“ a Jew from Poland is not and never was simply Polish. … it was clear to Jews and Poles alike

In the summer peasants also stood [in the town market area] selling wild strawberries, blackberries, and raspberries that they brought along in heavy, thick baskets. ... Some berries never were sold but instead were filched by youthful raiders, myself included. My friends and I missed few chances to sneak up to the baskets and run off with a handful of berries. Why did we do it? The berries we enjoyed, of course, but there can be no denying the thrill that stealing the berries brought us, especially when peasants gave chase for a short distance in a vain effort to retrieve what was rightfully theirs. ... Snatching berries didn’t bother me as much as the large number we crushed when we made our grab.³⁴²
Young Polish pranksters and ruffians could also expect rough treatment from Jews. Polish children on their way to school in Wielkie Oczy encountered a group of Jews who were upset over a slogan that had been painted on the fence of a Jewish baker: “Jews to Palestine.” When one of the children read it aloud the Jews quickly encircled and started to beat the terrified Polish children.³⁴³ In Lwów, a small group of Polish high school students was ganged up on and assaulted by a much larger group of Jewish youth.³⁴⁴ When a group of Polish ruffians tried to force some Jewish teenage boys off a park bench in Płock, a group of young Jewish men from the Maccabee Sports Club were alerted. “Carrying wooden clubs (designed for exercising), they came over to the park and confronted the gang. The Maccabees beat up these thugs, some of whom were taken to the hospital and the rest to court.”³⁴⁵

When a group of young men drafted into the army organized a “bachelor party” in Tomaszów Lubleski, and got drunk and started beating up Jews, “We … didn’t take to kindly to it, so we organized … defense. And when they started beating up Jews, … they got their portion, and they stopped it.”³⁴⁶ Another account mentions the exploits of Eliakim, a brawny Jew from Wołkowysk whose occupation was hauling wood:

the gentile draftees used to cheer themselves with a “little” vodka, and from time to time, they would come into town and fall upon the stalls of the Jewish merchants in the marketplace, and at times like these Eliakim would show them the brawn of his arm, and he would inspire the Jews with his display of courage, returning the fight to its perpetrators, and these unruly [drunken soldiers] would be scattered all over.³⁴⁷
When, in Siedlce in 1928, a Polish famer apprehended a Jewish youth who stole some lilacs from his cart on the way to the market, a large throng of Jews attacked the farmer in order to free the thief. When three Polish policemen intervened, they were pummelled with stones. Some other Poles were also assaulted in the disturbance which, in this case, was caused by the Jews.³⁴⁸

Throughout Europe, in the interwar period sporting events often became the scene of ethnic rivalry.³⁴⁹ (They remain so today in countries like Scotland, England and Italy.³⁵⁰) When “Betar” won the 1938 regional soccer championship against “Junak,” the Polish team in Drohobycz, according to a Jewish source:

The spectators pulled out knives after the match. There were wounded on both sides because we had our own scum too. Such as Fischel, who was built like the wrestler Zbyszko Cyganiewicz and loved to beat anti-Semites.³⁵¹
Matches involving only Jewish teams sometimes also degenerated into raucous, uncivil events.³⁵²

Ethnic rivalries did not only impact Poles and Jews, but also other national groups. Kopel Koplanitzky recalls the following incident that occurred in Łachwa, Polesia:

In the summer of 1938 … It was a Sunday … Suddenly, there was an explosive sound of shattering glass. Immediately after that, we heard a voice call out in the street: ‘Jews to Palestine.’ Moshe looked out the window and saw one of Lahwah’s Pravoslav [Orthodox] residents, drunk as a skunk, breaking windows of Jewish homes and spewing hatred …

Moshe was brave. He ran to the cabinet, grabbed a two-kilogram weight and, half naked, went into the street. He smashed the head of the Gentile, whose name was Goza, with the weight. Goza’s friends dragged him home, drenched in blood. This was an unusual incident, but it cooled our relations with the local Byelorussian population.³⁵³

Tuvia Bielski, a volatile man who was prone to violence, recalls his experiences in his village of Stankiewicze near Wsielub and in the army:
“We grew up among the [Belorussian] peasants, we knew them. We knew how to fight. …” [In a confrontation with a neighbour in a dispute over some land:] “When he came closer I reached for my scythe and with it hit his. He lost his balance, landing on his back. When he was on the ground, I began to hit him with my hands. Four farmhands came to look. They stood there amused, laughing at the man’s misfortune.

