May 2016 Traditional Jewish Attitudes Toward Poles

, 475–76 (a gang that “held the gentiles around adjacent towns in fear”), 545–46 (a notorious bandit gang “composed primarily of Jewish young men … terrorized both Jews and Christians in all the region”); Benyamin Shapir-Shisko (Karkoor), “Culture Wars in Volozhin,” in E. Leoni, ed., Wolozin: The Book of the City and of the Etz Hayyim Yeshiva, posted on the Internet at ; translation of Wolozyn: Sefer shel ha-ir ve-shel yeshivat “Ets Hayim” (Tel Aviv: Former Residents of Wolozin in Israel and the USA, 1970), 440ff. (Wołożyn); David Shtokfish, ed., Sefer-yizkor Ostrow-Lubelski—Yisker bukh Ostrow-Lubelski (Israel: Association of Former Residents of Ostrow-Lubelski in Israel, 1987), in particular, the account of Mechi (Mischa) Eckhaus posted on the Internet at (Ostrów Lubelski); Mędrzecki, Województwo Wołyńskie 1921–1939, 179, n.18 (political gatherings often ended in brawls and religious-based confrontations also occurred in Volhynia); Lucy S. Dawidowicz, From That Place and Time: A Memoir, 1938–1947 (New York and London: W.W. Norton, 1989), 156–57 (political violence in Wilno); Naftali Dov Fuss, The Imposter (Jerusalem: Gefen, 1992), 35–36 (Tarnów); Jack Pomerantz and Lyric Wallwork Winik, Run East: Flight from the Holocaust (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1997), 12 (Radzyń Podlaski, where political fighting pitted against each other Communists, Bundists, and Zionists); Gitel Donath, My Bones Battle to Survive: A Lonely Battle to Survive German Tyranny (Montreal: Kaplan Publishing, 1999) (Siedlce); Paweł Machcewicz and Krzysztof Persak, eds., Wokół Jedwabnego (Warsaw: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej–Komisja Ścigania Zbrodni przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu, 2002), vol. 2, 269 (Radziłów); Stefan Ernest, O Wojnie wielkich Niemiec z Żydami Warszawy, 1939–1945 (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 2003), 173 (Izrael First, the administrator of the Jewish Academic House in Warsaw’s Praga suburb, was renowned for leading fights with Jewish students with communist leanings); Joseph Pell and Fred Rosenbaum, Taking Risks: A Jewish Youth in the Soviet Partisans and His Unlikely Life in California (Berkeley: Western Jewish History Center of the Judah L. Magnes Museum and RDR Books, 2004), 27–28 (altercations between Betar and Hashomer supporters and fist fights between Bundists and Zionists in Biała Podlaska); Mariusz Bechta, Narodowo radykalni: Obrona tradycji i ofensywa narodowa na Podlasiu w latach 1934–1939 (Biała Podlaska: Biblioteczka Bialska and Rekonwista, 2004), 209–10 (Międzyrzec Podlaski, Radzyń Podlaski); Janusz Szczepański, Społeczność żydowska Mazowsza w XIX–XX wieku (Pułtusk: Wyższa Szkoła Humanistyczna imienia Aleksandra Gieysztora w Pułtusku, 2005), 265 (15 Bundists armed with hammers, posts and iron rods attacked Beitar members in Długosiodło, injuring 9 of them), 278 (Przasznysz), 284 (Maków), 286 (Mława), 304 (various locations), 305 (Nowy Dwór), 306 (Pułtusk), 315 (various locations), 317 (Wyszogród)—Szczepański’s study mentions many interventions by police; Mosze Snejser, as told to Jakub Rajchman, “Robiłem buty, odmawiałem kadisz,” Rzeczpospolita, January 29–30, 2005 (a Communist by the name of Jojne Bocian was killed as a traitor); Kamil Kijek, “Radykalizm polityczny sztetlowej młodzieży okresu międzywojennego,” in Sitarek, Trębacz, and Wiatr, Zagłada Żydów na polskiej prowincji, 86 (Leftist youth attacked stores belonging to Revisionists in Bielsk Podlaski, and fights between these factions occurred even during synagogue services); Bechta, Pogrom czy odwet?, Chapter 1 (Jewish Communists attacked Zionists in Parczew); Fay Bussgan and Julian Bussgang, eds., Działoszyce Memorial Book (New York: JewishGen, 2012), 126 (fist fights between Zionists and religious Jews and burning of library books in Działoszyce).

This communal violence was not just an interwar phenomenon but went back at least many decades prior, as the following example from Our Hometown Goniondz, 543–44, cited above, illustrates:

In Goniondz [Goniądz], in the 1880’s, a great schism occurred between the Chassidim and the misnagdim. … During that time period, there was a Reb Berele who was very staunchly supported by the poorer folk in town. The successful Chassidic merchants in town, however, were not pleased with him, and brought in Rabbi Gedaliah Kaminetzky. A sharp division soon broke out between the two rival factions. The Chassidim persecuted Reb Berele. They broke his windows and didn’t provide him with an income, since the local government franchise was in their hands.

The misnagdim mounted a counter attack. They went to the little Chassidic shtibl, which at that time was located in Chatzkel Babniak’s house. They pulled out the Sefer Toras and other books, and broke the benches and tables. From time to time, a fist fight would break out in the House of Study. Once, after the Sabbath prayers, the Chassids fell on Yehuda the butcher. When the other butchers found that Yehuda was being beaten, they all ran to the House of Study to defend him. At the end, the Chassids won the battle and Reb Berele had to leave town.

Violence also plagued Jewish politics in Palestine. See Joseph B. Schechtman, Fighter and Prophet: The Vladimir Jabotinsky Story (New York and London: Thomas Yoseloff, 1959). When Vladimir Jabotinsky spoke, he often faced well-planned Jewish Communist and Jewish Socialist heckling and disruption. Jabotinsky used “self-defence” units, comprising Barissia and later Betar, to beat up the disrupters. (PP. 36, 110–11, 190–91.) Sometimes the Revisionist youth instigated violence against Jewish leftists (p. 462). A Revisionist (Stavsky) was accused of the murder of Chaim Arlosoroff in Tel Aviv in 1933. Arlosoroff had been anti-Revisionist. Jewish leftists and other anti-Revisionists raised a hue and cry, trying to associate all Revisionists with the crime. Jabotinsky pointed out that, ironically, blaming an entire community for the actions of one of its individuals had been a poison weapon of anti-Semites (p. 186). The strong attack against the accused assassin, Stavsky, before he had been convicted of the crime amounted, in Jabotinsky’s words, to a “shameful pogrom and blood libel campaign conducted by Jews against Jews.” (P. 187.) Some Jews vowed to kill Revisionists to avenge Arlosoroff’s blood but, while this did not happen, there were violent attempts against Jabotinsky (pp. 189–90). (In time, Stavsky was acquitted and the crime was never solved.) Jabotinsky was candid about prejudices emanating from the Jewish side. He commented: “‘The main difficulty lies in the attitude of the Zionist leaders toward the non-Jewish world. … Theirs is a typical ghetto mentality, which regards all non-Jews as goyim, as enemies. With such a mentality nothing can be achieved. It is time that the Jewish people began to have confidence in the goyim. The goyim have not produced only Hamans; they have also produced great idealists who have given their blood for the cause of humanity.’” (P. 71.)

345 Kenneth B. Moss, “Negotiating Jewish Nationalism in Interwar Warsaw,” in Dynner and Guesnet, Warsaw: The Jewish Metropolis, 411–12.

346 Kenneth B. Moss, “Negotiating Jewish Nationalism in Interwar Warsaw,” in Dynner and Guesnet, Warsaw: The Jewish Metropolis, 419.

347 Kenneth B. Moss, “Negotiating Jewish Nationalism in Interwar Warsaw,” in Dynner and Guesnet, Warsaw: The Jewish Metropolis, 429.

348 By the early 1930s He-halutz had tens of thousands of members, and by 1935, the Revisionists could claim some 450,000 supporters and some 40,000 in its Betar youth organization. See Kenneth B. Moss, “Negotiating Jewish Nationalism in Interwar Warsaw,” in Dynner and Guesnet, Warsaw: The Jewish Metropolis, 426–27.

349 Hillel Halkin, Jabotinsky: A Life (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2014), 181.

350 Arkadiusz Kołodziejczak, “Morderstwo Dawida Siedlarza: Karta z dziejów Komunistycznej Partii Polskiej w Radzyniu Podlaski,” Radzyński Rocznik Humanistyczny, vol. 3 (2005): 97–105; Dariusz Magier, “Komuniści w powiecie radzyńskim w latach 1918–1944,” Radzyński Rocznik Humanistyczny, vol. 6 (2008): 188–89. When local Jewish communists learned that Dawid Siedlarz had become a police informer, he was knifed to death in May 1930 after two earlier failed attempts to kill him. More than a dozen Jews were implicated in his murder.

351 One memoirist recalled the reaction of her father when he learned about the verbal “advances” of his teenaged daughter’s male acquaintance: “When my father heard of this incident, he beat the boy till he was black and blue.” See Miriam Brysk, Amidst the Shadows of Trees (Ann Arbor, Michigan: Yellow Star Press, 2007), 35. An example from Chmielnik is the animosity toward a Jew called “Pitro,” who was disliked by other Jews. His antagonists would pay young Polish boys money to call him “Duński Kozalc” and then laugh at him. See Maciągowski and Krawczyk, The Story of Jewish Chmielnik, 192.

352 Mireille Silcoff, “(Moder) Day of Atonement,” National Post (Toronto), September 18, 2010.

353 Andrzej Krempa, Zagłada Żydów mieleckich, Second revised edition (Mielec: Muzeum Regionalne w Mielcu, 2013), 41. The local police intervened and arrests were made, among them Süssel Schmidt, a member of the town council, who was not elected to the Jewish community council. Some Jewish Communists also took part in the mêlée.

354 Samuel D. Kassow, “Community and Identity in the Interwar Shtetl,” in Gutman, et al., The Jews of Poland Between Two World Wars, 204–205. Kassow goes on to point out: “Quite often these conflicts went to the Polish courts, a point suggesting a higher degree of Jewish-Gentile contact than one would assume from reading the memorial books.” Jews often prevailed over Christians in proceedings in Polish courts, both civil and criminal, which were by and large impartial. See, for example, Wrobel, My Life My Way, 42; Leah Shlechter-Shapiro, “I Was a Wtniess to a False Accusation,” in Dereczin, 189–90; Asher Tarmon, ed., Memorial Book: The Jewish Communities of Manyevitz, Horodok, Lishnivka, Troyanuvka, Povursk, and Kolki (Wolyn Region) (Tel-Aviv: Organization of Survivors of Manyevitz, Horodok, Lishnivka, Troyanuvka, Povursk, Kolki and Surroundings Living in Israel and Overseas, 2004), 121.

355 Samuel Kassow, “The Shtetl in Interwar Poland,” in Steven T. Katz, ed., The Shtetl: New Evaluations (New York and London: New York University Press, 2007), 128, 130.

356 One newspaper, Sprawa Katolicka, reported the following incidents in a span of several weeks in 1935: an assault on athletes in Równe; an assault on a Catholic newspaper distributor; an assault on a painter in Radom; an assault on a 73-year-old woman in Lwów. See Dariusz Libionka, “Duchowieństwo diecezji łomżyńskiej wobec antysemityzmu i zagłady Żydów,” in Machcewicz and Persak, eds., Wokół Jedwabnego, vol. 1, 111.

357 Sebastian Piątkowski, Dni życia, dni śmierci: Ludność żydowska w Radomiu w latach 1918–1950 (Warsaw: Naczelna Dyrekcja Archiwów Państwowych, 2006), 90–100, 145–47.

358 Tomasz Kawski, Kujawsko-dobrzyńscy Żydzi w latach 1918–1950 (Toruń: Adam Marszałek, 2006), 230–31.

359 Kosow Lacki (San Francisco: Holocaust Center of Northern California, 1992), 49; David Ravid (Shmukler), ed., The Cieszanow Memorial Book (Mahwah, New Jersey: Jacob Solomon Berger, 2006), 40. Another account in the latter book refers to General Władysław Sikorski as having a “filthy Polish heart.” Ibid., 112.

360 Piotr Gontarczyk, Pogrom?: Zajścia polsko-żydowskie w Przytyku 9 marca 1936 r. Mity, fakty, dokumenty (Biała Podlaska: Rekonwista, and Pruszków: Rachocki i S-ka, 2000), 34.

361 Kawski, Kujawsko-dobrzyńscy Żydzi w latach 1918–1950, 237.

362 Joanna Żyndul, Zajścia antyżydowskie w Polsce w latach 1935–1937 (Warsaw: Fundacja im. K. Kelles-Krauza, 1994).

363 Emanuel Melzer, “Anti-Semitism in the Last Years of the Second Polish Republic,” in Gutman, et al., The Jews of Poland Between Two World Wars, 129. According to historian Emanuel Melzer: “The anti-Jewish excesses and pogroms in the years 1935–37 had their specific characteristics and dynamics. Usually they resulted from the killing of a Pole by a Jew, either as an act of self-defence or [more often] as a criminal act of an individual committed out of personal revenge. For this killing the entire local Jewish community was held collectively responsible. The pogroms of Grodno (1935), Przytyk (1936), Mińsk Mazowiecki (1936), Brześć nad Bugiem (1937), and Częstochowa (1937) all followed this pattern.” See Emanuel Melzer, No Way Out: The Politics of Polish Jewry, 1935–1939 (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1997), 53. The murder of the Pole that led to the retaliation killing of a Jewish couple in Przytyk in March 1936 was not an act of self-defence: he was shot in the back. It was the Jews, and not the Poles, that had escalated the heretofore-limited conflict by introducing firearms and shooting indiscriminately at Poles. Up to that time, the dispute had been limited to mutual insults, fisticuffs, and reciprocal overturning of booths. In May 1936, without any provocation, a group of Jews attacked and started to beat some young, unarmed Poles who passed by them on a street in in Kielce. One of the Jewish assailants stabbed Stanisław Łagowski, a 17-year-old student, in the back, seriously injuring him. In retaliation, some Poles accosted Jews in the area of the crime. The police quickly intervened to restore order, and arrested thirty Jews suspected of involvement in the attack on the Poles as well asother involved in altercations. A number of Jewish stores were demolished in Mińsk Mazowiecki in June 1936 after Jan Bujak, a Wachtmeister of the local 7^th Uhlan Regiment was shot by Judka Lejb Chaskielewicz, a Jewish resident. The stabbing of a policeman by a Jew in Brześć was an unprovoked attack; the Jewish leaders failed to take immediate steps to distance the community by condemning the aggression against a state official. The shooting of a Polish labourer by a Jewish restaurateur on September 17, 1937 led to disturbances in Bielsko-Biała where windows of Jewish shops and homes were broken. (See Żyndul, Zajścia antyżydowskie w Polsce w latach 1935–1937, 48, with an erroneous date of November.) Melzer fails to make it clear that the number of Polish rioters was relatively small (only a tiny fraction of the large numbers of people involved in race riots that have periodically engulfed the United States in the 20^th century: the riots often lasted for days or weeks, wreaked massive destruction on cities and resulted in hundreds of deaths and widescale looting, e.g., 53 in the Los Angeles riots of April 1992 alone, and more than 2,000 personal injuries); that the police arrested hundreds of rioters, both Poles and less frequently Jews, who were brought to trial speedily, and if found guilty, punished by prison sentences; that Poles were often assaulted by Jews during these altercations, as was the case in Przytyk, Brześć, and Cieszanów (1924). See Ravid, The Cieszanow Memorial Book, 21. Such factors do not lend support to the notion of a high degree of mass popular fury directed at Jews collectively. Moreover, reports about such incidents were often grossly exaggerated as when, for example, the Jewish press in Warsaw turned an altercation at a football game in Lublin in October 1931, into a pogrom in which more than 30 Jews were allegedly wounded, some seriously. The Lubliner Tuglat was astounded by these revelations and rebuked the Warsaw press. See Maurycjusz, “‘Kibole’ minionej epoki,” Nowa Myśl Polska, December 5, 2004. For more about violence by Christians directed at Jews, its background, Jewish retaliation, and the reaction of the authorities including the frequent use of police reinforcements, preventative detention and punishment of perpetrators, see: Żyndul, Zajścia antyżydowskie w Polsce w latach 1935–1937; Chodakiewicz, Żydzi i Polacy 1918–1955, 78–91; Gontarczyk, Pogrom?, especially 32–44; Wojciech Śleszyński, Zajścia antyżydowskie w Brześciu nad Bugiem 13 V 1937 r. (Białystok: Archiwum Państwowe w Białymstoku, Polskie Towarzystwo Historyczne–Oddział w Białymstoku, 2004)—for a critique of Śleszyński’s book, see Piotr Cichoracki’s review in Dzieje Najnowsze, vol. 37, no. 3 (2005): 214–18, and also Piotr Cichoracki, Polesie nieidylliczne: Zaburzenia porządku publicznego w województwie poleskim w latach trzydziestych XX w. (Łomianki: LTW, 2007), 198–253; Szymon Rudnicki, “Dokument kontrwywiadu o pogromie brzeskim 13 maja 1937 roku,” Kwartalnik Historii Żydów, no. 2 (2009): 221–34; Bechta, Narodowo radykalni, chapter 4; “Confessions of Zbigniew Romaniuk,” in The Story of Two Shtetls, Brańsk and Ejszyszki, Part Two, 24–25; Hoffman, Shtetl, 196–99; Machcewicz and Persak, eds., Wokół Jedwabnego, vol. 1, 112–13; Mariusz Bechta, Pogrom czy odwet?: Akcja zbrojna Zrzeszenia “Wolność i Niezawiłość” w Parczewie 5 lutego 1946 r. (forthcoming), Chapter 1 (an armed groups of Jew attempted to storm the local headquarters of the National Democratic Party and beat up its leader). After the Przytyk riots in March 1936, the Jewish community smuggled out of the country most of the twenty members of the so-called self-defence group, thus demonstrating that the Jews considered themselves to be above the law. See Antony Polonsky, The Jews in Poland and Russia, vol. 3: 1914 to 2001 (Oxford and Portland, Oregon: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2012), 146. Anti-Jewish disturbances also occurred in areas where the population was primarily non-Polish. In Kamień Koszyrski, Polesia (Polesie), an angry Ukrainian mob reportedly pillaged, robbed and killed some Jews on May 18, 1937. See Shmuel Aba Klurman, “September 1939—The Beginning of the End,” in A. A. Stein, et al., eds., Sefer ha-zikaron le-kehilat Kamien Koszyrski ve-ha-seviva (Tel Aviv: Former Residents of Kamin Koshirsky and Surroundings in Israel, 1965), 101, translated as Kamen Kashirskiy Book, Internet: