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Bund and Jewish Fraction of the Polish Workers' Party In CHAPTER 2 Bund and Jewish Fraction of the Polish Workers’ Party in Poland after 1945* Bożena Szaynok The General Workers’ Union, the Bund (Ogólno- żydowski Związek Robotnickzy) was established in Vilna in 1897. After the Bolshevik Revolution the Bund in the USSR was forcibly united with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In independent Poland the Bund by the 1930s moved to a less revolutionary and more social- democratic position and established itself as one of the principal parties on the “Jewish street.” It retained its basic program of establishing “national- cultural” autonomy for the Jews in Poland, once a democratic socialist state had been achieved. After the Second World War it was also active in countries other than Poland. Although the activists of Bund chapters outside Poland supported the Polish Bund with funds, the Polish Bund remained fully independent in its work in Poland. The Bund in post- war Poland began its activity in the autumn of 1944. Its leaders, who were in Lublin at the time, decided to accede to the National Council for the Homeland (Krajowa Rada Narodowa: KRN), the de facto par- liament of the new authorities, and fully accepted the program of the de fact government, the Polish Committee of National Liberation (Polski Komitet Wyzwolenia Narodowego: PKWN), and its manifesto of 22 July 1944. At this stage both these bodies were already effectively dominated by the communists, although they ostensibly pursued a popular- front policy and allowed other “democratic” parties to function. The activists of the Bund joined the Jewish institutions which were emerging in Lublin to provide help to Jews. A mem- ber of the Bund, Szlomo Hirszenhorn, became the head of the Referat Pomocy Ludności Żydowskiej (Department of Assistance to the Jewish Population). In November 1944 the first party convention following Polish liberation was held. In the convention’s principal resolution the Bund responded to the new conditions: * Originally published in Polin. Studies in Polish Jewry, vol: 13: The Holocaust and Its Aftermath, ed. Antony Polonsky (Portland, OR: Litman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2000), 206– 23. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2018 | DOI 10.1163/9789004361768_004 9789004361751_print_content_text.indb 18 27-Apr-18 9:46:56 AM Bund and Jewish Fraction of the Polish Workers’ Party 19 The convention is convinced that at the present time the only effective way to break Hitlerism and establish democracy is to realize the princi- ples of the [PKWN] manifesto and uphold a policy of a sincere and gen- uine fighting alliance with the USSR, the common struggle of the Red Army and the Polish army, and the close collaboration of democratic par- ties on the platform of the July manifesto. The convention maintains […] that the Bund as an organization should fully collaborate with the block of democratic parties and participate in its activities […]. The conven- tion recognizes the necessity to strive to unite the workers’ movement in Poland. Toward that end, the Bund endorses the establishment of […] closer contact with the PPS [Polska Partia Socjalistyczna: Polish Socialist Party] […] as well as the entering into an agreement with the PPR [Polska Partia Robotnicza: Polish Workers’ Party] regarding co- operation on work amongst the Jewish population.1 In February 1945, after the liberation of central Poland by the Red Army, Bund activists who had spent the war there arrived in Lublin, among them Marek Edelman, Leon Feiner, and Salomon Fiszgrunt, and a new temporary leader- ship of the Bund was established. Yitzhak Zuckerman in his memoirs recalls his meeting with Marek Edelman after the war: Marek went off to study medicine and was no longer with us. He told me of gathering of the Bundists to restore their movement. Marek was an extraordinarily brave man, but not a contemplative or articulate man. He told me his speech at gathering. He got up and said, “Comrades, enough splashing around in piss!” That is, the Bund had nothing more to do. That was his whole speech.2 Zuckerman’s memoirs also mentions Salomon Fiszgrunt, one of the post- war leaders of the Bund. He writes: We were always friendly, and he also participated in the underground. He wasn’t a fighter, but was one of their politicians, since because of his age he wasn’t suitable for the Jewish Combat Organization. […] In the Jewish Central Committee’s public struggles, we maintained good relations, 1 Archiwum Akt Nowych, Warsaw, KRN, Prezydium Rady Ministrów, sig. 23, 86. 2 Y. Zuckerman, A Surplus of Memory: Chronicle of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, (Berkeley, CA), 1993, p. 577. 9789004361751_print_content_text.indb 19 27-Apr-18 9:46:56 AM.
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