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When Speaking of Jewish Communists in Postwar Poland It Is The Others 181 7 THE OTHERS When speaking of Jewish Communists in postwar Poland it is necessary to differentiate between Communists of Jewish origin, functioning in various sectors of the Party and the State apparatus, and Jewish Communists active in the Jewish milieu. Devoted and experienced prewar Polish-Jewish Communists were indispensable to the regime during its fi rst postwar years. Some of them, like Jakub Berman, Hilary Minc and Roman Zambrowski, occupied its highest ranks. Then there were the numerous younger Jews, the new recruits, who were considered to be loyal and were offered excellent opportunities for social promotion. For reasons stemming from postwar Polish mono-ethnicity and prevailing anti-Semitic attitudes, upwardly mobile Jews were expected to Polonize. This meant, usually, changing names and severing contacts with Jewish life. A large proportion of young Jewish men found non-Jewish spouses. All this meant, of course, further assimilation. Most of them followed this path willingly, and were quite enthusiastic about their future. A Jew could now become a high-ranking Party or Security offi cial or a senior army offi cer. Jewish intellectuals and scholars took part in the cultural and academic life of postwar Poland, and young Jewish men and women enrolled in the universities. Quite naturally, therefore, Jewish administrators, professionals and students tended to concentrate in large urban centers such as Warsaw, Krakow and Lodz.1 Whereas Zionist-oriented Jews joined kibbutzim and Zionist parties, the political framework of Communist-oriented “Jewish” Jews was the Frakcja, the Jewish Fraction of the PPR. Most of the leaders and activists of the Fraction had survived the war in the Soviet Union and looked forward to the reconstruction of Jewish social, cultural and economic life in Communist Poland. They were convinced that in spite of the Holocaust and the tendency of survivors to leave, there was still an option for Jews to rebuild their lives in the country. The Fraction was under the direct supervision of the Party Central Committee; its leaders included Szymon Zachariasz, Bernard Mark, Grzegorz Smolar, and Michal Mirski. Zachariasz, a prewar member of the KPP Central Committee, was now a member of the PPR Central Committee and its referee for Jewish affairs. Fraction activists were represented at the Central Committee of Polish Jews (CCPJ) and they were members of the local Jewish committees. The Kielce pogrom in mid-1946 had a negative effect on the efforts of the 182 Chapter Seven Jewish Communists to have Jews remain in Poland. The situation started changing, however, in the following months. With the Communist victory in the general elections and the stabilization of Jewish life, the Fraction gained infl uence in Jewish politics. Its leaders and activists sought to limit the impact of their non-Communist partners in the CCPJ and in the various Jewish structures.2 The ideals and objectives of the Jewish Communists, as well as the obstacles which the Fraction faced, are refl ected in the offi cial correspondence, press articles, and reports of Fraction meetings and conferences. As early as May 1945, a Fraction letter to the Party Central Committee complained of lack of representation in the KRN, the Polish National Council. It criticized the membership of Dr. Adolf Berman, the younger brother of Jakub Berman and the leader of the Left Poalei Zion in the Council. In early August 1945, Fraction activists criticized Polish Prime Minister Edward Osobka-Morawski for supporting Jewish emigration from Poland. At a national conference of Jewish Party activists in early October 1945, Mirski criticized the Zionists for not being interested in the reconstruction of Jewish life in postwar Poland and for supporting Jewish emigration. In an article published in Folks-Shtime in early 1946, he derided the Zionists for presenting Poland as a “Jewish cemetery” and for spreading the idea of a Jewish exodus from Europe and from Poland. The Communist-Jewish press turned particularly vociferous in its attacks against Jewish emigration in the summer and fall of 1946, in the wake of the post-Kielce emigration. Life became more stable the following year for those Jews who remained in Poland. Mirski, in his closing remarks at a Fraction conference in the fall of 1947, expressed optimism in respect to the stabilization and the growing impact of the Fraction on Jewish life. At that time, however, only about 100,000 out of the quarter of a million Jews who had resided in Poland in the early summer of 1946 were still there. The Zionists had won the battle for emigration and aliyah. In their policies and arguments vis-à-vis the survivors and the returnees from the Soviet Union, the Zionists could point to the negative traits of postwar Poland and enlist Zionist fi nancial resources and organizational skills. The regime’s support for emigration and for the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine confl icted with the ideology of Jewish Communists. This, in turn, at least for the fi rst postwar years, resulted in their grudging compromise with the Zionists.3 The uneasy coexistence and continuous confl icts between the Frakcja and the Zionist parties took place on two levels, within the Central Committee of Polish Jews and within the local Jewish committees. Although in 1944-1946 the Communists already had a foothold in the CCPJ, it was dominated at the time mainly by Zionists. However, the infl uence of Communists in certain local Jewish committees was visible from the very start. Thus, while Lodz had a relatively modest number The Others 183 of Jewish Party members, the two leading positions in the Lodz Jewish Committee were occupied by Michal Mirski, an old-time Communist, and by Anatol Wertheim, who had been a member of a Soviet partisan unit in Belorussia. Both were also members of the CCPJ. The impact of the Communists in the local Jewish committees increased only in mid-1946. Whereas the main Zionist objective always remained emigration to Palestine/Israel, Fraction activists in the local committees strove for a revival of Jewish life in Poland. They played a decisive role in the initiation and functioning of various Jewish economic, social, cultural and educational activities. The number of Frakcja members increased in early 1947, mostly as a result of the election campaign. The second half of 1948 was marked by a more outspoken and aggressive stand of the Fraction toward the Zionists. This was facilitated by the increasingly hostile offi cial Polish policies toward Israel and Zionism emanating from Moscow. Polish-Jewish Communists also used the campaign against “rightist-nationalist elements” within Poland for their specifi c purposes on the Jewish street. The reorganization of the local Jewish committees in early 1949 resulted in the fi nal domination of the Communists. In a report presented in April 1949, Anatol Wertheim, secretary of the Lodz Jewish Committee, vehemently criticized Zionist-oriented teachers at the local Yiddish school who, in his words, “sought to instill in the children a sense of patriotism in respect to two homelands — Israel and Poland, forgetting that two homelands actually means no homeland at all.” A conference of representatives of local Jewish committees and Jewish organizations convened in February 1949 in Warsaw. Out of the 267 participants, only sixty-one were Zionists. The overwhelming majority were either members of the PZPR or representatives of various Jewish institutions supporting Communist stands.4 The earliest meetings and discussions of Bund activists in liberated Poland took place in Lublin, in late 1944 and early 1945. Among the participants were Michael Szuldenfrei and Leo Finkelstein, who had survived the war in the Soviet Union, and Leon Feiner, Salo Fiszgrund and Bernard Goldstein, who had survived in German-occupied Warsaw. The undisputed leaders of the Bund in interwar Poland, Henryk Erlich and Viktor Alter, did not survive the war: Erlich had committed suicide in a Soviet prison and Alter was executed on Stalin’s orders. Their tragic fate increased the negative attitude among Bundists toward Soviet Russia. Still, most of the surviving Bund activists initially believed in the reconstruction of Jewish life in postwar Poland. The Bund was represented both on the CCPJ and in local Jewish committees. Lodz was the most signifi cant site of Bund activities in the immediate postwar years: the Bund Central Committee was located in Lodz. The fi rst postwar national Bund conference convened in Lodz in mid-June 1945.The fi rst postwar meeting of Tsukunft, the Bund youth organization, took place in Lodz in July, and 184 Chapter Seven a conference of Tsukunft youth leaders was held there in October. Hundreds of Bundists and Bund supporters convened in Lodz for the celebration of the 48th anniversary of the Bund organization. A meeting in commemoration of Artur Zygelbojm, the Bund leader who had committed suicide in London to protest the world’s indifference to the Jewish tragedy under the Nazis, was organized by the Bund in Lodz in May 1946. Among the speakers was Polish poet Wladyslaw Broniewski. He told the audience that he had spent some time with Viktor Alter in a Soviet prison cell. All rose to their feet to honor and mourn Alter and Erlich. The number of Bundists in Lodz increased following the arrival of Jewish returnees from Russia. It has been estimated that close to a thousand old-time Bundists were among them. Many settled in Lodz. The Lodz branch of the Bund, which consisted of 250 members in 1946, grew to 400 members in 1947. The local Bund committee was headed by Gershon Fogel, and one of its members was Marek Edelman. Although the Bund and the Jewish Communist Frakcja did not see eye to eye on numerous issues, they were united in their opposition to Jewish emigration from Poland.
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