum in 1935, and Przytyk was no exception. Picketers prevented Poles from buying at Jewish shops and stalls, and Jews were excluded from markets. In February 1936 a farmer who bought a sheepskin in a Jewish shop in Przytyk was attacked. His sheepskin was cut with knives

and his hands were cut as well. The case ended up in court, with the head of the local cell of the Partia Narodowa accused of inciting the action. He was sentenced to

five months in prison, but the Court of Appeal overturned the sentence. Other, similar events did not even reach that point. The propaganda of the Endecja (National Democratic Party) increasingly gained ground, primarily among the very poor local farmers. Among the Jews the sense of danger increased. Rumours circulated that the farmers were preparing a frontal assault on the Jews. Farmers said the same about the Jews, claiming that the Jews were secretly arming themselves. The tiniest incident could have unforeseeable consequences. By the end of 1935, faced with the gathering strength of the boycott, the increasing power of the local Endecja, and the authorities’ inability or reluctance to intervene, the Jews had organized a self-defence group. Headed by Icek Frydman, the

group consisted of some twenty young people. The creation of the self-defence group would have important consequences during the later events. On Monday g March 1936 an annual market called the Kazimierzowski Fair was held in Przytyk. Some 2,000 farmers participated in it. By order of the Radom starosta, the Przytyk police force of five men was reinforced with another eleven policemen. Until approximately 2 p.m. the fair was peaceful. But then the incident This contribution was first published in Gazeta Wyborcza, 8 Mar. 2001.

386 Jolanta Zyndul | that would start the riot occurred in front of a Jewish baked-goods stall. Twentyyear-old Jozef Strzatkowski was trying to dissuade farmers from buying bread there. Police officers attempted to check his documents but were unsuccessful; surrounded and assaulted by the crowd that had come to Strzatkowski’s defence, they retreated to the police station. At approximately the same time another group of farmers attacked Jewish market stalls, destroying merchandise and beating the Jews. Some of the farmers began to leave the marketplace, heading towards Warszawska Street. At that moment the Jewish self-defence group entered into the fray. Skirmishes between Poles and Jews broke out both at the marketplace and on Warszawska Street. The Jewish self-defence group fired shots that wounded three Poles. On hearing about the shooting, the farmers abandoned their wagons and, armed

with sticks, turned back towards the town. Along the way they broke windows in Jewish houses. The police tried to stop the returning mob. At this point a shot was fired from one of the windows on Warszawska Street where the glass had been broken, killing 53-year-old Stanistaw WieSniak. The shot was fired by Szulim Chil Leska. The spectre of the body being carried by the farmers towards the suburb of Zacheta, to the doctor’s house, provoked a call for revenge. The police tried to prevent the riot from spreading, but the sixteen officers were powerless against the

| mob of nearly 1,000 people. The mob began to demolish Jewish apartments and beat their inhabitants. Several dozen Jewish apartments and shops were destroyed and more than twenty people were severely beaten. Most tragic of all was the attack on the apartment of the Minkowski family. Josek Minkowski was killed in his apartment, his wife, Chaya, died shortly afterwards in hospital in Radom, and their two sons were severely beaten. Thankfully, with this culmination of events the mob’s hatred was exhausted. Several other Jews were beaten at the same time at the horse market in Piaski, but a police reinforcement from Radom soon restored order. Fourteen Jews and forty-two Poles were brought to trial, with proceedings starting on 2 June 1936 in the District Court in Radom. The court handed down its verdict on 26 June. Leska, who was accused of killing WieSniak, was sentenced to eight years in prison; Luzer Kirszencwajg and Icek Frydman were sentenced to six and five years respectively for shooting at farmers. Four Poles accused of killing the Minkowskis were acquitted because, as the ruling stated: ‘During the trial the court did not find enough evidence to find them guilty of this crime.’ In addition, three Jews and eighteen Poles were acquitted. Eight Jews were sentenced to six to ten months in prison, and twenty-two Poles to six months to a year in prison. The Jews felt that the sentencing was highly unjust and that it sanctioned physical assaults against the Jewish population. The Court of Appeal slightly increased the sentences. In comparison to the mass murder of the Jews in Jedwabne, which has received so much publicity of late, the Przytyk case may seem minor and insignificant. Yet it is hard to resist the idea that without events like those in Przytyk, Jedwabne would not have been possible. A balanced and honest study of the events in Przytyk on

If Not a Pogrom, Then What? 387 g March 1936 would help us to understand the connection. Towards that end it would have to describe the motivations of the people involved and the social climate in which the events took place. It would have to go beyond the formal framework of police reports and court rulings, and cut through the noise of political harangues.

A book that could fulfil this aim has been available in bookshops for several months now: Piotr Gontarczyk’s Pogrom? Zajscia polsko-zydowskie w Przytyku 9 marca 1936 r.: Mity, fakty, dokumenty (‘Pogrom? The Polish—Jewish Incidents in

Przytyk, 9 March 1936: Myths, Facts, Documents’).! Its very title dispels all illusions. We know at once that this is a book with a definite thesis: there was no

pogrom at all! The author’s description of the course of events in Przytyk does not differ from what was already known from historical literature. It is not the facts but the genesis

and interpretation of the events that are at issue. The author devotes much of his book to interpretation, namely to criticizing the assessment—which is ‘over-

sensitive’ in his opinion—of Polish—Jewish relations in the Second Polish Republic. I strongly disagree with this part of Gontarczyk’s book.

He introduces his description of the Przytyk events with a discussion of ‘the historical background’, which can be summed up as follows. The Endecya propagated slogans that were hostile to the Jews and led to the economic boycott. For their part, the Jews engaged in a boycott of Polish commerce, introduced preferential practices and underpricing, and threatened to evict Poles from apartments and shops. ‘Neither side in the “Polish—Jewish war” shied away from using thuggish methods,’ Gontarczyk writes. “The Poles paid unemployed people or criminals to picket Jewish establishments, and the Jews paid them to break the picketing.’ It 1s true that the Jews were attacked and beaten, but they also attacked the Poles. Besides, Gontarczyk claims, in inter-war Poland everybody was beating everybody over everything; the skirmishes between the Poles and the Jews were only a small part of the brutal reality. For instance, Gontarczyk writes, people were killed and severely wounded in political conflicts within the Jewish community. Another important line of thinking leads the author to the conclusion that everyone exaggerated the conflicts between the Poles and the Jews for political reasons.

This was true of the Poles and the Jews, as well as of the state authorities. The author also claims that sometimes the so-called ‘anti-Jewish outbursts’ were actually arranged by the Jews themselves. Thus a picture of the Polish—Jewish conflict emerges in which the Poles are the more aggressive side but the Jews bear equal guilt for the outcome. Gontarczyk’s method of argumentation is very simple. From among the thousands of minor events that formed the reality of the second half of the 1930s—a reality that was painful for the Jewish community in Poland—he selects certain facts that diminish the importance of many others. Sometimes—as in the case of the alleged bloody victims of the settling of political accounts between the Jews—he provides no examples. Nor ! Rekonkwista: Biata Podlaska, 2000.

388 Jolanta Zyndul do I know of any such cases. Writing about the situation in universities, he notes that beating Jews became a standard pattern in relations between nationalities at institutions of higher learning. But he immediately adds that sometimes the other side in the conflict, the Jews, gave as good as they got. The so-called ghetto benches were the source of the conflict. The Poles wanted to isolate the Jews in segregated benches. The Jews did not want to submit to segregation. We may add here that if

they had submitted, there would have been no conflict. , The economic boycott in Przytyk is described similarly. The Endecja conducted

an aggressive action in support of the boycott. The Jews grew increasingly impatient with the worsening economic situation and the lack of a sense of security. Again the conclusion is obvious: had the Jews been more understanding, nothing would have happened in Przytyk. The author parenthetically reminds the reader that representatives of the Jews of Przytyk requested several times that the authori-

ties break up the boycott and provide protection. But, as he writes: ‘Neither the police nor the administration had legal grounds to oppose the boycott if those who were boycotting refrained from using illegal methods such as insults or beating,

which were subject to prosecution.’ :

Indeed, in pre-war Poland, calling for an economic boycott of the Jews was not a punishable offence. Moreover, many statements by the representatives of the state and the Church could be understood as condoning the boycott. Prime Minister

| Stawoj-Sktadkowski said in his June 1936 address, ‘economic struggle, certainly yes, but without inflicting harm’. Shortly after the Przytyk events, Primate Hlond said: ‘In trade it is good to give preference to one’s own kind and to bypass Jewish _ shops and Jewish stalls at markets, but to demolish Jewish shops or destroy Jewish merchandise is impermissible.’ Although the primary intention of these statements was to condemn physical violence against the Jews, they had entirely the opposite

effect. Not only did they fail to prevent further attacks on the Jews, but in a way they legitimized the boycott that led directly to the violence. In his presentation of the events in Przytyk, Gontarczyk omits any facts that could undermine the | image he has painstakingly built of the ‘Polish—Jewish conflict’. He somehow bypasses the antisemitic speeches in the Sejm that called for ridding Poland of the Jews or limiting their rights. He does not mention the draft law prohibiting ritual slaughter that was presented to the Sejm a few weeks before the Przytyk events; it was soon passed (though in a milder version), arousing bitterness within the Jewish

community. |

Gontarczyk’s main point is that the incident in Przytyk was not a Jewish pogrom because the nature of pogroms is more ambiguous and complex. For the author, the word ‘pogrom’ is dangerous and dramatic; it sounds like a magic spell. Perhaps this | is the reason why he does not say what kind of event he would be willing to term a pogrom. We can, however, infer it from his reasoning. The author claims that the

outbreak of the riot was not organized but was rather spontaneous. These were Polish Jewish events in which the principal blame for the bloodshed falls on the

| If Not a Pogrom, Then What? 389 unlawful actions of the Jewish self-defence force, which led to tragic consequences.

The killing of WieSniak ‘aroused the desire for revenge but it was not a pretext (an argument) for anti-Jewish actions’. If I understand this correctly, the arousal of this ‘desire for revenge’ is the justification for the riots. The author repeatedly emphasizes that the police did not participate in the events, but acted by and large responsibly, and were not negligent in doing what they could to prevent the outbreak of the riots and limit the scale of the tragedy. Nor can there be reservations about the conduct of the local authorities.

Thus we can distinguish several circumstances which must be present, in the author’s opinion, in order to call an event a pogrom. First, the Jews must be attacked and murdered without a reason; secondly, the events must be organized; thirdly, the Jews cannot defend themselves; fourthly, the police and the authorities must somehow support the anti-Jewish actions by either inspiring them or participating in them. Leaving aside for a moment the author’s reasoning, I would like to draw attention to the historical development of the word ‘pogrom’. It entered the vocabularies of almost all European languages as the term for the anti-Jewish riots that broke out

in Russia in 1881, and was used in connection with state-organized or tolerated actions. Thus the Morgenthau Commission, which went to Poland in 1919 to investigate the situation of the Jewish population, did not refer to the anti-Jewish riots of 1918-19 as pogroms. In this manner it rejected the suggestion that either the civil or military authorities had participated in organizing them. I am also convinced that the anti-Jewish riots in 1918—19 and 1935-7 were not organized by the government of the Second Polish Republic. The discussion of pogroms in interwar Poland could end here. However, in my opinion, the notion of ‘pogrom’ is still useful as properly characterizing a certain type of anti-Jewish action.

If we look at the events called pogroms in inter-war Poland—and there are not actually so many of them (Lviv 21-3 November 1918, Pinsk 5 April 1919, Lida 17 April 1919, Vilna 21 April 1919, Minsk 8 August 1919, Grodno 7 June 1935, Minsk Mazowiecki 1-4 June 1936, BrzeS¢ nad Bugiem 13 May 1937, Czestochowa 19 June 1937)—common traits and comparable circumstances are easily discernible. These were not alcohol-related brawls between neighbours or the breaking of a few windows, as Gontarczyk would have us believe, but large-scale acts of violence.

Jews were beaten, sometimes killed, and their property was destroyed. Several dozen people were killed in each of the pogroms of 1918-19. The pogroms of the 1930s did not always end in tragedy. In the pogrom in Minsk Mazowiecki in June 1936, several dozen Jews were wounded, shops and apartments were destroyed, and several houses were burned. The answer to the question of whether the Przytyk events erupted spontaneously is not as simple as Gontarczyk claims. The attacking mob had its distinct leaders, a fact acknowledged by the district court. Szczepan Zarychta, Wactaw Kacperski, and Jozef Pytlewski started the riot in front of the police station and later led the

390 Jolanta Zyndul - maddened crowd in attacking Jews after the killing of WieSniak. Likewise, the assault on Jewish market stalls preceding the action by the Jewish self-defence force

, has the characteristics of an organized action. I am convinced that it is not important whether the outbreak of the riot was | orchestrated or spontaneous; whether the organizers used rumours of Jewish col_ laboration with the Soviet or Ukrainian army to stir anti-Jewish riots, as in the pogroms that took place after the First World War; or whether reality provided the

pretext, as in the 1930s, when the death of a Pole at Jewish hands triggered a pogrom. What distinguishes a pogrom is its perpetrators and the course of events. A pogrom is the work of a mob seized by a common idea and acting emotionally, not

| according to a plan. In this mob, along with the instigators, if there are any, there are also many people who just happened to be there at the time. If such people respond to the call ‘Beat the Jews!’, then we are dealing with a pogrom situation, for this means that the hostility towards the Jews in that community is so strong that, in certain circumstances, otherwise peaceful people are capable of attacking, senselessly beating, and sometimes killing any Jew within their reach. This is how it was in Przytyk and five years later in Jedwabne. This overpowering and blind thirst for revenge causes the attacking mob to forget the actual perpetrators of a treason or crime and instead blame it on the entire Jewish community and all Jews; the mob wanted to extract justice from all of them. Thus the farmers in Przytyk did not look for WieSsniak’s killer, but turned against any Jews they could get their hands on. It was then that the pogrom started.

_ Gontarczyk’s remarks summing up his earlier analysis are characteristic. He writes that Polish—Jewish relations in the 1930s could not have been that bad since

many Jews served in important positions in the administration, held the highest offices in the country, and belonged to the narrow intellectual and political elite of the Second Republic. I am curious to know where this view comes from and which of the highest offices in the country were held by Jews. According to the book Who Was Who tn the Second Republic, of the 600 people who held high government positions, not more than two could be considered Jews—if we don’t go by the rules originated in Nazi Germany. These were Szymon Askenazy, the Polish representative at the League

of Nations in the 1920s, and Anatol Muehlstein, who also served in the Polish foreign service. Similarly, we cannot say that many Jews were employed in the administration,

since employees of the Mosaic faith constituted only 3 per cent of the 100,000 officials in the state administration, municipal administrations, the judiciary, and other public institutions. If we consider that in many departments in universities 20-40 per cent of the students were Jewish (which Gontarczyk notes, although for other purposes), we must conclude that the Jewish intelligentsia found employment in the state and local governments only with great difficulty.

As further proof that Polish—Jewish relations were more or less normal,

If Not a Pogrom, Then What? 391 Gontarczyk refers to the fact that the Jews had representatives in the Seym. In fact, in the Sejm elected in autumn 1938 and comprising 208 representatives, there were four Jews. Of ninety-six members of the Senate, there were two Jewish senators,

who had been appointed by President Moscicki. If we remember that Jews constituted nearly ro per cent of the population, then this representation must be considered token. Gontarczyk’s basic view is that what we have in Przytyk is a ‘normal’ ethnic conflict between equally matched groups. This kind of argument, even if it were more to the point, cannot alter the overall picture of the antisemitic campaign that was sweeping the country. ‘The pogrom alarm’ raised by the Jews was not caused by a few windows broken by some unruly youngsters, as Gontarczyk would have

us believe; it was caused by rabid antisemitic propaganda led by the Endecya, hundreds of greater or lesser acts of violence against Jews, pogroms, and the passive attitude of a government that either did not know how to or did not want to oppose

these acts. The last sentence of Gontarczyk’s book is characteristic. The author writes that today we tend to ascribe to conflicts like the one in Przytyk too great a role, completely out of proportion with their real outcome and significance. [ believe it is exactly the opposite. Today the name of Przytyk and the names of other pogrom sites say nothing to the Poles. Only for the Jews has Przytyk become a symbol of the anti-Jewish pogroms in Poland in the 1930s, just as Lviv was symbolic for the period after the First World War. The absence of this memory does not disturb

the image of our innocence. We carry this image in our hearts and we are very attached to it. It was we who were always wronged. Thus if someone accuses us, it must be because he wishes to do us harm. No wonder that our collective memory cannot grasp an event like the horrible crime in Jedwabne recently described in Jan Gross’s book. But the fact that 1t was possible, regardless of whether it was inspired by the Germans, is likewise a consequence of that wave of hatred and violence against Jews that seized Poland just before the war. The circumstances and motivations were different, but the readiness to respond to the slogan “Beat the Jews!’ remained the same. And that same— satanic—delusion of justice being done, that the victims ‘apparently’ must have done something wrong, remains intact. Translated from the Polish by Claire Rosenson

~ Pogrom? The Polish—Jewish Incidents in Przytyk, 9 March 1936 PIOTR GONTARCZYK

EVERYONE WAS BEATING EVERYONE I READ Jolanta Zyndul’s review of my book in Gazeta Wyborcza (8 March 2001) with great interest, though with regret I must point out that much of the informa-

: tion contained in the review either does not conform to the truth or has nothing to do with the content of the work. I therefore feel obliged to correct at least a few of

these distortions and misunderstandings. Nearly half of the article is devoted to an inexact description of the genesis, course, and consequences of the events of g March 1936 in Przytyk. On this Zyndul

remarks: ‘The author’s description of the course of events in Przytyk does not differ , from what was already known from historical literature.’ I find it difficult to agree with this. It is precisely the absence of a balanced study on this subject that encour-

aged me to write this book. In fact, I devoted a section to the question of how Przytyk is treated in the literature. In commenting on various studies and articles that touched on the subject, I came to the conclusion that, with perhaps one excep-

tion, they were of little value. My harshest opinion was reserved for Jolanta — Zyndul’s Zajscia antyzydowskie w latach 1935-1937 (‘Anti-Jewish Incidents in , Poland 1935-1937’), that is, for my present reviewer. I wrote that the description of _ the Przytyk issue in her book had little acquaintance with historical truth, and I summed up as follows: ‘Owing to unreliable methods and use of facts, 1t cannot be treated as a serious work’ (p. 14). Seen in this light, Zyndul’s assertion that my description of the events in Przytyk does not differ from what was already known is as strange as it is unconvincing. Fortunately, though, in writing her Gazeta article, Zyndul based her argument on my book, not on hers, which made it possible for her to avoid some of her previous errors.

This contribution was first published in Gazeta Wyborcza, 28 Mar. 2001.

Pogrom? The Incidents in Przytyk 393 THAT’S NOT WHAT I WROTE The greatest deficiency in the article under discussion is its reference to statements that supposedly come from my book but which in fact are not to be found there. Zyndul lists the pogroms that took place in pre-war Poland (Lviv 1918, Lida and Vilna 1919, etc.), adding: “These were not alcohol-related brawls between neighbours or the breaking of a few windows, as Gontarczyk would have us believe, but

large-scale acts of violence.’ In all honesty I can say that my book concerns the events in Przytyk in 1936 and that the events mentioned by Zyndul are nowhere to be found in it. Therefore, I could not have written that any of them were ‘alcohol-

related brawls between neighbours’. : Nor can I answer the question of how Zyndul arrived at many of her conclusions regarding my book. For example, she writes: ‘The economic boycott in Przytyk

is described similarly. The Endecja (National Democratic Party) conducted an aggressive action in support of the boycott. The Jews grew increasingly impatient with the worsening economic situation and the lack of a sense of security. Again the conclusion is obvious: had the Jews been more understanding, nothing would have happened in Przytyk.’ The problem with this is that I said nothing of the kind, and I believe that there is nothing in my book that would support such a

conclusion. |

Why did I write about the mood of the Jewish population just before the incidents? In researching the events in Przytyk, I came across the verdict of the District Court in Radom, which ruled on the guilt of certain participants in the incidents. This verdict stated: “The Jewish population actively attacked the fleeing farmers, pelting them with stones, beating them with bars and sticks, and using firearms as ,

well; and this led the attacked, unarmed farmers to take defensive action.’ | I could have treated the entire matter in the manner adopted by Zyndul (in relation to Poles) or after the fashion of pre-war antisemitic pamphlets. But these two approaches—and they would have been very similar to one another—would have been inadequate from a scholarly point of view. I therefore recognized that research into the behaviour described in the verdict and explanations of the emotions that gave rise to it—explanations that were accurate and not mythological—were essential. After an analysis of the sources, I came to the conclusion that the aggressive behaviour against the farmers was provoked in particular by the Endecyja. It was the nationalists who brought the relationship between the two communities to the level of fists and stones. It was the nationalists above all who engendered a sense of insecurity among the Jews of Przytyk with their aggression and their severe economic boycott. So, in writing about the mood of the Jewish population, I was trying

to explain the mechanisms of human behaviour, and I did not—as Zyndul suggests—draw any conclusions about Jewish responsibility for the outbreak of

, these events. Therefore, once again I do not know on what basis the author has

reached her ‘obvious’ conclusion. |

394 Piotr Gontarczyk | Many of the arguments used in Zyndul’s article are without serious scholarly foundation. This is true, for example, in the case of Cardinal August Hlond’s pastoral letter, which, in the mid-1930s, unequivocally warned against aggressive attacks against Jews. Zyndul wrote: ‘Although the primary intention of these statements was to condemn physical violence against the Jews, they had entirely the opposite effect.’ Really? How many cases of Polish—Jewish conflict can we say were caused by Cardinal Hlond’s statements? Does the author have at her disposal some research on the subject of how that pastoral letter was received? Elsewhere, as proof that relations between Poles and Jews were not the best, the author refers to the fact that in the Sejm elected in 1935 only four out of 208 delegates were Jews. In regard to this argument, one can only refer the author to the work of her Ph.D. supervisor, Professor Jerzy Tomaszewski, who placed the blame for this state of affairs not on relations between the two nations, but on the structure of the electoral system and on conflicts within the Jewish community that hindered electoral success.’

ONE POGROM OR TWO? Zyndul devotes most attention to my interpretation of the Przytyk incidents. My

thesis was that these events should not be called a pogrom because they were complicated and equivocal in nature. I conveyed this opinion in the book’s title, using the word ‘pogrom’, followed by a large question mark. The reviewer asserts that it was precisely this cover that dispelled all her illusions about my prudence and honesty. She added: ‘Pogrom? . . . We know at once that this is a book with a definite thesis: there was no pogrom at all! Zyndul thus does not agree with my question mark, writing that there was in fact a pogrom in Przytyk: This overpowering and blind thirst for revenge causes the attacking mob to forget the actual perpetrators of a treason or crime and instead blame it on the entire Jewish community and all Jews; the mob wants to extract justice from all of them. Thus the farmers in Przytyk did not look for WieSniak’s killer, but turned against any Jews they could get their hands on. It

was then that the pogrom started.

The trouble here is that before the events described by Zyndul began, it was the _ farmers who were the objects of aggression. The Jewish ‘self-defence’ group, armed with dangerous weapons, attacked the villagers who were fleeing from the market.

Some of the residents of the town joined the action (see the court verdict cited above). Not only the perpetrators of the attack on the Jewish tailor but anyone who

was found on the street was beaten. So, in keeping with the theory put forward by Zyndul, this piece of the incident should be described as follows, with the actors changed: “This overpowering and blind thirst for revenge causes the attacking mob 1 J. Tomaszewski, Najnowsze dzieje Zydéw w Polsce w zarysie do 1950 roku (Warsaw, 1993). :

Pogrom? The Incidents in Przytyk 395 to forget the actual perpetrators of a reason or crime and instead blame it on the entire Polish community and all Poles; the mob wants to extract justice from all of them. Thus the Jews in Przytyk did not look for the tailor Dalman’s killers, but turned against any Poles they could get their hands on. It was then that the pogrom

started.’ So when did the pogrom begin? How many pogroms were there in Przytyk? I wanted to avoid mystification and the ‘pogrom count’, which obscure history rather than clarifying it. I chose the words ‘incidents’ and ‘conflict’ because they are more accurate and are free of emotional associations. I could offer other examples of inaccuracy in the description of my book, which make it clear that the review has a rather loose connection to the work discussed— as well as to scholarship in general. However, my worthy opponent made one observation with which I must agree: ‘Sometimes—as 1n the case of the alleged bloody victims of the settling of political accounts between the Jews—[Gontarczyk] provides no examples. Nor do I know of any such cases.’ Indeed, I wrote that within the Jewish community, as in the Polish community, there were bloody battles not only of a political nature but also of a social, family, and commercial nature (p. 36). I did

| not describe this issue in great detail because the work concerned the Przytyk events and I was not in a position to delve into the many related matters that came up. I read about the organization of the incidents and the destruction of leftist party offices by Zionist revisionists among other places in the monthly reports of the Biatystok regional government. On the victims of political struggles, I cite the press report entitled ‘Bloody Battle at g Ogrodowa Street’ printed in one of the pre-war Jewish newspapers: A mass meeting of bakery workers took place yesterday at the Bund offices at g Ogrodowa Street. Several extreme leftists began to agitate for uniting with the workers, and so on, for which they were removed from the hall. They remained in the courtyard and at 12.00, when

the workers left the meeting hall, they attacked them. A battle ensued in which several people were injured. Abram Daczycki was severely beaten. The police stopped the battle and arrested several people. (5-ta rano, 16 March 1936)

There were 3 million Jews in Poland before the war, living as an extremely active and diverse community. It is worth remembering that we are speaking of the 1930s,

when we saw the catastrophic effects of the Depression, the radicalization of attitudes, and the triumph of an ideology that glorified might and the use of force. Everyone was fighting everyone over everything—religion, beliefs, work, customers—out of stupidity and a need to discharge accumulated frustrations. How, then, 1s it possible to think that severe conflicts—sometimes bloody and brutal—might have bypassed the Jewish community? But Zyndul asserts that she knows of no such incidents. In view of the fact that she wrote her article while an assistant professor of history at the University of Warsaw’s History Institute, and specializes in research on the history of Polish—Jewish relations in the 1930s, this

396 Piotr Gontarczyk confession should be seen as an act of courage. One can only recommend that she read reports by police and local authorities, memoirs, diaries, the press, and so on. The assertion that I called the events in Lviv in 1918, for example, ‘alcoholrelated brawls between neighbours’ I will treat not as an example of ill will, but rather as a simple blunder caused by carelessness and a lack of academic discipline. I am glad that my book is being read and that it arouses a desire for debate. From the scholarly point of view, however, an in-depth text in which Zyndul expanded upon the questions raised in her article on the basis of a thorough review of the sources would be more appropriate. It would also be useful to know the sources on

which the reviewer based her classification of the events in Pinsk in 1919 as a ‘pogrom against the Jews’, for that is not what it was. Likewise, I have no doubt that

she will soon publish the results of her research on the influence of Cardinal! Hlond’s pastoral letter on the escalation of Polish—Jewish conflicts and on the role that Polish antisemitism played in the electoral defeat of the Jewish community in

1935. I strongly encourage her to write such texts and to enter into an objective discussion. Translated from the Polish by Claire Rosenson

It Was No Ordinary Fight JOLANTA ZYNDUL

It is with mixed feelings that I respond to Piotr Gontarczyk’s remarks to the effect that my review concerns some book that I hallucinated. The book does exist, however, and in addition to surprising conclusions that reveal biases, it contains certain

detailed factual assumptions that I did not question. I do question, though, Gontarczyk’s fundamental distortion of the picture of Polish—Jewish relations in the 1930s and his presentation of antisemitism and its brutal manifestations as a nearly equal ‘Polish—Jewish war’.

It is not my intention to discredit my opponent by expressing pointed personal opinions. I did not do this earlier and I will not do so now. The fact that he does so both in his book and in his latest rejoinder is offensive and embarrassing, however, since he clearly sees this as a method of ‘scholarly’ discussion. My remarks are as follows.

I am not the only one who has written about Przytyk. There are, in addition to my work—in which I devoted less than three pages to Przytyk—broader studies of the subject. I mention here an article by Joshua Rothenberg and a passage in Emanuel Melzer’s book No Way Out.’ Gontarczyk, however, omitted American and Jewish works, as he puts it, ‘because of their lack of reliable sources and— concomitantly—their low quality’ (p. 19). In relating the events in Przytyk, I took into account not only my own findings, but also those of other historians writing on this subject, as I note in my review. Gontarczyk seems not to recognize that history is the result of the work of generations of researchers, each of whom contributes a greater or lesser piece to the edifice of our knowledge of the past. In writing that Gontarczyk places the burden of guilt for the course of the events

on the Jews, I based myself on his own statements. I cite one: ‘But the facts unequivocally indicate that the guilt for the bloody victims falls mainly on illegal actions of the Jewish “self-defence” that were tragic in their effect’ (p. 135). Elsewhere he writes that it was the Jews who committed the most serious criminal acts, organizing a ‘real hunt’ for villagers (p. 63). This contribution was first published in Gazeta Wyborcza, 28 Mar. 2001.

1 J. Rothenberg, ‘The Przytyk Pogrom’, Soviet Jewish Affairs, 16/2 (May 1986), 29~46; E. Melzer, No Way Out: Polttics of Polish Jewry 1935-1939 (Cincinatti, 1997).

398 Jolanta Zyndul The author probably does not want to deal with the consequences of the assertions that he made in his book. He writes that the economic boycott was the source of the tensions, and places the blame for the tragic course of events on the Jews. He is surprised by the conclusion that the cause of it all was ‘evidently’ their impatience with the boycott. I did not ascribe this conclusion to the author, but more than a few readers will draw this conclusion from his book, and they will have good reason.

In quoting Primate Hlond, I did not suggest that his letter was the cause of the Polish—Jewish conflict. This was an example of the acquiescence of the authorities in the boycott. In commenting on this letter I emphasized that it was a condemnation of violence, but also that it legitimized the boycott. And this led to violence, as Gontarczyk’s work on the case of Przytyk demonstrates. I was not writing about the effects of this one letter, but about the effects of the many statements of which this is an example. The author’s intentions and the light in which he wants to present the question of the economic boycott against the Jews is clear from the following example. Gontarczyk writes: ‘Boycotts were also enacted by some members of

the world Jewish community against German products. For example, in Poland cinemas that showed German films were widely picketed’ (p. 31). The author knows that this was an act of solidarity in reaction to the Nazi persecutions in Germany. Even so, he uses this argument to cast doubt on the exceptional character of the boycott against the Jews. -Gontarczyk supports the paragraph devoted to the bloody struggles within the _ Jewish community with a reference to Marek Jan Chodakiewicz’s widely criticized Zydzi i Polacy 1918-1955: Wspotistnienie—zaglada—komunizm.2 In his book, however, he wrote about the bloody victims of such conflicts. The truism that people were beating and killing each other for various reasons cannot rescue his doubtful

thesis, but it does reveal his clear intention to minimize the threat of violence directed against the Jews. His effort to prove that every act of violence was within the norm of the social relations of that time must be seen as barren at the very least. My observation on the number of Jews in the Sejm at that time was in response to Gontarczyk’s suggestion that their very presence there was proof that Polish— Jewish relations were ‘not so bad’ (p. 137). I reminded him that this was a purely token representation. I did not claim, however, that it was evidence of or the result of bad relations. It is simply that this is not an accurate argument with regard to the measure of the wave of antisemitism that was sweeping across Poland at the time.

| In writing now that ‘these events should not be called a pogrom’, Gontarczyk is simply trying to soften the categorical nature of the main thesis of his book. In the introduction he presented this thesis quite clearly: “The author of the present book intends to prove that the Przytyk events “were not a pogrom against the Jews”’ — (p. 15; and again as already ‘proven’, p. 136). Thus, in keeping with what I wrote in

pogrom.

my review, this is a book in which the author has a clear thesis: there was no 2 Warsaw, 2000.

It Was No Ordinary Fight 399 I absolutely did not assert that Gontarczyk writes in his book about any pogroms

other than Przytyk. In my review I refer to events that are widely accepted in historiography, which I clearly indicated in sketching the basic features of events that have been given the label of ‘pogrom’, in order to challenge Gontarczyk’s opinion on the subject of pogroms. In his book he deals with the question of the existence and nature of pogroms in a few dismissive sentences, one of which I quote in full: However, in spite of everything it seems that today we have become accustomed to ascribing

to conflicts like the one in Przytyk—which were in sum incidental phenomena for the Endecja [National Democratic Party], which was interested in ‘de-Jewing’ Poland, as well as , for the ‘pogrom alarm’ raised in the Jewish press in response to the breaking of windows by teenagers running wild—an enormous role that does not accord with reality. (p. 137)

Nevertheless, in the historiography a certain specific type of event, the characteristics of which I was attempting to discuss, has been designated a pogrom. This concept, I believe, is useful in reference to Przytyk as well. I will pass over the absurd formulation describing the ‘pogrom against the Poles’ carried out by Jews in Przytyk. Finally, I should like to make a correction. Asa result of the newspaper’s editing, a paragraph about Pinsk was left out of my review. I wrote in it, among other things, that it is difficult to label the execution of thirty-three Jews in Pinsk in April 1919 by a group of soldiers on the orders of their commander a pogrom, although it 1s usually called one in the historiography. I therefore agree with Gontarczyk’s observation in this instance. This was not a pogrom, but a war crime. Translated from the Polish by Claire Rosenson

Life and History RYSZARD FENIGSEN

THE last political trial conducted in Radom before the Second World War was of a different character. On g March 1936, a market day, in the town of Przytyk near Radom, the fighting squad of the Endecja (National Democratic Party) provoked a pogrom during which the shoemaker Josek Minkowski and his wife, Chaja, were

killed and several dozen Jewish residents of the town, including women and children, were severely beaten. Several of the Jews of Przytyk had firearms and shot

- into the crowd. A man by the name of Stanistaw WieSniak was killed and three people were wounded. Forty participants in the pogrom and fourteen Jewish

, defendants were brought to trial at the District Court in Radom. The latter were defended by the Warsaw lawyers Ettinger, Szumanski, Margulis, and Kruger. My father lodged a civil claim for a ‘symbolic zloty’ on behalf of the orphans of the

murdered Minkowskis. The lawyer Kowalski, leader of the Ob6z NarodowoRadykalny (National Radical Camp) in £6dz, made a similar claim on behalf of the family of Stanistaw WieSniak. The trial was conducted in a tense political atmosphere. Correspondents for several dozen national, European, and American newspapers came to Radom, and various other personalities arrived as observers. My father’s speech clearly did not please the correspondent of one of the Warsaw papers; he gave the speech the title “The Last Epigone of Assimilation’. The Przytyk trial was of historic importance; historical studies and collections of documents related to this case are published even today, sixty years later. In any case it was the most memorable episode of my father’s career.

It is curious that, when I recall my father, what comes to mind first is not the quality of his intellect or his professional achievements, but rather his courage and his excellent reflexes. On the first day of the Przytyk trial a ‘rent-a-crowd’ suddenly appeared in the entrance to the block of flats. This was the fighting squad of the

_ Ob6z Narodowo-Radykalny, come to ‘dissuade’ my father from going to the courthouse. My father called to me: ‘Put the dog on a long leash and come with , me.’ When our large bulldog appeared, the entrance emptied out in the blink of an eye. This contribution was first published in Dzis, 9 (1997), 119.

Letter from Ryszard Fenigsen , Dear Sir: I should like to add my voice to the discussion surrounding the 65th anniversary of the events in Przytyk (Gazeta Wyborcza, 27 March 2001). Three weeks after the pogrom, in the bright light of day, at one o’clock in the afternoon, the Przytyk marketplace made a strange impression. Silence reigned. Grass had sprung up between the paving stones. The shops were closed. No one was there. A few people still lay in hospital in Radom, and the rest did not show themselves.

I was there because my father, the lawyer Ludwik Fenigsen, had come from _ Warsaw with his colleague Szumanski during the preparation period for the trial concerning the incidents in Przytyk to see where the events had taken place, and they brought me with them. During the June 1936 trial my father made a civil claim for a symbolic zloty before the District Court in Radom on behalf of the orphans of the murder victims Josek and Chaja Minkowski. The Minkowski children had also been beaten with a heavy stone and a bar; Gawrys suffered a broken parietal bone and a broken rib, and 6-year-old Szmulek was pulled out from under the bed and beaten about the head. The attackers did not find the two smaller children. The drama of Przytyk lasted only an hour and played out in the marketplace, on

Warszawska Street, on the bridge across the Radomka, and in the suburbs of Zacheta and Podgajek. ‘'wo thousand people ran through the streets, and a few dozen or perhaps a hundred-odd people among them were the ones who, at the command of the fighting squad of the Endecja (National Democratic Party), broke

windows, forced open doors, demolished homes, and beat people with heavy objects. Several others shot into the crowd. The small police detachment did everything, 1t seems, to restrain the mayhem and defend the lives of the citizens. From witness testimony and police reports, snapshot images emerge: 70-year-old Jochweta Palant runs out into the street to look for her children; the crowd surrounds her and beats her with. sticks, leaving a dent in her skull. Fajga Szuch goes out to meet the attackers in order to draw their attention away from the eight children she

has hidden in her attic; she is beaten, sustaining injuries to her head and spine. Szulim Leska fires a pistol three times through the smashed window pane of his This letter was first published in Gazeta Swigqteczna, 1 Apr. 2001. |

402 Letter from Ryszard Fenigsen apartment, killing Stanistaw WieSniak as he runs through the street. We also see other young Jews who fired shots; three peasants sustained injuries from firearms. As they leave the town, the peasants complain to the police that the Jews beat them with sticks and iron bars. Twelve people break into Berek Tober’s shop. The shop is demolished and Berek is beaten with bars, leaving his head and arms wounded. Jankel Borensztajn and his wife are beaten with crowbars and stones. As Gabriel Rojek hits Leybus ‘Tober on the back with a crowbar, Aleksander Pytlewski orders him to beat him about the head. As she is being beaten with a bar, Chaja Frydman shields her 5-year-old child with her body. And so on. The number of seriously injured Jews in Przytyk was greater than the number of injured peasants, but people on both sides were wounded and even killed. Is it possible to designate one of the sides the attacker and the other side primarily the victim? Is it possible to impose some order on these events, to discover their meaning? I think it is possible, and I think that Piotr Gontarczyk has not succeeded in his attempt to do so. Several questions must be answered if we want to determine or fairly apportion guilt. Above all, how did these events come to pass? Who organized them? Who provoked them? We know the answers from the archival materials of the regional government of Kielce. In the course of a four-month preparatory action conducted in three powiaty (districts) by the fighting squad of the Endecja, peasants who _ bought from Jews or sold grain to them were beaten or financially ruined; several dozen Jews were beaten in villages, the windows of Jewish homes were shattered, _ and two Jewish farms were set on fire. This was not ‘the propagation of the economic boycott’; this was terror. Was it the Jews of Przytyk who planned the extermination of the peasants of the region? No. It was Jozef Sieradz, a member of the fighting squad, who threatened: ‘With this knife I will cut the throat of all Jews.’ It was Wincenty Korczak, the leader of the Endecja’s fighting squad, who proclaimed many times on market days: ‘A sentence of death to all Jews!’ If the young Jews of Przytyk began to arm themselves, it was not with the intention of attacking peaceful peasants. They armed themselves so as to be able to defend themselves against a long-awaited

attack. At the same time, the gmina (commune) and the tradesmen of Przytyk alerted the office of the starosta and the regional government. They asked for police protection, and this protection was finally provided. But it was not enough. And who started the events of g March? On which side did the first victims fall? On which side were the victims children or old women? Who had to hide in attics, basements, latrines?

Guilt must be fairly apportioned. The District Court in Radom, which sentenced two accused Jews to six and eight years’ imprisonment respectively,

Polin, § (1990), 327-59. , 1 Published in A. Penkalla, “The “Przytyk Incidents” of g March 1936 in Archival Documents’,

Letter from Ryszard Fenigsen 403 sentenced the peasants and members of the Endecya fighting squad to six, eight, or

at most twelve months, and pronounced no sentence for the murder of the Minkowskis ‘owing to lack of evidence’. The witnesses who identified the murderers were not believed. In reality, some of the Jews in Przytyk, including Szulim Leska, the murderer of

Stanistaw Wiesniak, committed crimes during the riots that the criminal code defines as exceeding the bounds of necessary defence. Other young Jews allowed themselves to be drawn into the frenzy of battle and were guilty of beating or shooting at people in the crowd. Members of the Endecja and those who followed them bear responsibility for the systematic campaign of hatred and terror, for provoking the riots, for attacking the police, for preventing an arrest, for taking over the police station, for inciting the crowd to violence, for dozens of lootings and the destruction of apartments, for the exceptionally brutal beating of several dozen defenceless

people, including women, elderly people, and children, and for the murder of the shoemaker Josek Minkowski and his wife, Chaja—for everything that has been engraved in collective memory as the Przytyk pogrom. Respectfully yours, Dr Ryszard Fenigsen Translated from the Polish by Claire Rosenson

— Przytyk and the Market Stall KSAWERY PRUSZYNSKI

INTO the centre of the hall, into a quadrangle enclosed on one side by the long judges’ table, on two sides by the lawyers’ lecterns, and on the fourth by a uniformed police officer, the fifty-seven people named as defendants enter one after the other. More than 500 are named in the proceedings as witnesses. But the trial does not exactly give the impression of a trial, and the court does not seem to be an

ordinary court. It is as if several hundred versions of the same event have been brought into the laboratory of a great film studio and developed there, exposed, examined, and edited. But the lenses do not make a wide sweep of the world. So we

will see a young farm-boy liberated from the hands of the police by the crowd in the , market as he calls for a boycott, and right after that we will see this same crowd of farmers surrounding the police, who are inside a little house. We will see a man in a first-floor garret put out his hand, we will see a revolver in that hand, we will hear shots fired, and a peasant will fall in the street. Next, the focus will become horribly clear for a while: we will be inside the low rooms of a Jewish home. The frames of its windows bend under the weight of stones. Three frightened little children will be dragged by their feet, hair, and little heads from under a shabby little bed. The farmers’ heavy clubs are raised above their heads, ready to strike. In the narrow hallway it will be dark, and once again we will not see the faces of the people who crush the skull, the parietal bone, the blue-veined protuberance of the poor shoemaker’s temple, with sticks. For a moment the film breaks completely and then we flow into reels of film shot by ordinary cameramen: police descriptions, the report © by the court physician, the autopsy report, and reports by officials from Radom. Then again through the peasant’s torn shirt we probe the deep, round wound that the bullet from above has made in the withered body of old Wiesniak. In its opinion the court will have to repeat constantly the words ‘could not be established’. This despite the fifty-seven defendants, the twenty lawyers, several hundred eyewitnesses, and three weeks’ work. The court will refuse to believe the testimony of the eyewitnesses, and the prosecutor will condemn personally the

unreliability of these statements. Even so, despite entreaties, references to the sanctity of the oath, to punishment under the law, to a sense of duty, a huge number This contribution originally appeared in Wiadomosce Literackie, 30 (1936).

Przytyk and the Market Stall 405 of witnesses will submit testimony that is contradictory, confused, fantastical. The mob will display solidarity not with the power of the oath, correct testimony, and punishment for perjury. It will display solidarity with the defendants’ bench, or

, rather with the two defendants’ benches. | In these proceedings, among those fifty-seven people, among those several hundred eyewitnesses—of whom very few can make a logical statement before the

court—there are no great, tragic, heroic, or criminal figures. There are no powerful , people pulling the strings. There are many places in Poland where antisemitic agitation has had more and better agitators, where the territory was covered earlier and much more decisively by the activities of the Endecja (National Democratic _ Party) than in the vicinity of Przytyk. Korczak, the infamous ‘voivode of Przytyk’, in an ordinary, average peasant. What he says, he says in peasant language, his method of argumentation is peasant, his environment is the environment of the ‘destitute’ peasant, of poor earth, of eking out a living by subleasing other people’s

land, of hoping to sell here or there a horse he’s bred, with distant dreams of running his own lime business. The only other thing that one could say about this

man, whom the Jewish press has made the spiritus movens of the incidents, this | leader of the Przytyk hordes, this Hitler of Radom, this threat to the government in Warsaw, who grinds the canons of Polish antisemitism into his speech, is that he, more than other peasants, has become familiar with the world of the village. ‘They came to the village once a week; he came every day. Perhaps he heard a radio a few times, perhaps he spoke with people of the wider world more often, perhaps he was able to read a newspaper more often. The spark that he became in the Radom events was accidental. The cinders that lay here could have been lit by a cigarette-butt. The vast majority of the defendants, both Polish and Jewish, are young people. They are smallholders or they are landless, the sons of many families, the inheritors of farmlands divided up into plots. They. are the unmistakable, classic rural proletariat of Poland, a country whose agrarian overpopulation and poverty have no equal in all of Europe. After all, this is the rural proletariat not of Baranowicze or Rowne, but rather of the area on this side of the Vistula, the proletariat from that other, happier half of Poland, of Minister K wiatkowski’s ‘Poland A’. Nineteen kilometres from here is socialist Radom, a hundred and some-odd kilometres away is Poznan, the Polish Denmark, an economic oasis. The defendants know how to read and write. They went to school. They belonged to political parties. They were boycotting not only Jewish stalls, but also regulations tightening electoral laws. It is not entirely coincidental that the biggest trial to date on outbursts of antisemitism is a trial of peasants; not a trial of kulaks, of wealthy farmers, but a trial of young rural smallholders and landless farmers: people who in their twenties came to see that they would not inherit their fathers’ lands. It is not Leska, Haberberg, Banda, Wojcik, or Kubiak marching straight ahead of us on press screens through-

out Poland; it is not only the witness Snopek who will say of the pogrom with pleasure: ‘Now there was something to see.’ A huge crowd of peasants is gathering

406 Ksawery Pruszynski before us, just as they did that day at three in the afternoon when the peasants, alarmed by the news from the village, hurriedly turned their horses around to go and ‘defend their own’. The crowd 1s the hero and the guilty, the accuser and the accused, in this trial, and, in searching for this crowd, we must make our way between the Jewish homes of Przytyk to Potworéw, to the countryside. ‘And before that boycott did the Jews trade a lot?’ the Endek defence lawyer, Kowalski, asks every Jew.

‘They traded,’ the Jew answers. ‘And how many of these Jewish stalls were there on a market day before that?’ ‘Seventy or eighty.’ ‘Eighty,’ the attorney emphasizes each time. ‘And when the boycott was on, and before g March, the morning of 9 March, before the disturbances, how many Jewish

market stalls were there?’ |

‘Maybe eight or ten Jewish ones,’ says the Jew. ‘Eight or ten,’ Kowalski repeats. ‘And how many peasants’ stalls were there?’ ‘Sixty,’ says the Jew. ‘Sixty,’ Kowalski affirms. ‘And how many were there before?’ ‘None,’ the Jew answers. ‘None. Before there were no farmer’s stalls,’ the attorney repeats. ‘But now, after the boycott, there are.’

And this type of exchange becomes the context woven by the defence around each witness. The defence’s strategy rests on two things: on the one hand, they _ defend each of the accused against charges of violence and terror, and on the other hand, they point out the economic success of the boycott, which in a matter of weeks had threatened a mass of Jews with the spectre of starvation and poverty. We do not know whether that action eased the misery of the countryside; we do not know whether it had a lasting character, or rooted the peasant in the village and truly brought him from the plough to the market stall. However, it is obvious that this action ruined a couple of thousand Jews living in Przytyk. At the beginning of what happened on 9 March there was an economic boycott organized by the peasants against the Jewish village. The battle that ended with the death of WieSniak and the corpses of the Minkowskis began as a battle over the market stall. Not over the shop, but specifically over the market stall. The Jewish population lives by trade. The aristocracy of that nation occupies the great banks,

, the middle class occupies the shops, and the proletariat has the market stalls. The market stall has been attacked by the peasantry, by the mass of people from the

countryside. In Przytyk the market stall was captured in a very short time. , Again, these are things that are difficult to understand in Poland. We are all used to, and consider natural and justified, the peasants’ aspiration to break up proper— ties, to take aristocratic farmlands even without compensation. In the city we are all convinced that the wave of the peasantry’s animosity will bring down the neoclassical columns of the estates; and, more importantly, that abundant and radical

Przytyk and the Market Stall 407 parcelling of the land will draw the peasant away from Communism and Witos, and will win him over to Sktadkowski and Grazynski. The trials resulting from peasant uprisings of the past—the Lapanow, Lisko, and Tarnow trials—revealed a peasant in a battle against taxes and statutory upkeep of the roads, a battle against the starosta, the bailiff, the policeman. But in the present trial we see him struggling with the

impoverished shoemaker Minkowski, with Icyk Banda (another of the Jewish accused), with the Jewish market stall, and eggs, muslin, or caps. The peasant will expropriate the Jewish market stall without compensation. Why? In order to understand why, we can conduct three experiments. First we can read Mlode pokolenie chtopéw,' and if we read it intelligently, we will see that the place occupied by the so-called manor house in the countryside of today’s Poland, in its poverty, in its hopes, is extremely small. We first encounter the phrase ‘manor house’ only on page one hundred-and-something. For thousands of villages and hundreds of thousands of peasants, it is a phenomenon approaching the exotic. Next we can fly over Poland in a plane. From a bird’s-eye view we can search from

Czerniowce to Danzig and from Vilna to Katowice for those latifundia, those measureless expanses, those endless aristocrat fiefdoms. From a bird’s-eye view Poland is a chequerboard of patchy fields. Finally, to understand the Przytyk tragedy, we can open up the books of Jozef Poniatowski and Theodor Oberlander, _which are devoted to the agrarian overpopulation of Poland.? They will tell us first that, even with the reclamation of barren lands, the land available for parcelling amounts to at most 3 million hectares. If even more radical steps were taken, it would be possible, in Poniatowski’s opinion, to reclaim another 600,000 hectares. On this maximal area it would be possible to establish 600,000 new 6 hectare farms. The annual population growth of Poland—the majority of it agrarian—amounts to 400,000. Poniatowski calculates the agrarian overpopulation today at 9 million. According to Oberlander, the entire area of land available for colonization will be used up almost entirely in supplementing the land of smallholders. And what about

the landless, and the generations of our countryside that are multiplying like _ rabbits? Seasonal migration and permanent emigration have come almost to a complete halt. There is no industrialization. The Przytyks are beginning. The battle for the market stall begins not because it is there that one can find rural unemployment. It begins because it has nowhere else to go: the roads are closed, there is not enough land. The establishment of a new farm, even when there is land, costs a lot; the market stall is the nearest and most accessible, and shows the quickest profit. That market stall will also help nothing; it will not absorb the population of the unemployed. It will be a great relief, but not the complete answer. But for today’s countryside, the tradesman is a rich man possessing a treasure trove of sugar, kerosene, matches, iron. Only to us, looking down from above, is that little

1 ‘Peasants’ Diaries’ (repr. Warsaw, 1984). ; ,

* Poniatowski, Przeludnienie wsi i rolnictwa (Warsaw, 1935); T. Oberlinder, Die agrarische Uberbevolkerung Polens (Berlin, 1935).

408 Ksawery Pruszynski tradesman in essence a pauper. For the tradesman earns only a few dozen zlotys a day, as we hear lamented in court. The peasant would be happy to earn one dozen.

This man in the yarmulke lives on herring and potatoes, while the man in the sheepskin coat lives only on potatoes. This ghetto is simply of a standard of living even lower than that of the Jewish ghetto. And again there would be nothing more natural. It would simply be a matter of a

process being completed in Poland that had been completed a hundred years or. a few decades earlier everywhere in the West, in conservative England as in republican France, in Germany, Austria, Denmark, and Czechoslovakia. The adjustment

of agrarian affairs has always thrown masses of rural people into the cities and

towns. In this way Karlsbad and Prague became Czech, Ljubljana became Slovenian, and in fact the cities and towns of the Poznan region became Polish. , Only this all took place earlier elsewhere and it took place without any Przytyks. The excessive proliferation of the rural population and the overpopulation of the countryside were everywhere accompanied by the development of industry. Not only did the agrarian lands contract, but the factories opened in the cities as well. The population of the small towns, the tradesmen, went from the market stall to the shop, from the shop to capital, from capital to industry. This movement not only emptied the business establishments in the villages, but also created new workplaces with the opening of factories. The development of industry here is stagnant. For years the annual increase in employment has been minimal in comparison to the massive increase in the number available for work. The impoverished throngs of the Minkowskis, Leskas, and Bandas will not make it to shops in Radom. The mill-owner Haberberg will not build a great factory and will not hire to work in it thousands of Strzatkowskis, Wojciks, Kubiaks. He will not give rise in the next generation to a Kronenberg or a Bloch.? The man from the countryside, whom he would have hired, will now become his competitor. He will be brutal. Feigning that he wants to buy, he fingers all of the rolls in the bakery stall with his dirty, sweaty hands. He’ll toss the baker’s cap from the counter into the mud. He’ll drive his customers away. He will flatten him, kill him. But the Przytyk Jew will not exchange his little business for a modern shop in the centre of Radom, or his workshop or mill for a factory. Not only is he unable to go any higher—he in fact has nowhere to go. Before the war there was industrial development. Today the new chimneys smoking by the dozen in Radom and ‘the security triangle’ are the smokestacks of state-owned factories. Before the war there was emigration, today there is none. Zionist organizations opened Palestine to the

, Jews of Germany, but have nearly closed it to the Jews of Poland. If you think that after Przytyk the Jews will leave, be informed that after everything that happened here, one person emigrated to Palestine. If you point to the example of Poznan, remember that in Poznan there were no Przytyks, Minsk Mazowieckis, or Grodnos, 3 Kronenberg and Bloch were great Warsaw financiers of the second half of the roth century.

Przytyk and the Market Stall 409 which cleared away the Jews from below with the spectre of pogroms. In Poznan the mirage of Berlin floated over the ghetto, excellent, marvellous Berlin, the Berlin of assimilation and affluence. Before and after the war thousands of Jews from Poznan emigrated deep into Germany. But in today’s circumstances the Jews of Przytyk have nowhere to go except to the cemetery. All of this is written in order to lay out a particular problem that is broader than the case of Przytyk, and which Przytyk represents for us. We must dispassionately ascertain what prospects today’s countryside has, which possibilities have been closed to it, and which in turn are luring it. Mierostawski supposedly saw the future of Poland in hanging the last nobleman and the last bishop by their guts. Perhaps at one of Korczak’s meetings some rural doctrinarian has said that there will be no happiness 1n Poland until the last bailiff hangs the last Jew. For demagogy is always the same, although at times it abandons its already eroded channels in search of new ones.

Hatred is carrying over from the street to the school bench. It is flooding the entire country. It will encounter no dams, nor will it encounter any windbreaks that would direct this storm—which arose not from agitation but from poverty—into channels that are useful, creative, constructive. There are those who want to see in it only the beginning of the coming revolution, a bloody wave that will bear their standard. Translated from the Polish by Claire Rosenson

BLANK PAGE

PART V

Reviews

| BLANK PAGE

BOOK REVIEWS

CHONE SHMERUK | Hakertyah lenavi: mehkeret histortyah vesifrut (The Call for a Prophet: Historical and Literary Research)

, EDITED BY

a ISRAEL BARTAL

( Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center for Jewish History, 1999); pp. 380

| CHONE SHMERUK Ayarot ukerakhim: perakim beyetsirato shel shalom aletkhem (Shtetls and Cities: Studies in Sholem Aleichem’s Writings) EDITED BY

CHAVA TURNIANSKY ( Jerusalem: Hebrew University Magnes Press, 2000); pp. 198

Professor Chone Shmeruk (1921-97), fellow of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, laureate of the Israel Prize in 1996, admired scholar and teacher, was

one of the great students of the culture of the Ashkenazi Jews and its offshoots, especially in Poland and eastern Europe. Central to his work and world was Yiddish—the everyday language of millions of Jews, a living, lively tongue of tremendous creative force, and until the last generation the common language of religious tradition and secularism, of conservatism and modernism. Shmeruk was a distinguished historian of the language and its literature, and of

the religious, cultural, and social world it represented. He was both a scholar of , sacred Jewish texts, possessed of enormous knowledge of traditional society and the literature of the ‘old study house’, and a highly professional, critical researcher, well versed in up-to-date academic disciplines. His interdisciplinary learning was combined with his deep understanding of the multilingual, multicultural world of east European Jews, his keen originality and curiosity, and his passion for the subjects of

414 Reviews his inquiry. His writings covered an amazingly wide range of subjects: hasidism and Haskalah, folk literature, theatre, rabbinic literature, journalism and modern secular poetry, philology and linguistics, the bibliography and history of printing and the book, children’s books, book illustrations, non-canonical literature (shund—the

Yiddish lowbrow literature), and so on. Included in his Festschrift, Keminhag ashkenaz upolin: Sefer yovel lekhone shmeruk (‘Studies in Jewish Culture in Honour of Chone Shmeruk’, Jerusalem, 1993), was a bibliography of more than 200 books, articles, and reviews published in all these fields.

, Shmeruk considered himself not only a scholar, but also a cultural agent, a selfappointed ambassador promoting research on the world of Polish Jewry whose voice had been silenced. He initiated many research projects, published many books, and, in accepted fashion, waged ‘holy wars’ within academe and without. In addition, he was endowed with a charisma that drew many students. His influence,

indeed, on the present generation of scholars in the history and culture of east European Jewry, both in Israel and abroad, was enormous. Personally, I can say that it is largely thanks to him that I entered into this world. I feel indebted to him for this, and I miss him. A study tour that he initiated and organized in 1984, and in which I participated, was one of the formative experiences of my life. Since then, tens of thousands of Israelis have been to Poland. But at the time relations between

, the two countries were in their early stages, and this was the first real contact between Israeli and Polish scholars since the Holocaust. The encounter with Poland (then still under Jaruzelski’s martial regime) and its Jewish sites made an incredibly strong impression on me, a young Israeli who had grown up in a traditional home,

with Yiddish-speaking parents originally from Poland, but whose ears were unattuned to anything that carried the flavour of galut. In his late years Shmeruk devoted much time and energy to building bridges of understanding and co-operation between Israeli and Polish academics. Shmeruk’s interest in the history of Jewish—Polish relations is expressed in his fascinating

intertextual works on the transformations of the fictional story of Esterke, the Jewish mistress of Kazimierz the Great (The Esterke Story in Yiddish and Polish Literature (Jerusalem, 1985); Legenda o Esterce w literaturze jidysz 1 polskiey (Warsaw, 2000) ); or his hunt for the sources of majufes (after the sabbath hymn ‘Mayufes’, ‘How beautiful’), an idea that penetrated deeply into the consciousness of Poles and Jews alike as a derisive expression of Jewish obsequiousness before the squire (Hakertyah lenavi; and also published in English as ‘Majufes’, in A. K.

Paluch (ed.), The Jews in Poland, 1 (Krak6éw, 1992), and in Polin, 10 (1997). For nearly all of his years in Israel, Shmeruk was identified with the Yiddish Department at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Two students who remained close to him, the historian Israel Bartal and the Yiddish literary historian Chava Turniansky, have each brought out a volume of studies selected from his extensive and widely scattered legacy. Shmeruk himself made the selections, but did not live to complete their preparation. The two collections represent well the imaginary poles

Reviews 415 between which Shmeruk’s research ranged: the poles of history and literature, and those of Yiddish and Hebrew. In his eyes the world defined by these points was an integral one, defying division by school. Yet he saw himself as a ‘/ustortan of Yiddish literature’, one who approaches ‘literary phenomena via historical research, not vice versa’; as he puts it, ‘I came from history to literature’ (Hakertyah lenavt, 17). Central to Shmeruk’s historical work were rabbis, writers, poets, and journalists, especially the founding fathers of modern Yiddish literature, S. Y. Abramovitch (Mendele Mokher Seforim), Sholem Aleichem, and Y. L. Peretz. Hakertyah lenavi (the title is drawn from a short chapter on a group of so-called ‘prophecy and rage’ poems by Hayim Nakhman Bialik, Zalman Shneour, and Y. L. Peretz, and their

relation to the Russian poetry of S. Y. Nadson) contains twenty articles that integrate ‘history’ and ‘literature’ in exemplary fashion. Rather than summarize each and every item, let us glance at several. Collective

memory has been quite fashionable of late; Shmeruk takes an original tack in ‘Yiddish Literature and Collective Memory: The Case of the Chmielnicki Massacres’ (Polin, 5 (1990) ). He shows how, at a key point in the age-old saga that

created the collective memory of national trauma, fact and fantasy exchanged places, as did text and custom, and prayer and testimony on the fate of Polish Jewry. The disaster’s typology was fixed by its religious-ritual status (a special liturgy or public fast observed among Polish Jews until the early twentieth century); by the contemporary chronicles (such as Yeven metsulah by Nathan Note Hanover) that were issued time and again and even translated into Yiddish; by the tombstones that preserve a ‘story’ or commemorate a local martyr; and by legends and folklore

that create images of myth and martyrdom. These were all mixed together in national memory, transmitted orally from generation to generation, in medieval and modern literature and in the contemporary historiography as well. Two other fine studies are ‘Mashma’uta hahevratit shel hashehitah hahasidit’ (“The Social Significance of Hasidic Ritual Slaughter’ (7szyon, 20 (1955-6), 47-72) ) and ‘Hahasidut ve’iskei hahakhirot’ (“Hasidism and Arenda Affairs’ (Tszyon, 35 (1969-70), 182-92) ), masterful examples of social history exploring the spread of hasidism in the first generations. As Shmeruk demonstrates, hasidic customs of ritual slaughter, a focus of contention in many east European communities, were dictated not only by halakhic and mystical factors, but also by matters of simple economics, such as taxes on kosher meat and the appointment and dismissal of slaughterers. Hasidic leaders also became involved in resolving tenancy disputes (a major economic problem area for Polish Jewry in the eighteenth century), which

had to do with, among other things, avoiding unchecked competition between lessees, or ransoming lessees who were being held captive by Polish nobles; this was another way in which they gained a following among the masses.

Although all of the articles have previously appeared elsewhere (some also in English or Polish), one new item of major importance—merely one page long—has

been added to the chapter ‘Devarim kahavayatam udevarim shebadimyon

416 Reviews bimegaleh temirin shel yosef perl’ (“Authentic and Imaginative Elements in Joseph

Perl’s Megaleh temirin). To the casual observer this document would appear marginal, whereas to one familiar with the issues it is exciting and charged with possibilities. Perl’s 1819 novel is a brilliant anti-hasidic satire, and was considered by Shmeruk and others to be the beginning of artistic prose in modern Hebrew literature. This epistolary novel in 151 chapters includes the description of a chase, rich in characters and incidents, with hasidim in hot pursuit of a book that reveals the ‘truth’ about their pranks and misdemeanours. The hasidim, the seven deadly sins incarnate, are anxious lest distribution of the book bring calamity upon them,

and so they spare no effort to lay their hands on it and burn it. Naturally, their efforts fail. Many scholars have noted that Perl cleverly wove a wealth of historical

material into his work, and have tried to separate fact from fiction. In his study Shmeruk shows that decoding acronyms and the numerical value (gematriyah) of Hebrew names of people and places in the book reveals references to actual historical events. And so it turns out that the strangely named Rebbe Yokltse of Kalashke is none other than the tsadik Meir of PrzemySlany; and the towns Abdari, Akhziv, and Greater Tsidon are Brody, Lwo6w, and Tarnopol. Evidently a number of readers sharpened their wits in trying to solve these puzzles, and some even succeeded. Shmeruk discovered a list of solutions, and it is published for the first — time in the new book, in reproduction. Shmeruk’s distinction as an original scholar is also brought to light in Ayarot ukerakhim, which comprises eight articles on Sholem Aleichem’s writings. The first, on the textual history of Tevye der milkhiker (“Tevye the Dairyman’), opens

with a surprising question: ‘How many daughters did Tevye have? Five? Six? Seven?’ The correct answer is: it depends on the particular version you’re reading. (This also holds true of the question ‘How old was Motl when he was orphaned by his father, Peyse the Cantor?’) Nearly all of the chapters deal with mutual relations

created, consciously or not, within the eternal triangle of textual history, the , artistic—literary taste of the writer and his readers, and the political, social, and cultural context in which the work was written. Like a detective, Shmeruk traces every twist and turn in the various versions, most of which were originally published in instalments in Yiddish papers and revised for book publication. He points out the literary and ideological principles that shaped their final form. For instance, the Soviet edition systematically censored Menakhem-Mendl’s remarks about antisemitic persecutions in Russia. Needless to say, any expression of Zionism, explicit or implicit, was also censored. Further complicating the question of text is that of translation. Translations of Sholem Aleichem’s works into Hebrew, Polish, and Russian appeared in his own lifetime, and they frequently diverge from the original Yiddish. Shmeruk reached clear conclusions; for example, that ‘the text of the book [Motl peyse dem khazns] that has come down to us is not reliable’ (p. 72). Characteristically, Shmeruk realized his implicit obligation and, shortly before his death, published a critical |

Reviews 417 edition of this book (Jerusalem, 1997). The novel Blondzhende shtern (‘Wandering Stars’) likewise suffered from severe textual problems. This wide-ranging book - describes the life of a travelling troupe of Yiddish actors, and criticizes, sharply and bitterly, the world of Yiddish theatre both in eastern Europe and in America. Since

Sholem Aleichem invested his story with much information, including descriptions of actual people and of his own experience in directing his works on stage, it has also a great deal of historical value. As usual, the novel was originally serialized in the press and published later in book form (1912), but the author was dissatisfied with the book. He explicitly disowned the ‘original’ version and published, in his lifetime, a revised and trimmed-down edition (1914). This revision, influenced also by the preparation of a Russian translation, did justice to the book; it was reissued in many editions (including translations into Ukrainian, Kazakh, and Latvian). Just in the last generation it has been rendered twice into Hebrew: by K. A. Bertini in 1992, from the revised version, with an afterword by Shmeruk; and by Arie Aharoni in 1990, from the longer first version. Aharoni took issue with Shmeruk’s conclusions. _ ‘Let the reader decide,’ Shmeruk laconically replies to Aharoni’s ‘peculiar’ comments (pp. 105-6). Two important articles in the book are new translations from Yiddish into Hebrew. In ‘Shalom aleikhem vereshitah shel sifrut hayeladim hamodernit beyidish’ (‘Sholem Aleichem and the Beginnings of Yiddish Modern Children’s Literature’) Shmeruk shows that the author was the founder of Yiddish literature intended primarily for children. Apart from the Mot! peyse dem khazns stories (which underwent more than a few transformations before their author decided whether his target audience was adult or juvenile), the festival stories (1900—4), a series of ten short stories aimed specifically at children, are of special importance. Shmeruk skilfully uncovers the background to the creation of this new genre. The second of these new translations, ‘Sholem Aleichem and America’ (YJVO | Annual, 20 (1991) ) examines the role of the New World in the life and work of one who, notwithstanding his declared Zionism, considered emigration to the United States a miraculous solution sent by Providence to Jews in the Pale of Settlement. As Motl, the young immigrant, says: ‘You forgot that America was created by God _ for protection and asylum for all persecuted people.’ A stanza from the popular lullaby ‘Shlof mayn kind’ (‘Sleep, My Child’), composed in 1892 (over time people forgot that Sholem Aleichem was its author), is characteristic: This America is for everyone So they say, great good luck And for Jews—Paradise; really something!

There they eat white bread |

on weekdays, my little son! There Pll cook you broth So, sleep, lulla-lullaby. (p. 150)

418 Reviews While expressing excitement about America, Sholem Aleichem could also describe the painful process of absorption, the dreadful poverty, and the difficulty of uprooting oneself, physically and emotionally, from the old country. He could also make fun of the parochial life created by immigrants who brought ‘Kasrilevke’ with them

to New York. From Sholem Aleichem’s perspective, ‘the Jewish all-rightnik in America and the nouveau ignorant riche in Eastern Europe belong to the same tribe’ (p. 164). The linguistic melting pot is also reflected in Sholem Aleichem’s ‘American stories’, which portrayed the new immigrants’ Yiddish as liberally studded with many ridiculous Anglicisms.

| It would be difficult to fault the editors. Shmeruk, as noted, made the choice himself, and they fulfilled his wishes in good faith and integrity. And yet it seems to me that his passing allowed his disciples a certain leeway in handling his legacy.

Certainly they could have eliminated duplication. If I may be allowed a small criticism, there was no need for double exposure of the article on Sholem Aleichem’s play Tsezeyt un tseshpreyt (‘Scattered and Dispersed’). Logically, it belongs only in the book of Sholem Aleichem’s writings and not in Hakertyah lenavt. Not all of the articles in Hakeriyah lenavi are cut from the same cloth. Besides

_ those that are pioneering, there are several that are marginal or negligible in the ~ context of Shmeruk’s ceuvre (e.g. various bibliographical studies). If it had been my choice, I would have included, in addition or instead, other, far more important works, such as ‘Hashem hamashma’uti mordekhai-markus: Gilgulo hasifruti shel idiyal hevrati’ (“The Significant Name Mordecai-Marcus: Literary Metamorphosis of a Social Ideal’, Tarbiz, 29 (1960) ); ‘Letoledot sifrut hashund beyidish’ (‘On the History of the Yiddish Shund Literature’, Tarbiz, 52 (1983) ); ‘Iyunim bedarkhei hakelitah shel sifrut yeladim lo-yehudit beyidish’ (‘Studies in the Adaptation Methods of Non-Jewish Children’s Literature into Yiddish’), in Iyunim besifrut... likhvod dov sadan (‘Literary Studies . . . in Honour of Dov Sadan’ (Jerusalem,

1988) ), and others.

Unlike Hakeriyah lenavi, Ayarot ukerakhim has clear thematic parameters. It includes nearly all of Shmeruk’s works on the subject. However, it lacks his introduction to Menakhem-Mendl in Varshe ((Menakhem-Mend1 in Warsaw’), the last

and least-known series of letters (Di goldene keyt, 56 (1966) ). It is a pity that the editor did not include Shmeruk’s modest booklet, written in the style of an encyclopedia entry, Shalom aleikhem: madrikh lehayav uleyitsirato (‘Sholem Aleichem: His Life and Literary Work (A Guide)’ (Tel Aviv, 1980) ), which provides an excellent - introduction for anyone who would like to know this great classic writer. Shmeruk’s legacy still awaits further efforts at collection and publication. There is his work on Yiddish writers and literature in the Soviet Union—especially Der ~ Nister (the Hidden One, Pinhas Kahanovitsh), whose name and marvellous work, like the novel The Family Mashber (Di mishpokhe mashber), is almost unknown to

most readers—as well as his work on Yiddish modernists in Poland, Israel, and

| the United States (Yisroel Rabon, Itzik Manger, Uri Zvi Greenberg, Abraham

Reviews 419 Sutzkever, and especially Isaac Bashevis Singer, among others). These could easily be gathered in book form. Shmeruk’s life story and his personal world, especially in the autumn of his days, have yet to be fully related. Heaven forbid that this unique life story should fall into

historians’ hands! It is just the stuff for novelists, poets, and dramatists—those whom Shmeruk admired, and whose life and work he researched and described all his life. Isaac Bashevis Singer would probably have been well suited to the job, but he, alas, is no longer with us either. Shmeruk died in Poland and was buried, according to his express wish, in the old Jewish cemetery in Warsaw. His decision to be interred with his forefathers in the earth of his beloved Warsaw was surely a well-considered statement, perhaps even a ‘prophetic call’, for there is none to heed him in his own town. Only a few attended him on his final path. But he was accompanied, as it were, by those he so

admired and whose world he studied and described, the cultural heroes of the Ashkenazi Jews in Germany, Italy, Poland, and Russia, in all their generations and extensions: Elia Bahur Levita and Rivke of Tiktin; Nahman of Bratslav and Joseph Perl of Tarnopol; Mendele and Peretz; Sholem Aleichem and his ‘children’, Tevye, Menakhem-Mendl, and Motl; Sholem Asch and Julian Tuwim; Uri Zvi Greenberg and Itzik Manger. All these stood around his fresh grave and recited kaddish.

, Tel Aviv University DAVID ASSAF

ANNA MICHALOWSKA

Miedzy demokraga a oligarchia: Wladze gmin zydowskich w Poznaniu1t Swarzedzu (Between Oligarchy and Democracy: Jewish Communal Authorities in Poznan and Swarzedz) (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Akademickie DIALOG, 2000); pp. 336

During the early modern era the Polish—Lithuanian Commonwealth was home to the largest Jewish community in Europe. Jews went to Poland mainly from German lands, bringing with them their Germanic language and their communal structures. They retained both for centuries, but also adapted them to local conditions. For example, the Judaeo-German language, which became known as Yiddish, absorbed numerous Polish words and expressions, and the famous supra-communal institution Va’ad Arba Aratsot (the Council of Four Lands) has often been seen as a Jewish equivalent of the Polish Sejm.

420 Reviews Polish Jews, who formed one of many ethnic and religious groups inhabiting the vast heterogeneous country, lived in territories belonging to the Crown or owned by private lords. In 1539 a state law effectively divided Polish Jews into ‘royal’ and ‘private’ Jews, leaving those in private towns and villages under the town owners’ jurisdiction. This legal distinction proved to have a profound influence on the lives of Jews living in these two domains. Generally, the position of Jews in royal towns was more precarious than that of the Jews in private towns. Jews in royal domains, subjects of the weak Polish kings, were hostage to the whims of local or distant royal officials, while Jews in private towns were often able to forge solid symbiotic relations with the towns’ owners. This early modern relationship between private landlords and their Jews has been documented by Gershon Hundert, Moshe Rosman, and Adam Teller. Michatowska’s book deals with two Jewish communities in the region of Wielkopolska: one in the royal city of Poznan and one in the private town

of Swarzedz. |

Michatowska presents a very detailed study of communal structures in these towns based predominantly on Jewish communal records describing their institutions and officials. She illustrates procedures concerning the election of officials, the communal judicial system, and various communal societies (hevrot). And while the book’s strength lies in this meticulous documentation and as such it is a valuable resource for students of early modern Polish Jewish history, the reader is frequently left with more questions than answers. Miedzy demokracgja a oligarchia displays an internal tension stemming from the dichotomy between the general and the particular. Michatowska’s attempt to paint a general picture of Jewish communal structures results in a rather static presentation of communal institutions: the kahal, the court (beit din), the rabbi, hevrot, etc.

The picture that emerges is a consequence of her focus on the mechanisms of Jewish communal institutions and the resulting limited attention paid to general and local historical contexts. This general—local dialectic, on the other hand, raises crucial questions concerning the influences of Polish society on the workings of the Jewish community. The failure of Migedzy demokracja a oligarchia to address fully the general and local historical context forces us to question whether it is a book about the Jewish communities in Poznan and Swarzedz or, perhaps, a book about the structure of the Jewish community in Poland that uses Poznan and Swarzedz as models. Additionally, one might ask, how can these two communities of Wielkopolska, a region that Michatowska contends was economically and demographically different from the rest of the country, serve as models for generalizations regarding the Jewish community in Poland as a whole? Clearly, the foundations of Jewish communal organizations had been laid centuries before the period Michatowska describes. Placing Polish Jewish communal structures within the wider context of Jewish institutional history, or at least in the

context of the communal organizations of medieval Ashkenazi Jews, would allow readers to understand where Polish Jews retained their old communal institutions

Reviews 421 and where they adapted them to local conditions. For instance, many of the communal institutions, such as the bezt din, the hevrah kadishah, the bikur holim, or the talmud torah, to name a few, were not unique to Poland. There are also parallels between the medieval Ashkenazi prohibition against bringing cases against Jews to ~ non-Jewish courts and the cases that Michatowska describes. On the other hand, providing local historical context would help the reader to - contextualize changes and adaptations. Michatowska does not fully exploit the topic. For instance, she provides Hebrew and Yiddish terms (only in Hebrew char-

acters) used by Jews to describe communal institutions and their elements. Transliterating them and placing them side by side with Polish terms would have underlined the influence of the local conditions on the Jews. For instance, the Hebrew ne’eman (‘trustee’) often appeared in Hebrew characters as viernik, from the Polish miernik. Similarly, the judges (shofetim) were sometimes referred to as sendzies, from the Polish sedzia. In Miedzy demokraga a oligarchia Michatowska provides information available only to those able to read Hebrew or Yiddish, but does not discuss its significance and implications. Symptomatic of the whole book is the discussion of the contract between the community and a prospective rabbi. The author mentions that until the eighteenth century it was called ketav rabanut, but in the eighteenth century it began to be referred to as konsens (a word of Latin origin,

used in Polish). But she does not explore the cultural significance of this shift; instead she provides only the content of this kind of contract. The book is indeed more descriptive than interpretative. In the struggle between the general and the particular, or the static ideal and reality, the book tends to conflate the workings of Poznan and Swarzedz, neglecting the importance of the difference between private and royal domains. This conflation results in the loss of historical context. One might wonder, for instance, how the fact that Swarzedz changed hands from Catholic to Protestant and back to Catholic owners influenced it in general and the Jewish community in particular. Additionally, Migdzy demokracja a oligarchig is organized around particular institutions, and the author tends to generalize how they functioned and to compartmentalize topics, failing to make explicit connections between them. For instance, in chapter 4 we learn about the procedures involved in electing Jewish communal officials, but the influence of non-Jewish authorities in the process is only briefly touched upon. On page 89 Michatowska cites a source that says: ‘under the penalty of 50 talars paid to

His Majesty the Duke, he who was chosen to become an elector is prohibited... from joining the other electors until he pays all the taxes he owes’. She does not comment on the relationship between the owner of the town and the kahal. Only at the end of the book, in the last short chapter devoted to relations between Jewish communal authorities and non-Jews, do we find a somewhat more detailed discussion of the involvement of the non-Jewish authorities in internal Jewish affairs. It is a shame that the contextualization of Poland’s Jewish communities’ rela-

tions with non-Jews comes so late, and that most of the book treats the Jewish

422 Reviews | communal organization in isolation. And, while the choice of the Crown town of Poznan and the private town of Swarzedz could serve as an excellent springboard for comparing the status of Jews in these two domains, the pull towards generalization (whether intended or not), and the use of Poznan and Swarzedz, located in the distinct region of Wielkopolska, as models for the Jewish communities in Poland as a whole, result in the blurring of the dynamics of Jewish institutional life in early

modern Poland. ,

MAGDALENA TETER

Wesleyan University

MAGDALENA SITARZ

Yiddish and Polish Proverbs: Contrastive Analysts Against Cultural Background Rozprawy Wydziatu Filologicznego, vol. lxxiii , (Krakow: Polska Akademia Umiejetnosci, 2000); pp. 162

The generations born and brought up in Poland after 1945 find it difficult to imagine their country as a commonwealth of many nations, which it was up to the time of the Second World War. Although throughout the ages the same territory had been

| inhabited by a variety of national groups, the relations between them were often far | from perfect. Nevertheless, representatives of these distinct nationalities were in contact with each other, and—whether consciously or not—the diverse cultural models influenced each other. The languages were also exposed to such mutual influences. The past decade has witnessed a considerable increase in research into foreign influences on the Polish language. In most cases such studies focus on the contemporary and historical variety of Polish spoken 1n the eastern borderlands, that is, in the territories of present-day Belarus, Lithuania, and Ukraine. Scholars have also researched the Polish language spoken by other national groups and the varieties of the language spoken abroad. Studies into the issue of linguistic influences between Polish and Yiddish have also been developing. Works such as Maria

Brzezina’s Polszczyzna Zydéw (‘The Polish Language Spoken by the Jews’ (Warsaw, 1986) ) and Ewa Geller’s fidysz: Jezyk Zydéw polskich ‘Yiddish: The Language of Polish Jews’ (Warsaw, 1994) ) help us to realize the intensity of the lin-

guistic influences between the languages of Poles and Jews, but at the same time _ they clearly show how many research problems await investigation. This is why every new publication that contributes to a better understanding of the issues is welcome. One of the latest works of this kind is Yiddish and Polish Proverbs:

Reviews 423 Contrastive Analysis Against Cultural Background, by Magdalena Sitarz, a Yiddish scholar at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. The author’s objective is to shed new light on Polish—Jewish cultural relations as well as to put into practice and modify new methods of classifying and analysing | proverbs (pp. 9-12). The analysis draws upon a systematic comparison of Polish and Jewish proverbs that mirror mutual cultural influences. ‘The Jewish proverbs are taken from Ignacy Bernstein’s collection Jidische Sprichworter und Redensarten (‘Jewish Proverbs and Sayings’ (Warsaw, 1908) ), while the Polish ones come from Nowa ksiega przystow polskich (“A New Book of Polish Proverbs’, i-iv, ed. Julian Krzyzanowski (Warsaw, 1969-78) ).

| Chapters 2 and 3 set the background for the discussion: the former, entitled ‘Methodology’ (pp. 13-23), is devoted to theoretical issues, and gives the author an opportunity to introduce terminological devices, including the notion of proverb

interlingual equivalency (‘internationality)—the most important idea in the holistic conception of the work. This chapter also explains the adopted rules of classification, while chapter 3, “he Authors’ (pp. 25-30), presents details of the life and work of Ignacy Bernstein and Samuel Adalberg, the paroemiologists whose works served as the source material for Sitarz’s work (Nowa ksigga przystow polskich

is based upon Ksiega przystéw (‘A Book of Proverbs’ (Warsaw, 1889-94) ) by Adalberg). While the two authors are discussed in considerable detail, Julian Krzyzanowski is mentioned only briefly. The central, material-based part of the book is to be found in chapter 4, entitled

‘Corresponding Yiddish and Polish Proverbs with Their German Counterparts’ (pp. 31-108). Three hundred and fifty-one pairs and groups of proverbs falling within the particular semantic fields established by the author are offered along _ with their Polish counterparts. Each Yiddish proverb is given in the Hebrew alphabet followed by the Latin transcription. Under the Yiddish proverbs the author gives their Polish and German counterparts. All examples are meticulously localized in sources and translated into English. The author does not give the English proverbial counterparts, but chooses the closest possible English translations. Thanks to this strategy, an English-speaking reader is able to make a comparison of forms according to their structural and lexical make-up as well as their metaphorical load. A relatively brief chapter 5, ‘Interlingual Influences on the Basis of Proverbs’ (pp. 1og—18), represents the author’s attempt to examine the mutual influences of Polish and Yiddish (p. 110). The whole set of proverbs in Bernstein’s dictionary

and in Nowa ksiega przystow polskich serves as the basis for this analysis. The Yiddish influences on Polish are discussed only in relation to vocabulary. In total, within all the proverbs the author has discovered, twenty-four words borrow from - Yiddish (there is a full list on p. 111). Although these also include words borrowed from German through the mediation of Yiddish, they are not mentioned explicitly as such by the author, who seems to leave the issue to the curious reader. I would have

insisted on making the etymology of such words clear because of its fundamental

424. Reviews impact on the whole picture of interlingual relations between Polish and Yiddish as well as between Polish and German. The section of Sitarz’s book devoted to Polish influences on Yiddish discusses the Yiddish vocabulary in the proverbs that was borrowed from Polish (full list on pp. 113-16). Yiddish borrowings from Polish far outnumber those in the opposite

_ direction, with the author finding 210 such examples. The influence of Polish on Yiddish morphology and syntax is also discussed in this part. Sitarz presents a list of characteristics that are considered to be Polish influences on Yiddish, and illustrates them with examples found in her stock of proverbs.

Chapter 6, ‘Cultural Influences Between Yiddish and Polish as Manifest in Corresponding Proverbs’ (pp. 119-37), concentrates on the mutual cultural interchange as mirrored by the corresponding Polish and Jewish proverbs. Sitarz relies on the literature in the field for a concise discussion of Polish—Jewish cultural relations in the past, and gives statistical data pertaining to the proverbs under analysis. According to her calculations, 351 out of 2,800 Yiddish proverbs in Bernstein’s collection (about 12.5 per cent) have a Polish counterpart. The majority of Yiddish

proverbs also correspond to German proverbs. Only 115 either do not have a German counterpart (seventy-five), or their Polish counterpart is closer to the Yiddish version than to the German one (forty). The most vital part of this chapter is a discussion of the contents of the corresponding proverbs, which, as we can read on page 121, ‘take us on a journey through all possible spheres of life’. The journey begins with the biblical ‘For dust thou art,

and unto dust shalt thou return’ (Gen. 3: 19), and runs from human birth until _ death and matters of eternity. The general survey is followed by a more detailed comparison of the seventy-five corresponding Polish and Jewish proverbs which , have no German counterparts. Each pair is provided with a comment relating to content, lexical structure, imagery, or semantic discrepancies.

151-61).

The author presents her conclusions in chapter 7 (pp. 130-43), followed by a reference list (pp. 145-50) and an extensive summary of the text in Polish (pp. _ Sitarz posed herself an extremely difficult task. On the one hand, she strives to make certain theoretical assumptions, while on the other, she proposes an analysis of two vast sets of paroemiological material. It must be stressed that she explores an area that has not been researched so far and rarely occurs in scholarly works, since neither Polish nor Jewish paroemiology has been analysed to such a degree.

Chapter 4—the comparison of proverbs—is an asset in itself as it offers study material to those scholars who do not speak either Polish or Yiddish.

| Unfortunately, Sitarz’s study also suffers from numerous flaws, which diminish its academic value. First and foremost, the author does not make enough reference to the literature in the field, especially to Polish sources that may suggest ways of analysing the linguistic material. One should mention here works such as Halina Pietrak-Meiser’s C'zeskie wyrazenta 1 zwroty frazeologiczne na tle pordwnawczym

Reviews 425 polskim (‘Czech Expressions and Idioms in Comparison with Polish’ (Lublin, 1985) ), which compares idioms according to their structural make-up. Other works worth mentioning include Anna Bajda’s ‘Niektore sposoby zdobywania pieniedzy w polskie} 1 angielskiej frazeologii’ (“Some Methods of Getting Money Depicted in Polish and English Idiomatic Expressions’, in M. Biatoskérska (ed.), Synchroniczne 1 diachroniczne aspekty badan polszczyzny (‘Synchronic and Diachronic Aspects

of the Studies of the Polish Language’), vi (Szczecin, 2000)) and Katarzyna Mosiotek’s ‘Stereotypy samic niektorych zwierzat domowych przekazywane przez

polszczyzne 1 jezyk francuski’ (‘Stereotypes of Some Domesticated Female Animals, as Represented in Polish and French’, Poradnik Jezykowy (1994), no. 3, 23-8). In these works the authors explore the ‘wisdom’ of particular ethnic groups | on the basis of idiomatic expressions (not only proverbs), and make inferences from _ these expressions about cultural relations between the groups. It would undoubtedly have been beneficial if Sitarz had included the results of these studies in her book. The author’s efforts might also have been more accurate if she had taken into consideration other papers in the field, which would help to sort out a number of issues. For example, instead of using ‘perhaps’ or ‘it must be assumed’ when talking about the genesis of the gender change in the word sitwa, a Polish borrowing from Yiddish (p. 111), Sitarz would have been better off referring to Mosze Altbauer’s explanation of the phenomenon in ‘O pochodzeniu wyrazu sitwa’ (‘On the Origin of the Word sitwa’, Jezyk Polski, 28 (1948), 79-80).

Another problem is that among the set of corresponding proverbs listed in chapter 4 there are some that are traceable to classical antiquity—a fact mentioned nowhere by the author. For example, take the Yiddish proverb ‘A toytn zol men dem emes nokhzogn’ (‘Speak well of the dead or not at all’, p. 46) with its Polish and Latin counterparts (‘O umartych albo dobrze, albo wcale nie méwi¢’ and ‘De mortuis nil nisi bene’, taken from Diogenes Laertius): an obvious conclusion is that we do not learn anything about the Polish—Jewish relations from such proverbs. What we do learn is that the two cultures borrowed equally from the classics. Similarly, some proverbs are taken from the New Testament, for example, the Yiddish ‘A dokter ken zikh aleyn nit helfn’ (“Doctor, heal yourself, p. 70); in Polish ‘Doktorze, gam sie wylecz’, and in Latin ‘Medice, cura te ipsum’ or ‘Medice, sana te ipsum’ (Luke 4: 24). To make matters worse, the context in which this proverb is used in the Gospel makes it clear that it must have been known as a proverb to the Jewish contemporaries of Christ: “You will certainly tell me this proverb: Doctor, heal yourself. ..’. Itis regrettable that Sitarz fails to classify such cases separately, or at least to mention their distinct origin, as she does once with the proverb “The sun shines fairly: on the poor and on the rich’ (p. 121). Chapter 6 indeed arouses readers’ interest in the subject matter, but at the same

time it leaves their thirst unquenched. The chapter discusses those Yiddish proverbs that correspond to Polish ones but do not have German counterparts. Each pair is accompanied by acomment, which is usually scant and trivial and adds

426 Reviews little to the issue of intercultural relations. To illustrate this let me quote the ~ comment ‘Same wording, literal meaning’ about the proverb ‘Ver filt zikh, der meynt zikh’ (‘He who feels guilty, feels responsible’, p. 130); and the comment ‘Same wording’ about the proverb ‘A nar git, a kluger nemt’ (‘A fool gives, a wise man takes’, p. 131). However, in the Polish summary of the work the same proverb is accompanied by the comment ‘Exact translation, one of the proverbs must be a borrowing’ (p. 158). Unfortunately, Sitarz does not decide which one. Sometimes the comments to the proverbs include remarks on their semantics and discrepancies between the Polish and Yiddish versions. These remarks seem to rely only on random, unsystematic observations. The proverb ‘Az men klopt afn tish, ruft zikh on di sher’ (‘If you knock on the table, the scissors answer’), for instance, is commented upon as follows: ‘Same wording, a very interesting picture suggesting translation from one language to another. The meaning is—if you start speaking on a subject, the responsible will betray himself? (p. 130). At times the comment in chapter 6 differs substantially from the one provided in the Polish summary at the end. This is the case with the proverb ‘Vos toyg dem poyer a zeygerl, az er ken es nit ondreyen’ (‘What use can a watch be toa peasant, if he cannot wind it up?’), which has the following comment in English: ‘Same wording, Jews and Poles do not think

- much of peasants’ (p. 131). On page 158, however, the Polish comment reads as follows: ‘Dostowne ttumaczenie, jedno z przyst6w musi by¢é zapozyczeniem’ (‘Exact translation, one of the proverbs must bea borrowing’). This comment might

well have been given in chapter 4, whereas in chapter 6 the reader should expect , discussion on the ‘cultural influences between Yiddish and Polish’, as the title suggests. The work under review has its indisputable merits and its obvious drawbacks.

The major reason for the latter is, in my opinion, the fact that Magdalena Sitarz strove to cover too broad an area for this type of work. It is true that a lot has been left unsolved, but that is also why I recommend her work to all to whom Polish— Jewish interlingual contacts are of interest. Looked at in this way, the book opens our eyes to a wide field for research, making us aware of how much is yet to be done.

| HENRYK DUDA |

, Catholic University of Lublin Translated from the Polish by

Konrad Klimkowski

Reviews 427 SHMUEL FEINER AND DAVID SORKIN (EDS.)

New Perspectives on the Haskalah (London and Portland, Oregon: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2001); pp. viii + 260

This volume is a collection of studies by well-known Haskalah researchers from Israel and the United States that were presented at an international conference held under the auspices of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies in summer 1994. Io counteract the German-centred model, the studies are dedicated to the Jewish Enlightenment in different regions. They all deal with Haskalah literature in Hebrew (except for Nancy Sinkoff’s contribution on the multilingual Mendel Lefin), which means that they take Haskalah in the literal sense. They contribute mainly to intellectual history, and all of them are based on published material rather than on archival documents. Psychological and social perspectives and gender issues are touched on in only two of the eleven chapters. Many of the chapters examine memoirs and fiction in Hebrew. Some are summaries or fragments of previously published monographs, for example, Sinkoff’s research on Lefin, and David Ruderman’s book on the Jewish Enlightenment in England (femish Enlightenment inan English Key (Princeton, 2000) ). Most of the authors—Sorkin, Ruderman, Sinkoff, Breuer, Friedlander, and Salmon—use an approach that could be called bio-bibliography. They deal with representative actors of the Haskalah, sometimes grouping them in sociological categories (rabbis, scholars, and physicians; protectors and actors), but they rarely focus on the interplay of changing social, psychological, and intellectual structures. Citing the practice of pz/pu/ and the integration of philosophy, biblical exegesis, and

the study of Hebrew into the curriculum of Ashkenazi Jewry (with the aim of harmonizing current with traditional Jewish knowledge) as evidence of pre-1770 Haskalah trends, David Sorkin discusses early maskilim (Solomon Hanau, Asher Worms, Isaac Wetzlar, Israel Zamos¢, and Aaron Gumpertz). Edward Breuer characterizes Naphtali Herz Wessely as a ‘myopic individual who sometimes lost sight of the sensibilities of those around him’ (p. 28), seeing him as dislocated, marginalized, and alienated both from the rabbinical culture and from maskilic circles. Summing up, he points out that Wessely was a transitional figure and an

early example of the dislocation that became characteristic of modern Jewish culture. David Ruderman’s discussion of five maskilim (Mordechai Schnaber Levison, Abraham Jacob Hart, Samuel Falk, Abraham B. Naphtali Tang, and David Levi) provides an overview of the Haskalah in England. Nancy Sinkoff describes the head of Galician Haskalah, Mendel Lefin, as a highly self-conscious intellectual

with a subtle sense of literary artifice who wrote for various audiences in many languages. Lefin interacted with the non-Jewish world (in Poland during the

428 Reviews Four-Year Seym) and called for east European Jewry to disseminate Haskalah ideas and current knowledge without denying Jewish religion, tradition, and autonomy. Joseph Salmon reviews the social activities of moderate maskilic or enlightened

religious rabbis (Pines, Jaffe, Barit, Troib, Stern, Lapiot, Lipschitz, Eliasberg, Mohilewer, and Reines) during the second half of the nineteenth century in , Russia’s (mainly Lithuania’s) changing Jewish society, with all of the external and internal problems that led to the rise of Modern Orthodoxy in the United States and the Mizrahi movement in Israel. Two of the contributors concentrate on one of the main topics of the Haskalah: the tension between rationalism and religion. Harris Bor outlines the redefinition of musar to apply to contemporary conditions as one of the main aims of the Haskalah. In the ethical writings of maskilim (Satanow, Wessely, and Lefin; the journals Hame’asef and Sulamith), non-Jewish influences in the European Enlightenment (the ideas of the philosophers Leibniz, Wolff, Locke, Rousseau, and Condillac, and of the philanthropists Basedow, Campe, and others) were harmonized with medieval Jewish philosophy (Maimonides and Judah Halevi). Bor distinguishes the rational Enlightenment musar concept of love and happiness from popular mystical literature’s concept of fear. He describes the ethical concept of musar of the early Haskalah as including an awareness of the danger of separating ethics from religion. Musar ‘acted as both a force for acculturation and one that precipitated a drawing inwards’ (p. 62). Treating Haskalah rationalism more sceptically, Immanuel Etkes discusses the relationship between maskilim and their prime targets, magic and

miracle-workers. Magic and hasidism for them were the same. Moreover, the maskilic opinion of magic and hasidism influenced and historians of hasidism (Jost and Graetz). The first historians with a more differentiating position on hasidism

came from eastern Europe, the native territory of hasidism (Eliezer Zweifel, Samuel Horodecky, Saul Hurwitz, and Simon Dubnow). Etkes repudiates the supposed identification of the practice of magic with hasidism, exposing the maskilic

position as a strategy of negative self-identification designed ‘to combat the “enemy” ’ (p. 127). Two articles deal with typological and gender aspects of everyday life under the influence of the Haskalah movement. The topic of Shmuel Werses’s article is ‘the young maskil’ as we know him from autobiographies and fiction. ‘Young’ functions

as a fundamental attribute of the Haskalah and thus of the maski! per se. Werses describes the path of the young maskil from his first rebellious step—the search for wisdom and truth in kabbalah and hasidism, and the resultant dissatisfaction—to — the study houses of benefactors and teachers such as Krochmal in Brody, Tsevi Klatchko in Vilna, David Lurie in Minsk, and Abraham Mapu in Kovno, and finally to the maskilic circles where he reads Haskalah literature in secret. Tova Cohen gives a complementary portrayal of women in Haskalah fiction. The male-oriented Haskalah literature developed its image of women from the tension between the real, traditional Jewish wife, who carried the dual burdens of breadwinner and

Reviews 429 homemaker and was described as having a ‘merchant’s mentality’, on the one hand,

and the ideal of European bourgeois femininity—the weak but pure wife in the privacy of the home, the symbol of love and loyalty—on the other. Unfortunately, the image of the ‘new woman’ with equal rights, inspired by the Russian radical movement, did not figure in Haskalah literature.

As his contribution to the volume, Shmuel Feiner takes upon himself the challenging task of defining the meaning of Haskalah. He defines it in a national framework as one of the European enlightenments, and as the ‘Jews’ ideology of transition into the “modern age” ’ (p. 218). For him, the maskilim were intellectuals who went through the transition with a liberal rationalist orientation—a ‘literary republic’ of writers and their journals, reading clubs, libraries, and circles. The maskilim attempted ‘to maintain a balance between the inner and the outer, Torah of God and knowledge of men, Jewish heritage and European culture’ (p. 218). Supported by wealthy benefactors, they co-operated with the state in enforcing community reforms and the change of values and ideals. They provoked strong reactions from the Orthodox, but they were aware of Jewish identity, and played a crucial role in the process of Jewish secularization.

, VERENA DOHRN , University of Gottingen

BRIAN PORTER

When Nationalism Began to Hate: Imagining Modern Polttics in Nineteenth-Century Poland | (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); pp. 308 Brian Porter’s ground-breaking study of Polish national thought from the time of the partitions to the advent of mass-based political parties is a provocative and brilliant must-read for all those interested in Polish history, Polish politics, and the place of ‘the Jews’ in both of these constellations. Throughout the work Porter strikes a judicious balance between the extensive historical material and the relevant theoretical literature without falling prey to the obscure jargon that often handicaps theoretical approaches to nationalism. Furthermore, by slaughtering some of the sacred cows of Polish historiography, Porter helps to demystify some of the more mythical (and therefore less academic) aspects of contemporary Polish © historiography (pp. 10-14). The end result is an evocative, forceful work of passion and intellect.

Throughout his book Porter carefully and persuasively traces the various permutations of Polish national thought from its early romantic stages in the first

430 Reviews half of the nineteenth century to its authoritative, disciplinary form in the early twentieth. He argues that the transition from a timeless, romantic concept of the nation to one rooted in the present and designed to achieve specific political goals was the turning point in the development of Polish national thought. Thus, he claims that ‘perceptions of historical time—the way people conceptualize history and prophecy, the means by which they plot their lives vis-a-vis the past and the future—structure and limit how the nation can be imagined’ (p. 8). This innovative

analysis of time, teleology, and politics represents the book’s most important contribution to the ever-growing body of literature on nations, nationalism, and

national movements. ,

, By placing the nation ina mythical realm that lay beyond time, early nineteenthcentury Polish thinkers were able to construct ‘a community with remarkably fluid boundaries’ (p. 16). This concept of the nation as an ideal and not as a specific social space helped to create a society that was conspicuously open to non-Poles (i.e. the Jews). As a result, ‘Polish nationalism in the period from 1830 to 1863 was more inclusive than it had ever been before or perhaps ever would be again’ (p. 37).

Unfortunately, this argument fails to explain fully the meteoric rise of various hasidic groups during the same period. Indeed, while the Polish press may have debated the ‘Jewish question’ at length, many Jews were, at this point, far less preoccupied with the ‘Polish question’. However, such social phenomena do not disrupt Porter’s convincing narrative, as he deftly traces successive generations of , ~ Polish thinking on concepts of the nation and the place of ‘the Jews’ in it. In the wake of the failed insurrection of January 1863 Polish intellectuals began to reconsider the nation’s place in Polish society, history, and teleology. Taking a cue from other European thinkers, such as John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer,

Polish intellectuals began to look for ways to improve the nation via a series of natural laws and remedies. This vision of a ‘concrete, visible, tangible’ nation led to a ‘Poland’ that was designed as a ‘community of Poles’ (p. 50). However, despite the transition from the mythical nation to a real community, Polish positivists (such as Bolestaw Prus and Aleksander Swietochowski) continued to believe in the power of historical time. The next generation of thinkers and activists, the nzepokorni (‘defiant ones’),

rejected adherence to historical progress and evolution. The niepokorni ‘returned autonomous, wilful action to the national agenda and repudiated the optimistic historiography that had allowed the positivists to work and wait’ (p. 102). Moreover, their commitment to many of the ideals espoused by Russian radicalism led them directly to the people. Here again different concepts of time and its relation to

both the people and the nation exacerbated the divide between the two main groups: the patriots and the socialists. More specifically, the ‘abandonment of historical time’ of the patriots (which Porter dates to 1889—90) placed the two _ camps on separate tracks: one relied upon the power of historical progress and the other had no time or patience for such prophecies of progress.

| Reviews 431 Regrettably, Porter perceives this split as so definitive that, for all practical purposes, he leaves the Polska Partia Socjalistyczna (Polish Socialist Party) and many of its leaders (including the venerated Jozef Pitsudski) out of the remainder of the work. While all works (like all nations?) require borders of inclusion and exclusion, the exclusion of the socialist camp from the larger discussion on Polish nationalism somewhat oversimplifies the beauty and magic of Polish politics. The call for action and organization soon replaced the niepokorni’s discourse of revolution and further refined the Polish nation’s role as ‘a vehicle for order and authority’ (p. 137). As part of this new dynamic, the people (/ud) had to be mobilized as a force that would support rather than subvert the nation. Moreover, it was the task of leading thinkers such as Dmowski and Balicki to harness the

-people’s misguided energies and steer them towards victory. Once viewed as a _ social body existing in the present, the concept of the Polish nation had to be further refined. This process of (re)definition led Polish intellectuals back to the debate on the place and role of the Jews in Polish society. However, in contrast to the thinkers

of the early nineteenth century, with their romantic visions, late nineteenthcentury thinkers could envision no solution to the ‘Jewish question’ save exclusion. Once again, Porter turns to the new generation’s ‘abandonment of historical time’

and progress as the key to understanding their conclusion that the Jews were ineradicable aliens who had no place in the (re-)emerging Polish nation (pp. 179, 182). He writes: ‘If time alone (progress) would not make ethnic, religious, and linguistic diversity go away .. . then one had to strive actively to eliminate it... . A nationalism without recourse to progress quickly dissolved into a rhetoric of hate’ (p. 177).

This, then, is the tortured path of Polish national thought and concepts of the Polish nation as they passed from that of an open, idyllic body to that of the tightly organized, well-disciplined movement that was so characteristic of the radical right of the twentieth century. Porter has written a persuasive synthesis of historical sources and theoretical literature that all students of Polish history, Jewish history, and nationalities ought to read carefully. One can only hope that a publishing house in Poland is already well on its way towards printing a Polish version of this masterful study. Brian Porter has much to say, and the reader cannot help but listen. SCOTT URY Institute of Contemporary fewry, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

432 Reviews IRENA JANICKA-SWIDERSKA, JERZY JARNIEWICZ,

, AND ADAM SUMERA (EDS.)

Fewtsh Themes in Enghsh and Polish Culture (Lodz: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Lodzkiego, 2000); pp. 196

The publication of Jewish Themes in English and Polish Culture is the result of a four-year scholarly co-operation between the Department of English Literature and Culture and the Department of Studies in English Drama and Poetry at the University of $6dz and the Department of English and Related Literature at the University of York. In the course of the project, Polish scholars visited the University of York and read papers there, and their British colleagues lectured in L6dz. The resulting volume contains ten articles: six written by Polish scholars and four by British scholars. The articles are remarkably varied in scope; they deal with fiction, poetry, and drama, and explore literary themes from such diverse periods

as the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the nineteenth century, and the twentieth century. One paper transcends the literary domain and discusses how a handful of well-known motifs from literature were reworked in painting. The volume opens with Jacques Berthoud’s article, entitled “The Figure of the Jews in English Renaissance Drama’. The author discusses Marlowe’s The few of Malta, Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, and seven lesser-known plays written between 1584 and 1627. He notes the absence of fully developed portraits of Jewish characters, which he sees as a consequence of the expulsion of the Jews from England in 1290. However, as Berthoud asserts, The Jew of Malta and The Merchant of Venice were excellent compensation for this thematic void: the two plays ‘are alone able, in the enormous output of English, French, Italian, and Spanish Renaissance drama, to do justice not to Jewish life as such, but to its meaning as a con-

stituent but resistant presence at the centre of Christian society’ (p. 33). The Merchant of Venice is also discussed by Andrzej Wicher, who offers a comparative analysis of models of prejudice in Shakespeare’s play and Chaucer’s “The Prioress’s Tale’. Wicher’s point of departure is the incorporation of Jewish stereotypes into the folk-tale tradition. This tradition abounded in all sorts of malevolent creatures

that schemed against man, and Jewish characters came to substitute for those creatures. Two papers in the volume are devoted to contemporary drama. Richard Drain

theorizes that Harold Pinter’s artistic sensitivity may have been influenced by manifestations of English antisemitism; he analyses such characteristic motifs in Pinter’s plays as the troubled identity, intrusion from the outside, the sense of estrangement, and secrets of the past against the historical backdrop of anti-Jewish prejudice from the 1920s to the 1940s. Mary Luckhurst demonstrates a subtle

Reviews 433 mechanism of theatre censorship in contemporary England on the basis of the history of Julia Pascal’s play Theresa. The play is based on facts from the life of | Theresa Steiner, an Austrian Jew who emigrated to England in 1938, and, having travelled to Guernsey the following year, was not allowed to return to England by local authorities who were loyal to the Germans. Pascal’s play was first staged in Newcastle in 1990, but so far its production in Guernsey has been precluded. Jerzy Jarniewicz’s and A. David Moody’s papers are concerned with poetry. Jarniewicz discusses two poems by Stephen Romer: ‘All Souls’ and ‘The Satrap’. The former describes the poet’s visit to the Jewish cemetery in 4.6dz, while the latter is devoted to the figure of Chaim Rumkowski, the head of the Jewish community council in the $.6dz ghetto. In turn, Moody is interested in the intricacies of Ezra Pound’s antisemitism before 1939 and offers a polemic with those critics who overestimate the consequences of Pound’s prejudice as well as with those who tend to play down the importance of the poet’s antisemitism. Moody’s article is based on thorough research and is indeed highly informative, but its thesis that ‘Pound was antisemitic; but at the same time he was not’ (p. 151), because his antisemitism was limited to economic issues, is risky. It is as if he had suggested that some manifestations of antisemitism were more tolerable than others. He adds that there are hardly any traces of antisemitism in Pound’s poetry, which we remember for its excellence, and that his antisemitic views surface primarily in his propaganda writings. However, the aesthetic criterion is not fully adequate here.

Maria Edelson’s paper on Jerzy Peterkiewicz’s Jsolation is one of the three papers discussing Jewish themes in English fiction. Edelson considers Kira ‘an off-stage character’ in the novel (p. 72), a key figure in Peterkiewicz’s treatment of the Holocaust. The genocide is overtly absent from the narrative, and yet, paradoxically, constitutes a crucial theme. In her discussion of Malcolm Lowry’s Under

the Volcano and October Ferry to Gabriola, Dorota Filipczak points to certain elements in the setting that make one think of Qliphoth, or Kelipot, ‘an abyss inhabited by the demons’ known from the kabbalah, where it ‘signifies the world of shells or empty husks of matter’ (p. 78), symbolizing cosmological forces of evil. This analogy in the type of setting enables Filipczak to find a much broader web of intertextual links between Lowry’s works and the kabbalah, the Bible, The Divine Comedy, and Kafka’s novels. Finally, Adam Sumera traces the autobiographical elements in Muriel Spark’s Mandelbaum Gate, stressing the novel’s special status in her literary output as one in which Spark explores her Jewish heritage. Ewa Kozubska’s paper ‘Jewish Literary Themes in Painting’ stands out in the volume for two reasons. First of all, together with Jarniewicz’s article, it fulfils the promise contained in the title of the volume by examining issues from both Polish and English culture. Secondly, it considerably extends the scope of the volume in

relating literature to painting. Kozubska is primarily interested in the work of Maurycy Gottlieb, whose paintings illustrated such important texts as Mickiewicz’s Pan Tadeusz and Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. Additionally, Kozubska

434 Reviews discusses illustrations to Scott’s [vanhoe, Orzeszkowa’s Meir Ezofowicz, Gotthold

Ephraim Lessing’s Nathan the Wise, and Karl Gutzkow’s Uriel d’Acosta. She analyses the way in which Gottlieb’s renditions of Jewish literary figures reflect his experience as one who is affiliated with Polish culture but at the same time remains

loyal to his Jewish heritage. Kozubska does not limit her discussion to Gottlieb, but , comments as well on the paintings of other artists: Matejko, Norwid, Andriolli,

Mayer, and Gorazdowski. |

Jewish Themes in English and Polish Culture, as a volume prepared by scholars working at English departments, explores an interesting thematic field in English studies. Admittedly, students of English in Poland know relatively little about the presence of Jewish themes in English literature and culture; obviously, they possess

| a broader knowledge of the prominence of such motifs in Polish literature or, for that matter, in American letters. Undoubtedly, the authors of the articles collected in the volume, in covering texts written in different epochs and representative of all literary kinds, succeed in highlighting the importance of Jewish themes in English literature and in systematizing this field of study. However, paradoxically enough, this undeniable asset of the volume is concomitantly its drawback. A glance at the table of contents reveals that the papers were written by scholars from English departments and that their treatment of Polish themes is rather marginal. In fact, if it had not been for Jarniewicz’s and Kozubska’s papers, issues of Polish culture would have been absent from the volume. Accordingly, if this scholarly project is to be continued, it seems advisable that scholars from Polish and Slavonic departments join it. On the other hand, a volume like Jewish Themes should contain comparative analyses so as to enhance the intercultural perspective. All in all, it does not

, fully satisfy the reader’s interest. MAREK PARYZ

University of Warsaw

NANCY L. GREEN (ED.) Jewish Workers in the Modern Diaspora | (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1998); pp. 256

This collection of documents is the result of a research project carried out by scholars from universities and research institutes in the United States and western

Europe. The volume contains archival documents, articles from the press, and memoirs recording various aspects of the life of Jews—mainly workers and craftsmen—1in the countries of settlement from the 1880s until the 1940s. The research

Reviews 435 | agenda was to conduct a comparative analysis of the situation of Jewish migrants

Berlin. ,

from east-central Europe in the six cities regarded as the centres of Jewish immigration in the modern era: New York, Buenos Aires, London, Paris, Amsterdam, and

The editor divides the material into four thematic groups; manuscripts in |

languages other than English are translated. The conceptual framework of this book is interesting and, to my mind, right on target. The preface contains basic data on the scope and history of migration movements to each city, points out characteristic features, and addresses the legal systems and objective conditions of the settlement processes. Sparing yet sufficient commentary precedes each document. The source base is impressive: apart from printed sources, including fragments from diaries and memoirs, the authors have gathered a great deal of material from state.

archives, the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, private collections, and the Jewish press (in many languages). It is important to note, however, that the contribu- | tors do not limit themselves to Jewish sources and publications. They also include administrative reports, municipal regulations from non-Jewish milieux, and newspaper articles written by non-Jews.

The first section, ‘Daily Life and Work’, contains materials concerning living , conditions, labour, employer—employee relationships, the professional structure of the Jewish population and the Jews’ attempts to adapt to the new social and political reality (for example, by working on the sabbath), personal bonds and relationships, neighbourhood communities, and leisure and entertainment. There are also documents concerning co-operation and antagonism between the ‘new’ and the ‘old’ immigration. In the case of the United States, these relationships involved the socalled Russian Jews (all the Jews coming from east-central Europe) and the German Jews, who had settled there earlier. This part, like the next one, highlights a clash

| between generations that grew sharper with each wave of immigrants. Such conflicts accompanied Jewish families almost from the moment of their arrival in America, Argentina, or other Western countries. | The next part, ‘Societies, Organizations, and Schools’, contains documents concerning immigrant organizations: welfare and charity committees, benevolent associations, self-help societies, labour exchanges, and home-town societies (/andsmanshafin). The authors include materials on school systems and external forms of education, such as press initiatives, secular libraries, cultural societies, and artistic undertakings. There is also material on the decline of the Orthodox school system (heders).

Among the group of documents entitled ‘Politics and Ideology’ the reader will find articles, press reports, and fragments of statutes from Jewish branch associations and trade unions. The gathered material illustrates the struggle of Jewish workers for better working and living conditions. It covers the course of strike actions as well as Jewish workers’ attempts at collaboration with non-Jewish workers. A number of documents concern Jewish political parties—mainly socialist and

436 Reviews Zionist—as well as the conflicts between these two groups (the authors include,

- among others, polemics from the press). Other documents deal with the parties’ role in the workers’ movements of the countries of their settlement. In their selection of documents the contributors focus on the participation of delegates of the Jewish community in political and parliamentary life; for example, the participation of American Jews in congressional and presidential elections. Some documents refer to the reaction of Western Jews to the worsening situation of the Jews in Germany under Nazirule and their attitudes towards Soviet Russia. The last part, ‘Culture and Identities’, continues the discussion of issues that were touched on in the previous sections, having to do with Jewish self-identity and Jewish lifestyles. The authors focus on the attempts of newcomers to adapt to new social, professional, and political realities as well as on the problem of the so-called Americanization of Jews. The documents in this section are selected to shed light on the question of language and intergenerational conflict; they reveal the attitudes of different social strata, political parties, and religious associations towards those processes. In general, the materials illustrate the emancipation of Jewish society

and refer to attempts to halt the progress of the secularization of Jewish life in America and western Europe.

The four parts are each followed by a summary in which the authors outline what they consider the most important similarities and differences between the Jewish communities investigated. One of the most characteristic features for the whole Jewish migration was that the Jews made efforts to settle as closely as possible

to former neighbours and compatriots from the same street, ghetto, shtetl, city, or province. The professional structure of newcomers was relatively simular, especially during the first few years after their arrival. Most of them were craftsmen, salesmen, trade agents, and labourers. Everywhere the next generation or next wave of newcomers adapted itself to the new reality with the help of the existing trade unions, branch associations, and home-town societies. Among the more

important differences, apart from the varied scope of Jewish migration in each city and the presence of a group of Sephardi Jews only in Amsterdam, was the unequal development of political movements, which was determined by the particular , political and economic conditions in each country. The same was true of collaboration between Jewish and indigenous workers’ organizations and unions. The book ends with a select bibliography, notes on the contributors, and a joint index of names, subjects, and localities.

The volume brings together a broad range of documents focusing on the life of Jewish populations in the Diaspora. The authors take into account the social, political, and local diversity of these communities. The value of this work is not diminished by the authors’ decision to include only fragments of many documents.

We must recognize that, considering the large number of archival collections, memoirs, newspaper articles, and literature available on the subject, some selection was necessary. All of the documents were prepared in a very professional way, and

Reviews 437 the editor’s choice of sources merits particular appreciation. The documents selected illustrate not only the ‘virtues’ but also the ‘sins’ of the Diaspora, including phenomena connected with the social underclass (for example, prostitution).

| Although the editor proclaims that this volume is a starting point for future research on Jewish migrant communities in other cities and countries, I wish she had included material on Viennese Jews. Vienna would have fitted into the study because it had geographical and cultural importance for world Jewry and, above all, because a relatively large number of Jews from Galicia and Bukovina went to the city, especially during and after the First World War. A comparison between the immigrant communities in Vienna and those in the other cities undoubtedly would have enriched Green’s book. Besides, the material that illustrates the links between migrants and their old homelands is, to my mind, represented insufficiently, in spite of the authors’ declaration that ‘the Modern Jewish Diaspora to which we

refer was a mass migration from Eastern Europe’. Although private correspondence is rarely to be found in archives, it would be relatively easy to find documents that were submitted in Polish passport offices, for example, or material that would illustrate the economic role of the western Diaspora for east European Jewry. The activities of foreign committees and Jewish relief agencies (among others the _ American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee) in Poland, Russia, or the AustroHungarian empire during the First World War and in the inter-war period should be given stronger emphasis. I suppose that Jewish exiles, including at least some parts of the working class, were engaged in similar undertakings. Perhaps researchers from east-central Europe should have been involved in the project, and the editor should have included another chapter directly focusing on links between migrants and their lands of birth.

Nevertheless, publishing the documentation on problems associated with migrant communities in different countries is an excellent idea and encourages future comparative studies and analyses. Moreover, the book stands the chance of becoming a standard reader on the subject. I hope that it will be followed by other excellently prepared editions of documents on the Jewish Diaspora.

, KONRAD ZIELINSKI

Marna Curte-Sktodowska University, Lublin

438 Reviews GERTRUD PICKHAN

‘Gegen den Strom’. Der Allgemeine Fuidische

Arbetterbund ‘Bund’ in Polen 1915-1939 (‘Against the Current’: The General Jewish Workers’ Bund in Poland 1918—1939) Schriften des Simon-Dubnows-Instituts Leipzig, vol. 1 (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, [c.2001 ]); pp. 446

Gertrud Pickhan’s book on the history of the Bund in inter-war Poland is the single

best work on this theme ever published. It is grounded in extensive original _ research conducted over ten years; it is unusually insightful and is characterized by

| persuasive analysis. Pickhan makes particularly good use not only of unpublished materials found in the Bund Archives in New York, but also of important, hitherto unknown sources in Polish archives. She has, moreover, examined unpublished materials located in Germany, the Netherlands, and Russia, and has engaged in an exhaustive search of relevant published works in a number of languages. Major portions of Pickhan’s book are devoted to the reorganization of the Bund

in the decade following the First World War, the demographics of the Bund’s activists and leadership, the roles played by the Bund in Jewish affairs and in the fostering of Yiddish culture, the relationship of the Bund to Polish parties, and the . significance of the approach taken by the Bund to movements and events outside Polish borders. She makes a compelling argument that much of the existing literature on the Bund devotes disproportionate attention to the work of the Bund in tsarist Russia, and insufficient attention to the Bund in inter-war Poland. Pickhan, moreover, provides a notably more positive assessment of the Bund’s work in Poland than has the bulk of earlier studies of the subject. Bernard Johnpoll, for , example, in The Politics of Futility (which has hitherto been the most authoritative ~ academic book on this topic), concluded that ‘the Polish Bund was a political failure. ... It did not become a significant force in interwar Poland.”! Pickhan, on the other hand, accents the degree to which (and the ways in which) the Bund was successful. Pickhan’s conclusion rests in part on her depiction of organizations and institutions related to the Bund or operating under its auspices. Her descriptions of the Medem Sanatorium (a children’s institution named after the Bundist theoretician Vladimir Medem), the Tsentrale yidishe shul-organizatsie (Central Organization

of Jewish Schools), the Kultur-lige (a publisher of books and periodicals, and | ! B. Johnpoll, The Politics of Futility (Ithaca, NY, 1967), 259.

Reviews 439 supporter of libraries and cultural activities), and Yidishe Arbeter Froy (a Bundist-

| oriented organization for women) are fascinating and thoughtful. However, it ought to be noted that Pickhan has chosen to discuss examples of Bundist-affiliated movements, not all of the components of the Bundist network. For example, while

certainly aware of them, Pickhan devotes little attention to the Sotsialistisher Kinder-Farband (Socialist Children’s Union), Tsukunft (the Bundist-affiliated youth movement), Morgnshtern (a Bundist association for the promotion of physical education), or to such phenomena as the food co-operatives, choral groups, and _ health services run by Bundists. My own sense is that these organizations may well have been (even) more successful than certain of the institutions on which Pickhan has chosen to focus. Additional work on these and other Bundist affiliates, therefore, may well corroborate Pickhan’s thesis. Though Pickhan’s work is scrupulously documented and very reliable, there are a handful of minor errors. Bela Shapiro, a pivotal figure in the Bund’s Lublin organization, is misidentified on page 114 as the leader of the Bundist organization in Vilna. Somewhat more seriously, certain statistics used by Pickhan in her discussion of the extent to which the Bund’s power increased in the late 1930s are open to

question. |

Scholars have repeatedly debated the question of just how much the Bund increased its power in the years immediately preceding the Second World War. Antony Polonsky, for one, has asserted that ‘Bundist claims to a political monopoly, or even a majority of Jewish support, are greatly overplayed. . . . Jewish political life in Poland . . . was subject to violent swings of mood.” Pickhan, in turn, indicates that the Bund itself claimed to have captured the majority of Jewish votes only in large cities and not in Poland as a whole. However, portions of Pickhan’s summary of election results for the last set of municipal elections (p. 370)—1.e. her assertion that the Bund won seven out of eleven Jewish seats in L6dz and seventeen out of

twenty Jewish seats in Warsaw—may not be accurate. One Bundist source (not inclined to minimize the extent to which there were Bundist victories in Poland) | reports that in fact seventeen Jewish city council members were elected from explicitly Jewish slates in the elections that took place in #6dz on 18 December 1938. Eleven of the seventeen were elected on a list that contained members of the Bund, of Jewish trade unions, and of the Po’alei Tsiyon Left. Seven of the eleven were Bundists.* Thus Bundists appear to have won (only) 41 per cent of the seats won by Jewish parties in 4.6dz (manifestly one of Poland’s major cities, and also the site of one of the Bund’s largest local organizations). For the record, moreover, it should be noted that even in Warsaw, the Bund’s bastion, the Bund’s victory in the last pre-war municipal elections was very impressive, but not quite as impressive as 2 A. Polonsky, ‘The Bund in Polish Political Life, 1935-1939’, in A. Rapoport-Albert and S. J. Zipperstein (eds.), Jewish History: Essays in Honour of Chimen Abramsky (London, 1988), 572. 3 -N. Libeskind, ‘Far velkhe parteyen hobn yidn in lodzsh geshtimt bes di valn tsum shtotrat un seym in 1919—1938?’, Unzer tsayt, 7-8 (692-3) (July—Aug. 2000), 27.

440 Reviews | the figure provided by Pickhan might have us believe. There were roo seats in Warsaw’s city council during the period in question. ‘Twenty of those elected to the council in the last elections held before the Nazi invasion were elected from Jewish slates. Sixteen of these twenty were Bundists, though another individual who ran

on the Bundist-dominated list, and who was a member of the Communist- | influenced textile workers’ union, also won a seat.* Pickhan is on target in stressing that the Bund was successful, but it may have been just a shade less (politically)

~ successful than the data she provides would lead us to conclude. These minor lapses notwithstanding, I hasten to add, Pickhan’s work is better researched than that of her predecessors, and is far more convincing in its approach. Pickhan quite correctly focuses on the Bund’s organization in its major strongholds, Warsaw and 4.6dz. Are there sufficient materials available for discussion of the Bund’s day-to-day activities in other parts of Poland? Could relevant material be gleaned from yizkor bikher or from the local press? These questions are meant to

suggest that Pickhan’s masterful book, which ought to replace Johnpoll as the definitive study of the inter-war Polish Bund, opens additional lines of research. I am deeply impressed by her accomplishment, and genuinely hope that her work

will ultimately reach a wide audience. , JACK JACOBS , John Jay College, City University of New York 4 J.S. Hertz, Di geshikhte fun bund in lodzsh (New York, 1958), 429.

ANNA CICHOPEK

Pogrom Zydow w Krakowmte, 11 sterpnia 1945 1. (The Pogrom of Jewsin Krakow, 11 August 1945) (Warsaw: Zydowski Instytut Historyczny, 2000); pp. 270

In recent years the problem of anti-Jewish violence committed by Poles during the Second World War and particularly in its immediate aftermath has attracted the attention of a number of scholars. Among the most widely discussed works is the recent study by Jan T. Gross.! Some of these studies set out to analyse patterns in anti-Jewish violence by Poles. Joanna Michlic-Coren has compared anti-Jewish violence and rhetoric in the aftermath of the Holocaust with pre-war pogroms.” 1 J. T. Gross, Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland (Princeton,

34-61. ,

2001).

2 J. Michlic-Coren, ‘Anti-Jewish Violence in Poland, 1918-1939 and 1945-1947’, Polin, 13 (2000),

Reviews 441 David Engel has compared and contrasted post-Second World War anti-Jewish violence with political murders of Poles.? Anna Cichopek’s book Pogrom Zydéw w

Krakowie, 11 sierpnia 1945 r., belongs to a different historical genre—one that focuses on a single case-study and attempts to reconstruct as detailed an account of the events as the available sources make possible. Her research bears fruit as she reconstructs the events that took place in Krakow on 11 August 1945.

While anti-Jewish violence is mentioned in numerous historical studies of the period immediately following the liberation of Poland, and the various Jewish testimonies and memoirs devote much attention to the Jewish survivors’ lack of physical security, relatively little material has been available on the pogrom in Krak6w—the first to occur in Poland after the Holocaust.* Cichopek’s book suc-

cessfully fills this gap, bringing to our attention numerous archival sources. Moreover, her research allows us to compare the events in Krakéw with the most thoroughly studied pogrom of all, the one that took place in Kielce on 4 July 1946. Though some questions remain unanswered, Cichopek’s reconstruction of the events points to a number of interesting similarities to the historical narrative of the Kielce pogrom—particularly as presented by Bozena Szaynok.® Cichopek points out that the pogroms in Kielce and Krakow share numerous characteristics, and that the only significant difference seems to have been in the scale of events.® Cichopek conducts thorough research and brings together numerous details on the dynamics of the pogrom and its immediate aftermath that were not presented in

previous studies by Marc Hillel, Zdzistaw Zblewski, Julian Kwiek, and Jan T. Gross.’ The author makes use of sources from the Krakéw archives as well as

materials from the Centralne Archiwum Wojskowe in Rembertéw (Central Military Archives) near Warsaw that originated in the investigation and trials that

> D. Engel, ‘Patterns of Anti-Jewish Violence in Poland, 1944-1946’, Yad Vashem Studies, 26 (1998),

43-85.

+ See e.g. N. Lasman, Wspomnienia z Polski (Warsaw, 1997); Y. Zuckerman, A Surplus of Memory: Chronicle of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, ed. and trans. B. Harshav (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1993);

S. Shneiderman, Tzvishn shrek un hofnung: A rayze ther dem nayem poyln (Buenos Aires, 1947). : . > B. Szaynok, Pogrom Zydéw m Kielcach 4 lipca 1946 r. (Wroctaw, 1992). See alsoK. Kersten, Polacy,

Zydzi, komunizm: Anatomia potprawd 1939-1968 (Warsaw, 1992); S. Meducki and Z. Wrona, Antyzydowskie wydarzenia kieleckie 4 lipca 1946: Dokumenty i materiaty (Kielce, 1992); T. Wiecek,

Labic Lyda: Kulisy 1 tajemnice pogromu kieleckiego 1946 (Krakow, 1992); D. Blus-Wegrowska, ‘Atmosfera pogromowa’, Karta, 18 (1996), 87—106.

6 A. Cichopek, Pogrom Zydéw w Krakowie 11 sierpnia 1945 r. (Warsaw, 2000), 50. . ™M. Hillel, Le Massacre des survivants en Pologne apres holocauste (1945-1947) (Paris, 1985); Z. Zblewski, Miedzy wolng Polska a ‘siedemnastqa republika’: Z dziejow oporu spotecznego na terenie wojewodztwa krakowskiego w latach 1945-1947 (Krakow, 1998); J. Kwiek, Zydzi, Lemkowie, Slowacy w pojewodztmie krakowskim w latach 1945—1949/1950 (Krakéw, 1998); J. T. Gross, ‘A Tangled Web: Confronting Stereotypes Concerning Relations Between Poles, Germans, Jews, and Communists’, in

I. Deak, J. T. Gross, and T. Judt (eds.), The Politics of Retribution in Europe: World War I and tts Aftermath (Princeton, 2000), 74-129.

| 442 Reviews followed the pogrom.® Last but not least, Cichopek uses photographs to establish _ the number of victims of the pogrom, and on this basis revises the estimates offered in previous studies. In the first chapter, which presents general information on the Jewish population in Poland and its institutions in the aftermath of the war, Cichopek relies on secondary literature and some archival material. She underestimates the number of

Jews living in Poland before the beginning of the emigration that followed the - pogrom in Kielce. Although she maintains that there were between 204,000 and 216,000 Jews in Poland before the Kielce pogrom (p. 13), the number of Jews was

probably higher. According to the records of the Centralny Komitet Zyd6w w ~ Polsce (Central Committee of the Jews in Poland, CKZP), there were 240,489 Jews | registered at the end of June 1946.° Cichopek is correct in stressing that in the aftermath of their liberation the survivors suffered from psychological trauma and dire economic need (p. 14).'° In addition, she offers a brief yet accurate examination of the two major networks of Jewish institutions; namely the CKZP, which she portrays as the principal Jewish body, and the Zydowskie Zrzeszenie Religijne (Jewish Religious Congregations) (pp. 12—14).1! Describing the factors that contributed to the phenomenon of anti-Jewish violence in the country, Cichopek poses in more - general terms the question that seems to underlie the whole research project: ‘How is it possible that anti-Jewish violence characterized the country where the Holo-

- caust took place?’ (p. §2). In her narrative the influence of Nazi propaganda and violence plays an important role. Cichopek stresses the demoralizing effects of a war that involved a radical rupture in the functioning of institutions of authority, easy access to firearms, and a sense of impunity for acts of violence. She argues that ‘the war... taught people to kill with ease and to kill the Jews in particular’ (p. 15). Moreover, she emphasizes the influence of antisemitic German wartime propa8 Cichopek does not, however, address the challenges in using documentation produced by the perpetrators during a court trial as sources for the reconstruction of the events. Jan T’. Gross addresses this

question in Neighbors, 26-32. . 9 Zarys dziatalnosci Centralnego Komitetu Zydéw w Polsce za okres od 1 stycznia do 30 czerwca 1946 rf. _ (Warsaw, 1947), 7. According to David Engel, by the first half of 1946, 196,000—220,000 Jews lived in

Poland, whereas some 51,000 had left in the emigration organized by the Zionists between the beginning of 1945 and the end of July of 1946, and an additional 10,000~20,000 had left Poland in emigrations

not organized by the Zionists. Thus, between 266,000 and 280,000 Jews were present within the postSecond World War borders of Poland until June 1946. See D. Engel, Bein shihrur leberthah, nitsolei hasho’ah befolin vehama’avak al hanhagatam, 1944-1946 (Tel Aviv, 1996), 155 n. 7.

10 See also M. Szulkin, ‘Sprawozdania z dziatalnosci Referatu dla Spraw Pomocy Ludnosci Zydowskiej w Polsce przy Prezydium PK WN’, Biuletyn Zydowskiego Instytutu Historycznego, t (1971),

7599. ‘1 However, Cichopek fails to recognize both the contentious character of the committee and its complex origins. See H. Shlomi, “The Communist Caucus in the Central Committee of Jews in Poland, November 1944—February 1947’, Gal-Ed, 13 (1993), 81-100; N. Aleksiun, ‘Zionists and Anti-Zionists

in the Central Committee of the Jews in Poland: Cooperation and Political Struggle 1944-1950’, Jews in Eastern Europe, 2/33 (Fall 1997), 32-50.

Reviews 443 ganda, in which ‘the occupiers suggested to parts of the Polish society a vision of the

Jew as a quintessential enemy, to be blamed for all misfortunes, including their own’ (p. 16). Finally, she points to the post-Second World War period as a time of social and political crises in which the need for scapegoats became acute (p. 17).

Cichopek argues that the blood libel accusation became a comfortable outlet for these post-war tensions as well as a justification for the choice of scapegoat (pp. 18-20). She pays relatively little attention to the direct impact of the pre-war antisemitic propaganda that also used the Jew as the universal scapegoat (pp. 33-4).12 Of the pre-war antisemitic stereotypes, she analyses closely only that of Judaeo-communism (zydokomuna), which ‘came into being in the inter-war period and became [more] popular after the Second World War’ (p. 20). She explains only briefly what Jan T. Gross has termed the ‘tangled web’ of stereotypes among Poles, Jews, and communism. ?? Cichopek also analyses the role of the Catholic Church, the only institution that enjoyed a level of trust and authority that could have allowed it to shape a more positive image of Jews in post-war Poland. Her assessment is critical; she presents examples of anti-Jewish iconography from churches in Kalwaria Zebrzydowska and Leczyca (p. 28). Moreover, she sees the Church hierarchy’s passive response to the spread of blood libel accusations as an important factor in making anti-Jewish violence possible (pp. 28, 30). She points in particular to the passive responses in the period prior to the pogrom in Kielce (p. 28). However, it should be stressed that despite international appeals and petitions from local Jewish institutions in Poland, the pogrom in the summer of 1946 was not a turning point in the response of the Church in Poland to anti-Jewish violence. '4 In the same chapter Cichopek analyses the problem of security for the post-war

Jewish population. She accepts a figure in excess of 1,000 as the most probable number of Jewish victims of violence, although in his recent study David Engel demonstrated that this was a high estimate (p. 36).'° She correctly identifies the periods of the most intense anti-Jewish violence as the spring and summer of 1945

and the spring and summer of 1946 (p. 38). Krakow, Lublin, and Warsaw provinces, according to Cichopek, were the most dangerous for Jews in the period under consideration (p. 38).‘° Among numerous cases of anti-Jewish violence she pays special attention to those bearing a resemblance to the pattern of events that '2 On the traditions of anti-Jewish rhetoric, see S. Rudnicki, Obéz Narodowo-Radykalny: Geneza i dziatalnosé (Warsaw, 1985); J. Zyndul, Zajscia antyZydowskie w Polsce w latach 1935-1937 (Warsaw, 1994); A. Landau-Czajka, Wyednym stali domu: Koncepcje rozwiqzania kwestii Zydowskiej w publicystyce

polskiej lat 1933-1939 (Warsaw, 1998). “ See Gross, ‘A Tangled Web’. ‘4 See R. Gryz, ‘Stanowisko KoSciota Katolickiego wobec pogromu Zydéw w Kielcach: Stan badan’, Nasza Przesztos¢, 93 (2000), 411-34; A. J. Kochavi, ‘The Catholic Church and Antisemitism in Poland Following World War II as Reflected in British Diplomatic Documents’, Ga/-Ed, 11 (1989), 116-28; Michlic-Coren, ‘Anti-Jewish Violence in Poland’, 47-8. © Engel, ‘Patterns of Anti-Jewish Violence in Poland’, 60. ‘6 David Engel identifies the Rzesz6w province as another perilous region of the country. See ibid. so.

444 Reviews unfolded in Krakow and Kielce (such as Rzeszow in June 1945); that is, those cases that involved an accusation that Jews had kidnapped and killed Christian children

(pp. 39-41). She rightly notes the spread of blood libel accusations in Bytom, Biatystok, Bielawa, Otwock, Legnica, Szczecin, Przemysl, Krakow, and Kielce. Cichopek presents numerous examples of anti-Jewish violence, proving that the pogrom in Krakow was not an isolated incident; it took place in the context of a growing wave of anti-Jewish violence that began after the war and reached its peak in the summer of 1946 (pp. 34-51). She shows that blood libel accusations were reported as late as the spring of 1947.

In the second chapter Cichopek takes a closer look at the surviving Jewish communities in Krakow and its outlying provinces in the months before the pogrom. Her focus is on the attempts to re-establish Jewish institutions. She presents interesting statistical data from the spring of 1945, including a breakdown of the Jewish population in various districts of the region. According to her interpretation of the demographic data, the Jews moved to the city in response to antiJewish violence in the province. There they faced difficulties in finding employment as well as in the process of recovering their property (p. 57).

| According to Cichopek’s research, the number of physical attacks and the widespread dissemination of antisemitic leaflets demonstrate that the province of Krakow became particularly dangerous for returning Jews in the summer of 1945 (pp. 57-9). Among the rumours spreading in the province at this time were blood libel accusations (p. 59). Quoting from contemporary official reports, Cichopek explains the appeal of these rumours in terms of popular anti-Jewish sentiments as well as lingering Nazi influences and right-wing political traditions (pp. 59-60). Bringing to our attention rich local archival material, Cichopek argues that the lack of an adequate official response to the anti-Jewish mood and to the physical violence prior to the pogrom in Krakow contributed to the escalation of violence _ (p. 64). In her analysis of the responses of government institutions she identifies various strategies developed by the Wojewodzki Urzad Informacyi 1 Propagandy (Provincial Office for Information and Propaganda) and the Polska Partia Robotnicza (Polish Workers’ Party, PPR) for fighting antisemitism. These strategies included the productivization of the Jews and the organization of conferences with Polish and Jewish representatives (pp. 60—1, 64). Cichopek rightly points out that, despite the appeals of government and Communist Party institutions, these organizations themselves were not free of anti-Jewish sentiment, especially at the local

level (pp. 63-5). | | The third and most interesting chapter of the book deals with the events of

11 August 1945. Cichopek traces these events back to those of 27 July 1945, when, | according to a local report from a Krakow police station, a woman was accused of plotting to kidnap a child under her care. A crowd that had gathered outside the station accused Jews of involvement and began to loot Jewish stores. The situation was brought under control by the police, however (p. 67). Yet in the period prior to

Reviews A45 , the pogrom, rumours spread, especially in the city’s marketplaces, about Jews murdering Christian children (pp. 67-8). A mob regularly attacked Jews attending sabbath services in the Kupa synagogue in Kazimierz. Days before the pogrom the Zydowskie Zrzeszenie Religijne sent a request for intervention and protection to the voivode (provincial governor) (pp. 68-9). The pogrom began with an attack on the Jews praying inside the Kupa synagogue

similar to those reported earlier by the Zydowskie Zrzeszenie Religijne (p. 69). Jewish soldiers who were present tried to drive away the attackers and may have beaten up a young man, who ran away and loudly accused the Jews of attacking him. This triggered the pogrom itself. More elusive is the role of Antoni Niyaki, who also entered the synagogue and ran away screaming that he had been attacked by the Jews.

Cichopek compares two versions of the events based on the differing testimonies given by Niaki in the course of the investigation and in the text of the bill of indictment. The latter mentions a provocation initiated by a police officer (p. 70). The first testimony offered by Nijaki on the day of the pogrom bears striking similarities to the story that surfaced around the pogrom in Kielce. Both Niyaki in Krakow and Henryk Btaszczyk in Kielce claimed to have been hired by a Jew to deliver or carry a package and then abducted at the place of delivery. Nijaki claimed that on entering the synagogue he saw Jews dragging the body of a boy (p. 71). Henryk Btaszczyk told

a similar story; it ended with his alleged abduction by the Jews and his imprisonment in the basement of a local branch of the CKZP, from which he managed to escape.’ Nijaki’s second testimony was very different: in this version of events a policeman told the boy to run away and shout accusations against the Jews (p. 73). Again, like the tragic events in Kielce, the pogrom in Krakéw was triggered by Polish soldiers and police entering a Jewish building and arresting Jews for an alleged crime. These soldiers claimed to have witnessed Jews murdering Polish children.15 In the early stage of the pogrom the mob forced its way into the synagogue, dragged people out and beat them up, and set the Torah scrolls and religious books on fire. Among the curses and beatings, the victims remembered hearing warnings that the mob would ‘finish off Hitler’s work’ (p. 76). The crowd proceeded to attack and rob Jewish apartments and institutions close to the synagogue, beginning with the Jewish shelter and the shelter for repatriated Jews (pp. 76-9). As in the case of the Kielce pogrom, there were unclear reports of Jewish self-defence and of Jews shooting at the mob, which contributed to the rage of the attackers and provided the police with a pretext for searching for guns in Jewish apartments (pp. 78, 80—-1).!° Jews were harassed and cursed even as they lay in ambulances and later in the hospital (pp. 85-6). On 12 August 1945 a crowd entered the synagogue

and devastated its interior again. Additionally, Jews were harassed at the railway station by functionaries of the railway guard. Notably, however, the Jews were assisted and eventually successfully protected by Russian soldiers (pp. 92-3). 17 See Szaynok, Pogrom Zydow w Kielcach, 32-3.

‘8 Compare the events in Kielce as described ibid. 35-6, 39—40. 19 See ibid. 40, 43.

446 Reviews Cichopek suggests that the mob that participated in the pogrom included mainly uneducated and frustrated elements as well as soldiers and police, but she notes that the crowd was in fact heterogeneous. Despite attempts to link the participants to the political underground, it seems that the majority of those eventually indicted

were not politically involved (pp. 74-5). Some of those who actively participated in | the pogrom were motivated by traditional anti-Jewish hatred. Cichopek quotes Franciszek Bandys, who says that ‘the old hatred of the Jews rose [in him] (p. 74). Cichopek mentions a soldier who followed a Jewish child, shouting ‘kill [her], she is

Jewish’ (pp. 82-3). Many participants appear to have been under the influence of alcohol (p. 83). According to Cichopek, the majority of the violent mob were people who had taken over Jewish apartments in Kazimierz—often people without a profession or any source of income (p. 85). Moreover, the presence and active participation of police and soldiers at various stages of the pogrom seems well documented by the materials presented in Cichopek’s study (pp. 76-8). Cichopek stresses that the percentage of police and soldiers among the participants was rather high, in contrast to Kielce (pp. 78, 81). A number of people were put on trial and sentenced by the Krakow Military Court between October 1945 and February 1946. The sentences handed down varied from six months’ to seven years’ imprisonment, and Antoni Nijaki was released (pp. go—1). These sentences were significantly less severe than those handed down by the court in the case of the Kielce pogrom, which included nine death sentences. In Cichopek’s reconstruction of the events, the official response to the pogrom is not entirely clear. However, the author brings to light a number of cases in which the energetic intervention of the security forces or Russian soldiers prevented even more violent scenarios and possibly saved Jewish lives, as in the cases of Emil Rosenzweig and Hillel Kleiner (pp. 81-3). The author was not able to locate conclusive written evidence that would establish the number of victims, but she notes that the photographs from the funeral show five caskets (pp. 86—7). In the fourth chapter Cichopek analyses the actions of the authorities in the aftermath of the pogrom. She observes that the pogrom was mentioned in official propaganda and triggered actions aimed at increasing the security of the Jewish population

(pp. 94-5). One of the most interesting documents she cites are the minutes of a session of the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the PPR dated 16 August 1945—less than a week after the pogrom. The Secretariat proposed that there should bea quick response, including actions targeting Krakow society in particular, such as deporting unemployed people and removing ‘reactionary’ students from the university. Moreover, the productivization of the Jewish population was highlighted as a possible preventive measure (pp. 96~7, 194-6). According to Cichopek, the events in Krak6w made it easier for legislators to pass a law in November 1945 making violence or incitement to violence against a particular ethnic or religious group a crime (p. 97). The author also analyses official pronouncements made in the aftermath of the pogrom by the Krakdéw voivode, the president, and local leaders of political parties

Reviews 447 (pp. 97-9). She rightly concludes that ‘it is difficult to question the sincerity of the representatives of the ruling camp in their condemnation of anti-Jewish excesses. Unfortunately, instead of [providing grounds for] a thorough analysis of social interaction and working out a concrete preventive policy, antisemitism was used [as an excuse] for contemporary [political] propaganda’ (pp. roo—1). In addition to her analysis of the uses and abuses of antisemitism, Cichopek includes a discussion of the educational activities carried out in the autumn of 1945 among the police and soldiers, which proved to be only partially successful, as well as of a propaganda campaign in the local and national press that was designed to combat antisemitism

and political opposition in the country (pp. 103-6). The local authorities also organized mass protest meetings that served both as educational enterprises and as forums for political mobilization (pp. 106-7). Cichopek analyses closely official

press publications devoted to the pogrom and to the question of anti-Jewish violence (pp. 109-12). She notes that the underground press called the pogrom a provocation organized by the NKVD, but at the same time acknowledged and tried to justify the existence of strong anti-Jewish sentiments in Polish society (pp. 113-14).

Cichopek devotes special attention to the responses of the Catholic Church, artistic circles, youth organizations, and Polish political émigré groups. She quotes extensively from an article published in Tygodnik Powszechny on 19 August 1945 in

response to the events, which, she points out, was printed on the third page in a corner column and failed to mention the alleged blood libel accusation. Cichopek also analyses the proclamation jointly published by university presidents in Krakow and contrasts it with the less unequivocal stance of the general public (pp. 115-16). She also points to political accents in the official responses of youth organizations, which ‘tried to use the phenomenon of antisemitism in the fight to open the doors of universities to young people from working-class and peasant families’ (pp. 107, 116).

In the last chapter Cichopek describes the reactions of the Jewish community to the pogrom, with particular focus on the CKZP. Again, it may be revealing to compare the initial response to the pogrom at the plenary meeting held on 14 August 1945 with the meetings held in the aftermath of the pogrom in Kielce. Whereas in 1945 the organization of a Jewish self-defence group was considered but eventually dropped, less than a year later the government allowed the CK ZP to set up a special commission for this purpose. After both the Krakéw and the Kielce pogroms, the

CKZP also sent delegations to various government bodies to appeal to them to

protect the lives of the surviving Jews (pp. 119-20).?° | Finally, Cichopek examines the pogrom’s consequences. Among the most

important, according to the author, was the acceleration of emigration, and : 20 J. T. Gross, ‘In the Aftermath of the Kielce Pogrom: The Special Commission of the Central Committee of Jews in Poland’, Ga/l-Ed, 15-16 (1997), 119-36.

448 Reviews especially illegal emigration. This, however, she incorrectly terms berihah, without distinguishing between illegal individual emigration and the exodus organized by

the Zionists (p. 120). Cichopek suggests that the influence of the pogrom was limited to the province of Krakow, whereas in the case of the pogrom in Kielce it

caused a panic that reached far beyond the city and its environs (pp. 120-1). Another interesting aspect of the response was that many Jews changed their Jewish-sounding personal names, although Cichopek does not prove that this strategy became more widespread in the aftermath of the pogrom (p. 122).

Cichopek’s book constitutes a very important contribution to the study of _. Polish—Jewsh relations in the aftermath of the Holocaust. Although many of the details of the events on 11 August 1945 remain unclear, the book broadens our understanding of the pogrom and its immediate context and enables us to make a number of interesting comparisons with the Kielce pogrom, the most widely studied anti-Jewish outbreak in post-war Poland. Last but not least, it should be mentioned that Cichopek includes a complete bibliography as well as a large appendix of more than sixty primary documents not readily available elsewhere. In all, Cichopek’s book represents a welcome and valuable contribution to scholarship on the post-Holocaust era. NATALIA ALEKSIUN

, Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies , New York University

MICHAL HOROSZEWICZ

—— “Przezdwa millenia do rzymskie synagogi’: Szkice o ewolucit postawy Kosciota katolicktego wobec

Lydow tjudarzmu (‘For Two Millennia to the Roman Synagogue’: Essays on the Evolution of the Attitude of the Roman Catholic Church towards the Jews and Judaism) , (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Kardynata Stefana Wyszynskiego, 2001);

, PP. 452

Theological Christian—Jewish dialogue in Poland remains in the shadow of the dis-

| cussion on Polish—Jewish relations, not least as a result of the events that took place in Jedwabne. To paraphrase the title of one of the books published in Poland on the relations between Christians and Jews, Christian—Jewish dialogue was once

Reviews 449 overshadowed by Auschwitz, and now it is overshadowed by the tragedy that took place in Jedwabne, a small locality near the town of Lomza. It might even be said that theological issues have always been in the background, eclipsed by historical and national questions and considerations. The prevalent view is that anti-Jewish attitudes on the part of some Christians, both in the past and—despite the teachings of John Paul II and Polish bishops—at present, are determined historically and nationally. So, now Polish readers and teachers need to be provided with a solid knowledge of the history of Christian—Jewish relations. However, there is much to indicate the predominant role of theological determinants in the persistence of such attitudes. Theology and religious dialogue seem to have the potential to provide answers to the most vital questions concerning the Christian—Jewish past, as well as the future. In discussions on the future of the Christian—Jewish dialogue a number of issues have been brought out that are regarded as requiring particular attention. Christians should concentrate their studies on the consequences of the long-established belief that there is an eternal covenant between God and the Jews. In this context the following questions need to be answered: How can Christians speak of redemption as being brought by Jesus Christ while recognizing at the same time the exceptional relationship between God and the Jews that is not connected with Christ? How can Christians define themselves as God’s people and accept that the Jewish people—in the past, future, and everywhere—belong to God? How should the evangelical command to carry out missionary work be interpreted? In Christian exegetic studies it is important to consider the issue of the typological approach to the study of the Scriptures prevalent in preaching, religious instruction, and liturgy. The use of typology as the only method by which to interpret biblical events has frequently led to the emergence and consolidation of the negative image of the Jews and deprecation of Judaism, which goes against the

, teaching contained in the Church documents. A change ought to take place in the Christian—Jewish dialogue relating to the approach to the common history. New publications should no longer concentrate on relating cases of Catholic prejudice and contempt for Jews and the resulting terrible consequences, disregarding manifestations of mutual respect and friendly coexistence. ‘T'wenty centuries of Christian—Jewish relations cannot be said to be solely a history of scorn and humiliation. That is not to say that negative attitudes, attributable mainly to Christian teaching, have not dominated our history. Does ‘Przez dwa millennia do rzymskiej synagog?’, a book by Michat Horoszewicz, who has investigated Christian—Jewish relations for many years, take into account the theological postulates listed above? I think that it does, and this is visible in the. theological issues addressed by the author and, above all, in the historical

| core of his study, which takes into consideration the positive elements in relations between Catholics and Jews. The author says in the introduction: “There were, though, some spatio-temporal areas of satisfactory coexistence and certain traditions

450 Reviews of goodwill and kindness, as well as papal and curial directives intended to protect human rights (even though they were not always observed in the daily practice of the Church)’.

The very identity of the author may persuade potential readers to expect an unbiased analysis, because Michat Horoszewicz, being a representative neither of the Catholic Church nor of the Jewish people, maintains a distance from the events he describes and the published Church documents. He does not hesitate to express criticism, nor is he indifferent to the sometimes strongly hostile attitude of some of the Jewish communities. Horoszewicz is also objective in his choice of historical facts, always striving to show various perspectives and determinants on the issues. The book consists of six articles, revised since they were first published in early

, 1988 in Cztowiek i Swiatopoglad, a journal with an openly critical, even hostile, attitude towards the Catholic Church. In this context it is important to note that the book has been published as one of a series edited by the Revd Waldemar Chrostowski and published by the Stefan Cardinal Wyszynski University. It was the content of the book and the attitude of the author, for whom an indomitable search for truth is the only relevant criterion, that influenced the university’s decision to publish. The evolution of the attitude of the Catholic Church to Jews is laid out in the six articles, each featuring a specific period with a certain significance: AD 30-305, 305-1096, 1096-1555, 1555-1917, 1917-1965, and after 1965. The year 305 is the

date of the synod in Spanish Elvira. It was probably the first synod to introduce , anti-Jewish canons implicitly aimed at the social isolation of Jews (e.g. prohibition of mixed marriages and common meals). The beginning of 1096 saw the start of the first crusade, during which Jewish communities on the Rhine were destroyed and the population was slaughtered. Horoszewicz says, perhaps rather understating the

case, that ‘in collective Jewish memory the crusades—with the cross as their sym- , bol—have become the symbol of opposition between Christianity and Judaism’. In Jewish awareness they represent more than that: they are testimony to the cruelty of Christians. It is necessary to recall these events, especially as many Christian publications leave out these painful facts. In 1555, when Pope Paul IV issued the bull ‘Cum Nimis Absurdum’, a compulsory ghetto for Jews was set up in Rome and their business activity was restricted. In 1917 Nakhum Sokotéw, a representative of the World Zionist Organization, was received by Pope Benedict XV. During the audience the Pope expressed for the first time his approval of the Jewish plan to settle in Palestine and to revive Israel. The Declaration of the Ecumenical Council Vatican II on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions, Nostra Aetate (no. 4), was approved on 28 October 1965. The fourth article of this document represents a breakthrough in Roman Catholic teaching on Jews and Judaism. It was the greatest milestone in the history of the attitude of the Church towards the Jewish people. Thirty years later, on 13 April 1986, Pope John Paul II visited the Great Synagogue in Rome. The title of Horoszewicz’s book emphasizes this event in the history of Catholic—Jewish relations. Quoting from the report in the

Reviews 451 Vatican monthly, L’Osservatore Romano, Horoszewicz recalls this unprecedented moment, and points out that it was the first time that the bishop of Rome ‘spoke to Jews and prayed with them, and they spoke to him and prayed with him’. Not all the issues addressed in the book fall neatly into the time periods outlined above, which is understandable since some important developments in Christian— Jewish relations belong to different periods in their common history. This is the case, for instance, with the prayer for the Jews spoken on Good Friday. It is less understandable, though, why Horoszewicz’s account of successive modifications of the prayer stops in 1959 although it was further modified during the latest Vatican Council and its present form was approved by Pope Paul VI on 26 March 1970. The

author’s decision may have been influenced by the fact that the current Polish translation differs considerably from the Latin original, with its anti-Jewish under-

tone. Similar reserve, quite contrary to the uncompromising commitment to objectivity shown in the rest of the book, can be observed when he writes of an antiJewish song ‘Ludu m6j, ludw’ (‘Oh my people, oh my people’) that it is ‘a lament sung only during the Good Friday liturgy’, while in fact it is sung during the whole of Lent. Horoszewicz is very keen to trace manifestations of Christian—Jewish solidarity

beyond the national divisions. In summing up nineteenth-century testimonies regarding this issue, he says hopefully: ‘May such an attitude pervade the teaching of the Catholic Church in Poland and, through it, the practice of Polish Catholicism’. Regrettably, the balance of mutual relations retains old prejudices. One of the reasons for this is said to be the Christian conviction that Jews share hereditary responsibility for the death of the Saviour. It is generally recognized that it was not until Nostra Aetate that the Catholic Church started to reform its teaching on the

Jews, drawing back from attributing to them hereditary collective guilt, even though the Second Vatican Council document did not deal with the issue in a way that satisfied all observers. Comments on Nostra Aetate point out that the Vatican Council’s teaching had no basis in any documents from the past, but this alone

is proof of a radical change in the attitude of the Church towards the ‘Jewish question’. However, it is also argued that the Roman Catechism of the Council of Trent viewed it as unjustified to lay the blame for the murder of the Son of God on the Jews. Such opinions are due to the fact that certain theses from the Roman

catechism are found in recent publications, and some Fathers of the Second Vatican Council also proposed basing its teaching on this Catechism. But Augustin | Cardinal Bea, who was in charge of the preparation of the Council’s document concerning Jews, was against it on the grounds that the argumentation in the sixteenthcentury Catechism was inappropriate, and in some places even confirmed the guilt

of the Jews. The authors of the most recent Catechism of the Catholic Church (1992), however, draw upon the Roman Catechism, quoting it when explaining that all those who commit sins are responsible for the death of Jesus Christ: ‘Our guilt in this case is greater than the Jews’ because, according to the Apostle’s testimony,

452 Reviews they “would not have crucified the Lord of glory” (1 Cor. 2: 8) if they had recognized him’ (no. 598). Horoszewicz makes numerous references to statements contained in the Roman Catechism, simply calling the guilt attributed to the Jewish nation ‘the mark of Cain’. He says: “The Church did have a clear and satisfactory doctrine renouncing the “mark of Cain”. It seems that it was just not translated into the Church practice.’ Horoszewicz’s book is not one that could be recommended to every reader. A certain amount of expertise and tranquillity is needed in order to absorb even a small amount of the multitude of facts and dates conveyed here. But although this wealth of information might discourage some potential readers, it is in fact a virtue

of this book, which is an excellent encyclopedic record of the history of Christian—Jewish relations. GRZEGORZ IGNATOWSKI

, Stefan Cardinal Wyszynski University

| OBITUARIES Rafael Scharf (1914-2003) Krakow Autumn

At this time of year chestnuts fall from the trees in Krakéw. But no one any longer hangs them in a sukah. Wawel stands as it always has. But at the dragon’s cave

There are no Jewish children... We gather like the chestnuts on the Planty of Krakow We thread a chain of memory longer than slavery; Our idyllic Krakéw Jewish childhood, Days of struggle and exaltation, days of youth and pranks, Days of love, days of happiness, days of disaster, days of sadness. Who knows as well as you, you Krakow streets,

What once pained us, what still pains us— , Our Jewish fate

At this season, the chestnut trees are wet from the rain in Krakéw It is already autumn on the Planty and winter in our hearts Darkness falls. It is time to return. The gates are closing. It is slipping away, my unforgettable Krakow, _ ‘That Krakow which is no more.

, . NATAN GROSS

No ONE did more to stop the ‘slipping away’ of that ‘unforgettable Krakow . . . which is no more’ than Rafael Scharf, a member of the editorial board of this yearbook, who died on 19 September 2003. His activity, both as a writer and as a public figure, was dedicated to the preservation of the memory of the multifaceted world of Polish Jewry whose annihilation was so nearly achieved by the Nazis, and to reflect on why the history of the ‘world’s two saddest nations’, to use Antoni Stonimski’s phrase, diverged so drastically and led to so much misunderstanding,

bitterness, and hatred. Few people were better qualified to expound on these

complex and perplexing themes. |

Scharf was born into a relatively comfortable but still observant Jewish family in Krakow and attended the Hebrew high school there, which he described movingly ina number of his essays. In this way he obtained both a thorough general education

and an abiding love of Polish literature, as well as a deep grounding in Jewish _

454 Obituaries. history, the Hebrew language, and modern Hebrew literature.’ He went on to the | Jagiellonian University, where he graduated in law. Already committed to revision-

ist Zionism and uneasy about the future of Poland, he left in 1938 for England and enrolled at the London School of Economics and Political Science, ostensibly to study colonial administration, but hoping ultimately to make his future in the emerging Jewish state. Seduced by the calm and order of England he settled permanently in London, where he married and, with his wife Betty, raised a family, and where he worked as a printer and a dealer in watercolours. Yet his real vocation was always as a writer. Already in Poland, as a journalist for the Polish-language Jewish daily newspaper Nowy Dzienntk, he had demonstrated his literary skills. He took a long time to find his voice. Partly this was because of the need to establish himself in his adopted country and to support his growing family. But there were deeper reasons. He felt a strong desire to become English. As he wrote in the introduction to his collected essays: ‘There was a time when I would have given my right arm (or some other part of the anatomy) to speak English without a foreign accent and not to be recognized as a “foreigner” the moment I opened my mouth’ (p. 190). He found, as so many have done before, that while England 1s hospitable to exiles, it is much harder actually to become English, and he came to see the futility of his desire to do so: ‘I now think that that wish was misplaced, not to say pitiful. I have cured myself of that feeling of inferiority and see that the object of my admiration was not essentially better but only different from me’ (p. 190). He also found that he could not abandon either his Jewish or his Polish roots, and slowly his interest in them resurfaced. In the case of his Polish background, this seems to have occasioned some irritation, as is suggested by the title of his volume

of essays, Poland, What Have I To Do mith Thee?, which he glosses as ‘Your concern, Poland, is not mine’. Yet, in spite of his bitterness at the strength of antiJewish prejudice in his native country, he came to feel that he had no desire to, as he put it, ‘convert’ from his Polishness. The cost would be too high—he would lose ‘the Polish language, Polish poetry, the Polish landscape, the good and not so good memories of the common past, those parts of one’s personality which reflect the Polish character’. Were this to occur he would be ‘bereft, impoverished, incomplete’ (p. 190). His Jewish feelings were more complex. As a young man he became a radical Zionist because he believed that the condition of the Diaspora Jew required drastic, indeed revolutionary, modification. He felt little sympathy for normative Jewish

| religious belief or practice. In a moving passage in his essays, he describes an encounter with his father, when he questioned why he spent his Saturday afternoons attempting to make his way, not very successfully, through the dense pages of the Talmud: , | Rafael Scharf’s essays are collected in a bilingual edition, Co mnie 1 tobie Polsko .. . Eseje bez uprzedzen / Poland, What Have I To Do with Thee?... Essays without Prejudice (Krakow, 1996). Page

references to quotations are to this edition.

Rafael Scharf 455 He wished to persuade me to share his outlook but we did not know how to talk to each other, and he realized that an argument with a precocious know-all only led to an aggravation of spirit. Only once, I remember, he exploded when I asked him: ‘What is all this for?’ ‘What is all this for, fool? The whole of life is for thzs!’ (p. 234)

He also felt little empathy for the mass of Jews in Poland. As he explained: To those who grew up within or next to that human landscape and who remember it lovingly, these people—shameful to confess—did not at that time look attractive. Those misty eyes,

beards, sidelocks, crooked noses—one looked away, embarrassed by what a non-Jewish onlooker might feel or say. It now seems clear that these faces, etched with worry and wisdom, lit with inner light, otherworldly, Rembrandtesque, were inexpressibly beautiful .. .

(p.306)

Yet as he came to see himself as one of the last representatives of this now almost entirely destroyed world he came to see its deep inner spirituality: The community was fragmented and torn by internal strife, but there was also a sharing of a common fate that transcended social and political differences. There was a marked spirituality even among the non-religious, a response to what was felt to be the Jewish ethos, a deeply ingrained universal conviction that beyond the daily sweat and strife, men had to aspire to higher things. (p. 237)

It took nearly forty years from the time when Scharf arrived in England for him to begin to write about what became his forte, the borderland where the Polish and the Jewish worlds overlapped. In 1977 he wrote an account of ‘Janusz Korczak and his Time’ for the Jewish Quarterly, that indispensable journal whose survival and flourishing owed so much to him (indeed, he played a crucial role in the emergence not only of this journal, but also of Polin). As one of the founders of the Inter-

national Janusz Korczak Society, he naturally expressed a deep sympathy for Korczak, for his humanism, his attempt to combine Jewishness and Polishness, and for his tragic death. But the essay also adumbrated 1n an early form the two main themes which came to dominate his writing. His discussion of the vexed question of Korczak’s Polishness shows how strongly he identified with it and with its fate: Korczak grew up feeling Polish to the core. In his attachment to the Polish soil, history, literature and language nobody could be more so. In this he was typical of a segment of Jewish society in love with the zdea of Poland. It was only by a gradual and painful process, in

| the cooling moral climate, that he was forced to recognize that his case was one of love unrequited, and no matter how pure and worthy his devotion he would stay condemned by the sheer fact of his origin. The unhealed wound of rejection never ceased to plague him. (p. 294)

He used the peg of Korczak to explain why the integration of the Jews into Polish society did not succeed, describing the separateness of the two groups on the Polish lands and the difficult situation of the minority of Jews who wished to transform themselves into ‘Poles of the Mosaic faith’. He linked the fate of the Jews in Poland

456 Olntuaries during the Second World War, as Jan Btonski was later to do, to this separateness from the majority. Certainly, a sense of grievance at Polish behaviour during the Holocaust pervades his earlier writings. It received its finest articulation in the speech he gave at the Oxford conference on Polish Jewish history held in Sept-

| ember 1984, where he expressed his pain at the fact that the ‘fabric of Polish—Jewish cohabitation on Polish soil has been irreversibly destroyed’, and referred to the ‘trauma of unreciprocated love’ of the Jews of ‘this last generation, nearing its close’, who could not ‘erase from their hearts this country where “they were born and grew up”, where... they loved the landscape, the language, the poetry; where they were ready to shed their blood for Poland and to be her true sons. That this was evidently not enough leaves them broken-hearted.’ He concluded: The paths of ‘two of the saddest nations on this earth’ have parted for ever. I wonder how far

_ the Poles are aware of the fact that with the Jews an authentic part of their Poland was obliterated. The question begs to be asked: Will that Poland one day be better, richer in spiritual and material goods, without the Jews?

This article evoked a highly significant response in the form of Jan Btonski’s piece, “Che Poor Poles Look at the Ghetto’, published in Tygodnik Powsechny in February 1987, in which he called on the Poles to accept some degree of responsibility for the fate of their Jewish fellow citizens under Nazi occupation, to stop ‘haggling, trying to defend and justify ourselves. To stop arguing about the things that were beyond our power to do, during the occupation and beforehand. Nor to place blame on political, social and economic conditions. But to say first of all, “Yes, we are guilty”.’ Btonski explicitly referred to Scharf’s speech in Oxford as the spur which led him to take up his pen: I recall one moving speech at the Oxford conference, in which the speaker started by comparing the Jewish attitude to Poland to unrequited love. Despite the suffering and all the

problems which beset our mutual relations, he continued, the Jewish community had a genuine attachment to their adopted country. Here they found a home, a sense of security. There was, conscious or unconscious, an expectation that their fate would improve, the burden of humiliation would lighten, that the future would gradually become brighter. What actually happened was exactly the opposite. ‘Nothing can ever change now’, he concluded. ‘Jews do not have and cannot have any future in Poland. Do tell us, though’, he finally demanded, ‘that what has happened to us was not our fault. We do not ask for anything else.

, But we do hope for such an acknowledgment.”” Scharf was deeply affected by Btonsk1’s article, which certainly changed significantly the way in which the ‘Jewish issue’ was discussed in Polish circles. He com-

mented on it in his contribution to the discussion on ‘Ethical Problems of the Holocaust’ at the international conference on the history and culture of Polish Jewry held in Jerusalem in February 1988: 2 “The Poor Poles Look at the Ghetto’ is reprinted in Antony Polonsky (ed.), ‘My Brother’s Keeper?’ Recent Polish Debates on the Holocaust (London, 1990), 44-5.

Rafael Scharf 457 I read Btonski’s article, for the first time, with growing excitement and quickened pulse. At one point he makes reference to one of the speakers at the conference in Oxford in 1984, whose words, he said, inspired him to ponder these matters. From the words quoted by him it was clear that he was referring to me. I was startled and also moved to see how one word, a sentence, a thought can strike another man’s mind, can germinate there and bear fruit beyond expectation. I was talking then, at least that is how Blonski understood it, to the effect that we Jews no longer expected anything from the Poles but the admission that they have been, in some way, at fault. For many years, we listened, waited for a sign—but we heard no voices. In the end, I had thought that we would be straining our ears in vain. But now, at last—we hear the voice of Btonski... More than a year has passed since Blonski’s voice sounded. I would like to assure all those

who feared that it would have a harmful effect on Poland, that quite the opposite has occurred. His article is seen, in itself, as a certain rehabilitation of sorts. When, paradoxically and undeservedly, I am put in the role of an advocatus Poloniae, | myself, in many instances, recall this article and those which followed. I maintain that one can no longer speak loosely about the Poles’ opinion on the subject without taking into consideration these new voices, which save the reputation of Poland. (p. 260)

The second theme of Scharf’s writing, his evocation the lost world of Cracovian and Polish Jewry, played a larger role in his later writing. Already in his Korczak essay, he stressed the scale of what has been destroyed: But for the Jews, let there be no mistake, the loss of Poland is incalculable. For despite the chequered fortunes, despite the vicissitudes, or perhaps because of them, the Jews in Poland through generations formed the most energetic, resilient and productive, the most ‘Jewish’ part of the Diaspora. Deep roots were struck and they nourished abundant growth. (p. 298)

His recall was almost Proustian. It was a unique privilege to accompany him as he strode round the streets of Kazimierz and recalled their former inhabitants and the various exploits of his youth, now divided from us by over half a century and the abyss of the Holocaust. In the words of Jan Btonski: Who on earth, today, walking along Dietel Street in Krakéw, can still recall any of its former inhabitants? They have virtually all perished, for Dietel Street, with its avenue of trees, was the very heart of the Jewish quarter. The only person, perhaps, who recalls not just one, but all these people is Rafael Scharf... and so he has taken upon himself the role of guardian of Cracovian and Jewish memory, the role, as it were, of the last witness, who strives to record this Jewish-Cracovian particularity. Like Gebirtig in his songs, Scharf bears live, authentic testimony to the character of that city and its community, which filled these walls to the roof, in a state of more or less peaceful cohabitation with their Polish fellow-citizens.°

Scharf’s view of the past was elegiac and pervaded by a sense of loss. In one of his

essays he provides a moving and detailed description of all the inhabitants of the apartment block at the corner of St Sebastian and Berek Joselowicz Street, which was a microcosm of the many-sided Jewish life of Krakow and which culminated in 3 Jan Btonski, ‘Przedmowa’, in Scharf, Co mnie i tobie Polsko, 7.

458 Obituaries a description of the non-Jewish janitor, Rehman, whose son, a chimney-sweep, kept Scharf’s mother’s possessions during the war, selling some to provide her with an income in hiding and returning the rest after the war, ‘which perhaps would not deserve mention if not for the fact that the opposite was the rule’. He concluded: |

‘Such was just one, ordinary tenement house, one strand in a patchwork, a tiny stone in a crazy paving. Nothing, nothing remains of it all’ (p. 201). All of his writing was preoccupied with the consequences of the mass murder of the Jews of Poland and of Europe. As he commented, “The period of German

occupation in Poland dominates my internal landscape and casts a shadow over everything that happened to me before and after . .. Some people may say that all this was a long time ago, but there has not been a day in my life that I have not reverted in my thoughts to those events.’ Like many of those who survived, he felt guilty and burdened by the need to bear witness to the ordeal of those who did not. In his own family, the only exception apart from himself was his mother. He

wrote:

How does one cope with that sort of knowledge, that almost everybody one knew—family, friends, teachers, neighbours, shopkeepers, beggars—all died some horrible death and it is only due to some accidental twist of fate that one has not gone the same way? When I want to recall a face I know, I see it contorted, gasping for breath, in a mass of swirling bodies. The generation of Jews of the post-Holocaust era, the ‘survivors’ in the broadest sense, are a people apart. Burdened by their memory, walking wounded in eternal mourning. I do not think an outsider can understand their condition. (p. 218)

Much of his pessimism derived too from his sense of the enormous mass of talent

destroyed by the Nazi genocide: |

One third of the Jewish people perished, were gassed, extirpated, turned into ashes. In those ashes how many potential Einsteins and Freuds, Heines and Mendelssohns, Gottliebs and Chagalls, Tuwims and Korczaks—people burdened with that genetic endowment that gives rise to genius? (p. 284)

Is it fanciful also to think of Felek himself as one of the victims of this catastrophe? The move to England made him a bilingual writer, capable of expressing his many

and complex thoughts in both English and Polish. But the destruction and the move robbed him of what every writer needs, an audience. As he wrote: ‘I haven’t got a clear image of my reader. The majority of those who might have formed the natural readership have perished: a great many of those who survived the cataclysm are also no longer with us’ (p. 187). It is clear too that he feared, wrongly in my view, that he had been unable fully to communicate, even to his own children, what was most important to him, a failure he attributed at its deepest level to the problem of ‘how to present the boundless horror of those events which have no analogy in history and at the same time not to undermine the belief in the sense of creation, in human values, in justice’. It may be, too, that the move to bilingualism robbed him

of fluency. How moving and important are his essays, ‘a small plot on Mount

Rafael Scharf 459 Parnassus’! But, with his enormous talent, is it not possible to imagine him in other circumstances as having been another Stryjkowski, Rudnicki, or Grynberg? When reflecting on Polish behaviour during the Holocaust, he always recalled the exceptions to those who were indifferent to, or even rejoiced at, the murder of the Jews: the chimney-sweep Rehman, the antisemite Jurczyga, who during the war

helped his former Jewish adversary Staszek K. He also reminded us of Jewish

mankind: :

collaboration, as of his friend Arthur Loeffler, who disgraced himself in the ‘Jewish

police’ in the Krakow ghetto. He saw the Holocaust as a perilous portent for What lesson humanity will draw from that cataclysm; how it will cope with the awareness of the depth to which man showed himself capable of sinking; how man will renew belief in

basic moral values, in a world possessing the means of destruction, by comparison with which even the gas chambers pale into insignificance: on these questions depends the future of humankind. (p. 289)

His prevailing tone, faced with the incomprehensible character of the Holocaust and of the evil of which man 1s capable, was to mourn, to regret the loss of ‘the world of European Jewry, a thousand-year-old civilization’ wiped out in four years. I know that Felek believed that poetry can perhaps articulate feelings inexpressible in any other form, and that he worked hard to make better known both Polish poets, such as Jerzy Ficowski, and Polish Jewish poets, such as Stanistaw Wygodzki, whose work he published in an edition with a parallel Hebrew text.* Indeed, his view of the world was perhaps closest to that of Wygodzki’s in its sense of loss and its attempt to find an appropriate language for mourning. So let me conclude this

tribute to him with some of Wygodzki’s verses: | I am a father to you Rachel, Sulamit, Rebecca I am a tomb and quietness

Miriam, Esther, Ruth A father for Malka and Chana Not like a pilgrim do I stand here A pilgrim has a time of rest ... Ever deeper I go into sadness Into an ever larger cemetery The song of the wounded heart does not seek revenge ... Wrong is overcome by the force of grief

I do not come as an avenger, or a judge , I do not come as a preacher to sow poison and wormwood in the heart

How can one place flowers on a grave in the air? ANTONY POLONSKY * Stanistaw Wygodzki, Wybor poezjt: Wydanie dwujezyczne (London, 1987).

Eugenia Shrut (1925-2003) EUGENIA SHRUT (TABACZYNSKA), who died on 20 October 2003, was a member of the board of the American Association for Polish—Jewish Studies and a strong supporter of Polin. Born on 20 May 1925, she came from a well-to-do Jewish

family in the small town of Ktodawa (no ‘shtetl’, the town was predominantly Catholic), in the province of Poznan; she had two elder brothers. She was educated at the Miglasowa gymnasium in Warsaw, where she was particularly influenced by one of the teachers, the prominent historian Marian Matowist. During the occupation the whole family moved to Warsaw, then to the Warsaw

ghetto. Genia continued to attend school (which was now underground), and graduated in 1942. One of her brothers and his wife had been deported from Umschlagplatz; they perished, probably in Treblinka. Genia’s parents arranged _ for her to go toa hiding-place on the ‘Aryan’ side, and on 19 April 1943, the first day

of the uprising, she left the ghetto: a bribed watchman let her pass. She had memorized the address she was to go to, but when she arrived did not know whether to knock at the door to the left or to the right. An error could have been fatal, but she had good luck. The hiding-place was the apartment of a Mr Pawtowski, where nine Jews were living in a room whose entrance was camouflaged as a sink. Genia stayed there for fifteen months. Meanwhile, the ghetto was fully evacuated: her parents were sent to Trawniki labour camp, and her remaining brother to the camp in Poniatowa. All three perished in 1944 when, together with all the Jews of Trawniki and Poniatowa, they were shot by the Germans. Genia came out of her hiding-place during the Polish uprising in Warsaw in August 1944. Concealing the fact that she was Jewish, she left Warsaw, together with the city’s entire population, and in Pruszkow she joined a Polish group that was being sent as forced labour to Brig in Upper Silesia. Liberated in the winter of 1945 by the Russians, she returned to Ktodawa to search for surviving relatives, and found her cousins Ignacy and Michal Wolkowicz. After spending a year and a half in £.6dz, where I saw her often, she left for France, and worked for some time as a Clerk at the Polish embassy in Paris. Her lifelong friendship with Halina Winnicki dated from this period. In 1947 her relatives in the United States, notably her Uncle Albert, helped her to emigrate to Boston, where, working as a volunteer, she helped new Jewish immigrants from Poland. In 1948 Genia married Mark Asch, nephew of the writer Sholem Asch, who gave

Eugenia Shrut 461 a speech at their wedding. Genia and Mark had three sons, Neil , Roger, and Glenn. Genia’s second marriage, to George Shrut, ended in divorce.

Being fully integrated in American society Genia had a number of close American-born friends, both Jewish and non-Jewish, but she remained true to her Polish roots, and it came naturally to her to speak and write perfect literary Polish. When Polish visitors, freshly arrived, complimented her with the words ‘You speak excellent Polish’, Genia used to answer: ‘You too.. .’. She travelled often to Poland, had friends there, and never forgot Mr Pawtowski, the dapper Pole who gave her

shelter during the Holocaust, supporting him until his death. In 1999 Genia travelled to the Vatican, where she met John Paul II and had a conversation with him—in Polish, of course. | Genia’s last and memorable journey to Poland was her pilgrimage to Jedwabne in 2001, on the sixtieth anniversary of the massacre. Frail as she was, she marched on that exceptionally cold and windy day, all the way to the town’s central square, and then to site of the burned barn where the rites were held. Her charm, wit, and keen interest in people will not be forgotten. RYSZARD FENIGSEN

George Szabad (1917-2002) GEORGE SZABAD, who died on 30 March 2002 at his home in Haverford, Penn-

sylvania, at the age of 85, was one of the most committed and effective of the supporters both of the American Association of Polish—Jewish Studies and of our yearbook. Born on 21 February 1917 in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, of a Polish Jewish family which had been evacuated to central Russia during the war, he was raised in Warsaw. He was related to the prominent Jewish activist in Vilna, Tsemakh Shabad (Szabad), who was elected to the Polish senate in 1928, and he often referred to his distinguished lineage. In 1934 he emigrated with his mother and his sister, Ina, to _ America and studied law at Columbia. While a student there, he married Shirley

Meyers, to whom he was devoted and whom he nursed lovingly in her final years | until her death in 1992. At Columbia Law School, George was an editor of the Law Review, and after

graduation worked for the Department of Labor and the Office of Strategic Services. After the war he held the post of section head of Russian Manpower in the

State Department. In 1947 he joined the New York law firm of Blum & Jolles, where he was made a partner in 1949. He had a distinguished career as a litigator, arguing cases before the Federal Appelate Division and the US Supreme Court. While working as a lawyer, he retained his links with Poland, working with the Polish Mission for Relief and Reconstruction in America and travelling in Poland on behalf of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency.

From the early 1960s he became active in the American Jewish Committee (AJC), becoming a member of its board of governors and Honorary Vice-President.

In 1999 the AJC awarded him its National Distinguished Leadership Award. Through the AJC he joined the National Taskforce on Polish—Jewish Relations, a dialogue group which it sponsored with the the Polish-American Congress and

which led to the creation of the still-functioning National Jewish—American Polish—American Council. Szabad served as co-chairman of this body, with Harold Gales between 1979 and 1985 and with the Revd John Pawlikowski between 1993 and 1997. He was a founder member of the American Association for Polish—Jewish Studies and was instrumental in persuading Irene Pipes to take its presidency. His wise counsel was a crucial factor in the success of the association. George was a strong supporter of the State of Israel and was also deeply commit-

ted to democratic values and the struggle against communism, tyranny, and

George Szabad 463 antisemitism. He campaigned to secure the release of Solidarity activists in the early 1980s, including Wtadystaw Bartoszewski, Bronistaw Geremek, and Adam Michnik. Ina letter to the New York Timesin December 1981 he expressed concern

for ‘the Solidarity leaders and intellectuals who have been arrested and whose health and very lives are in danger. Clearly, there is a need in our American democratic pluralistic society for political pressure by Polish Americans and their Jewish

and other allies so that the United States will take the lead on behalf of the suppressed and starving Polish people.’ George was an effective and persuasive advocate of Polish—Jewish reconciliation and often supported important initiatives in a quiet but effective way. He facilitated the publication of the important book by Magdalena Opalski and Israel Bartal, Poles

and Fews: A Failed Brotherhood (Waltham, Mass., 1992), which described the Polish—Jewish fraternization in the run-up to the ill-fated insurrection of January 1863, and he funded an important study by Dr Hanna Wegrzynek, Research Fellow

at the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, entitled “The Treatment of Jewish Themes in Polish Schools’, which was published by the AJC in English and Polish in 1998. George was always willing to offer guidance and advice on the most complex and difficult topics, of which there were indeed many in the field of Polish—Jewish relations. His courage in fighting pancreatic cancer was exemplary and a demonstration

of his love of life and of his family, his second wife Janet, son Peter, his daughter Ellen, and their families, to whom we offer our deepest condolences. George’s vision, Compassion, and goodwill were an inspiration to his many friends and admirers. When he was awarded the National Distinguished Leadership Award by the AJC, the citation referred to ‘his exemplary commitment over many decades to the ideals of Jewish philanthropic tradition and ... his outstanding contributions to his community and to society’. He is a model to us all and will be sorely missed. ANTONY POLONSKY

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Notes on the Contributors JoEL BEeRKOow!IrTz is Assistant Professor of Modern Jewish Studies at the State University of New York at Albany. He is the author of Shakespeare on the American Yiddish Stage (lowa City, 2002) and editor of Yiddish Theatre: New Approaches

(Oxford, 2003). He is founding editor of the Yiddish Theatre Forum, an online discussion group.

ALINA Caza isa researcher in the Zydowski Instytut Historyczny in Warsaw. She is the author of Wizerunek Zyda w polskie; kulturze ludowej (Warsaw, 1987), trans— lated into English as The Image of Fews in Polish Folk Culture (Jerusalem, 1995), and Asymilacja Zydéw w Krélestwie Polskim (1864-1897): Postawy, konflikty,

stereotypy (‘The Assimilation of Jews in the Polish Kingdom, 1864-1897: Attitudes, Conflicts, Stereotypes’ (Warsaw, 1989) ), which is soon to be translated into English. In addition, she has written more than forty other works on the history of Polish—Jewish relations in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in Polish, English, German, French, Slovak, and Hebrew. GLENN DyYNNER completed his dissertation ‘Men of Silk: The Hasidic Conquest

of Polish Jewry, 1754-1830’ at Brandeis University. At present he is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. GENNADY ESTRAIKH was Managing Editor of the Moscow Yiddish literary ~ monthly Sovetish heymland between 1988 and 1991. From 1991 to 2003 he lived in Oxford, combining academic positions with Yiddish literary activity. Since 2003

he has been Rauch Visiting Associate Professor of Yiddish Studies at New York University.

RYSZARD FENIGSEN is a doctor of medicine who practised in Poland and the Netherlands. He is the son of Ludwik Fenigstein, the attorney who represented the Minkowski orphans at the trial of perpetrators of the Przytyk pogrom in 1936. GABRIEL N. FINDER teaches modern Jewish history at the University of Virginia.

He has a Ph.D. in history from the University of Chicago and a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania. He is currently writing a book on the post-war

: Polish Jewish community’s establishment of a court of honour to determine the culpability of Jews accused of collaboration with the Germans during the

Holocaust. |

MicHAk GALAS is a Lecturer at the Department of Jewish Studies of the Jagiel-

lonian University in Krakow. He was the editor of a post-conference volume, | Duchowos¢ zydowska w Polsce (‘Jewish Spirituality in Poland’ (Krak6éw, 2000) ). He

has written numerous articles on the history of the Jewish religion in Poland,

466 Notes on the Contributors particularly on Shabbateanism and Frankism. At present he is preparing his _habilitation thesis on the career in Poland and the United States of Mordechai ~ (Markus) Jastrow.

LecH W. GLUCHOWSKI 1s an independent scholar and writer based in Hamilton,

| Ontario. He received his Ph.D. in 1992 from the University of Cambridge and has published numerous articles and documents, primarily with the Cold War International History Project of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC. He recently completed a novel entitled ‘Father, Son, Holy...

Spy’, based on the defection to the CIA in 1953 of Lieutenant-Colonel Jozef Swiatto of the Polish Ministry of Public Security.

PiotR GONTARCzYK wrote his MA thesis at the University of Warsaw on the Communist resistance in the Radom area during the Second World War. At present he is writing a doctorate on the history of the Polish Workers’ Party (PPR). He has published articles in Zycie, Zeszyty Historyczne WiN, and Dzieje Najnowsze.

BRIAN Horowirtz occupies the Family Sizeler Chair for Jewish Studies at Tulane University. He is the author of The Myth of A. S. Pushkin in Russia’s Silver Age: M. O. Gershenzon, Pushkinist (Evanston, IIl., 1996). A specialist on Russian Jewry, - he is at present completing a book on the Society for the Promotion of Enlightenment among the Jews of Russia, 1863-1914.

JOHN KIER is Corob Professor of Modern Jewish History in the Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies at University College London. Among his books are

Storms’.

Russia Gathers Her Jews: The Origins of the ‘Jewish Question’ in Russia (DeKalb, IIl., 1986) and Imperial Russia’s Jewish Question 1855-1581 (Cambridge, 1995). He has

recently completed a study of the anti-Jewish pogroms of 1881-2, ‘Southern EpwarpD Kossoy was a prisoner in Soviet camps between 1939 and 1941 and — then served in the Polish (Anders) army and in the Israeli War of Independence. He studied in Warsaw, Munich, Cologne, and Geneva, and has doctorates in law and political sciences. Between 1949 and 1975 he represented over 60,000 victims of Nazi persecution in Germany. He has published a number of books and articles mostly connected with the events of the Second World War. Since 1958 he has lived in Geneva.

MIKHAIL KRUTIKOV graduated in mathematics from Moscow State University

and studied Yiddish literature at the Literaturnyi institut imeni Gor’kogo in Moscow. He completed his doctorate entitled ‘Representations of Crisis in the Yiddish Novel 1905-1914’ at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (New York). He is currently Assistant Professor of Jewish—Slavic Cultural Relations at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and a columnist for the Forward (New York).

Notes on the Contributors 467 Rosa LEHMANN graduated with an MA in Social Anthropology at the University of Amsterdam. She studied Polish—Jewish and Polish—Ukrainian relations as a research fellow at the Amsterdam School for Social Science Research (University of Amsterdam), and is currently a research fellow at the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation and the Centre for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. She is the author of Symbiosis and Ambivalence: Poles and Jews in a Small Galician Town (New York, 2001).

ANNAMARIA ORLA-BUKOWSKA is a social anthropologist at the Institute of Sociology at the Jagiellonian University in Krak6w; her general field of research is majority—minority relations. She lectures for, among others, the postgraduate programmes at the State Museum at Oswiecim and the Centre for Social Studies, Warsaw. She had been a visiting lecturer in the United States, the Czech Republic, Belgium, Greece, and Australia. Dr Orla-Bukowska has held the Koerner Holocaust Fellowship at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies and a Fellowship at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. YOHANAN PETROVSKY-SHTERN received his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Moscow University and his Ph.D. in Modern Jewish History from Brandeis

University. He has taught at Tufts University and the Hebrew College, Boston, and is now Assistant Professor in Jewish History at Northwestern University. At present he is reworking his dissertation into a book under the title ‘Drafted into Modernity: Jews in the Russian Army 1827-1914’.

BEN-CION PINCHUK teaches Russian and east European history at Haifa University. Among his publications are the book Shtetl Jews Under Soviet Rule and related articles.

ANTONY POLONSKY is Albert Abramson Professor of Holocaust Studies at Brandeis University and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Until 1991 he was Professor of International History at the London School of Economics

and Political Science. He is chair of the editorial board of Polin, the author of Politics in Independent Poland (Oxford, 1972), The Little Dictators (London, 1975), and The Great Powers and the Polish Question (London, 1976), and co-author of A History of Modern Poland (Cambridge, 1980) and The Beginnings of Communist Rule in Poland (London, 1981). EUGENIA PROKOP-JANIEC teaches Polish literature at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. Her principal interests are the history of modern literature and literary criticism, as well as Polish—Jewish cultural and literary contacts in the nineteenth

and twentieth centuries. She is the author of Miedzywojenna literatura polskoéydowska jako zjawisko kulturowe 1 artystyczne (‘Inter-war Polish Jewish Literature as a Cultural and Artistic Phenomenon’ (Krakow, 1992) ), translated into English as Polish—femish Literature in the Interwar Years (Syracuse, NY, 2003), and editor

468 Notes on the Contributors of Miedzywojenna poezja polsko-zydowska (‘Inter-War Polish Jewish Poetry’ (Krakow, 1992) ). Her book Literatura 1 nacjonalizm (‘Literature and Nationalism’) is soon to be published.

_ KSAWERY PRUSZYNSKI was born in 1907 in Kierekeszyn (Ukraine) to a Polish landowning family. He was associated in the inter-war period with the Miodzi Konserwatysci (Young Conservatives), a political group that criticized the chau-

vinism and antisemitism of the Endecja (National Democrats), and also reported , from Spain for the liberal literary weekly Wiadomosci Literackie. These reports were printed in his book W czerwonej Hiszpaniu (‘In Red Spain’ (Warsaw, 1937) ).

After the Polish defeat in 1939 he escaped to France and enlisted in the Polish army, serving in Norway, where he received the Polish Military Cross for Outstanding Valour. He then became the press attaché to the Polish Minister of Infor- mation, Stanislaw Kot. Becoming disillusioned with the politics of the exiled government, he returned to Poland in 1945 and was appointed ambassador to the Netherlands. In 1950 he died in a car crash whose cause has never been fully explained. A prolific journalist and writer, among his works are Palestyna po raz trzeci (‘Palestine for the Third Time’ (Vilna, 1933)), Podréz po Polsce (‘Journey , Through Poland’ (Warsaw, 1937) ), anda collection of stories, Trzynascte opomiesct (“Thirteen Stories’ (Warsaw, 1946) ).

SHIMON REDLICH is Professor of Modern History, Director of the Rabb Center for Holocaust Studies, and Solly Yellin Chair in Lithuanian and East European Jewry at Ben-Gurion University. He is the author of books and articles on east | European Jewish history. His latest book 1s Together and Apart in Brzezany: Poles, Jews and Ukrainians, 1919-1945 (Bloomington, Ind., 2002).

REGINA RENz is Professor of History at the Akademia Swietokrzyska in Kielce. She works on the social and economic history of inter-war Poland and the history

of the Jews in the Kielce region in the inter-war period. Among her works are Rzemiosto wojewodztwa kieleckiego w okresie miedzywojennym: Aspekty spoteczne 1

gospodarcze (‘Crafts in Kielce Province in the Inter-war Period: Social and Economic Aspects’ (Warsaw, 1984)); Zycie codzienne w miasteczkach wojewodztwa kieleckiego 1918-1939 (‘Everyday Life in the Small Towns of Kielce Province 1918-1939 (Kielce, 1994)), and (with Waldemar Brociek and Adam Penkalla) Zydzi ostrowieccy: Zarys dziejéw (‘The Jews of Ostrowiec: A Historical Sketch’ (Ostrowiec, 1996) ).

ADAM TELLER is a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in the Department of Jewish History at the University of Haifa. Educated at Oxford University and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, he has two books currently forthcoming: Hayim betsavta: Harova hayehudt bepozna bemahatsit harishonah shel hame’ah hasheva-esrei

(‘Life in a Closed Community: The Jewish Quarter of Poznan and Its Inhabitants in the Seventeenth Century’) and Kesef, ko’ah vehashpa’ah: Hayehudim be’ahuzot

Notes on the Contributors 469 beit radzivil behta beme’ah hayud-het (Money, Power and Influence: The Jews on the Radziwill Estates in Lithuania in the Eighteenth Century’). He has published a number of articles on the social, economic, and cultural history of Polish Lithuanian Jewry in the early modern period, and 1s currently working on a history of the Polish Lithuanian rabbinate in that period. KATARZYNA WIECEAWSKA works in the Centre for Jewish Studies at Marie Curie-Sklodowska University, Lublin. She is preparing her Ph.D. dissertation on the image of the shtetl in modern Yiddish, American, and Polish literature.

MirostEaw Wojcik is Senior Lecturer at the Akademia Swietokrzyska in Kielce. He is the author of Cztomiek-nikt: Prozatorska tworczosé Edwarda Stachury w kontekscte buddyzmu zen (‘Man as Nobody: The Prose Writing of Edward Stachura in the Context of Zen Buddhism’ (Kielce, 1998)) and Emil Zegadtomicz, Stefan Zechowski, Marian Ruzamski: Korespondencja 1936-1944 (‘Emil Zegadtowicz, Stefan Zechowski, Marian Ruzamski: Correspondence 1936-1944’ (Kielce, 2002)).

He has also translated the work of and written articles on Gustaw HerlingGrudzinski, Paul Johnson, Chone Shmeruk, Julian Tuwim, and Emil Zegadtowicz.

KONRAD ZIELINSKI is Assistant Professor in the Center for Jewish Studies at Marie Curie-Sktodowska University, Lublin. Among his publications are: W creniu synagogi: Obraz zyctia kulturalnego spotecznosci zydowskiej] Lublina w latach okupacn

austro-wegierskiey (‘In the Shadow of the Synagogue: The Cultural Life of the Lublin Jewish Community During the Austro-Hungarian Occupation’ (Lublin, 1998)); Zydzi Lubelszezyzny 1914-1918 (‘Jews of Lublin Province 1914-1918’ (Lublin, 1999)); and (with Nina Zielinska) Jeszywas Chachme; Lublin (‘Yeshiva Khakhmei Lublin’ (Lublin, 2003)). He now deals with Polish—Jewish relationships during the years 1914-18 and migration movements within the lands of the

former Russian empire (1917-30). ,

JOLANTA ZYNDUL is the head of the Centrum Badania i Nauczania Dziejéw i Kultury Zydow w Polsce im. Mordechaja Anielewicza, Warsaw University. She is the author of Zajscia antyzydowskie w Polsce w latach 1935-1937 (‘Anti-Jewish Incidents in Poland in the Years 1935-1937’ (Warsaw, 1994)) and Panstwo w panstwie? Autonomia narodowo-kulturalna w Europie Srodkowowschodniej w XX mieku (‘State Within a State? National-Cultural Autonomy in Central and Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century’ (Warsaw, 2000) ).

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Glossary arenda_ A lease of monopoly rights, usually of an estate, which was then administered by the lessee (the arendator).

av beit din Head of a Jewish religious court. | ba’al shem (pl. ba’alei shem; Hebrew: ‘master of the Divine Name’) ‘Title given in popular usage and in Jewish literature, especially kabbalistic and hasidic works from the Middle Ages onwards, to one who possessed the secret knowledge of the Tetragrammaton and the other “Holy Names’ and who knew how to work miracles by the power of these names.

, bett midrash (pl. batei midrash) Communal study house. commonwealth (Polish: Rzeczpospolita) The term Rzeczpospolita is derived from Latin res publica, It is sometimes translated as ‘commonwealth’ and sometimes as ‘republic’, often in the form ‘Noblemen’s republic’ (Rzeczpospolita szlachecka). After the union of

Lublin in 1569 it was used officially in the form Rzeczpospolita Obojga Narodéw ~ (Commonwealth of Two Nations) to designate the new form of state that had arisen. In historical literature this term is often rendered as the Polish—Lithuanian Commonwealth.

devekut Cleaving to God. | ,

Endecja, Endek Endecja was the popular name of the Polish National Democratic Party, a right-wing party that had its origins in the 18gos. Its principal ideologue was | Roman Dmowski, who advocated a Polish version of the integral nationalism that became popular in Europe at the turn of the nineteenth century. The Endecja advanced _ the slogan ‘Poland for the Poles’ and called for the exclusion of the Jews from Polish political and economic life. Its adherents were called Endeks.

etrog A citrus fruit, one of the four types of plant used in the celebration of the harvest festival of Sukkot.

galut (Ashkenazi Hebrew and Yiddish: golus) The traditional term for the Jewish diaspora,

with implications of its being in exile. |

gaon, geonim, geonic (Hebrew: lit. ‘genius’) A term originally used to designate the heads of the academies of Sura and Pumbeditha in Babylon from the sixth to the middle of the eleventh centuries. Later used to describe a man who had acquired a phenomenal command of the Torah. From this is derived the adjective ‘geonic’.

gematriyah (Hebrew; from Greek word for ‘geometry’) A method of interpreting biblical passages by explaining a word or group of words according to the numerical value of the Hebrew letter or of substituting other letters of the alphabet for them in accordance with a set system.

halakhah (Hebrew: lit. ‘the way’) A word used to describe the entire prescriptive part of Jewish tradition. It defines the norms of behaviour and religious observance. Individual rules are halakhot.

472 Glossary hasidism A mystically inclined movement of religious revival consisting of distinct groups with charismatic leadership. It arose in the borderlands of the Polish— Lithuanian Commonwealth in the second half of the eighteenth century and quickly spread through eastern Europe. The hasidim emphasized joy in the service of God, , whose presence they sought everywhere. Though their opponents, the mitnagedim, pronounced a series of bans against them beginning in 1772, the movement soon

| became identified with religious orthodoxy. Haskalah (Hebrew: lit. ‘learning’ or ‘wisdom’, but used in the sense of Enlightenment) A movement that arose in the wake of the general European Enlightenment in the second half of the eighteenth century and continued into the second half of the nine-

| teenth century. Its adherents were known as maskilim. Its most prominent represent, ative was Moses Mendelssohn (1729-86). ‘The Haskalah was particularly important and influential in German and Slavonic lands. It advocated secular education, the acquisition of European languages, the adoption of productive occupations, and loyalty to the state. In eastern Europe there was considerable emphasis on Hebrew as opposed to Yiddish, which was rejected by most maskilim.

heder (Hebrew: lit.‘room’) Colloquial name for a traditional Jewish elementary school, in which teaching was carried on by a melamed.

- hevrot Societies that were created to perform charitable functions and observe specific religious practices. Sometimes referred to as havurot.

kahal (pl. kehalim), kehilah (pl. kehilot) Although both terms mean ‘community’, kahal is used to denote the institution of Jewish autonomy in a particular locality, while kehilah denotes the community of Jews who live in the town. The kahal was the lowest level of the Jewish autonomous institutions in the Polish—Lithuanian Commonwealth. Above the local kehilot were regional bodies, and above these a central body, the Va’ad Arba

| Aratsot (Council of Four Lands) for the Kingdom of Poland and the Va’ad Medinat | Lita (Council of Lithuania). The Va’ad Arba Aratsot was abolished by the Polish authorities in 1764, but autonomous institutions continued to operate legally until 1844 and in practice for many years after this date in those parts of the Polish— Lithuanian Commonwealth directly annexed by the tsarist empire and until the emergence of the Polish state in the Kingdom of Poland and Galicia. Here the reorganized communal body, which no longer had the power to punish religious heterodoxy, but administered synagogues, schools, cemeteries, and mikva’ot, was often called the gmina (commune). In inter-war Poland the legal status of the kehz/ot was regulated by statute in October 1927 and March 1930. The legislation gave them control over many aspects

| of Jewish communal life with both religious and social functions. All adherents of the ‘Mosaic faith’ were required to belong to a kehilah, and one could not withdraw except through baptism or by declaring oneself an atheist.

kloyz (pl. kloyzn) Hasidic prayer house. kosher A term originally used in the Bible in the sense of ‘fit’ or ‘proper’ and usually used to denote food that is permitted (1.e. in keeping with the laws of kashrut) in contrast to that which is non-kosher (trefah).

Glossary 473 loshn-koydesh (Yiddish: lit. ‘holy language’) refers to Jewish religious terms, usually Hebrew- or Aramaic-derived.

magid Itinerant preacher of homilies on religious themes.

Matopolska (Polish: lit. ‘Lesser Poland’ or ‘Little Poland’) Southern Poland; the area around Krakow. Also referred to under the Habsburgs as (western) Galicia.

maskil (pl. maskilim) See Haskalah.

melamed (Hebrew: ‘teacher’)