“That day I gave him such a beating that we did not see him for two weeks.”

When a Polish soldier whom Tuvia suspected of being slightly retarded called him a dirty Jew, he grabbed the man by the collar and ordered him to stop. The Pole continued … and Tuvia reached for a knife. He hit the man over the face with the handle of the knife and let him go only after the soldier, whose face was covered with blood, became silent.

Several soldiers witnessed the scene. … This incident was followed by several hearings before different superior officers. Each time Tuvia defended himself saying that as a Polish citizen he could not tolerate anti-Semitic abuse. … the case was dismissed.³⁵⁴

[Retold, this story goes as follows:] When he asked a cook if he could have a schmeer of chicken fat for his bread, the man responded: “Get out of here, you scabby Jew.” Without a moment’s thought, Tuvia grabbed the man with his right hand and pummeled him with his left. He shoved him against a table and grabbed a large knife—which, despite his anger, he refrained from using. Instead, he picked up a chair and smashed it across the cook’s face. …

The incident was subject to a thorough investigation. Tuvia described [with exaggeration] his pride in serving in the army and defending his country. The cook’s insult was directed not only at him, he said deftly, but at the Polish Army itself. “I am prepared to protect the honor of my uniform.” No action was taken.³⁵⁵

Ben Shedletzky from a small near Warsaw recalled a similar experience:
When a fellow Polish soldier said, “Jew, clean my rifle,” Shedletzky hit him with his own rifle, breaking his collar bone and sending him to hospital for 12 days.

“I didn’t know a Jew could hit that hard,” the soldier later told a military hearing which cleared Shedletzky of charges.

The Polish soldier became Shedletzky’s best friend and later helped save his life.³⁵⁶
Yosel Epelbaum recalls the following confrontation with a tax collector in the family meat store in Biała Podlaska:
Most of all we dreaded the tax collector. … Failure to pay [taxes] resulted in the confiscation of your entire stock of goods. A taxman once came into our store and brazenly hauled off a huge slab of beef. This triggered an explosion of rage in Simcha [Yosel’s brother], who walked up behind him, hit him on the side of the head with the brass knuckles he often carried, and knocked him out cold. That particular tax collector never bothered us again, and Simcha was never identified as the one who assaulted him.³⁵⁷
Some other examples:
In Jaroslaw [Jarosław] where his unit was stationed, he [Zygmunt Krygier] was attacked by some hooligans, who wanted to beat him up. … They called him a Jew and he says, ‘Kiss his ass before another one comes.’ They chased him to some alley … he was strong and he really hurt those hooligans. There were three of them and he was put on trial for inflicting serious injury. … He [Father] hired an attorney, one of the most famous ones, and he got him out of this mess.³⁵⁸
The well-known Polish hooligan of the shtetl [in Szczebrzeszyn], Szustak, appears, in the company of the Polish corporal, and both attempt to get into exchanging blows with the Jewish young people.

Moshke Millstein is standing at Shlomo’s booth on the sidewalk. The two big shots get close to him. He remains standing fearlessly. …

The corporal is angered by the ‘Chutzpah of the Zyd [Żyd]’ and begins to hit. Moshke immediately gives each of them a blow from the right and the left, as it needs to be … a group of ‘the guys’ detain Szustak, preventing him from fleeing, and he is given his just deserts … Szustak is not seen in the street for a while.³⁵⁹
A boy was sent to a store in Ryglice on Saturday to purchase tobacco for his father. The Jewish proprietor was outraged, grabbed the boy by the neck, gave him a swift kick and told him to go. Apparently, such a violent reaction did not disturb his Sabbath.³⁶⁰ Such accounts should not be taken for granted. When a 15-year-old Korean-Canadian high school student retaliated and punched a white student in the nose, after the latter called him “a fucking Chinese,” refused to apologize when confronted, and first punched the Korean-Canadian in the mouth, the only one charged by the police was the Korean student, who was also suspended from school. Other students also hurled racial slurs at the Korean student. The rural area in question, a mostly white community north of Toronto, is known for a spate of incidents—given the name “nipper tipping” by locals—where Asian fishermen were assaulted and harassed.³⁶¹

Jews were quite capable of picking fights and defending themselves when confronted, as the following accounts from Kosów Lacki and Częstochowa demonstrate:

The driver who took me to the railroad station the day I left was part of a group of Jewish toughs in our little town who didn’t know fear. They loved a fight with goyim and sometimes even among themselves. (Their filthy language alone could kill.) These drivers prided themselves on their muscles, rudeness and standing up to anybody.³⁶²

They [Endeks] attacked the Jews, and they didn’t let themselves. … When a Jewish team played a non-Jewish team, a radical team, they always came a fight broke out. So the Jews always won the fight. Because they have tough guys, good boxers, good fighters, they always could, they beat up any attack.³⁶³

Yet despite all these tensions, according to official Polish sources, some 8,400 Jews who had emigrated from Poland to Palestine chose to return to Poland in 1926–1938.³⁶⁴ Quite a few Jews who left for America also returned. In the small town of Kolbuszowa, there were ten such Jewish families—a clear indication that many Jews did not believe that life was unbearable for them in interwar Poland.³⁶⁵

It should be noted that when there were signs of impending violence in towns, local authorities and police generally took steps to prevent it.³⁶⁶ When violence erupted the police contained it, often resorting to shooting at the demonstrators, and the culprits were prosecuted and punished.³⁶⁷ On a number of occasions suspected Polish instigators and participants were mistreated by the police and even killed.³⁶⁸ When brawls broke out between Poles and Jews at universities, initiated for the most part by Polish nationalist students, the school authorities did not hesitate to take disciplinary action against all those involved in such activities.³⁶⁹ Conditions in interwar Poland can be contrasted with how Israeli authorities deal with violence by Jews against Palestinians. According to a June 2017 Haaretz editorial,

The impotence of the State of Israel in the face of the Jewish lawbreakers in the territories has been revealed once again. An investigation by Haaretz found that since April [2017] at least nine incidents were documented in which settlers threw stones, and harmed Palestinians, soldiers, and left-wing activists in other ways. Although the incidents were documented or took place in the presence of soldiers, very few suspects were detained, and even those who were detained were quickly released. Needless to say, none of the lawbreakers was prosecuted (Yotam Berger, Haaretz, June 25).

The fact that the Israel Defense Forces and the police turn a blind eye to the crimes of settlers is nothing new. It’s as old as the occupation. Many Palestinians have for years refrained from filing complaints with the police because the outcome is a foregone conclusion. The IDF for its part boasts of the fact that it sends in forces to separate the sides during clashes between settlers and Palestinians, but apparently this intervention, even when it takes place, does not result in prevention or deterrence, and in some cases it is characterized by indifference and even contempt for the task the soldiers were summoned to carry out.

Even more serious, there is documentation of cases in which soldiers are witnesses to violent incidents and do nothing to prevent the attacks, or at least to try to separate the two sides. This happens despite their having the authority to detain the attackers.

Such a disgraceful attitude provides backing for the failures of the police in the territories. … In other words, the job of the police is to find, question and prosecute the suspects. But repeatedly it turns out that the police quickly close hundreds of files with unreasonable explanations of “lack of public interest” or “lack of evidence.” At least in some of the cases it’s clear the police do so without any acceptable explanation.

There is no lack of evidence of the anti-Palestinian activities of Jewish lawbreakers who are residents of the settlements. These include videos, still photos and testimony of Palestinians, investigators from human rights organizations, and IDF soldiers who were present at the scene of the incident. But despite all that, the police fail. They don’t prevent crimes, don’t find suspects, and certainly don’t question and prosecute them.³⁷⁰
The 1920s and 1930s witnessed a marked increase of violence on the part of radicalized elements of society. This was true for many European countries. By far, the largest, most violent and most deadly demonstrations and confrontations were those organized by the socialists and communists.³⁷¹ Ukrainian nationalists embarked on outright terrorism against the Polish State and were also known to attack Jews.³⁷² The Jews were no exception to these disturbing developments. Violent confrontations were by no means the prerogative of criminal elements, such as the bloody fighting between rival underworld gangs of Litvaks and “locals” in Warsaw and Łódź or the fighting that pitted Jewish criminal elements against Jewish workers in Lublin.³⁷³

Street brawls and altercations involving various political, social, linguistic, and even religious factions, disrupting each other’s meetings, and ransacking their opponent’s premises, shops and even synagogues—all these were constant features of everyday Jewish communal life, in both cities and shtetls.³⁷⁴ A bitter 1921 campaign against the appointment of a non-orthodox rabbi to the Warsaw rabbinate resulted in protests by the Agudah in synagogues, study houses and streets, culminating in a mass demonstration of 15–20,000 Hasidim in front of the Gmina (community) building.

Two years later, another angry crowd, whipped up by Agudah activists under the leadership of the influential Ger Hasidic scholar-rabbi-political leader Menachem Zemba, stormed the Gmina building, smashed furniture, and defaced portraits to protest the community’s council’s plans to build a dormitory for Warsaw Jewish university students—“a house of debauchery”—on community land claimed by the Orthodox for religious uses.³⁷⁵
In 1928, a Jewish underground Communist organization disrupted the participation of Jewish students in honour of the tenth anniversary celebrations of Polish statehood in Warsaw, barring the exits of a Jewish girls’ school and lecturing the young girls about Piłsudski’s “fascism” and Poland’s “anti-Soviet” stance.³⁷⁶

The radicalization of the political landscape in the 1930s was a cause for concern, as “nationalism loomed ever larger as a decisive political determinant of Jewish destiny and hence an unavoidable horizon of Jewish political life.”³⁷⁷ The explosive growth of the He-halutz pioneer movement and, at the other end of the political spectrum of Zionism, the dramatic growth in popular support for right-wing Revisionist Zionism, the former’s bitter opponent, gave rise to increased friction and violence in the Jewish community.³⁷⁸ Historian Hillel Halkin provides example of the bitter conflict between the different factions of Zionism in the early 1930’s:

Groups of demonstrators interrupted and heckled both men. Violent brawls were frequent. In Warsaw, Ben-Gurion was attacked with Revisionist stink bombs and bricks; in Brisk [Brześć], Jabotinsky was stoned by a Labor Zionist mob. The level of invective was fierce. Jabotinsky called the Zionist Left “lackeys of Moscow.” Ben Gurion referred to him as “Vladimir Hitler,” an epithet given resonance by the brown-shirted squadrons of Betarniks who accompanied him everywhere. (It was actually pure coincidence that both Betar and the Nazis wore brown for their marching colors, which had been chosen for the Betar uniform long before Hitler’s rise.) Nor did it help that Achimeir and Hazit Ha’am, in which Jabotinsky frequently published, praised the Nazis for their anti-Bolshevism and cult of the leader while condemning only their anti-Semitism. Jabotinsky was irate over this.³⁷⁹
Such violence could take on lethal forms, such as the knifing to death of Dawid Siedlarz in Radzyń Podlaski by Jewish communists.³⁸⁰ Violence on a purely personal level was also not uncommon.³⁸¹ Jews who flaunted their secularism could find themselves roughed up by religious Jews. The Warsaw Yiddish daily Haynt reported, the day after Yom Kippur, 1927, that when a group of Freethinkers, some with lit cigarettes, came out onto a street in the Jewish quarter, “On account of this provocation, a serious battle occurred between the ‘demonstrators’ and the religious passers-by. Water was dumped from a window on Karmelicka Street onto the heads of the Freethinkers.”³⁸² Religious Jews were attacked by Zionists. On October 12, 1933, 40 Zionists stormed the synagogue in Mielec, where 150 Orthodox Jews were praying. They threw stones, smashed windows, and basically demolished the interior of the edifice. The brawl spread onto the adjoining streets, where windows of homes were broken including the rabbi’s.³⁸³

As historian Samuel D. Kassow has observed, violence was part and parcel of ordinary shtetl life:

Contrary to popular perceptions, the shtetl saw its share of violence and chicanery. Chaim Grade’s account in Tsemakh Atlas of a local balebos’s hiring thugs to destroy a library accords with real-life accounts of violence during kehillah elections, disputes over new rabbis and funerals, and arguments over taxes. Grudges and grievances often interrupted Sabbath prayers and even led to fights in the synagogue. Incidents such as that which occurred in Mińsk Mazowiecki in the 1930’s, when the local butchers assaulted a respected Zionist delegate to the kehillah after he raised the meat tax to pay for the local Tarbut school, were not uncommon. Bribery to fix elections of new rabbis was rampant, and the disgruntled party often brought in its own candidate, thus leading to serious conflicts that split families and friends.

… An incident in Głębokie on Yom Kippur in 1932 was not atypical. In that case, a conflict arose in the Starosielsker minyan over who would lead the musaf (additional) prayers. When Rabbi Menakhem-Mendl Kuperstock began to intone “Hineni he-ani,” a fist fight broke out. His opponents, still draped in prayer shawls, ran to adjoining synagogues to rally reinforcements. A mass brawl ensued, and as Polish police arrived en masse to quell the fighting, the leader of the pro-Kuperstock faction was seen escaping through a window. Twenty-five Jews, including many of the prominent community leaders, faced a public trial, which ended in suspended sentences. The editor of the local [Jewish] newspaper had pleaded with the opposing parties to settle their differences before the trial began. For a time it seemed that he had succeeded, but as soon as the court session started, charges and countercharges—in a broken Polish that caused waves of laughter from the spectators—began flying back and forth. In Mińsk Mazowiecki, a sharp battle over the rabbi’s position went all the way to the Polish Najwyższy Trybunał Administracyjny (Supreme Administrative Tribunal).³⁸⁴

Another key source that reflected the changing society of the shtetl was the weekly newspaper. Such publications contain valuable contemporary accounts that serve as a counterpoint to the nostalgic accounts that were published in many of the post-war memorial books (yizker bikher). For example, the memorial book of Glebokie [Głębokie] made no mention of grinding poverty. Indeed, it said that most Jews lived well … But the weekly shtetl newspaper painted a far bleaker picture and ran detailed accounts of riots by desperately poor Jews who demanded more help from the Jewish community. The memorial book depicted an image of a Jewish community that lived in peace and harmony. But in an editorial from October of 1931, the shtetl newspaper bemoaned the fact that on Shabes Shuva (the Sabbath between Rosh Hashona and Yom Kippur) fights had broken out in three different synagogues. “Gentiles like to fight in taverns,” the newspaper complained. “We prefer to fight in the synagogue.” On Yom Kippur of 1932 a fight broke out over who would lead a service in the synagogue [and] resulted in a mass brawl that spilled into the street. On this, too, the memorial book was completely silent.

… Elections [to the kehilles, the local Jewish community councils] were often intense and hard fought and exposed political rifts in the community. Political parties, coalitions of Hasidim and prayer houses, and personal cliques all contested these elections, which were sometimes marked by violence, especially when the Orthodox Agudat Yisroel used Polish law to overturn Bundist and Zionist victories. In the shtetl of Sokolow [Sokołów], after the Aguda used Article 20 to cancel a Poalei Tsiyon (Labor Zionist victory), the Poalei Tsiyon invaded the kehila building and smashed the furniture.³⁸⁵

In an eye-opening study, YIVO researcher Eddy Portnoy notes that the Yiddish papers of the 1920s and 1930s “are full of reports of furious Jew-on-Jew violence, attacks that took place between all kinds of Jews.”³⁸⁶ An article in Haynt (October 3, 1927) is titled “A Bloody Battle Between Jews (That lasted 21 hours).” It occurred on Krochmalna Street in Warsaw. Hundreds of Jews were involved in the riot, which began over one woman starting “rumors” about another.³⁸⁷ There was a growing nonobservance of Sabbath by many Jews, and this prompted the activities of the Shomrey Shabbos (“Guardians of the Shabbos, or perhaps more accurately, as Portnoy suggests, “the Sabbath Enforcers”). Portnoy writes, “Infractions were often met with threats of boycott, public reprimand, and even violence.”³⁸⁸ In 1935, the three leaders of the anti-Shabbos group in the Praga suburb of Warsaw were all found to have died under mysterious circumstances (one with his throat slashed). However, it was not only the religious Jews that initiated Sabbath-related violence. Portnoy informs us that, “The Free Thinkers, as they were known, had bureaus all over Poland, clubhouses for nonbelievers where lectures and meetings were held … Willing to fight at the drop of a hat, the Free Thinkers and the Shabbos enforcers often came to fisticuffs, or worse; in 1935 the enforcers tried to bomb a Free Thinker office on Warsaw’s Krulevska [Królewska] Street.”³⁸⁹

Profonation of Yom Kippur was not organized by Christians, but by the Jews themselves. Portnoy notes that, “Yom Kippur fisticuffs, it should be known, were not unique to New York City. Warsaw, with its large Jewish population, was also a flashpoint for Jew-on-Jew Day of Atonement fury.”³⁹⁰ The following statements provide the background to this movement, which cannot be considered as marginal: