May 2016 Traditional Jewish Attitudes Toward Poles

Video footage shows hundreds of Beitar Jerusalem fans rioting against Arab workers in Malha Mall; investigation delayed because no complaints were filed, say police. 

The Jerusalem Police announced Sunday that it had opened an official investigation over the riots that erupted last week when 300 Beitar Jerusalem fans attacked Arabs at the capital’s Malha shopping mall.

Hundreds of Beitar Jerusalem supporters who went to the mall after a match last week were caught on video assaulting Arab cleaning personnel, in what was said to be one of Jerusalem’s biggest-ever ethnic clashes. “It was a mass lynching attempt,” said Mohammed Yusuf, a team leader for Or-Orly cleaning services.

Despite CCTV footage of the events, no-one was arrested. Israel Police chief said Rosenfeld said no investigation was launched before a Haaretz article on the incident stirred a controversy, because no one sought medical attention or filed complaints.

Witnesses said that after a soccer game in the nearby Teddy Stadium, hundreds of mostly teenage supporters flooded into the shopping center, hurling racial abuse at Arab workers and customers and chanting anti-Arab slogans, and filled the food hall on the second floor.

“I’ve never seen so many people,” said A, a shopkeeper. “They stood on chairs and tables and what have you. They made a terrible noise, screamed ‘death to the Arabs,’ waved their scarves and sang songs at the top of their voices.”

Shortly afterward, several supporters started harassing three Arab women, who sat in the food hall with their children. They verbally abused and spat on them.

Some Arab men, who work as cleaners at the shopping center and observed the brawl, came to their rescue. “How can you stand aside and do nothing?” said Akram, a resident of the Old City’s Muslim Quarter who was one of the cleaners who got involved. CCTV footage shows that they started chasing the rioting youths, wielding broomsticks.

It seemed the workers managed to chase the abusers away, but a few minutes later supporters returned and assaulted them. “They caught some of them and beat the hell out of them,” said Yair, owner of a bakery located in the food hall. “They hurled people into shops, and smashed them against shop windows. I don’t understand how none shattered into pieces. One cleaner was attacked by some 20 people, poor guy, and then they had a go at his brother who works in a nearby pizza shop and came to his rescue.”

The attackers also asked Jewish shop owners for knives and sticks to serve as weapons but none consented, witnesses said. Avi Biton, Malha’s security director, sent a force of security guards in an attempt to restore order, but they were outnumbered. He called the police who arrived in large numbers about 40 minutes after the brawl started. At about 10.30 P.M., they evacuated the mall and the management shut its doors.

“I’ve been here for many years and I've never seen such a thing,” said Gideon Avrahami, Malha’s executive director. “It was a disgraceful, shocking, racist incident; simply terrible.”

Biton said that his department would step up security measures when Beitar matches take place. “This event was unusual for Beitar fans,” he said. “We’ve learned our lesson and from now on we'll make more serious preparations ahead of Beitar games.”

Beitar fans are known for their staunchly anti-Arab positions and have been previously involved in attacks on Arabs.

A few weeks later dozens of Beitar Jerusalem soccer fans marched in Jerusalem chanting anti-Arab slogans (“Death to the Arabs”) on their way to a match and beat a woman who objected. Typically, the police who escorted the march part of the way did not hear any racist chants and couldn’t apprehend her attackers since they melted into the crowd. See Nir Hasson and Oz Rosenberg, “Beitar Soccer Fans March in Jerusalem Chanting Racist Slogans, Allegedly Beat Woman,” Haaretz, April 16, 2012. That same month, Molotov cocktails were hurled at apartments occupied by African refugees in Tel Aviv’s Shapira neighbourhood, causing significant property damage but, fortunately, there was no loss of life. A kindergarten attended by migrant children was also targeted and damaged in the attacks. In May 2012, thousands of Israeli protesters attacked Africans they encountered, vandalized cars, and smashed windows and looted stores. See Ilan Lior and Tomer Zarchin, “Demonstrators Attack African Migrants in South Tel Aviv,” Haaretz, May 24, 2012. The following week, unknown attackers set fire in Jerusalem to an apartment housing Eritrean migrants, luckily injuring only two people. Concerned that their non-Jewish presence could become permanent, and inflamed by hateful political rhetoric and ugly rumours falsely accusing asylum-seekers of committing 40 percent of the crime in the Tel Aviv area, spray painted on the wall was the ominous threat, “Get out of the neighbourhood.” See Patrick Martin, “Flood of African Asylum Seekers into Israel Sparks Race Riots,” The Globe and Mail, June 5, 2012. Africans, of course, are often on the giving end in such confrontations, as the anti-Rwandan riots in Lusaka, Zambia in April 2016 show. See Siobhán O’Grady, “After Mysterious Ritual Killings, Two Zambians Burned Alive in Witch Hunt,” Foreign Policy, April 20, 2016.

364 During the 19^th century partitions of Poland most lands inhabited by Poles came (eventually) under Russian rule. The Jews were confined by and large to the Pale of Settlement, most of which was ethnically Ukrainian or Belorussian, except for the lands west of the Bug and around the city of Wilno (Vilna in Russian). As Jewish scholars point out, “Until 1881 in Russia, the number of riots by Jews against other Jews probably exceeded the number of pogroms by non-Jews against Jews.” See Shahak and Mezvinsky, Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, 132. The pogroms that occurred in the latter part of the 19^th century and early 20^th century for the most part bypassed the ethnically Polish lands. The deadly pogroms that did occur there were perpetrated by the Russian authorities, for example, in Białystok in June 1906 and Siedlce in September 1906. Only one Jew was killed as a result of anti-Jewish rioting that occurred in Warsaw in 1881, which was precipitated by a stampede that took 28 Polish lives. See Michał Kurkiewicz and Monika Plutecka, “Rosyjskie pogromy w Białymstoku i Siedlcach w 1906 roku,” Biuletyn Instytutu Pamięci Narodowej, no. 11 (November 2010): 20–24; Artur Markowski, “Pogromy, zajścia, ekscesy: Zbiorowe akty przemocy przeciw Żydom w Białymstoku pierwszych dekad XX wieku,” Studia Judaica, 27 (2011): 23–44; Artur Markowski, “Anti-Jewish Pogroms in the Kingdom of Poland” in Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry, 1815–1918, vol. 27: Jews in the Kingdom of Poland, 1815–1918 (Oxford and Portland, Oregon: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2015), 219–55, here at 230–33. Given the infrequency of such occurrences (eight “pogroms” in the Kingdom of Poland, some of them small, involving a small number of ethnic Poles over the span of 100 years, and usually precipitated by local grievances), Artur Markowski’s conclusion that “pogrom attitudes” permeated Polish society is an unwarranted generalization similar to stereotypes that form the basis of twentieth century (and even current-day) charges of “Black crime” in the United States or Canada. (Unfortunately, Makowski frequently resorts to sweeping generalizations based on stereotypes.) Pogrom paranoia swept the Jewish community at the beginning of the twentieth century and all sorts of myths and rumours about the Chrsitians’ anti-Jewish activities arose, such as speculation about attempts to achieve the mass extermination of Jews by poisoning them, for example, Christians were allegedly handing out poisoned sweets and sugar to Jewish children. This psychosis bred Jewish aggression causing them sometimes to attack Christians without cause.

365 Sławomir Mańko, “Żydzi międzyrzeccy w okresie Drugiej Rzeczypospolitej w świetle dokumentów Archiwum Państwowego w Lublinie,” Kwartalnik Historii Żydów, no. 2 (2006). As pointed out in a study on the town of Chmielnik, the Jewish community derived the vast majority of its income from slaughter charges and ritual butchers were, along with rabbis, the best paid employees in the community. See Marek Maciągowski and Piotr Krawczyk, The Story of Jewish Chmielnik (Kielce: XYZ and Town and Municipality Office in Chmielnik, 2007), 92. The vast majority of Poland’s meat production (much higher than in other countries) was prepared according to the dictates of Jewish ritual slaughter, and this greatly raised the price of beef. Within the Jewish community this was felt most heavily by impoverished Jews. Legislation was enacted by the Polish Parliament in January 1937 to limit ritual slaughter of animals proportionate to the Jewish share of the country’s population. While the law was recognizably enacted to reduce the Jewish dominance of the meat industry, it did not abolish kosher slaugher contrary to what many historians allege. See Gershon C. Bacon, The Politics of Tradition: Agudat Yisrael in Poland, 1916–1939 (Jerusalem: Hebrew University, Magnes Press, 1996), 278. Many historians, like Anika Walke, for example, claim that by the mid-1930s, the Polish government had “prohibited the ritual slaughter required to maintain the Jewish dietary law.” See the introduction to Kutz, If, By Miracle, xv. Nonetheless, this measure sparked boisterous accusations of anti-Semitism even though, at that time, the practice had been banned entirely in Switzerland, Norway and Sweden (for humanitarian reasons animals had to be stunned before slaughter). (It should also be noted that ritual slaughter is presently not permitted in the European Union except for religious purposes.) In Poland, there was an important economic consideration at play, in that the meat processing industry was largely in Jewish hands and as many as 90% of cattle were killed ritually. Ritual slaughter was an important source of revenue—perhaps as high as 50% of their income—of Jewish communities, who licenced those who carried it out and charged a tax for every slaughtered animal. In effect, Christian consumers bore the bulk of the tax on kosher meat and were thus subsidizing Jewish community institutions. The restriction of the practice of ritual slaughter alleviated the unnecessary financial burden that fell on the largely impoverished Christian population for a practice that was not dictated by their religion. Had the situation been reversed, and Jews were subsidizing Christian community institutions, it would undoubtedly have been branded as anti-Semitic. While the charges extracted from North American food producers for kosher certification are equally exorbitant and are borne for the most part by Christians, while enriching the coffers of the Jewish religious establishment, they are spread over a much larger consumer base. Emanuel Melzer correctly points out that the new shechita law reduced, but did not eliminate, the practice. However, the author states that the new law deprived tens of thousands of Jews of their livelihood, and that it caused such a drop in revenue available to the Jewish communities that they had to institute a new tax among Jews to make up for the loss. See Melzer, No Way Out, 86, 194–95. This telling fact validates the premise that the Jewish system of ritual slaughter, was, in part, economically superfluous, and that the shechita system did in fact impose a hidden tax upon Poles.

366 Katz, Gone to Pitchipoï, 6–7.

367 Thomas Toivi Blatt, From the Ashes of Sobibor: A Story of Survival (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1997), 10.

368 “Polish Rabbi Arrested for Inciting Congregation Against Sabbath Desecrating Barber,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, January 6, 1932.

369 Testimony of Avraham Hartman in Denise Nevo and Mira Berger, eds., We Remember: Testimonies of Twenty-four Members of the Kibbutz Megiddo who Survived the Holocaust (New York: Shengold Publishers, 1994), 220.

370 Aharon Schrift, “The Match,” in Shuval, The Szczebrzeszyn Memorial Book, 25–27. The author recalled: “My father rolled me over, and he flayed me on my behind with his belt until I became black and blue. I could not sit for days. My yelling could be heard out in the middle of the street.”

371 Leibush Glomb, from the village of Grabowiec near Zamość, writes that the Jews “enjoyed not only some sort of religious and spiritual autonomy, but could also carry on their business amongst themselves without interference of secular authorities. When they had quarrels, they went to their Rabbi.” See Sh. Kanc, ed., Memorial Book Grabowitz (Tel Aviv: Grabowiec Society in Israel, 1975), 12–13 (English section). For examples of chicaneries see Szczepański, Społeczność żydowska Mazowsza w XIX–XX wieku, 317. Another example: “Frysztak received a reputation as a fanatical place in the area. The community followed the extreme precepts of orthodox Jewry and did not tolerate the slightest deviation. There was not even a breath of Zionism in the shtetl. Several young yeshiva students tried to open a non-religious library in the hamlet and borrowed some books from nearby Strzyzow [Strzyżów]. The religious opponents took matters in their hands and set the place on fire. Following serious discussions within the community to prevent the matter from reaching the courts, the culprits admitted their deeds and promised to pay damages to the library in Strzyzow.” See “Frysztak,” in Pinkas ha-kehilot: Polin, vol. 3 (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1984), 295–98, translated as Encyclopedia of Jewish Communities in Poland, Internet: .

372 The son of a well-to-do fur merchant in Radom recalls: “After a burglary, we, like other such victims, would go to a certain tavern in town notorious for its underworld clientele. We would wait until we were approached by one of the regulars who asked us what kind of merchandise we were seeking. … We then told him what was missing and he would invariably tell us to come back the following day. When we did, we would have a ‘discussion’ with the thieves’ ‘representatives’ and negotiate a price in exchange for the return of the mechandise. … Going to the police was a ‘breach of faith,’ and the thieves could no longer negotiate with us.” See Jack Werber with William B. Helmreich, Saving Children: Diary of a Buchenwald Survivor and Rescuer (New Brunswick, New Jersey and London: Transaction Publishers, 1996), 8–10.

373 Leonard Rowe, “Jewish Self-Defense: A Response to Violence,” in Fishman, Studies on Polish Jewry, 1919–1939, 105–49. Rowe argues that the formation of Jewish militias was largely in response to Polish anti-Semitic violence and that they engaged only in “self-defence” or “preventive” actions. Rowe extols their virtues to the heavens: “Their moral values and mode of living were expected to be impeccable, and these expectations were usually met. Indeed, there was insistence on complete honesty, integrity, and ethical purity.” However, the examples he cites, as well as those gathered here, clearly indicate that the various Jewish militias had their own independent raison d’être and were more often battling each other (and the communists), than Polish groups. This was especially so in small towns were Polish-organized confrontations with Jews were rather rare. Rowe makes the following revealing comment about a Jewish self-defence group: “The Ordener-grupe leaped into action when the picketing of Jewish stores became too flagrant.” Ibid., 119. Jewish sources also confirm that members of the Jewish underworld were also conscripted to repel attacks by “anti-Semites.” See Bernard Goldsein, The Stars Bear Witness (London: Victor Gollancz, 1950), 15; Honig, Reunions, 49.

374 According to in-depth studies by historian Mordechai Zalkin of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, until the Second World War, the underworld in Warsaw, Wilno and other large Polish cities was largely in the hands of Jewish syndicates: “Jews could be found at almost all levels of underworld activity, from the individual thief to gangs that numbered more than 100 members. The large organizations operated in the cities, which they divided into sectors among themselves. Each organization had a charter, a clear hierarchy and internal courts, and its work was divided according to different areas, such as theft, protection money, prostitution, pickpocketing and murder. The art of crime was treated seriously, as it was a major source of livelihood for many people.” See Kobi Ben-Simhon, “World of our (god)fathers,” Haaretz, October 21, 2004. David Ben-Gurion (Grün), who was jailed in Warsaw in 1905, recalled: “That was the first time that I ever came into contact with the dregs of society. I was shaken to the core at the language and behavior. I never had the slightest notion that such people ever existed. … The thing that shook me most was that these criminals were Jews.” See Dan Kurzman, Ben-Gurion: Prophet of Fire (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983), 67. The Jewish underworld controlled most of the brothels and was particularly successful in luring young women into prostitution, at first mostly Jews, but later a great many Christians. Jewish gangsters also controlled hundreds of brothels in South America (principally in large centres like Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro), South Africa, and to a lesser extent, New York City, where they employed thousands of Jewish women, often brought from Poland under false pretences. At its peak in the 1920s, the Zvi Migdal organization had 430 pimps, controlled 2,000 brothels with 30,000 women in Argentina alone. Counting 400 members, its annual turnover was around fifty million dollars at the turn of the century. They generously donated funds for the construction of synagogues and other community buildings. Because Argentinian officials were bribed, few of the organizers who were convicted of crimes in the crackdown in the 1930s ever served their sentences. As most of the Jewish prostitutes came from Poland, the word “polaca” (“Polish woman”) acquired a scornful meaning in Argentina and Brazil because it was used as synonomous to prostitutes. In the 1920s the investigations of the League of Nations, particularly its 1927 Report of the Special Body of Experts on Traffic in Women and Children, highlighted the visibility of Jewish prostitutes and traffickers. In 1931 the Polish authorities compiled for the League of Nations a list of more than 500 traffickers, almost all of them Jews, who supplied women to brothels in Argentina and Brazil. See Edward J. Bristow, Prostitution and Prejudice: The Jewish Fight Against White Slavery 1870–1939 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982; New York: Schocken Press, 1982); Nora Glickman, Jewish White Slave Trade and the Untold story of Raquel Liberman (New York and London: Garland, 2000); Isabel Vincent, Bodies and Souls: The Tragic Plight of Three Jewish Women Forced into Prostitution in the Americas (Toronto: Random House, 2005); Charles van Onselen, The Fox and the Flies: The World of Joseph Silver, Rackateer and Psycopath (London: Jonathan Cape/Random House, 2007); Małgorzata Kozerawska and Joanna Podolska, “Piranie czekają na kadisz,” Gazeta Wyborcza (Wysokie Obcasy), January 22, 2007. Edward Bristow describes what was probably the largest episode of violence directed against Jews in Warsaw’s history (before the German occupation in World War II), the so-called Alphonsenpogrom or Alfonse pogrom. (Alphonse or alfonse was the slang term for pimp.) In late May 1905, Jewish workers clashed with members of the Jewish underworld, and rampaged for several days in and around brothels and other public spaces throughout Warsaw. Although accounts differ over the exact origins and course of the violence, bands of armed Jewish workers went from brothel to brothel ransacking property and assaulting both prostitutes and pimps, who controlled most of the city’s legal brothels, eliminating most of their competitors. Jewish factory workers and artisans looted and destroyed public houses and places frequented by pimps throughout Warsaw, knifing, beating, and throwing pimps and prostitutes out of windows. Forty brothels were torched, eight people were killed (including one prostitute), and more than 100 injured. See Bristow, Prostitution and Prejudice, 58–61. According to other sources, over 100 apartments were ransacked, five people were killed in the events themselves, another ten died from wounds they incurred during the mayhem, and over forty were hospitalized. According to one version, the brothel keepers and prostitutes were perceived to be agents of the Russian police, who were attempting to undermine the Jewish trade union movement. Indeed, the Bund portrayed the Alfonse pogrom “as part of government designs to discredit the revolution. … the regime was cast in the role of the mastermind and director of the affair.” Even though Bund supporters were among the pogromists, the Bund “placed the blame for the developments on the tsarist regime and its reactionary allies, the Black Hundreds, local thieves and ‘the wild youth.’” See Scott Ury, Barricades and Banners: The Revolution of 1905 and the Transformation of Warsaw Jewry (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2012), 126–29. Antony Polonsky argues that “competition between legal and illegal [Jewish] brothel owners led to violent attacks on the legal brothels in May 1905 by gangs associated with the illegal trade, which eliminated most of their legal competitors. The view that this was a political action organized by the Bund, a reaction of Jewish workers to the exploitation of Jewish women, cannot be sustained given the documented participation of the criminal underworld and the fact that only licensed brothels were affected.” See Antony Polonsky, The Jews in Poland and Russia, vol. 2: 1881 to 1914 (Oxford and Portland, Oregon; The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2010), 93. (It should be noted that Polonsky generally eschews topics such as the participation of Jews in the criminal underworld and their involvement in white collar crime, which was massive and undetected. He also skirts over the issue of trafficking in women, particularly its international aspect, shifting much of the blame onto the victimized women. Polonsky focuses more on attacking alleged Polish perceptions than on honestly assessing the impact of a very real problem on Polish-Jewish relations. Ibid., 92–95.) Rioting also occurred in Lublin and Łódź. At that time almost all the brothels were operated by Jews, and most of the prostitutes were Jews. Jewish outrage subsided, however, when increasingly young Christian women were lured into Jewish brothels.

That this serious social problem would create an unfavourable impression on the part of the Poles (it was mentioned specifically in a pastortal letter of August Cardinal Hlond), is entirely understandable. German Jewry was greatly concerned about the negative image created by their co-religionists and sent delegations eastward to see if they could curtail the trade in women. In 1910, the United States Congress passed the Mann Act (White-Slave Traffic Act) which made it a felony to procure prostitution across state lines. The Mann Act had been preceded by exposés by journalists like George Kibbe Turner, whose famous essay “The Daughters of the Poor” in McClure’s Magazine (no. 34, 1909) described the role played by Jews in prostitution in New York City. By 1912, two years after it was first published, The House of Bondage, an American novel about the evil spectre of white slavery, was already in its fourteenth printing. In the book, written by Reginald Wright Kaufman, Max Grossman is a pimp and described as “a member of a persistent race.” Despite the efforts of the Polish government, who delegalized all public houses in 1922, the problem persisted. Jews continued to figure prominently among the pimps, but Jewish prostitutes were now in a minority. The Polish government authorities reported to the League of Nations in 1931 that it had a list of almost 600 persons who were engaged in the movement of women destined for prostitution in South America. It is against this background that one has to evaluate August Cardinal Hlond’s pastoral letter of 1936 in which he decried that some Jews who took part in various criminal and immoral activities, including dealing in prostitution. Cardinal Hlond was promptly decried as an anti-Semite and continues to be so branded to this day. (In his partoral letter of February 29, 1936, Cardinal Hlond also condemned violence against Jews: “... it is not permissible to assault, strike or injure Jews. In a Jew you should also respect and love a human being and your neighbour”; just as other members of the Polish Catholic hierarchy had done. According to Jewish Telegraphic Agency dispatch of November 17, 1931, “The Metropolitan of Cracow [Archbishop Adam Sapieha] has issued an appeal to his clergy and to all Catholics, in which he exhorts the population to keep the peace and not to allow themselves to be led away by acts of provocation committed against the Jews. The Metropolitan goes on to condemn those who are inciting the people against the Jews and demands that they should be punished.” In this regard, one should bear in mind that stereotypical treatment of religious and ethnic minorities was, at that time, the order of the day among the political leadership and academic circles in Western countries such as Britain, the United States, and Canada. The extensive writing on “Black crime” in the United States shows that this treatment is still acceptable if the target group is considered an easy mark. When some Black gang members shot a few persons in Toronto in 2005, there was an outcry in the mainstream media about “Black” crime and calls for the Black community to get its house in order, even though more than 99% of Blacks had nothing to do with these criminal activities. Blatant xenophobia of this nature is also widespread on the contemporary German political scene. To the applause of the mainstream media prominent politicians call for a crackdown on “criminal young foreigners,” who are mostly German-born, while ignoring or downplaying crimes committed by native Germans on immigrants and minorities. As one report noted, “In many other Western countries, a slogan like that from a mainstream politician would have killed off his career. Yet [premier Jürgen] Rüttgers now runs Germany’s most populous state [i.e., North Rhine-Westphalia]. … People with an immigrant background make up just under 20 percent of the population. Yet immigrants are conspicuous by their absence from civil service jobs, the police force, corporate management. With a few exceptions, they are not present in broadcast news and the media.” See David Crossland, “Letter from Berlin: Xenophobia at the Heart of German Politics,” Spiegel, January 2, 2008.

As the Krynki memorial book demonstrates, the Jewish underworld was also active outside the large centres of Jewish settlement: (1) “There were in Krynik [sic] two brothers who were the leaders of all the thieves in the area: They were called the ‘Akhim’ and all the merchants, villagers, landholders, dairy farmers and tenant farmers had to absolutely deal with the ‘Akhim’ and reward them.” (2) “Krynki, like other towns, had its share of dark people, the inferiors of the Jewish community, operators and thieves who would steal anything from a hinge to a horse. The thieves were grouped in gangs, each with its ‘rabbi’ and they never betrayed each other and never took over each other’s ‘living.’ One of the famous ones was Henoch Hillke’s. Once he arrived in Zelwe [Zelwa] for a fair and made good ‘business,’ filling his pockets with the merchandise. In the end people looked around and knew that a Krinker was there at the fair. They immediately chased after him with a couple of good horses and Henoch was brought back to Zelve to the rabbi. They would not give a Jew over into gentile hands, unless they were absolutely certain that he was the thief. The rabbi ordered a hearing. So he was brought to the synagogue so that he could swear on a Torah scroll. Henoch went up to Holy Ark, opened the curtains and in a loud voice screamed: ‘Torah! Torah! Defend your honor! People want a hearing for Reb Henoch son of Hillke—he is accused of being a thief!’ The people heard it all and they were very frightened and Reb Henoch son of Hillel was set free. From then on the name ‘Krinker Thief’ meant smart.” That source also mentions a Jewish police informer named Yankl Kopel, who “would get money from everyone he could and if people did not cough up he would inform on them saying this one is a Communist.” When the Polish government found out about his antics, he was arrested but managed to escape and hide. See D. [Dov] Rabin, ed., Memorial Book of Krynki, Internet: , translation of Pinkas Krynki (Tel Aviv: Former Residents of Krynki in Israel and the Diaspora, 1970), 193, 210. That source also mentions Yosel Lieder, a “meat tax” holder who “was worse than the auditors.” He also owned a distillery and “stole the excise taxes, as much as he wanted, and nobody could do anything about it.” Ibid., 195. Jewish criminal gangs of horse thieves also operated in the countryside and, as mentioned elsewhere, perpetrated insurance scams, torching their own insured property or that of other Jews to collect payments. A memoir from Łuków refers to a notorious local Jewish criminal: “Before the war, he was a professional thief who ran a school for thieves in Warsaw. As the town thief and fence, if anyone had an item stolen Avrum would be the one to go to.” See Wrobel, My Life My Way, 56. Not surprisingly, Jewish and Polish thieves often worked together: “The relationship between Jews and non-Jews in Lukow, at least until 1933, was relatively friendly. Many were business partners—even in the thieving business (they would steal our things and we would have to ransom our items back from them).” Ibid., 1–3. The son of a well-to-do fur merchant in Radom recalls: “There was always the fear of robberies which occurred from time to time. … After a burglary, we, like other such victims, would go to a certain tavern in town notorious for its underworld clientele. We would wait until we were approached by one of the regulars who asked us what kind of merchandise we were seeking. We were immediately recognizable because average citizens only went there in situations like this. We then told him what was missing and he would invariably tell us to come back the following day. When we did, we would have a ‘discussion’ with the thieves’ ‘representatives’ and negotiate a price in exchange for the return of the merchandise. I might mention that when we did get it back, nothing, not even a needle, was ever missing. After all, these were ‘honorable’ thieves who lived up to their code of conduct. Going to the police was a ‘breach of faith,’ and the thieves could no longer negotiate with us.” See Werber, Saving Children, 8–10. A prominent underworld figure from Warsaw, Icek Farberowicz, known as Urke-Naczalnik, attempted in vain to organize his colleagues to fight the Germans. He was arrested in Otwock in November 1939 together with two other Jews for illegal possession of weapons and executed. See Wojciech Chmielewski, “Nożownicy z Krochmalnej: Żydowski półświatek Warszawy,” Nowe Państwo, April 2004, 38–39. Surprisingly, some Jews deny that there were criminals among the Jews, even among those convicted of crimes. Rabbi Isaac C. Avigdor recalls the efforts of his father, Jacob Avigdor, the chief rabbi of Drohobycz in the interwar period, to help Jewish prisoners: “In Drohobycz stood one of the biggest federal penitentiaries in Poland. … The penitentiary always had thousands of prisoners, including about 100 Jews, mostly victims of false accusations or mixups in money and tax matters, innocent people locked up together with real criminals—murderers and robbers. These Jews came from all over Poland and included many scholars and pious people. … In the 20 years of his service in Drohobycz my father, of blessed memory, brought these Jews not only the material assistance provided by the community but also moral encouragement through his personal visits and letters he wrote them. He helped to get dozens of Jewish prisoners released.” See Isaac C. Avigdor, From Prison to Pulpit: Sermons for All Holidays of the Year and Stories from the Holocaust (Hartford, Connecticut: Horav Publishing, 1975), 260.

The reality of those times is reflected in candid memoirs such as the following which attest to the widespread participation of Jews in white collar crime, a massive phenomenon in business dealings. A Jewish memoir from Kraków also stresses that “it was customary to keep one’s financial status secret, mainly from the tax-inspector, but also from a jealous [Jewish] neighbour.” See Scharf, Poland, What Have I To Do with Thee…, 193. Another Jew who lived in that city concurred in that assessment: “The third group of Jews were newcomers, settlers from the eastern territories. … They traded among themselves and did not mix with other Jews. … They controlled the shoe industry, but for the most part they were wholesalers, supplying goods either to local stores or to shops in the many small towns in the countryside. They engaged trained bookkeepers to keep their books for tax purposes, but in addition they all carried in their pockets little notebooks in which their actual accounts were kept, accounts different from those found in the bookkeepers’ neat ledgers. The information in those little books was entered in a Hebrew script, legible only to them.” See Bruno Shatyn, A Private War: Surviving in Poland on False Papers, 1941–1945 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1985), 101. The following experience is that of a Hasidic family from a small town in central Poland: “There was, however, at least once year when we made a concerted effort to appear less prosperous. That was when Butzke, the tax inspector, came to Dzialoszyce [Działoszyce] to assess every business in town. Butzke was from Pinczow [Pińczów], the regional tax department. When we heard rumors that he was coming, we tried to empty our usually packed store of much of its merchandise. We wanted Butzke to see as little as possible so that he would levy a lower tax.” As “justification” for this conduct the author adds: “Jews were taxed above the normal rate. We were just trying to protect ourselves from this unfair taxation.” See Tenenbaum, Legacy and Redemption, 59. For a vivid description of Jewish crime in pre-World War I Warsaw, see Ury, Barricades and Banners, 76–81. Even money collected for a charitable fund for victims of the Białystok pogrom of 1906 were misappropriated. Ibid., 79. Despite such overwhelming evidence, and the fact that most white collar crime went undetected, Jewish-American historian Robert Blobaum contends bizarrely that, unlike Poles, “Jews in reality didn’t steal.” See Robert Blobaum, “Criminalizing the ‘Other’: Crime, Ethnicity, and Antisemitism in Early Twentieth-Century Poland,” in Blobaum, Antisemitism and Its Opponents in Modern Poland, 100.