New research, new views 9781909821569, 9781904113799

Table of contents :
Frontmatter
STATEMENT FROM THE EDITORS (page 1)
ART AND ARCHITECTURE
Góra Kalwaria: The Impact of a Hasidic Cult on the Urban Landscape of a Small Polish Town (Eleonora Bergman, page 3)
Jewish Districts in the Spatial Structure of Polish Towns (Maria Kazimierz Piechotka, page 24)
The Function of Synagogues in the PPR, 1988 (Eleonora Bergman and Jan Jagielski, page 40)
MEMORY: The New Monuments commemorating the Struggle and Martyrdom of the Jews of Warsaw (Stanisław Jankowski, page 50)
POLISH JEWS IN GERMANY
The Expulsion of Jews with Polish Citizenship from Bavaria in 1923 (Józef Adelson, page 57)
Reichskristallnacht 9 November 1938 and the Ostjuden Perspective to the Nazi Search for a 'Solution' to the Jewish Question (John P. Fox, page 74)
The Atrocities Against the Jews in the Third Reich as seen by the ENDECJA (1933-39) (Karol Grünberg, page 103)
ZIONISM IN POLAND
The Beginnings of the Zionist Movement in Congress Poland: The Victory of the Hasidim over the Zionists? (Joseph Goldstein, page 114)
The Ideological Background to the Hehaluts Movement in Russia and Poland in the 1920s: Parallels and Divergences (Israel Oppenheim, page 131)
Jabotinsky and the Poles (Laurence Weinbaum, page 156)
ARTICLES
Yiddish Literature and Collective Memory: The Case of the Chmielnicki Massacres (Chone Shmeruk, page 173)
The Omission of Jewish Topics in Mickiewicz Scholarship (Jadwiga Maurer, page 184)
The Polish Interfaith Alliance (Artur Eisenbach, page 193)
The Reassessment of Haskala Ideology in the Aftermath of the 1863 Polish Revolt (Mark Baker, page 221)
Polish Socialism and the Jewish Question on the Eve of the Establishment of the Polish Socialist Party (PPR) and Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland (SDKP) (Moshe Mishkinsky, page 250)
A Voice from the Diaspora: Julian Stryjkowski (Laura Quercioli Mincer, page 273)
Poles and Poland in I.B. Singer's Fiction (Monika Adamczyk-Garbowska, page 288)
EXCHANGE
Letter from Jędrzej Giertych to the Editor of Polin, Oxford (Extracts) (page 303)
The Dmowski-Namier Feud: A Reply to Giertych (Paul Latawski, page 311)
DOCUMENTS
The 'Przytyk Incidents' of 9 March 1936 from Archival Documents (Adam Penkalla, page 327)
NOTES
International Symposium on the bibliography of Polish Judaic documents, Kraków, 5-7 July, 1988 (Krzysztof Pilarczyk, page 360)
The Conference 'Studies on the History of the Jewish inhabitance of Silesia', Wrocław, 10-11 July 1988 (Krystyn Matwijowski, page 364)
REVIEW ESSAYS
The History of Towns and Burghers in pre-partition Poland (Tomasz Polański, page 366)
The 'Genealogical Sketches' of Kazimierz Reychman (Andrzej S. Ciechanowiecki, page 372)
German Photographic Documentation of Jewish Ghettos in Poland (Władysław T. Bartoszewski, page 385)
Four Jewish memoirs from occupied Poland (Władysław T. Bartoszewski, page 389)
BOOK REVIEWS
Juden und Nichtjuden im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert in Polen. Soziale und ökonimische Beziehungen in Responsen polnischer Rabbiner by Janusz Tazbir (Dieter Fettke, page 394)
Jewish Thoughts and the Scientific Revolution of the sixteenth century: David Gans (1541-1613) by Lionel Kochan; The Hope of Israel by Lionel Kochan (André Néher and Menasseh Ben Israel, page 396)
Les deux rives du Yabbok: la maladie et la mort dans le Judaisme ashkenze by Daniel Tollet (S.A. Goldberg, page 397)
La pensée hassidique by Daniel Tollet (Y. Jacobson, page 399)
The Jews of Vienna in the Age of Franz Joseph; Norbert Kampe Studenten und 'Jungenfrage' im Deutschen Kaiserreich: Die Entstehung einer akademischen Trägerschicht des Antisemitismus; Conditio Judaica. Judentum, Antisemitismus und deutschsprachige Literature vom 18. Jahrhundert bis zum Ersten Weltkrieg by Peter Pulzer (Robert Wistrich, page 402)
Emancypacja Żydów polskich 1785-1870 na tle europejskim by R.F. Leslie (Artur Eisenbach, page 405)
For Whom Do I Toil? Judah Leib Gordon and the Crisis of Russian Jewry by Eli Lederhendler (Michael Stanislawski, page 408)
The Jews in Russia: Some Notes on the Jewish Question by Heinz-Dietrich Löwe (Nikolai S. Leskov, page 411)
Między dyktatem, realiami a prawem do samostanowienia by Jakub Basista (Józef Chlebowczyk, page 413)
A History of Habsburg Jews 1670-1918 by Michael Hurst (William O. McCagg Jr, page 415)
The Making of Czech Jewry. National Conflict and Jewish Society in Bohemia, 1870-1918 by Jerzy Tomaszewski (Hillel J. Kieval, page 420)
The Dreyfus Affair: Art, Truth, and Justice by Geoffrey Cubitt (Norman L. Kleebatt, page 423)
Przeminęli zagończycy, chliborobi, chasydzi...Rzecz o ziemi stanisławowsko-kołomyjsko-stryjskiej by Jerzy Tomaszewski (Kamil Barański, page 426)
From the Emancipation to the Holocaust. Essays on Jewish Literature and History in Central Europe by Michael Burleigh (Konrad Kwiet (ed.), page 427)
Polish Jewry before the Holocaust by Jerzy Tomaszewski (Nacham Tamir (ed.), page 429)
Letters and Drawings of Bruno Schulz by Richard Weihe (Jerzy Ficowski (ed.), page 430)
The Holocaust in History by Franklin Bialystok (Michael R. Marrus, page 432)
Why Did the Heavens Not Darken? The Final Solution in History by Norman Stone (Arno J. Mayer, page 435)
Germany Turns Eastwards. A Study of 'Ostforschung' in the Third Reich by Anna Bramwell (Michael Burleigh, page 437)
La question juive en Europe 1933-1945 by Jerzy Kłoczowski (Gerard Silvain, page 439)
'Euthanasie' im NS-Staat. Die 'Vernichtung lebensunwerten Lebens by Michael Burleigh (Ernst Klee, page 440)
Was sie taten- Was sie wurden. Ärzte, Juristen und andere Beteiligte am Kranken- oder Judenmord by Michael Burleigh (Ernst Klee, page 443)
Die Auschwitz-Hefte. Text der polnischen Zeitschrift 'Przegląd Lekarski' über historische, psychische und medizinische Aspekte des Lebens und Sterbens in Auschwitz John P. Fox (Hamburger Institut fü sozialforschung (ed.), page 446)
Bełżec, Sobibór, Treblinka. The Operation Reinhard Death Camps; Yitzhak Arad, Yisrael Gutman, Abraham Margalion (eds) Documents on the Holocaust. Selected Sources on the Destruction of the Jews of Germany and Austria, Poland, and the Soviet Union by John P. Fox (Yitzhak Arad, page 448)
Pamiętniki z getta warszawskiego. Fragmenty i regesty by Adam A. Hetnal (Michał Grynberg (ed.), page 450)
A Cup of Tears: A Diary of the Warsaw Ghetto by Michael R. Marrus (Abraham Lewin, page 453)
Double Identity. A Memoir by Janina Bauman (Zofia S. Kubar, page 456)
A Private War: Surviving in Poland on False Papers. 1941-1945 by Andrzej Bryk (Bruno Shatyn, page 458)
The Courage to Care. Rescuers of Jews During the Holocaust by Teresa Prekerowa (Carol Rittner, RSM and Sondra Myers (eds), page 460)
Judaism and Christianity Under the Impact of National Socialism John P. Fox (Otto Dov Kulka, Paul R. Mendes-Flohr (eds), page 462)
Gal-ed. On the History of Polish Jews Volume IX by Mark Baker (page 464)
Gal-ed Volume X by Lionel Kochan (Emanuel Meltzer (ed.), page 467)
Vienna and Its Jews: The Tragedy of Success, 1880-1980s by Steven Beller (George E. Berkley, page 468)
The Meaning and Uses of Polish History by Zdzisław Najder (Adam Bromke, page 470)
Więź No.333-334 by Antoni Pospieszalski (page 471)
Znak No.396-397 by Antoni Pospieszalski (page 474)
Stefanesti. Portrait of a Romanian Shtetl by Harvey E. Goldberg (Ghitta Sternberg, page 477)
Judaizm by Rabbi Dow Marmur (Witold Tyloch, page 479)
Antisemitism. An Annotated Bibliography Volume I by John P. Fox (Susan Sarah Cohen (ed.), page 481)
Grezen der Aufklärung. Zur gesellschaftlichen Geschichte des modernen Antisemitismus; Vom Judenhass zum Antisemitismus. Materialien einer verleugneten Geschichte by Heinz-Dietrich Löwe (Detlev Claussen, page 483)
LETTERS TO THE EDITORS (page 486)
CONTRIBUTORS (page 488)
OBITUARY (page 493)
NOTES FOR CONTRIBUTORS (page 498)

Citation preview

THE INSTITUTE FOR POLISH—~JEWISH STUDIES The Institute for Polish—Jewish Studies in Oxford and its sister organization, the American Association for Polish—Jewish Studies, which publish Polin, are learned societies

which were established in 1984, following the First International Conference on Polish—Jewish Studies, held in Oxford. The Institute is an associate institute of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, and the American Association 1s linked with the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis University. Both the Institute and the American Association aim to promote understanding of the Polish Jewish past. They have no building or library of their own and no paid staff; they achieve their aims by encouraging scholarly research and facilitating its

publication, and by creating forums for people with a scholarly interest in Polish Jewish topics, both past and present. To this end the Institute and the American Association help organize lectures and international conferences. Venues for these activities have included Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, the Institute for the Study of Human Sciences in Vienna, King’s College in London, the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, the University of L6dz, University College London, and the Polish Cultural Centre and the Polish embassy in London. They have encouraged academic exchanges between Israei, Poland, the United States, and western Europe. In particular they seek to help train a new generation of scholars, in Poland and elsewhere, to study the culture and history of the Jews in Poland. Each year since 1987 the Institute has published a volume of scholarly papers in the series Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry under the general editorship of Professor Antony

Polonsky of Brandeis University. Since 1994 the series has been published on its — behalf by the Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, and since 1998 the publication has been linked with the American Association as well. In March 2000 the entire series was honoured with a National Jewish Book Award from the Jewish Book Council in the United States. More than twenty other works on Polish Jewish topics have also been published with the Institute’s assistance. For further information on the Institute for Polish—Jewish Studies or the American Association for Polish—Jewish Studies, contact . For the website of the American Association for Polish—Jewish Studies, see .

THE LITTMAN LIBRARY OF JEWISH CIVILIZATION

Dedicated to the memory of

Louis THomas SIDNEY LITTMAN who founded the Littman Library for the love of God and as an act of charity in memory of his father

Josepn Aaron LitTMAN | 172 O37 ND

‘Get wisdom, get understanding: Forsake her not and she shall preserve thee’ PROV. 4:5

The Lattman Library of Jewish Cwilization is a registered UK charity Registered charity no. 1000784

STUDIES IN POLISH JEWRY

VOLUME FIVE

New Research, New Views Edited by

ANTONY POLONSKY

Published for The Institute for Polish—Jewish Studies and The American Association for Polish—Jewish Studies

Oxford - Portland, Oregon

The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization

The Littman Library of Jewish Curhzation Chief Executwe Officer: Ludo Craddock

Managing Editor: Connie Webber

PO Box 645, Oxford ox2 OUJ, UK www .littman.co.uk

Published in the United States and Canada by

The Littman Library of fewish Curhzation c/o ISBS, 920 N.E. 58th Avenue, Suite 300 Portland, Oregon 97213-3786 First published in hardback 1990 by Basil Blackwell Ltd First issued in paperback 2008 First digital on-demand edition 2008 © Institute for Polish—Fewish Studies 1990, 2008 All nights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of The Littman Library of Jewish Cwilization

The paperback edition of this book 1s sold sulyect to the condition that tt shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated unthout the publisher's prior consent in any Jorm of binding or cover other than that in which it ts published

and without a similar condition including this condition : being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

A catalogue record for this book 1s available from the British Library

ISSN 0268 1056

ISBN 978-1-904113-79-9

Publishing co-ordinator: Janet Moth , Cover design: Pete Russell, Faringdon, Oxon. Printed in Great Britain by Lightning Source UK, Milton Keynes, and in the United States by Lightning Source US, La Vergne, Tennessee

This book has been printed digitally and produced in a standard specification in order to ensure its continuing availability.

This volume is dedicated to the memory of

AARON ABELHEIM general practitioner, obstetrician, and dedicated Xiontst born Maryampole (now Kapsukas), Lithuania, 9 June 1867 — died Fohannesburg, 23 January 1934

and

ELLEN (RAYA) ABELHEIM (née BERMAN) mathematician born Svencionys (Swrecany), Lithuania, 17 February 1890 died Fohannesburg, 17 November 1977

The Institute for Polish—Jewish Studies, which sponsors Poln, has benefited from the support of the following:

Dr Harry Coll, Dr Esme Abelheim (Mrs Coll), Dr David Polonsky, Dr Nina Abelheim (Mrs Polonsky), Mr and Mrs Michael and Gill Polonsky, Mrs Irene Pipes, the Jewish Presence Foundation, the M. B. Grabowski Fund, the American Jewish Committee, the Polish American Congress, the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, Commentary magazine, Present Tense magazine,

Gadsby & Hannah, Paisner & Co., Edmund Gibbs & Co., and the American Foundation for Polish—Jewish Studies

Editors and Advisers EDITORS Monika Adamczyk-Garbowska, Lublin Israel Bartal, Jerusalem Antony Polonsky (Chair), Waltham, Mass. Michael Steinlauf, Philadelphia Jerzy Tomaszewski, Warsaw

EDITORIAL BOARD

Chimen Abramsky, London Elchanan Reiner, Tel Avw David Assaf, Tel Avw Jehuda Reinharz, Waltham, Mass. Wiadystaw T. Bartoszewski, Warsaw Moshe Rosman, Tel Avw Glenn Dynner, Bronxville, NY Szymon Rudnicki, Warsaw

David Engel, New York Henryk Samsonowicz, Warsaw David Fishman, New York Robert Shapiro, New York ChaeRan Freeze, Waltham, Mass. Adam Teller, Haifa

Jozef Gierowski, Krakow Daniel Tollet, Pans

Jacob Goldberg, Jerusalem Piotr S. Wandycz, New Haven, Conn. Yisrael Gutman, Jerusalem Jonathan Webber, Birmingham, UK

Jerzy Ktoczowski, Lublin Joshua Zimmerman, New York Ezra Mendelsohn, Jerusalem Steven Zipperstein, Stanford, Calf. Joanna Michlic, Stockton, NY

ADVISORY BOARD

Wtadystaw Bartoszewski, Warsaw Hillel Levine, Boston Jan Btonski, Krakow Lucjan Lewitter, Cambridge, Mass. Abraham Brumberg, Washington Stanistaw Litak, Lublin Andrzej Chojnowski, Warsaw Heinz-Dietrich Lowe, Heidelberg

Tadeusz Chrzanowski, Krakow Emanuel Meltzer, Tel Aviv Andrzej Ciechanowiecki, London Shlomo Netzer, Tel Aviv

Norman Davies, London Zbigniew Petczynski, Oxford Victor Erlich, New Haven, Conn. Alexander Schenker, New Haven, Conn.

Frank Golczewski, Hamburg David Sorkin, Madison, Wis. Olga Goldberg, Jerusalem Edward Stankiewicz, New Haven, Conn.

Feliks Gross, New York Norman Stone, Ankara

Czestaw Hernas, Wroctaw Shmuel Werses, Jerusalem Jerzy Jedlicki, Warsaw Jacek Wozniakowski, Lublin

Andrzej Kaminski, London Piotr Wrobel, Toronto

CONTENTS

STATEMENT FROM THE EDITORS 1 ART AND ARCHITECTURE Eleonora Bergman Gora Kalwaria: The Impact of a Hasidic Cult

on the Urban Landscape of a Small Polish Town 3

Structure of Polish Towns 24

Maria and Kazimierz Piechotka Jewish Districts in the Spatial Eleonora Bergman and Jan Jagielski The Function of

Synagogues in the PPR, 1988 40

Warsaw 30

Stanistaw Jankowski MEMORY: The New Monuments commemorating the Struggle and Martyrdom of the Jews of POLISH JEWS IN GERMANY Jozef Adelson The Expulsion of Jews with Polish Citizenship

from Bavaria in 1923 57

Question 74

John P. Fox Retchskristallnacht 9 November 1938 and the Ostjuden Perspective to the Nazi Search for a ‘Solution’ to the Jewish

Karol Grunberg The Atrocities Against the Jews in the Third

Reich as seen by the EVDEC 7A (1933-39) 103

ZIONISM IN POLAND

Zionists? 114

Joseph Goldstein The Beginnings of the Zionist Movement in , Congress Poland: The Victory of the Hasidim over the

Israel Oppenheim The Ideological Background to the Hehaluts Movement in Russia and Poland in the 1920s: Parallels and

Divergences , 131

_ Laurence Weinbaum Jabotinsky and the Poles 156

viii CONTENTS ARTICLES Chone Shmeruk Yiddish Literature and Collective Memory:

The Case of the Chmielnicki Massacres 173

Scholarship 184

Jadwiga Maurer The Omission of Jewish Topics in Mickiewicz

Artur Eisenbach The Polish Interfaith Alliance 193 Mark Baker The Reassessment of Haskala Ideology in the

Aftermath of the 1863 Polish Revolt 221

Moshe Mishkinsky Polish Socialism and the Jewish Question on the Eve of the Establishment of the Polish Socialist Party (PPR) and Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland

(SDKP) 250 Stryjkowski 273

Fiction 288

Laura Quercioli Mincer A Voice from the Diaspora: Julian

Monika Adamczyk-Garbowska Poles and Poland in I.B. Singer’s

EXCHANGE |

(Extracts) 303

Letter from Jedrzej Giertych to the Editor of Polin, Oxford

Paul Latawski The Dmowski-Namier Feud: A Reply to Giertych 311

~ DOCUMENTS

Archival Documents 327

Adam Penkalla The ‘Przytyk Incidents’ of 9 March 1936 from

, 1988 | 360 NOTES Krzysztof Pilarczyk International Symposium on the bibliography of Polish Judaic documents, Krakéw, 5-7 July,

Krystyn Matwijowski The Conference ‘Studies on the History of

the Jewish inhabitance of Silesia’, Wroctaw, 10-11 July 1988 364 REVIEW ESSAYS Tomasz Polanski The History of Towns and Burghers in pre-

partition Poland 366

Kazimierz Reychman 372

Andrzej S. Ciechanowiecki The ‘Genealogical Sketches’ of

Poland 389

Wtadystaw Bartoszewski German Photographic Documentation

of Jewish Ghettos in Poland 385

Wiadystaw Bartoszewski Four Jewish memoirs from occupied

CONTENTS 1X BOOK REVIEWS ! Dieter Fettke juden und Nichtjuden 1m 16. und 17. fahrhundert in Polen. Soziale und okonimische Beztehungen in Responsen polnischer

Rabbiner by Janusz Tazbir 394

André Néher fewish Thought and the Scientific Revolution of the

sixteenth century: David Gans (1541-1613) by Lionel Kochan 396

Menasseh Ben Israel The Hope of Israel by Lionel Kochan 396 S.A. Goldberg Les deux rives du Yabbok: la maladte et la mort dans le

Judaisme ashkenze by Daniel Tollet 397

Y. Jacobson La pensee hassidique by Daniel Tollet 399 Robert Wistrich The jews of Vienna in the Age of Franz Joseph; Norbert Kampe Studenten und ‘fudenfrage’ im Deutschen

Katserretch: Die Entstehung einer akademischen Tragerschicht des | Antisemitismus; Conditio Judaica. Judentum, Antisemitismus und , deutschsprachige Literature vom 18. Jahrhundert bis zum Ersten

Weltkneg by Peter Pulzer 402 europesskim by R.F. Leslie 405 Michael Stanislawski For Whom Do I Toil? Judah Leib Gordon and Artur Eisenbach Emancypacja zydow polskich 1785-1870 na tle

the Crisis of Russian Jewry by Eli Lederhendler 408

Nikolai S. Leskov The Jews in Russia: Some Notes on the Jewish

Question by Heinz-Dietrich Lowe 411 Jozef Chlebowczyk Migdzy dyktatem, realiami a prawem do samostanowtenta by Jakub Basista 413

Michael Hurst 415

William O. McCagg Jr A History of Habsburg Jews 1670-1918 by Hillel J. Kieval The Making of Czech Jewry. National Conflict and

Jewish Society in Bohemia, 1870-1918 by Jerzy Tomaszewski 420

Geoffrey Cubitt 423

Norman L. Kleeblatt The Dreyfus Affair: Art, Truth, and Justice by Kamil Baranski Przemingh zagonczycy, chliborobi, chasydzi. .. Rzecz

Tomaszewski 426 Burleigh 427 Tomaszewski 429 o ziemt stanistawowsko — kotomyjsko — stryjskiej by Jerzy

Konrad Kwiet (ed.) From the Emancipation to the Holocaust. Essays on fewish Literature and History in Central Europe by Michael Nacham Tamir (ed.) Polish Jewry before the Holocaust by Jerzy

Richard Weihe 430

Jerzy Ficowski (ed.) Letters and Drawings of Bruno Schulz by

Franklin Bialystok 432

Michael R. Marrus The Holocaust in History by

Arno J. Mayer Why Did the Heavens Not Darken? The Final

Solution in History by Norman Stone | 435

X CONTENTS Michael Burleigh Germany Turns Eastwards. A Study of

‘Ostforschung’ in the Third Reich by Anna Bramwell 437

Ktoczowski 439

Gerard Silvain La question juwe en Europe 1933-1945 by Jerzy Ernst Klee ‘Euthanasie’ im NS-Staat. Die ‘Vernichtung

lebensunwerten Lebens by Michael Burleigh 440

Ernst Klee Was sie taten- Was sie wurden. Arzte, Furisten und andere

Beteiligte am Kranken- oder Judenmord by Michael Burleigh 443 Hamburger Institut fu Sozialforschung (ed.) Die Auschwitz-Hefte. Text der polnischen Zeitschrift ‘Przeglad Lekarski’ uber histonische, psychische und medizinische Aspekte des Lebens und Sterbens in

Auschwitz by John P. Fox 446

Yitzhak Arad Betzec, Sobibor, Treblinka. The Operation Reinhard

Death Camps; Yitzhak Arad, Yisrael Gutman, Abraham Margalion (eds) Documents on the Holocaust. Selected Sources on the Destruction of the Jews of Germany and Austra, Poland, and the

Soviet Union by John P. Fox | 448 Michat Grynberg (ed.) Pamiginihi z getta warszawskiego. Fragmenty 1 regesty by Adam A. Hetnal 450

Michael R. Marrus 453

Abraham Lewin A Cup of Tears: A Diary of the Warsaw Ghetto by

Zofia S. Kubar Double Identity. A Memoir by Janina Bauman 456 Bruno Shatyn A Private War: Surviving in Poland on False Papers.

1941-1945 by Andrzej Bryk 458

Carol Rittner, RSM and Sondra Myers (eds) The Courage to Care.

Rescuers of Jews During the Holocaust by Teresa Prekerowa 460 Otto Dov Kulka, Paul R. Mendes-Flohr (eds) Judaism and Christianity Under the Impact of National Sociahsm John P. Fox 462 Gal-ed. On the History of Polish Jews Volume IX by Mark Baker 464

Emanuel Meltzer (ed.) Gal-ed Volume X by Lionel Kochan — 467

Najder 470

George E. Berkley Vienna and its Jews: The Tragedy of Success,

1880- 1980s by Steven Beller . 468

Adam Bromke The Meaning and Uses of Polish History by Zdzistaw

Wz No.333—334 by Antoni Pospieszalski 471 Nad - xs aCe] | e Re % ° Ww y ~ pee : O o " 3 o 8 AR Ss ia ® sa w B c ¥ — a = @ = ¥ uw +i 33 : * 0 w > 2 . = 8 g $3 = o9 ~ © x sé — = & . af ne) -2 20 ~ o = 28 3 = © 2 E se é i) + 7. : © ae = Ws 5s ° La] a“ E ei ie : “f= =

tr)

or

52

< Ce) FS ¥

Bae. § ;

oc or < &, >@e

rp

5©

:

~

R|

20 POLIN

ii nN v 9 Ne>

; " i ) A Por |1

A482 u ayUuuuuetuuueel GHD HPT NETO, ie iC ‘ ‘ ] TRA ~ Ua lan! : ga; e's oadMT L/ | " |

||

former HOUSE OF PRAYER ;

: | of David . u \! ir

Ff:

| >. x ark Pe

ee , =lll=TI : Sans Sas\ -a eA ie’ «Shes ep ie te. 4 The scene at the main Warsaw railway station as the tsaddik leaves for Karlovy Vary.

+ 3 . es ee anal ¥ : Sa _ * > ; : ss : ’ ‘ a = %

4 ~ as - ="a ae . NS ye

. al aa =

“ —— od = : — Sis ‘ SG . a On i “ey ‘ ' . « : A bes e., » a ll Pats By ae — . & *, ~Y Pea.; s* ‘ |al

mien @ yy ;~ See a 4eet :og. é; Vs %,,lS -2 wy “See

® > 2* : — ag * 4 a nd ; } — . Ree tS Ae ca 4 a < % 3 Se

oia‘eTaias4% ,Sa..Sy:.=i

—— ey os . ainda : RO . YS ; SS SV

5 Hasidim leaving the Unia Lubelska Square by bus en route to the tsaddik.

x P 7) » 9 .is : ’ . Ss ~ /~" & ‘ >. »* | > hy |. ‘‘ee : ;: ~*~ Y 7 . .S$ 7 . . :te, + ’eee > es eS ,©

;» ~ xX ‘ ~ 5a ;-~ : ke z “,'-™ ys » = *' .ye a Fi Ul

ie 4) $; - .sPic ri ; >. ;

* x &: « : P « . ° “ : ‘ SS ‘ ‘ < Wx x f : 7 - s ¥. x: |‘ ‘; ——y

(> ~ ay .

sepeaea seSeSs ehRRS RW ee Cee eee Cs . =~ x me . SS oe Se SSR = Se 2

6 Prayers on Day of Atonement in the yard of the tsaddtk’s court.

oN . SS ee settee ee : ee — Se ° aati ~ > | Si 'ee ; =%7sa .% Se aw BB mt ies oS. )— . ae ae S nent a wR a > ra SE ;

z~ arpetOnin ena aangitity tmeen 7sees _A ee .gname : on Sane ies tia be .eae “s Soe ewenwns. ’_— | cas — : pe ‘ Pere Sie hii ‘ Co tieisany ea ee

Seee BORE Be. ah ee ., agit ~-as ’ a Bi ps ee . WR Ge . ee DOR tina. og encod e338 : Sages oe caf - *% . Pe ss RE ee ee Se Book i ees oh ‘d : eS Se 3 , ; ~~ is

atte ar, oa ter ” eete ee AOR —. = —" > Se Te wrt 8 ‘ a Sat Dtneeneemeeninee H-

oie decent a

,.,

‘ % os ‘ aot - . ; —

:*

11 The former tsaddtk’s court.

re = eS Be or ae

oes SRE Sav. Se SEO Se oe ee | saitaiemet SR Ao PR aera ERE SRN tae See SS 7S ; Sioa BS het a CERRO Sask So SSE cg Re Seas eS ARS Re SR SeeRees : Sy ee Rage Sx a.ee ae SSS SS SeeRRR a geSRS : Bs; aa Mocha s,

SSS Sates | ee RRP a ks SS ae so a . ¥ SOON oo a SS -. : an, oe bat eS sat “ F r* Be nee . z Bara .RSS >. ae P —S : . ‘ a S¢ x es ex Sy; RRS eSEateS: ass SNSE — SSSR RSs ~ . Ae See SeRs Ee aPeeseccme Sa. : re = a Aeeeees =

ome ad $2 -Y-2eeeR

BS ee Ree Ata SS an. ee

SSSSS°: SS Se SS SRE SEARS ck etSSE ace a SSS as : “Pag. eA baat Se FesF =, RRS a SRRS; ae essSee -Pose es S2 3 Oe Se

.7

: >ae ar} ws 2 :™ -5 — “as ¥

.

é : a cate,

||

12 ‘The window preserved in the former prayer house.

eae 4 ws . = a *& F PS ae . F 3 ) ¥ Bi y, .my ; . a ae ¥ = y; *& pS Wh ,

“ee, ee%a

xSas ae .ot x > # ie * . ° ee>S pene wd . sah a Riiieas. ”%,Pees ; or. ‘* whee a ~ ,Saas ES — .spe a Moy ay

AS ~ oe. . . ~~ — »

. . % e. - Ss oe.

~~ wr ae*Ee —— =~~a -" eS a

‘eo ; . PS i

%

gf SMe. nse Ss y

eos eSoSse “ ae ~ on SR

-.SSeee | }eS TS Re oe ; ts el ; ee boss SS SS a ee

? é Re Roget .y shih a eee i at

s wt s sp ; Fig: s eis Be oe

rex a oe = . - cS ai < os Py, n

. “ye 2k SS

Pg Be ai. “om a oo . ' . ee ae eee SRC ee. cea

pee heeeepep are ea bs X sae aR Samat nN‘et

13 The preserved mezuza.

Sue: ;

u “ ; i a al 33 . . F ae + ; of : , < % SS Sa > Pos a e . 2 . y e wz a = ; o .7a ; a2 Ss7s

“= sae.ae SS a =a=. OW. : oe grees : . “at Wer . , io as $ . af OS 7. Sak — : , co a Ses SS ss : i 3 z- tet, Ot +

:* $ -‘z8>P2ks — ; J*a:=

< 7 ee ee 3 Pa ; ca eS ae : . at :

. 5..neoy x.=ee ” ®SN % i, pO ag 4 : : VE P oy 7Berea > ¢.ae.%ae: - " sro=: |"

; : it SAR v “es n /Sete »= 4 oil — 2 > 7 os

a~7PP - Pee’ > Se P ;—yo .' eA % |: ¢ ate ; :-ra...& | | a oT are # Sana 5 ;2, m .: 4% :ae,.:Ped °x SF¥f -4 4~- oe3.¥ 5 :; Fpm. . oe , :a“As “2 :. «3 ..2aeS53 5- ”" Sg~~ ' Ree - * we ey*) . te 5 . >. - “ - — id * : ; Ea xy + - as FF BS P . "4 — < toy 8

14 The cemetery gate.

ee ee Oe a Stee SO ae . a ee _ g.° re i 8 Se | = “> : CR ah es eX oe ee Se

RR as Res eee oe Po ee TS eaten eae : 2

gS ee ee cr eer RE eSees SS ba Se SES ee: Sa se base

.4°

Te oS one: ae >wer .> < :an 2 ‘ oe . se seSee a ax .; sa. one ba, . : i. ee ss 3 x P . ste

; Nie ~ . a ae ae ‘ ‘y ey aa = ew ens .rs yee 8 7 .as* A «‘ea.Ys ' } ~. *.S S .t oete" — i “ ~ww * Pa . 2 =} *ne *>yh >-Face : ‘ot .*Me 2*2% “Pv®*. a~ . < pe ‘% “ey, al ‘ / 4 ee . - ry oe ?a ss ;7 eS « ; “**“ = ae .: ~-2“=v8 Sig’,.7*Lt :“‘4sfa:°"ee ne ; ee » ne . ' = e . £ ed » s 4 -*;" ;| ee Se sek ; 6 x ~ ees eee MS > en,soet\ae ek ea oh eee ao + eft, ay rey “ > 4 3 Rh. i ; ee : a % oa \ to — >: te ‘a Rap = . > ey a i -% 1 Pe a . So TR Z et” > , a . > ¥ ~:. 15 The ohel of the Alter family.

|

.*ee Re tee &ee % eea. : 2a ES =ee *; at : -aoeio ,Zz o>Ses ,a‘é Sy as ry a ,Me” ‘4—. ¥ ashfs. >;’ % he~ >Fe *est se ed 4; ae Kio OR x.+aFer ry ae eod 2 a. 7 eead5 ;ott, a, ae ak,ae” Py2%, . ae. SE . toy , éae ’ et . Aal *

= e* ba: PA i Sa « Me we ¢ etee; ~'Fs Pal rs >| 3i Fe A+ J, }| & VY NV ZG/D

Sues AS &, NS Ne, AQDR 8

C20 NRE AR K A EDARA

0 _290

4 MIEDZYRZECZ — according to a plan of 1780. 1. Castle; 2. Market square with town hall; 3-5. Churches; 6. Synagogue. from H. Much, Geneza rozplanowania mast wielkopolskich XIII i XIV w. (Krakow, 1946).

Mdijyy ialre” hs § si ‘SO, Whe yy _ “fl Loeaaers

pi MMS Sg XE =%YP SS S atire/?*. % al nila vy ee’

EN paystitaat ann: ars | Gy

, 2 ise GAD He / Daal = may F4=y < LA

Sr ee “i 7 —* » WC) AWS 2 \ Cages ug . ~ 7 : n\ ZZ AZ. / =£ eoO OZER OXW SAPS § Bs 6 dTIY\ 52 =3 / ryDOVE 2 : el adalels

(} xSON aS ? is | : 3 i Ne ¢ 2 Cra Owe aid = *

“y QB r> 5 2 3 y) or ‘ WAC A>: & = atpe %,Se = ;2 —8 ONZE \: tsyrent XEN] TSSSs2s 3s ae rhe : Ce BV i 5

>= fel - =G FEE: B/ b — ey Nef BF NO Wh Ee twe>et QV sic 3 y a ~_7REY = & B O a —-“exrs eZ 33Ses Ss KS Mais & k Vol ee: vo rae2355 tS j= o es

7 S = 3S

34 POLIN

SS s nh , ‘ = Vf. CLR / a NSSS > Lib / Woo Sot / — Sy tS aw PF te wt

\ S \ / {47 \ —< nyett" : Yi / ee A, A iy \, Laan 7 4 LL Za Wy ~Tn, \ ee SPP aka LORS. J / La a “a Yea ". ~“ , pry 2 SSO BE NO

of if: eS ale. me OAN \7‘tN IF SEES OS wo fs , A Ys 3 SS" 2 of \ + ‘ hr eer | — \,4 -:a : —\= -\tf,}! \ ge SS yy13 » NY ‘ = NOE NS | SZZ ~ 7‘—~S ~sS \ ! } fj — y oN | | v Se ~ aa , ro a ‘gp a ,;iH Uf Ss im \ tend) Y i ad} \ PN — XN

/ - Se \ oa OS

a.\\. ‘My); \ . YO Y3 “4/7 | >t \ —==r— \"\ SF | 4 | Sets coy Ss? _ ub AS SY AKNe4= Lf AL

\»~ ,0 £90 4 ‘

8 WILNO

1. Upper Castle; 2. Lower Castle; 3. Market square with town hall; 4. Jewish district within the jurisdiction of the Princes Stucki. according to I. Totwinski, Urbanistyka vol.1 (Warsaw, 1937).

JEWISH DISTRICTS OF POLISH TOWNS 35

7-

Ue tf,fees SQYo

47 . A FRA: ° US 2 &> \ [e1)S Ye A \ ‘rlisitans — 5 a _@

8 OAs 0? ESLaBS s alepltir'z: ate. | i re pity, “ANS ce eo * \"\,

o,° : 2 cap *tGG p< PAW ows er Seu. Ah.--4& 3 ©: ao fx3! Me, A a ee . oe Ade SP \EB SNalfa 7

%, ; ‘Ss adaneiats” a hig, ie

‘Pas -i Z2 ra 290

9 PRZEMYSL - c. 1780. 1. Castle; 2. Market square; 3. Cathedral; 4. Orthodox church; 5—11. Monasteries; 12. Synagogue in the Jewish district. according to J. Mach, A. Piatek in Zabythi urbanistyki 1 architektury w Polsce, vol.1 Masta historyczne (Warsaw, 1986).

ean |

SASA \ a°Sii BQ >. ASas aN A 7PrN

LeGia cereBONS “en ~~ e \ X | 2 Z g E—— ,

i( Le) Keft Ze\ SV

,!

~. ~~XQ-! A\ fy 290

10 LUCK I Medieval castle and borough: 1. Castle; 2. Jesuit church; 3. Convent of the Sisters of St Bridget. Il The new town: 4. Basilian monastery; 5. Armenian church; 6. Evangelical chapel; 7. Karaite synagogue; 8. Raban synagogue; 9. Dominican monastery. according to a plan from the collection at the Institute of Architecture, Polytechnic of Warsaw.

36 POLIN

= =e ee eT As > Es — yma Beary hyp reihilelteltitileela

FF

3458913) 1 2 wil /"" == ga” a svete

+ -— = ON Si = / Ye 200 \ ops —aae

;

11 ZOLKIEW 1. Castle; 2. Market square; 3. Catholic church; 4. Monastery; 5. Orthodox church; 6. Synagogue. according to I. Totwinski, Urbanistyka vol.1 (Warsaw, 1937).

i)

i, 7 KC a —J IN) YS =—— \/Z -

Yy f= > =\(

Sg \ Varig Oe

Nw~ K( C tf \ Ly LLIN ONY

ee,

ae + Ce >

Q \\ Fi We

$0 12 STANISLAWOW 1. Castle; 2. Market square with town hall; 3. Collegiate Church; 4-5. Monasteries; 6. Greco-Catholic Church; 7. Armenian church; 8. Synagogue. according to a plan from the collection at the Institute of Architecture, Polytechnic of Warsaw.

JEWISH DISTRICTS OF POLISH TOWNS 37

Ge 2 NS si thay Ty,

Ne 4 oAv>: Pine a“ y =S WAN tak oe e $=

‘E ofSS62 2

° ~ a 2 = 0 A PY 2+ 5 Pm . 2 F 3

= |e! cl CAC? at: / SJ bo NN a \% > : = % $ Pw, S, ‘J \”5, 3=- 3 F ; D> - AA e . ~ coke cos ) is aSo SOS 132 2°, bY a, D> s_O 2° 8 JONG, ( “Der! . SY , 4 ¥ © 4 >< 7.5 a . ST Yr» = o0

'a5 —- «&

38 POLIN

— . _ . | =Te, aes ro) = E “y =z \Sws Pa Q & y hh 7 — Y 4 l=) ofa

w==S&S SS FF SS \—> >+ ~: = S mee ESoMess Myst S a > [sets Zz

“wie 6S SOS g “SES SS Og So= = ree [oo ste BOE = $s

SSeR /2% oy0 &mD> —ae: f ===: ; () Mee = £:v o Uy, RE ST Sotfesia| | 28 GU Ba rN Bet T 5p ‘se 2a 9

yy — 4 NS ful Sv = 1); Wnts tH), itm ~ / Kall A) £ = Ye 2/7/14" PSB 7 M44"? et FY enh (| ge ied Sa A KE era meno PL) /Wie lor ~fii; =ij on 3OS ra 7a a_“a SSL enMWY «= ye — . YS) \ “tBE o>

gp NET — fNS so 2 ly |oY S >\~ uit)Se = oe im ak 3° = “NNN Vein MEY SS 2 ~Z -_e~ waa ya gOS i =s © = n Ste, . = oO o q = a “Se LUyiy Ee 0 3 | Ss. =

= ; BR CS se) ox . = 7 TT * 235 = . ‘ > y = 2 Sb WYN a ee NPS SJ © h (LL WN §ses

= teeteeedl - F‘ / a0 ~~Ne < 1G age
, foe & SAGE

_- o «

JEWISH DISTRICTS OF POLISH TOWNS 39

ees. Oe ie . l;

, B7) TI Wy, wud UT

>are 20 200| ,2

ne seamen

15 LOSICE — regulatory plan of 1823, taking the ‘isolation of Jews’ into account. 1. Polish market square; 2. Jewish market square. according to a plan from the Main Archive of Past Records — CVV vol. 3803.

THE FUNCTION OF SYNAGOGUES IN ‘THE PPR, 1988 Eleonora Bergman and Jan Jagielski

There is no guide to ‘Jewish historical monuments in Poland’. Majer Bataban’s classic work under this title, published in Warsaw in 1929, has

long since gone out of date, especially since the Nazi occupation. It is worth remembering that one of the factors prompting the writing of that

War. |

book was the losses borne by the Jewish communes during the First World

The losses sustained during the Second World War were incomparably greater. It is not within the scope of this article to describe them. The notes

below are limited to those synagogues (temples) and houses of prayer which have survived. Synagogues in Poland have always been characterized by great differences in size, building materials, and interior architectural design, as well

as in exterior ornamentation. According to Jewish custom, a place of common prayer should be established wherever the community consisted of at least ten grown men (over thirteen years of age), and, in practice, of at

least ten families. From the times of the earliest Jewish settlement in Poland, synagogues were built of wood or stone in accordance with local custom; brick was not a common building material until the 18th century. The size and furnishings of urban synagogues depended on the size and wealth of the Jewish communes; particular contrasts arose in the second

half of the nineteenth century. The construction of synagogues was financed exclusively by a number of different funds gathered by members of a particular commune; in private towns timber was sometimes donated by a wealthy gentleman. As towns grew in size, together with the Jewish settlements linked with them, synagogues began to appear serving the inhabitants of different districts (for example the ‘suburban synagogue’ in Lwow). From the second half of the eighteenth century individual hasidic temples began to appear -

the style of hasidic prayer was not compatible with a strictly orthodox style. In the second half of the nineteenth century so-called reformed

, ~ THE SYNAGOGUES IN THE PPR 4] synagogues also began to appear, modelled, in part, on Protestant churches. The representatives of particular trades or guilds, such as tailors or porters, also had their own small synagogues. Halls of prayer - both hasidic and orthodox - were also found in private houses (there were over one hundred of these in Warsaw in the first quarter of the nineteenth century), and could also be found in Jewish hospitals. The synagogues, also called Jewish schools, or simply schools, sometimes housed adjoining schoolhouses, or houses of religious instruction (hebr.: beit hamidrash; Polish Jews pronounced this besmedresh or besmedrysh), which also contained a hall of prayer. The buildings which have survived of this enormous number of monuments, serving Jewish religious purposes in their many forms, have done so

purely by accident and cannot at all be treated as fully representative. They are mere remnants of what once existed and a place for them should be found in the painstakingly reconstructed histories of cities and societies. The post-war owners or users of these buildings are also purely fortuitous. We open our balance sheet forty years after the end of the Second World War. No precise register has been compiled throughout these years. There were other, more pressing needs immediately after the war which made such a task impossible. The first list of synagogues surviving the war was

drawn up in 1953 by Anna Kubiakowa; it included only 25 buildings, usually sixteenth- and seventeenth-century, ruined for the most part (unfortunately, nineteenth-century architecture was not thought to be of historical significance at the time). Gradually, different uses were found for

these buildings which were now deprived of their natural owners. As a result of their new functions, some were rebuilt beyond recognition (for example in Biezun and Gorlice); some fell into complete disrepair as a result of intensive use as warehouses or garages; it is not known how many

were dismantled. Even an inclusion in the Catalogue of Artistic Monu-

ments did not save the synagogues from demolition in Chrzanéw (1784-86), Pabianice (1847), Opatow (17th-century), Mikotow (1816), and Piaseczno (18th-century). Some remain as ruins from the time of the war. A great deal of work has been put into restoring others (in Krakow, Tykocin, Warsaw); a dozen are currently being restored. The first list of synagogues in Poland with reference to their function was compiled by an American researcher, Carol Herselle Krinsky, in the first

half of the 1980s. Her list contains about 70 buildings and, probably by mistake, two in the USSR; eight of these no longer exist and the function of others has changed. The list below was compiled as a result of over 10 years of research and verification with the help of local inhabitants, social functionaries and conservation organizations. It contains 242 buildings which are listed accord-

ing to their function. Precise addresses and additional descriptions are

42 POLIN tl > ‘Y 4 a \ |‘ .i:KOSZ { Var 9 zz 1 i zes 5 ALIN ‘ *y ‘ B ! «J ‘s ser i. at “ ,“ Grylice 7 ‘ rans Gdonskit) | -0% —~ ;Sr\a ‘ :\/ ;\\‘szczecinek ao reyzo > { Prot ~ A C , / S2CZECIN Pa ~ tee | aon i >Fordon(*} oe ; ‘~~, : Y D J . , oe” ; PRA =< ByYDGOszcz A S / v4 lf | 47>c§x“Sky, TORUN

a>‘

; SCLUPSK S GDANSK

\|te.4. A Mae ”Hy — # ae ~ [*) s;‘eo O L.. Opniewy a oe ee { ~ 0Miedzyrzecz “. 404 a ; a io} Inowroctow, Sierokow ~~ 1°; ty ‘ a

; bs 7% Le = _— } 2 4 f Y i ee ad Se bien P 2 Buk ll oe “Kleczewl) OD Ok rewsk Q 5 Mosino ll sroeg Wikp ~ Dstupce, i. 7 ut

iC ZIELONA Wolsztynry., 2 J ? Sy eye | fey = Ogd -. GORA S a ‘, Meee” Oo ye ‘ won ‘\. " re Oceszno ¢ kaussz jurek } te, / ;. ,S.. Zory ., 5S ) = Oostrow 2 ie Sansee. .ON : Szodek, ta *:-a

ji x i : atte 1

i ? GN x ~a i Fa, « Zgor ze lec ; > : f ; ™ ene tan \ Bierurowenes é i-.Gsé‘;.UE\ SORA > 5 ; oa a ie, fen ENIA ~~ weet te, eanhene | oa vetes \ oe A oy ‘ > So WROCEAW\ -? dpreszka ie i 2 / PA » !.Krzepice tN Oe 0 &..CZESTOCHOWA “p, __fww Ozierzondw /s OPOLE * Szcz ri gon ZorkiO = c=,‘\ 8\-ya tom3, a peti Present°function: oes PFTOsze ret < ge -4Gliwice av ‘ ae a. =a:: . . . ane S . 228 a of 4 >¢€ waeSas N ": ?' :cee ome! , .’ :ns ; >» 8 ‘.* xh ae |

c ‘ ee ; J Re < R : “238 a ae ; 'nd :=:~~ 3© ; ‘ra . ;:;.ROBe Se a ” has og Ss oa ; = “ ‘ “ ~ Ot $Chena Ma we * , » ee, -.°=ane

..°|

SianRe ———e oe, ae

3 Gorlice, front elevation, 1967.

SE et : tee% ’ ge eS os 3 Od ae aes ; e.

Poad oe a

ee gsVek oeeases et ad wer acd be peate3 3 se |

yr. a #4 4 Se ee = ‘ YF . CS : Bo aee eS Bees *y 2 = Bc 5) re oy &y = ae&iees ; as

Sa . a Ar. TS SG aS SG =eete4oS . |beee 8aeaa. F ; 4 s os 4 ng : e Ps TEES as § —_— : a oe oh$oar SSS 3RS iPewoe“ os >.aeae3° : ~ 7 ee = . % ‘ 7 Ps FSS , :‘ % :i SS + 4= BS ak, aaBg 2Se eo.ae re= Se ste = ; ‘3 : Re : a x an .:. 7.Sts ta ete ee Be s he . ¥ SS SSFo" Pa’ Fe “SS eM Cpe Shp ak wor FP“ Bo i aae

4 As above, 1980.

3. Seas a ae Be, go BEE am 88 Fg a ak = core aoc * iy oot sisFoie So one ea ae A. .ace 5 aS TRS 3 Biss PRR L .«sathe » -

Sea bi -Se i te ep ‘7-2agit » Sa ¥SMT Ss oe Dae oe. : ha Bes EE, > - RR ‘* souER One Neseeose deena Fn Nga PesSeeRe Rie Rae geet ee?) SS a re je re “

eo ee es ON eR NE ed ee

Sah oR ie eeaa — ERR othe teé ‘iOS) ERE ae; ‘ oseex oecs. = PSF ‘aa * % Ps r = Cab . 2 Ps ie a — og spray PY 25 = J os so "3 Rac * Ny Pee pam ey oe ¥ ; > ae $ Sy ee rs S SESSed: ae a Fie, ~~ SeSe woe Se >; See §Sk ee % ieSoe 3 PeRaSoee Bias rebg Serene BF $ ageatePee ae ans oy ghentes Bt. DOE See Se Peart ae Suan ee Bk Ss ats ‘ns at, a SSR. ee eck Ps = wat oi Se ae al ‘2 ‘i ‘et ae ie s ‘ Bas 2 edie RS z ef ai ; 2a Ea Sa 3 4 ee R o. cee re se

tiie ae tiers Saas Tee gS FE ck ae Ne ene = Se

sia « SSR SS RS es SOE a ae ee = ; See. RE SS eee ot St SS. a oe eh ee a 3 RR

fee Se sali SNE Rs 8 :. ee &: 3*Be1cg. OeSs M.Sed ae SES See ; aeSA a = Se ahsae aEeee eee laoyFe :nes ; .Sor Mk a ae :oo ): Pa Ee ete Ss eg eee S A. , fae | ; = Tee Be ~a Ry -oor *ss.RS !©: ae rke ~< 2 % 3 : ~ . ae. : t . ‘We : | ey “2 A . ~ f 2:&4 ;Ss ; i yf ; ie ~e e¢ > E~ 2« ;= Ty ae as :>

’ = Rory | ' * ; , 11 Ostrow Wielkopolski, a fragment of the side elevation, 1989.

aS . fe . ie

Sa§“esbe ; é a, " 2ee‘¥ 3, Co * * CO ee 3&a =e re 2S SS .¥ bs eS re ee & ae, ~ . - +: ‘ & ‘ iy & PS Pn e. o oan = ear

> _sf % x:* aa

iss -

3:;

- =iBawey.. 32>;4% . SR Saas Se a ee ais’ ‘. aes ‘th te ne=bate Reis Se Seoe sei=

ne

12 Przysucha, a fragment of the interior, 1989.

, ae _ c |

a ¥.. 1 See 4 de 3.™mn _' . a oy PX,” 4 a; _— od | ; dd f, ef ‘ y ; Ps =~ * 3 ee “ee. 8 anv ee . ’ gel? ie | fo ‘ Fy ‘> e ‘opp ‘* ; ae . “SBN + ie F a a io” , # > 7 \ ; Soe » = v aial oefA »ac 4:»= “ 3, al a\". Be ,--pt Cae ~»tS =¥ =&§ : oe ar. ~~

3: ¥bPafks $ *Teeice > ae PSse = en % . *=" ~ . a- :a,a * >* ~ ~ a=ome

AQa:>. me ~aie. a2Say ~ 2h Ssce> % :S f,(yPe SS Rae ar ey > eR “ ca, ty re. a

je “= oe * aR, ~_ RS 2 _ es : .s > ie + ‘— cS aa =. ..Pe ~ :Cer »=. ‘meh? *p Ss ns =. * geee * 4385 va ;= “j 4.mitts N ° i a a G ; tas SSE Le et sai ae : 4 ; Ss >, - 4 4_: *..as _ :-TT ?.&, ; ms ~&~--. :7”

7a.%aone pr reeVets = “: _‘ire v MR ~ .| e2S . :ie~ 3 Bs ee ab f — | ai%.RR +. eR ea Fo 2 AS Se eS to

. . s . worsa . . 7 a , “ >" = 4 «eco By ago ee : AE 7 ~ ~~.” ested Poe ie yee Z

> .tafe ~~> .any — ; .™* *% “y wee . hw fae * -*SEES ae EN | eee ee a eh ayy 4 ae :& “=gcee oteesee as ° m4 ~ . . .

vee Su m4

*¢ .\s. a;es>~‘ a; .% = ‘a - Pe = es ‘

rs aviee AY *» VW.7a * 4 fx; —

ee -if '% ie =

. i oo me | , tS ; Vy P e

, [ie 4 : 7

} aS rey ‘s a 74 ee SOS" . b . \ i nee BES . = a & x . =

SS ee SR ee eS nS si a 16 The interior of the Umschlagplatz memorial - view of the tree, the symbol of memory.

ee

See Box

tee fe e: Stes

cS Pees

5 ok cee ae

i ae aBF eteSak PESOY SSaba Ss“4 : :x See 3 ie ae. aie ee oS Nae Pgh oes 6c all iy , . aig Nm _ th. aSas sa parte Rasae By§i 5~‘ *. 5 Ros aeSEAS Ss.SeTeaod ene eeSnvomannees | eea =. oo oe ~ aSa = oe ke a>ss«Be. Se BoSo Wit, cs:ES = aa) .ms. eeBae See ae ae PS a : Se S x 3at : his 5 a. Se a * as tem,.fo) © a. Ce ty SE Sa ““h.3 Sree

hs a a Sete

- on ¥Me eoees rb, a Ss oe ~Mee F oeeag SiN Cea. aNe SAB ro)

‘ a Se “ey < 7 eS Saett oar, 4| Y> > nine a). ey }® ,ms ~ :;Se ‘te Pas: ~~ . .ae ‘ ; ; aR Cant aoe Saaremaa a; OO i ee RR es vt % “See « tae Rg —a. “Se oS Sey, . sail —eT ~ Ee ee ee See . ? Soo er See ss ie - ~*~ WIODIOGN SG Fy “ Bas 8 Oa SR ae eae Sa ara SS eea = " . ~ re: 22 P SOS oN ;SS STRAR eke: So aeee. ae yh+ BE

~“a -| avers . ey ™ (Seeeeeket =| te « as oes Gok Me EhSy =-. Pes: ssYS Se STP he ste Be Bae SERS GARI ORS SiRSSai soee a ee eR

Kg ul Pe nee ; eee : RS eeA a ER ; “a 7es =SeRee Saat ee ua RE eePE ae| gee ot. | | Sean ike. Ge ue r 4 8 —— aoe a 7 Se a ite REQ ee eS is = i é a oe Ral NARS ae SAORI IER get Stee ee & es oe

8a&Pm “ : rank eee Se PR. ORR ec. SRS —Ss SeSa ee ee3LS oot, ae ee Beeae owe aca --Ce ae aa eeSeeeRe ~~ H Eswe —;te ek a ee Ca a?S ier ke5IO ‘-ce ‘ntti, 7my eee SaeSR a ae Boe oe ae Booaseitiy RS ataeeeeae Rae wconear ae , 3>; = sane 5 esae || a:we ore ;—hey .j«rover * < Ch, “. * Mae ec. kee s . ‘ deg ae Re Bi : sai < ”» Geos ee eet ee

——— bX aSe Se eee AOI,>asH . }:SSS tine.ee E>ar aER so. SRSee suet “ , ee ; bs Se . : ‘ RR eae Sa Sho Renate meme nen. 5 Pde eB a oe se hme 4 . Hey e Pe Cate ak, aie: tae ;2SRR. 'oe.S Pi ‘eoes ag Ge aeiz= ™ ,eu, .,rein:Nee Pe REQ SR are — . iN 3 - :Py “1 zee - A+.- .ocmbaiindl 1 % * ae bORS Sn 2 7Sere 3 as © & SR, F Bron : wuicninas Dy RR a % : oS cet ae Py : = it = 2

oe ee o a-oo:Soret. ST a Ae ee % en. |© iS ae ae i 52 ::ee : Ss ; s ; ee A SPRRRER Se < . vo eo ee Me , - ian a . - - ee ' é eos: | Claas BT. Wiehata Selene ls Seles ee “ a

So Laing RES ec 8 Satan. Beaeters 2 ae ‘ a t BE i Oe Rk:She Poei aa aaa Pes Rt ae ee 4 aise. xs Sa ae Se ae o Ee = ae= meneee ¥ ; SSS ae >2s. SASS Setee eeeae ae a ; : Pak SS gees a ae x ae ed Se‘ae aeeeeRees ke sea |ay oan a‘aqee : 2—= “~. ho gk: eee Tae ae .on eeSSSeee

: é| Se ' ay pS ce < Stee FfBS, Ss ee «2 aeehE 3Gee Re eS “eeaS * > bs ae =eAt ee a “ a lgee Ts 8)

7..ae ya :oeex" we 3eVee ee 4eee tsaeBPR =BeSee _ , ae . mung, B36 ‘ se seo aeeae é aSae Saal sae SisCIS : 3‘< ee ee eS beeaema . a -en aexee ae 2 Sede, Oo = 3s y SS - Ss ae K a Se ee eS ’ ge < nS ate ON Bis Be 2; eS . r:

: : a x &: ~eer ee he neSEO. pe nrat- NSN ~e veSoaeBane eee es ease OtaPas BPR Se.: es eeeee , ae °

ie ee; MOL 3 “eee eee es . oe nae ae Sega "3 — c NG WenNea dicen SokeweeeeSese:, See as So es

eS See ae ‘ , cu . he Oe ee -oe: teoeAevse . ; Ges ‘ee. i Fm Oe

, ~) \ : } : . SARS: sae “Fae ‘> a =) . 9 . 4 o>4aFU ae "sae y g! oe > a ee OAR as ge “a. “% ea. - oo - 2) - bi ieSere . a Ad

. wie + ~ — ~ —— . ~ ~~ he * . " if ba : ~ ;

abetemsinte se ABER NS SS

: ae ee ae E Sy" ao ae Se is,

So ons SBteoeSroe, ity hitiee By.3 20 The memorial route ~ one of the stone blocks marking the route.

NEW MONUMENTS TO THE JEWS OF WARSAW 53

lights. |

The far wall contains an inscribed commemorative plaque, dated 18

April 1988. At dusk the interior of the Wall Monument is lit by four flood-

THE MEMORIAL ROUTE TO THE STRUGGLE AND MARTYRDOM OF THE JEWS 1940-1943 Plans by Zbigniew Gasior, Stanistaw Jankowski and Marek Moderau.

The Memorial Route begins at the Monument to the Heroes of the Ghetto, runs down Zamenhof Street, past Shmul Zygielbojm Square and the mound and stone on the corner of Mita Street, dedicated to Mordekhai Anielewicz and the Command of the Jewish Fighting Organisation, then down Stawki Street, past numbers 5 and 7, which once housed the SS

Unit Command, past numbers 6 and 8, the former school and Jewish transit hospital, and ending at the entrance to the Umschlagplatz and the Wall Monument. The Route is marked out by black granite blocks next to the Heroes of the Ghetto Monument and in grass verges alongside the pavement. In front of the pavement there are slabs (for candles and flowers) and some cypresses and bushes. On each block is a plaque in the shape of a matseva, adorned with a menora ~— the seven-branched candlestick, the emblem of

the Jewish people - and with Polish and Hebrew texts describing the events and people to whom the Route is dedicated. The sides of the blocks display this inscription (in Polish and Hebrew):

MEMORIAL ROUTE TO THE STRUGGLE AND MARTYRDOM OF THE JEWS 1940-1943 The Route begins with a “Tree of Shared Remembrance’ (a huge oak), planted next to the Heroes of the Ghetto Monument. Alongside, on the first granite block, is the inscription:

_ A TREE OF SHARED REMEMBRANCE TO THE POLISH JEWS, MURDERED BY THE NAZI INVADERS 1939-1943, AND TO THE POLES WHO PERISHED HELPING THEM. POLES AND JEWS 19 APRIL 1988

ON THE 45TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE WARSAW GHETTO UPRISING. Inscriptions on the other granite blocks commemorate the following events and people:

Second The creation of the Ghetto in 1940. Third to Fourth 19 April-15 May 1943. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

34 POLIN Fifth Emanuel Ringelblum, historian, founder of the underground Ghetto Archive, shot at Pawiak Prison in March 1944.

Sixth J6zef Lewartowski, Polish Workers’ Party (PPR) Central Committee plenipotentiary to the Jewish district, shot in the Ghetto.

Seventh Michat Klepfisz, member of the Jewish Fighting Organisation, who perished on the second day of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

Eighth Szmul Zygielbojm, representative of the Bund on the National Council of the Polish Government in London, who committed suicide on 12 May 1943.

Ninth ‘I cannot remain silent and I cannot live while the last remnants of the Jewish people in Poland perish.’ Szmul Zygielbojm

Tenth Arie Wilner, jurek, liaison officer between the Jewish Fighting Organisation and the Home Army (AX), who committed suicide on 8 May 1943.

Eleventh Mordekhai Anielewicz, commander of the Jewish Fighting Organisation, who committed suicide on 8 May 1943.

Twelfth Meir Majerowicz, group commander of the Jewish Fighting Organisation during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

Thirteenth Frumka Ptotnicka, liaison officer of the Jewish Fighting Organisation in Poland, who perished in the Ghetto at Bedzin in 1943.

Fourteenth Yitshak Nyssenbaum, rabbi, religious and _ political leader, shot in Treblinka.

Fifteenth Janusz Korczak (Henryk Goldszmit), perished with the children from his orphanage in the Treblinka death camp.

Sixteenth Yitshak Katsenelson, poet, author of ‘Song of the Murdered Jewish People’, perished in Auschwitz-Oswiecim camp.

Seventeenth Numbers 5 and 7 Stawki Street, the building from which the SS Command oversaw the Umschlagplatz.

Eighteenth Numbers 6 and 8 Stawki Street, the Jewish hospital, where Jews were held before being transported to

Treblinka. :

Nineteenth Pawel Frenkel and Dawid Apfelbaum, leaders of the Jewish Military Union.

Twentieth The creation of the Ghetto in 1940.

NEW MONUMENTS TO THE JEWS OF WARSAW 55 THE CONSTRUCTION A matter of particular concern was the removal from Stawki Street of the CPN station (petrol station) and its driveway, which was next to the Wall Monument and clashed with its purpose and shape. It had been partially pulled down on the eve of the forty-fifth anniversary because of numerous protests about a petrol station being there. The Warsaw municipal authorities have now decided not to rebuild it there but some way off. The driveway and station building will thus be completely removed and the land be turned into a green area around the Wall Monument. The main investor, on behalf of the Municipality of Warsaw, was the city’s chief architect, Stanistaw Soszynski. In charge of construction was the Voivodship Municipal Roads Directorate, under Director Grzegorz Adamiec.

Stone-work was the responsibility of the Warsaw Structural Stone Company, directed by Jerzy Stankiewicz and Witold Feliksiak.

The white marble and black syenite were supplied by the Kambud company of Stronie Slaskie and Pilawa. Trees and shrubs were supplied by the Botanical Gardens of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, directed by Professor Bogustaw Molski. The stone blocks for the Memorial Route and the plaques and lettering on the Wall Monument were the work of a team of sculptors led by Marek Moderau. It proved impossible in the time available to find a block of black granite for the carved matseva over the entrance to the interior of the Wall Monument, so it was made from alternative long-lasting materials.

The expenses were met by the City of Warsaw and by the American Joint Distribution Committee in New York. The representative of the latter, Dr Akive Kohane, who had been shown plans for the Wall Monument and Memorial Route at a meeting with the Executive Committee, gave $30,000 to purchase imported materials and tools for the stone-work.

Building work began on 20 September 1987, and was completed on 16 April 1988.

On 17 April 1988, on the initiative of the Public Committee for Commemorating the forty-fifth Anniversary of the Ghetto Uprising, a meeting called “We Were Brothers’, chaired by Marek Edelman, was held at the

Heroes of the Ghetto Monument. The official ceremonies to mark the forty-fifth anniversary of the Ghetto Uprising took place from 14-19 April 1988.

56 POLIN PLANS FOR THE FUTURE As a second stage, it is proposed that the Public Committee for the Protection of Cemeteries and Monuments to Jewish Culture should commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising on 19 April 1993, by preserving the following sites and erecting suitable memorials

there: places where Jews and those Poles allied with them fought the

Germans; places where Poles helped the Jews; and surviving remains of the Ghetto (parts of walls, passages, hiding-places). It is anticipated that selected memorial sites will be indicated by similar plaques, with explanatory Polish and Hebrew texts. The names of benefactors to the plaques might be recorded at the bottom of them. Once the PKS bus garage on Stawki Street has been removed, the third

_ Stage will involve: converting a barracks which has survived from the occupation into an Umschlagplatz Museum; restoring the railway embankment and rails, where trucks which transported Jews to Treblinka

would be placed; preserving the surviving section of wall around the Umschlagplatz and making a green area of the surrounding land; and requesting that the housing estate next to the Umschlagplatz along Stawki Street be named after the Heroes of the Ghetto.

POLISH JEWS IN GERMANY

THE EXPULSION OF JEWS WITH POLISH CITIZENSHIP FROM BAVARIA IN 1923 Jozef Adelson

The influx of Polish Jews to Bavaria began in the last decade of the nineteenth century. Two-thirds of them were emigrants from Galicia, the rest from the Congress Kingdom and a small number from the Wilno Governorship. They settled in the larger towns of Munich, Nuremberg, Furth and Bayreuth. Before the First World War there were about 10,000 people from Polish lands living in Bavaria, of whom 95 per cent were Jews.

In Munich alone there were 2,000 Jews from the three partitions. During the war as a result of a strong influx of refugees, mainly from Galicia, the

number rose to 3,000, in other towns the increase was smaller, e.g. in Nuremberg the number of Polish Jews during the war only rose by about one hundred and amounted to 1,100 persons. The years 1919-1923 were marked by a considerable fall in the number of Polish Jews living in Bavaria. Initially this was caused by post-war re-emigration, but the main cause was the successive campaigns of mass expulsions. The first followed the fall of the Bavarian Soviet Republic, and the second occurred in 1920. In 1923 there were about 2,000 Jewish Polish citizens living in Munich. It

was the largest concentration in Bavaria; in the remaining towns there lived from several to a couple of hundred families. As before the war, the

largest numbers were to be found in Nuremberg, Furth, Bayreuth and Wurzburg. In the whole Consular district of the Polish General Consulate

in Munich, 1.e. in Bavaria, Wurttemberg, Baden and Hesse there were about 15,000 Polish citizens living, of whom 90 per cent were Jewish. Apart

from the Bavarian concentrations, Mannheim was also a large centre of Polish Jews.’

Jews from Poland settled in Bavaria usually as single people, their families following at a later time. In some cases they arrived at once with their whole families. The majority of families had many children and as the marriages had taken place in their own communities, the children, like their parents, had Polish citizenship. With the passage of time increasing

58 POLIN numbers of children were born in Germany. According to military Consular registers of recruits 20 per cent of the 1903 class and 50 per cent of

the 1906 class had been born in Germany.’ The rearing of large numbers of children, who for instance in Furth made up 30 per cent of the Polish citizens, must have created problems for people who were not usually wealthy and who in many cases were driven to poverty level by the crisis. This was especially true in the case of traders, who did not have their own shops and worked as pedlars (an exceptionally difficult profession for the Polish Jews due to the difficulties in obtaining permission to carry on this kind of trade.) Apart from peddling they acted as travelling agents. There

were not many wealthy Jews, about 10 per cent, amongst whom industrialists - owners of tobacco factories - were conspicuous (in this sector of trade it was Jews who dominated), and they also owned several leather-processing factories. Amongst the most wealthy merchants, jewellers and antique dealers were prevailed, and also owners of large carpet trading firms. About 25 per cent of all employees were craftsmen, mainly tailors and furriers, and there was a small group of workers, trade assistants and servants employed in the businesses belonging to Jews from Poland. The percentage of unemployed was at the same high level as in the

German community, e.g. in Furth of one hundred people capable of working thirty had no work. Similar unemployment was prevalent in

Munich and Nuremberg. Young people worked in their parents’ businesses or studied - five out of 450 Polish citizens residing in Furth studied at German schools of higher education.° The first organisations to be formed by the Polish Jews at the end of the

nineteenth century were associations of a religious character: AhavasShulom and Akhi-Esser. They were founded due to the different religious

ritual practiced by Polish Jews in comparison to German Jews. At the beginning of the twentieth century in virtually all the towns where Polish Jews lived, self-help organisations, the so-called Ostjudenverein, started to

be formed. They took the name Union of Eastern Jews because of the Bavarian authorities, although 95 per cent of their members were of Polish origin. As a rule nearly all the Polish Jews of a given area belonged to these

organisations. Each Union functioned independently and funds were raised from dues and subventions given by wealthy members. All the associations had their own premises and carried out widescale charity and

self-help activity. They also regarded themselves in relation to the Bavarian authorities to be a collective representation of Polish Jews. In

Nuremberg there was an economic organisation of Polish Jews, the Ostjudischer Handlerverein. There were no political organisations of Polish

Jews in Bavaria, nor as a rule did they belong to German Jewish organisations. If one could talk about any sort of political interests worth mentioning, on the whole these Jews tended to lean in the direction of

Zionism. Their connections with Poland were maintained through

THE EXPULSION OF JEWS FROM BAVARIA IN 1923 59

families living in Poland. Some Jews followed with interest news in the

German press on Poland. Some of the activists of Polish Jewish organisations regarded themselves as Poles of the Jewish faith, but they were exceptions. The youth on the whole did not speak Polish, but some representatives of the older generation spoke Polish well. Polish Jewish delegations always took part in state ceremonies organised by the Polish Consulate General in Munich. Their attitude to the Polish state was defined by the Consul General as ‘loyal’.*

| After the bloody break-up of the Bavarian Soviet Republic in May 1919, the government there passed into the hands of conservative and national

elements. Social Democrats and Communists, not having had many adherents prior to the revolution, were killed and imprisoned following its suppression. Some escaped to Saxony from Bavaria, and others - fearing

nationalistic hit squads - ceased to be active. The Retchswehr, which together with the Freskorps had suppressed the revolution, wanted to create a reactionary conservative government there which would be an ‘umbrella’ for the attempts to break up the Weimar coalition and annul the Treaty of

Versailles. Gustav von Kahr, a Bavarian Conservative and the guardian and protector of many right-wing associations, was admirably suited for such a role. After taking office in Bavaria, Kahr declared the main task of the new cabinet to be war on the Marxists and ‘November criminals’ (Novemberverbrecher), the people who had agreed to sign the Treaty of Versailles. During the period of Kahr’s governments, Bavaria became the centre of all kinds of separatist, national and nationalistic movements.

Separatism had deep roots in Bavarian traditions. The Weimar Constitution diminished the separateness of the individual ‘Lander’. This

caused strong opposition on the part of the Bavarians. Both Kahr’s government and those of the prime ministers who took office after his departure were adherents of separatism. Berlin never undertook any radical action against such an attitude; it was always on the defensive and its policy towards Bavaria was one of cautious steps. A decisive attitude towards the anti-Berlin moves of Bavarian politicians threatened armed

confrontation, and the Reich government wished to avoid that as they feared extreme national and nationalistic elements coming to power in the whole of Germany. For this reason, the various Bavarian governments were able to carry out an internal policy virtually independent of the rest of

the Reich, which culminated in Hitler's unsuccessful November 1923 Putsch in Munich.

This was the background to the policy pursued by the Bavarian government towards Polish Jews on its territory. This policy changed diametrically in 1919 when the government was taken over by right-wing

nationalists. They put the full blame for the revolution on the Jews, inciting Bavarians against them. Next to the government a wave of antisemitism was whipped up by the fast developing nationalistic movement,

60 POLIN which blamed the Jews for the economic and political crisis in Germany. The difference between the fascists and the nationalists in relation to the Jews was based on different ways of treating the problem. The nationalists considered the Jews to be a foreign national element, which should be ‘neutralised’ by legally sanctioned means, whilst the fascists propagated racist concepts, and, as a result, regarded the Jews as being outside of the

law. Kahr and Hitler represented these two different attitudes, but, in critical moments for the Bavarian government, Kahr succumbed to Hitler’s pressures, wanting to save (as he maintained) issues which were more important to him. There was no divergence in attitude to foreign Jews; both nationalists and fascists were in agreement that they should be

removed by expulsion. The Reich Government felt the international repercussions caused by this, however, as the inhabitants of Bavaria took over (usually at once) the estates and properties of expelled Jews, which at . the time were at a premium. From the moment when Kahr took office in 1919, the Jews in Bavaria lived in continual fear of the future. Repression could come from two sources: firstly from official government agents and secondly from the hitsquads of various para-military organisations which were influenced by the fascists. The fascist programme regarding the Jews, which was not really openly formulated until 1924, could be gleaned from the utterances of the main NSDAP leaders, especially from Hitler’s speech at Nuremberg

on 2 September 1923. Alongside many general concepts it contained several concrete proposals:

1 German recovery is only possible if the Jews are removed. 2 There will be special laws for Jews. 3 All Jews entering Germany after 1914 should be expelled, even if they had obtained German citizenship. 4 A stop must be put to Jewish immigration into Germany.

5 All Israelites will be considered to be Jews and all those who have Israelite inheritance on their father’s side. 6 The Mosaic faith as such does not exist but only adherents of Mosaic laws.

7 Germans married to Jews will be considered to be Jews. 8 Jews are forbidden from holding German civic rights, nor may they apply for them.

9 Jews are forbidden from holding public office or carrying out any public functions. 10 Jews cannot have active or non-active voting rights. 11 Jews are forbidden from practising the professions of lawyers, doctors

(except when exclusively for Jews), journalists, writers, printers, publishers, editors and all other professions connected with the sphere of arts and culture.

THE EXPULSION OF JEWS FROM BAVARIA IN 1923 61

12 Jews are forbidden to run banks and banking businesses. 13 Jews are to permanently separated from the German nation and may have no influence upon the life of that nation.’ Owing to the fact that up until the middle of 1924 neither the NSDAP

, nor the Deutschvolkische Fretheitspartei were represented in the Bavarian Landstag, they were not able to effect the programme by parliamentary means. Both the Socialists and the Liberal Democrats were opposed to it. It was for this reason that the hit squads of the Kamp/bund tried to settle with the Jews independently and place the government, which did not interfere in the matter, with a ‘fait accompli’. In November 1922, the Consul General, Lech Malczewski, reported to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Warsaw shortly before the culminating point of the anti-Jewish campaign about the plight of the Jews in Munich:

Jewish pogroms are being prepared here. Hundreds of Jewish families have already left the city or have hidden with friends. Cases are even to be found amongst those occupying high positions, e.g. the university professor, Frankenberger, hid with his family at friends as a result of a warning from German friends. Some Jewish shops have

already been sold out for a couple of days or have removed their goods to secure places. It should be noted that the present panic has set in in spite of the fact that the local people have grown used to these types of rumours being spread. Jews coming to the Consulate state

that they have received revolvers from Jewish organisations for defence. Workers on the other hand advise them to leave as quickly as possible, because if there is any reactionary action there will be a

general strike. They state that on 12 November a German fascist congress is to take place in Munich. Rumours are circulating, that the pogroms will not be confined to Jews but will be directed against foreigners as well.®

Alongside the physical threat of the fascist hit-squads, the whole existence of the Polish Jews was threatened by the National Bavarian Government. Their physical security was under constant threat. In the period of a continually deteriorating economic crisis and a growth of chauvinism amongst the poorer townspeople, summary steps, even if they were for many reasons amoral, lessening tension in the community, were

always greeted with applause. Kahr was probably motivated by these when he expelled Polish Jews from Bavaria.

The first expulsions took place after the fall of the Bavarian Soviet Republic in the summer of 1919, immediately after Kahr took office. About fifty families, mainly from Munich, were expelled then. They were

62 POLIN wealthy families of merchants, industrialists and property owners, who _had been living in Bavaria for a dozen or so years. The second wave took place in 1920. Mass expulsions of entire Polish families began on 21 June 1920. The Polish Consular service, which was only just starting its work in Germany, did not yet have an office in Munich, whilst the Consulate in Berlin owing to the great distances and unfriendly Polish-German relations, was not able to guarantee to a sufficient degree of care for these Polish citizens. In spite of numerous interventions in the Auswartiges Amt and direct negotiations between the Polish legation in Berlin and the Munich authorities, over 100 Jewish families were expelled from the whole of Bavaria. The expelled persons had been convicted of no offence; they ran their own businesses or shops, and had their own homes. It was significant that wealthy persons owning their own houses or flats were expelled. That was intentional, because, as well as achieving immediate political advantage, there were also material gains, as Jewish homes and businesses were taken possession of without any compensation. Admittedly, after Kahr’s departure there were no mass expulsions of Polish Jews between 1921 and 1922, but the situation still remained tense. As

the economic crisis deepened, Nationalistic and Volkist propaganda strengthened the campaign against the fairly large number of foreigners coming into Bavaria in 1921 and at the beginning of 1922. In the period

of the greatest increase in immigration (the situation in Bavaria was relatively better than in other parts of Germany), this phenomenon was

recognised as damaging for Poland for economic reasons and was restricted by the authorities in a series of passport and_ political regulations. At the end of 1922, the influx of foreigners had been reduced to a minimum. Foreigners who were not able to prove that their stay in Bavaria was necessary, were expelled within 24 hours. The situation of Polish citizens was especially difficult owing to the anti-Polish campaign carried out by the nationalistic Bavarian press. It contained slanderous reports of the mobilisation of Polish forces, preparations for war, an

attack on East Prussia and other similar types of news provoking a chauvinistic mood and hatred of Poland and her citizens. In spite of statements by President Kniling assuring Polish citizens protection, they were often victims of attacks by fascist and nationalistic hit squads, which not only left physical scars but also devastated shops and left the cash tills empty. Several days after the announcement of the state of emergency and the

return to power of Kahr as Commissar General in September 1923, rumours circulated in Munich predicting stiff repressions and expulsions

of foreigners. When the Polish Consul General in Munich met the Bavarian President Kniling, he was informed by the latter that nothing of the kind had been planned, and that if Kahr were to start taking any steps in that direction, President Kniling would inform the Consul in advance.’

THE EXPULSION OF JEWS FROM BAVARIA IN 1923 63

In spite of such assurances, on 15 October 1923, between 5 and 6 a.m.

practically all Jews, especially Polish Jews, were simultaneously searched , without any prior warning to the Consul. The searches were aimed at finding any sort of pretexts to support expulsion orders. Virtually the whole police apparatus was engaged in the operation. In every case several

policemen and agents in civilian clothes carried out searches. Correspondence, account-books, valuables, money, cash-tills, food and all other possessions were searched. Questions were asked about the property, with which the searched persons had arrived in Germany, about party, trade

union, and other organisational affiliations, newspaper subscriptions, connections with Poland, acquaintances in Bavaria and so on. In certain cases valuables and cash were requisitioned. The searches were carried out brutally and very thoroughly, and in several cases they lasted whole days. Amongst the Polish Jews panic broke out. They feared arrest and internment in the Inglostadt camp.® Some of the families hid with German friends, leaving their homes and businesses uncared for. Three days later the police began to issue expulsion orders. The first was delivered on 18 October, followed by about 50 each day. Apart from Munich, the same things were happening in Nuremberg, Furth, Bayreuth and Wurzburg. Prior to the beginning of the action the directorate of the police in Munich had sent to all Bezirksamt a questionnaire asking how many and what kind of Jews there were to be expelled, and on the basis of this information the expulsions were carried out.? In order to give the impression that the expulsions did not have a mass character, the orders contained individual reasons for expelling the given person. Most were accused of damaging the economic interests of the Reich and hampering its recovery, some of threatening public peace and

order, but the main accusation was that the person involved had been polizetlich beanstandet, which meant he or she had been noted by the police.

Each police note with the name of a Polish Jew could form the basis for expulsion. Even if he had been, for example, the witness of an accident or of some other kind of incident in which he was not directly involved, he could still be expelled on these grounds. If there was nothing of which to accuse the person to be expelled, the formula poltzeilch beanstandet was left

without any explanation, but where there was the slightest ground for accuSations it was amplified, e.g. a widow with two children who had been living in Bayreuth since 1905; was expelled because four years earlier she

had paid a fine of three marks for buying unrationed butter for the sick

children. The purchase of unrationed food was given as a reason for expulsion in about 20 per cent of the cases. In the years 1916-1919 nearly everyone practised it, as rations were virtually at starvation level. Another cause of expulsion frequently encountered was the charge of price-raising in shops belonging to Polish Jews. In several cases, there were minimal

fines for the owners, in others the fact was only noted. In the period of

64 POLIN growing inflation, it was a normal occurrence and it would probably have

been difficult to find a shop in Munich, which did not commit such an offence. Amongst the 94 families registered in the Consulate, who were given expulsion orders, about 50 per cenit had probably committed no offences, since, apart from the formula polizetlich beanstandet, no offence was

given. Of the more important offences mentioned in the motives for expulsion, there were two short prison sentences from twenty years previously. ‘The remaining reasons given by the police were in the majority of cases false. ‘The expelled persons were subject to the following rigours:

1 They were not permitted to sell or liquidate businesses, but, under the threat of confiscation, had to appoint a representative approved by the _ police, who was to continue to run the business. 2 Shops, stores and warehouses had to be left as entered in the inventory

_ during searches. Nothing could be sold or removed by the owners, under the threat of confiscation. 3 The costs of expulsion were to be covered by those being expelled. 4 Homes were requisitioned by the local authorities without the right to

exchange or sell. |

5 The date of expulsion was usually a fortnight later, in one case it was 24 hours, and in two 48 hours. 6 The post office to which the police delivered the letters of those expelled were supposed to apply the most severe regulations to them.

Of the 94 expelled families registered by the Consulate, nearly all of them made up the property elite of Polish Jews living in Bavaria. ‘There were no workers, artisans or servants amongst them; six of them were industrialists, and the rest owners of shops, trading businesses, jewellery work shops and antique shops. The estates had been obtained in Germany prior to the inflationary period. According to estimates individual families lost about 5,000 and 500,000 marks in gold.’ The expulsions took place in the period of the greatest inflation. The authorities hampered the expelled persons in the selling of their estates

(except businesses, which could not be sold), some owned tenement houses as a result of which priced received were exceedingly low in relation

to the real value of the property. The prohibition on the purchasing of foreign currencies meant that savings taken abroad in marks became useless paper. All these factors resulted in the complete ruin of those who were expelled, and the situation was made all the more tragic by the fact that the majority of the families had large numbers of children. Many of

those who left Bavaria hoped to return and that is why they settled temporarily in other parts of Germany. The largest group lived in Wiesbaden and Mannheim. Previously they had wandered all over Germany, and were expelled from various towns as the Bavarian police

THE EXPULSION OF JEWS FROM BAVARIA IN 1923 65 had sent lists of expelled persons to all the regional heads with a request not to permit persons expelled from Bavaria to settle. ‘The majority of those

who went abroad chose Argentina, some went to France, and only one of the registered families at the Consulate returned to Poland. Two of the 94 families had settled in Bavaria after 1914, the rest in the pre-war years and some even at the end of the nineteenth century. The first wave of expulsion orders lasted from 18 October until the end of the month. The next one started after the liquidation of the Hitler putsch. It was expected then that the expulsions would cease, but Kahr - attacked

by certain people for betraying Hitler, for defending the Jews and for putting a break on the Nazi movement - in order to demonstrate the falsity

of these opinions and gain the approval of the nationalists’ proceeded differently. The expulsions were continued with intervals until May 1924, when the last five families were removed from Furth. It is not possible to say exactly how many people were expelled. The Consulate General in Munich, on the basis of information from the Ostjudenverein, had registered

94 families which received expulsion orders from Bavaria and left. According to Consulate figures 85 families had received expulsion orders by the end of December. In Nuremberg itself 40 families were expelled, whilst in the Consulate figures only 22 families are to be found. It is not possible to assess exactly the numbers expelled as the Chairman of the Munich Ostjudenverein, who coordinated aid, stated that in the first period of expulsions 800 of the people receiving expulsion orders went neither to

the Consulate nor to Jewish organisations, in fear of aggravating their situations. The consternation was so great that nearly all, in anticipation of expulsion, left Bavaria, having previously arranged passports and visas. This fear was deepened by threats from the Nazis, who threatened leading representatives of the Ostjudenverein with death if they helped the expelled persons. The two weeks which the Bavarian police gave for the winding up

of the expelled person’s affairs was too short a period for any kind of individual attempts to oppose the action. The weak press-campaign in defence of Polish Jews, individual appeals, and attempts to arrange a reversal of the decision with the help of personal contacts, all came to nothing. This is why there was widespread hope of preventive action on the part of the Polish government.

In the end, between October 1923 and May 1924, about 1000 people

received expulsion orders, but how many actually left can only be calculated on the basis of the difference in the numbers of Polish Jews living in various Bavarian towns in 1923 and 1926. In Munich the number was about 400 persons, in Nuremberg about 200 and in Furth about 80. ‘The validity of these figures is verified by the fact that there was a reduction in the numbers of foreigners entering Bavaria in these years to virtually zero."!

It is likely that the expulsion action was intended to have a wider scope.

66 POLIN The statement of the Regverungsrat, Eric Heppner, who directed it, that in

the near future it would be widened to include citizens of the Reich, indicates this.‘ Alongside Polish Jews, several Czechoslovakian, Rumanian and Russian Jews were expelled simultaneously. Orders for three Austrian citizens were revoked, due to threats by Austria of repression against Bavarians.

The attitude of the Bavarians to the expulsions was varied. The Nazis

and nationalists supported them, whilst Cardinal Michael Faulhaber expressed the opinion of part of the Catholic community in a letter to Gustav Stresemann:

... the fanaticism (displayed) towards our fellow Jewish inhabitants or other national groups unaccompanied by any feelings of guilt provokes general condemnation.’ The Bavarian Jews, with few exceptions (the local Jewish community helped the expelled persons and negotiated for them) did not take any

position over the expulsions. On the other hand, all the Consulates of foreign states in Munich condemned the behaviour of the Bavarian authorities. In many cases, these statements were not followed by action. The French Consulate, which was very critical of the expulsions, received instructions from its Ministry of Foreign Affairs not to issue the expelled persons with French visas, in spite of information about the very correct

behaviour of those who had earlier gone to France. The Consulates observed very carefully the behaviour of the Polish Consulate-General in Munich in its defence of the Polish Jews, having no confidence from the outset in the possibility of repressions being applied to German citizens living in Poland. When the Polish Consul-General in Munich received the assurance of President Kniling concerning the security of Polish citizens, the whole action had already probably been prepared. As was later shown, under the influence of this conversation the project was changed, mass expulsions being replaced by the individual treatment of each foreigner. In practice

this was of no significance, as the action in any case had all the characteristics of mass expulsions. The police, however, had more work fabricating the causes for expulsion.

Between 18 and 20 October sixteen families, which had received expulsion orders, came to the Consulate. After receiving instructions from

the Ministry of Foreign Affairs the Consul intervened on 25 October directly with Kahr, who sent him (on the pretext of not being acquainted with the problem) to his deputy Baron Hubert Nufsetz. ‘The Baron tried to

play down the issue, saying that the expulsions were not of a mass character and were directed exclusively at the Jews. Consul Malczewski

stated in reply that the Polish Republic did not make that kind of

THE EXPULSION OF JEWS FROM BAVARIA IN 1923 67

discrimination and the Polish authorities protected all its citizens regardless of their religion. Malczewski was aware from the outset of the action, that nothing would stop Kahr from carrying out further expulsions,

but in spite of this he took an uncompromising attitude towards the Bavarian government. In conjunction with the defence of the expelled, which was his main task, he wanted to take advantage of events to initiate

in Poland and abroad anti-German propaganda and also expel from Poland as a reprisal a suitable number of Germans. At the beginning he received the approval of the Polish Legation in Berlin and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for his plans. They agreed that during his intervention with

Kahr he should threaten reprisals against German citizens living in Poland. Malczewski demanded that a reply should be given to his intervention by 29 October, that is by the date by which the first group of

expelled persons left Bavaria, otherwise German citizens would be expelled from Poland. The Bavarian government, ignoring Malczewski’s statement, replied in the negative on 31 October. Then the Consul took up a two-pronged action: on the one hand he proposed to the Polish envoy in Berlin intervention in the Auswartiges Amt, and, on the other, he tried to persuade the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Warsaw to start immediate expulsions. In spite of the assurances of the Polish envoy of total support

for Malczewski’s stand, he was not able to intervene with the German authorities owing to the instructions of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of 3

November, which ordered the cessation of further action in the Munich region and the dispatch of all materials to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.”* The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, however, could not expel German citizens

from Poland without exact details on the numbers and reasons for

expelling Polish citizens in Bavaria, but even after receiving information (having already lists of German citizens’ families marked up for expulsion)

because it was afraid of exacerbating the situatign. It applied to the German Legation in Warsaw to intervene with the German government in Bavaria, with the aim of halting the repressions against Polish Jewish citizens. Representatives of the Auswartiges Amt delegated to Bavaria only managed to obtain the cessation of expulsions for a while in Munich, but

they were continued in other towns. Kahr ignored the interventions of the central government as he had those of the Poles. He could permit himself to do so in the knowledge that Berlin would not undertake any decisive step against such an attitude. The position of Kniling, who was always very friendly towards Consul Malczewski and would probably have been inclined to co-operate with the government in Berlin, was shaky, and a decision to stop the expulsions could only be taken by

Kahr. Neither the Berlin nor the Munich government regarded as possible, even in a cautious form, a change in the negative decision of

Kahr as expressed in the note of 31 October which was sent to the Consulate General.

68 POLIN Consul Malczewski was at first blamed for refusing to co-operate, although he had not received any official proposition for talks. This resulted from a desire to avoid exposing Kahr and also to remove the pretext for repressions by the Polish government. | On 2 November, Edgar Rauscher, the German envoy in Warsaw, stated that the expulsions had been stopped and that talks had not been started

owing to the fault of the Consul General in Munich. After obtaining information as to the real state of affairs in the Munich region, the Ministry

of Foreign Affairs decided to expel from Poland fourteen families of German citizenship. Fourteen because at least as many Polish families had left Bavaria by 31 November. The Polish Consulate General in Munich advised the remaining families to remain where they had lived in spite of the fact that the deadline for leaving Bavaria in the majority of cases had

already passed. The tactic of Rauscher, the Auswartiges Amt and the Bavarian Government was based on misinforming the Ministry of Foreign

Affairs in Warsaw and the Jewish and the German communities. The German government tried to place the whole blame for the worsening of

the situation on the Polish Consulate General in Munich. In January, | particularly after the final expulsion of fourteen families of German citizen-

ship from Poland (by then at least 40 Polish Jewish families had been expelled), an anti-Polish campaign was let loose in the Bavarian press, basing itself on an official German communiqué that supposedly fourteen Jewish families had left Bavaria voluntarily prior to the conclusion of Polish-German relations. The explanation given to the Bavarian press by the Polish Consulate General presenting the factual state of affairs was not published.” The final expulsion at the end of January 1924 of fourteen German families probably gave the impression that the Polish government did not only intend to use diplomatic action but would also use reprisals.

Rauscher had to go to Bavaria to calm the situation. He did not accomplish much. Kahr was unbending and Polish repression did not

affect him at all. In order to draw out the affair Rauscher brought documents from Munich concerning the expulsions which had been fabricated by the police there. He presented them directly to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, by-passing the Auswartiges Amt. The Rauscher visit in Munich brought only one visible change in the situation, which was that the Reich envoy in Bavaria, Haniel, for the first time since 31st October 1923, made an official proposal of negotiations (authorised by the Bavarian government) on 23 January to Consul Malczewski. In reply Malczewski put forward the following conditions for talks:

| 1 Expulsions and home searches will be suspended until the end of the talks.

2 Expelled persons will be informed of the above. 3 Investigations are to cover all expelled persons without exception.

THE EXPULSION OF JEWS FROM BAVARIA IN 1923 69

4 The Bavarian government recognised in principle the right to compensation by persons incorrectly suffering damage.

5 The Bavarian government will appoint a representative, who will be authorised to negotiate in all cases on the territory of the Bavarian state. The reply of the Bavarian government was negative and ‘improper’, as Malczewski defined it in a report for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. When the Consul, in spite of it, requested Haniel to intervene in opening up talks, the latter refused, although he had earlier acknowledged that Malczewski was right, and pointed to the abnormal situation in Bavaria. The attempt

by Berlin to put pressure on the Bavarian government to start up talks ended with a strong protest by the Bavarian government in the Reich capital against interfering in its sovereign rights. Munich, so as not to bar utterly for itself a way to talks, proposed to the Consul that he negotiate with individual police departments. In its explanation of this decision, the low status of the Consulate General in the hierarchy of consular representations was cited. Malczewski refused to accept the proposition. To incline the Consulate General to talks with low level police officials in individual towns would have been an event without precedent in the contacts of the

administration with consular missions. Also this kind of negotiation necessitated a large number of employees, which the Consulate did not possess. By forcing the Consulate to examine each case individually, the Bavarian government could claim that the expulsions did not have a mass

character. In order to support the argument for such negotiations, Rauscher stated in Warsaw that, as of 6 February, the expulsions would be stopped for three weeks (in reality, both on 6 February and later, expulsion

orders continued to be issued). In this situation the Ministry of Foreign Affairs told Malczewski to start talks on the conditions proposed by Munich.'® Malczewski did not agree to the decision of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as he rightly believed that it would be a capitulation to the Bavarians. He organised a counter action in the form of a collective note sent by the whole Munich Corps Consulaire to the relevant embassies and legations in Berlin with the request that they present it to the Auswartiges

Amt. This note protested against the Bavarian government forcing Consulates to deal directly with police directorships and secondary authorities, and requested a joint démarche aimed at a definite regulation of the relations between the Consulates and the Bavarian government. The highest state agents were involved in the matter; the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, not wanting to take responsibility itself for widening the conflict, sought the opinion of the Polish Prime Minister: The Chairman of the Council of Ministers after acquainting himself with the matter regarded it as expedient to recommend to the Consul

General in Munich the commencement of negotiations with the

70 POLIN Bavarian police. Taking all factors into consideration, overplaying our hand too strongly in respect of the Reich and Bavaria in the case of our withdrawal could injure the interest and prestige of the Polish Republic and also not have the anticipated results. Such a decision is especially expedient as twenty German families have been expelled

in retaliation, a decision we will not rescind. Apart from that the Reich government did observe the basic conditions we demanded in

the incomparably more important matter of the Mecklenburg expulsions.’ Citing this opinion, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs advised the Consul to start negotiations with the police directorships, in spite of further Jewish expulsions, using the following guide lines:

1 The whole weight of the matter is placed on the intervention of the Polish legation in Berlin and on the German Legation in Warsaw. With the Bavarian authorities we ought to restrict ourselves to a strict matter of fact treatment of the issue.

2 The trivial reasons for the expulsions should be remembered. This circumstance provides us with our justification for our expulsion of some German citizens. 3 For this reason, the Consul General is invited to show understanding to

the Bavarian authorities when evaluating the motives of individual expulsions, preparing a dossier of those cases whose justification the

Consul General considers to be sufficient. This material will be

Germans."* |

extremely valuable in the case of expulsion action against undesirable

The Consul General continued, however, to believe that the only way to avert further expulsions was to take steps against German citizens living in Poland. This is why, in spite of the explicit instructions of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he did not undertake talks with the Police in Munich. At the beginning of March 1924, Malczewski was called to Warsaw, where he obviously convinced his superior Stanistaw Los (the Head of the Northern

Department in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs) of the correctness of his attitude, because no talks with the police were started following his return to Munich. However, detailed work was started on individual cases of expulsions in order to prepare the material for intervention by the Polish Legation with the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In December 1924, it was decided that in the negotiations concerning the expulsions of Polish citizens between the Polish Legation in Berlin and the Auswartiges Amt, the Bavarian Legation in Berlin would take part. The negotiations were started in March 1925, The attitude of the Polish side was clearly formulated in

THE EXPULSION OF JEWS FROM BAVARIA IN 1923 71 the instructions of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the Polish envoy in Berlin, and contained thirteen points:

1 The expulsions of Polish citizens from Bavaria in 1924 were in the majority of instances insufficiently motivated and carried out under the influence of political motives, and only really justified in a few cases. 2 As a result of the expulsions, Polish citizens have borne damages and | material loss. 3 As the Bavarian authorities are to blame, the Bavarian government is bound to grant the victims appropriate damages.

4 The Polish government continues to take the stance, that only two

categories of expulsion orders exist, that is ones that are either sufficiently motivated or insufficiently motivated. There is no intermediary category.

5 Small crimes and crimes punished by courts in the past cannot be

current expulsion orders. | considered by the Polish government to be suitable justification for the

6 Damages should be demanded not only for persons expelled without suitable justification, but equally for persons for whom the expulsion order was suitably justified, but who received an order to leave Bavaria

in a ruthless manner, which did not enable them to wind up their personal and property affairs. 7 As far as the means of arranging damages is concerned, in principle the aim should be that each claim be examined individually. Only in cases in which this cannot be achieved, should agreement for lump sums be given.

8 As for the sum, it would be paid to the Consul General in Munich, who would arrange the allocation of individual amounts.

9 In cases where the property of a given person was occupied by the Bavarian authorities, and has not yet been handed to a third person, property should be returned to the victim with full rights to its disposal, in spite of the fact that the expulsion remains valid.

10 The claims of the Polish government should be limited to financial damages or, as foreseen in point 9, the restitution of property. A withdrawal of the expulsion order should not, however, be demanded.

{1 The elimination of the matter of Bavarian expulsions should be achieved in a compromise manner, with the demand, however, that the basic nature of the compromise enables us to maintain the validity of our own reprisals. 12 Our retaliatory orders, which were totally justified, cannot be retracted to any degree, nor can any kind of damages, for that reason, be given to the Germans.

13 In these negotiations, the creation of iunctim with other matters of expulsions from Poland or Germany, and also complaints of the

72 POLIN Germans to the Polish government of another category should not be permitted. Little was achieved by this. ‘The Bavarians managed to provide justification for the majority of expulsions. The Polish side, for fear of the return of

twenty expelled German families, accepted a far-reaching compromise. However, a very important concession was gained, namely the abandonment of expulsion orders against those remaining in Bavaria. Those who had left the country regained virtually nothing of their property. Few of those who settled in other towns of Germany returned later to Bavaria. In the lists of expelled citizens which were drawn up quarterly by the Consul General in Munich for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs after 1933, names of people expelled from Bavaria between 1923 and 1924, who either did not

leave Bavaria or returned, start to reappear. The return was of a short duration. Probably the whole matter of the Bavarian expulsions would not be important in the history of the Jewish community in Germany, were it not for the fact that exactly fifteen years later, some thousands of Polish Jews were expelled from Germany. The expulsions in 1938, although carried

out in a more brutal manner and on a more massive scale, had many similar characteristics to those of the years 1923-1924. They concerned Polish Jews exclusively, the conditions for leaving Germany were similar (it

was virtually impossible to take anything), intervention had no positive results.

The fact that it was the first repression applied on such a massive scale

by German agents against the Jews increases the significance of the 1923-1924 expulsions. Up until the moment of the expulsions no government, least of all that of Bavaria, had applied open repression. The official sanction for the first time by Kahr’s government in Bavaria of anti-semitic

policies, and support for that policy by a part of Bavarian society, strengthened the Nazis in their belief in the correctness of their racist programme, which began to be carried out in the whole of Germany in 1933.

NOTES 1 Archiwum Akt Nowych, Warsaw, Files of the Polish Consulate General in Munich, vol. 57, pp. 43-68. 2 AAN, Munich, vol. 57, p. 135. 3 AAN, Munich, vol. 57, p. 141. 4 AAN, Munich, vol. 57, p. 141. 5 AAN, Munich, vol. 14, p. 261. 6 AAN, Munich, vol. 14, p. 76. 7 AAN, Munich, vol. 126, p. 9.

THE EXPULSION OF JEWS FROM BAVARIA IN 1923 73 8 The concentration camp in Ingolstadt, which was under the supervision of the Munich police, was where stateless persons were held until their citizenship was clarified. If it was not clarified, the internees were expelled from Bavaria. Thecamp | was a screen for expelling foreigners from Bavaria. The majority of them, even with

established citizenship, were immediately expelled regardless of accords with Consulates and without staying in the camp. 9 AAN, Files of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, vol. 12465, p. 120. 10 AAN, Files of the Embassy of the Polish Republic in Berlin, vol. 3603, pp. 1-235. 11 AAN, Munich, vol. 57, p. 135. 12 AAN, Munich, vol. 126, p. 32. 13 AAN, Munich, vol. 126, p. 38. 14 AAN, Berlin, vol. 3597, p. 67. 15 AAN, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, vol. 12465, p. 120. 16 AAN, Berlin, vol. 3597, p. 78. 17 As a result of the intervention of the Polish envoy in Berlin in the Auswartiges Amt the expulsions of Polish seasonal workers from Mecklenburg in 1923 was stopped. 18 AAN, Berlin, vol. 3597, p. 97.

REICHSKRISTALLNACHT 9 NOVEMBER 1938 AND THE OS7FUDEN PERSPECTIVE TO THE NAZI SEARCH FOR A ‘SOLUTION’

TO THE JEWISH QUESTION

| | John P. Fox

The anti-Jewish pogrom of Retchsknistallnacht (‘Night of Broken Glass’) on 9 November 1938 in Nazi Germany and Austria occurred because that day

a minor diplomat in the German Embassy at Paris, Ernst vom Rath, died two days after being shot by Hershl Grynszpan, a Polish Jewish student. But to understand fully those events and the later Nazi ‘Final Solution of

the Jewish Question’, it is essential to grasp the centrality of the Ostjudenfrage to the ideological imperatives of the Nazi leadership. Serious

as Knstallnacht was as the first real nationwide anti-Jewish pogrom organised by sections of the Nazi leadership since the Machtubernahme of 30 _ January 1933," from the wider perspective it was merely a convenient and timely Stufenlosung to the German aspect of the more extensive Judenfrage in Europa which Adolf Hitler felt it his task in life to ‘solve’ once and for all. The chief objects of this wider Zudenfrage were not the German Jews as

such. While they suffered badly enough under Nazi rule, what they experienced until the Second World War was social discrimination and ‘an encouragement to emigrate’, actions against a clearly defined minority or racial group which were by no means unique in the world even at that time, rather than more drastic measures of persecution or even a policy of physical extermination. There were a number of reasons for the somewhat ‘restrained’ or ‘step-by-step’ anti-Jewish policies of the Nazis towards

German Jews, following January 1933, which continued after the somewhat unusual (within this context) excessive brutality of Knstallnacht: German public opinion was not always as enthusiastically anti-Jewish as the Nazi régime wished it to be,” the manner in which the Nazi authorities slowly ‘felt’ their way in pursuing some internal policies,’ world opinion concerning Nazi Germany’s racial policies, and which in one instance - in relations with Japan - directly affected internal Nazi and external German

foreign policies, Germany’s uncertain foreign policy and military

REICHSKRISTALLNACHT AND THE OSTJUDEN 75 situation in the centre of Europe,’ and internal Nazi struggles between socalled ‘conservatives’ and ‘radicals’ on Jewish policy.° This apparent but superficial ‘restraint’ of the 1930s did not alter the fact

that Hitler had in mind a very different fate for European Jewry, as and when the opportunity arose. While it was always intended to remove the Jewish presence from German society, the German and Austrian Jews were far from being the main concern of Hitler’s deep-rooted and violent anti-Jewish drives and intended policies. That honour was reserved for the Ostjuden, the generic applied to the great mass of Polish and Russian Jewry, the majority of whom lived in a Poland, which, until 1917, was subsumed within the Russia of the Tsars. From 1918 and 1919 - although the seeds of his hatred were laid in pre1914 Vienna’ - the Ostjude became a morbid fixation of Hitler’s distorted brilliance. After the Great War of 1914-1918 the term Ostjude really meant

for him, conceptually and practically, not so much the Polish as the Russian Jew whom he saw as the controller and carrier of that new ‘bacillus’, world revolutionary Bolshevism which had brutally taken control in Russia in 1917. Both together now threatened to destroy Western European Aryan man and his society as it had, in Hitler’s version, ‘destroyed’ Germany in the ‘revolution’ of 9 November 1918. Hitler’s :dee fixe soon after 1918-1919 was to seek revenge and destroy, physically, the

Jews of Europe. Firstly, this meant the extermination of Russian Jewry since their annihilation would wipe out the Bolshevik edifice in Russia and

remove that threat to the rest of Europe. This would be followed by the

_ extermination of other Jews in Europe (the majority living in newlyindependent Poland’) because the ‘universal’ nature of Jews meant that all

bore the stigma of those in Russia. German Jewry, although obviously included, nevertheless ranked low on this list of priorities for extermination, a policy on which Hitler knew he would find it difficult to carry most Germans with him. Throughout the 1920s, therefore, while Hitler railed and rallied against the Jews, his worst threats and language were reserved

for the Russian-Bolshevik or Ostjude persona.? | Vom Rath’s death on 9 November 1938 at the hands of Grynszpan fortuitously brought together three highly emotive issues in the eyes of Hitler and other Nazi leaders which were to prove especially unfortunate for the Jews of Germany and Austria: it coincided with the anniversary of the hated ‘revolution’ of November 1918, the assassin was a Jew, but above all he belonged to that especially detested group, the Ostjuden. When these features are taken together with other recent developments in Germany’s policies and international situation, it becomes clearer why the events of

November 1938 led to what they did, whereas the assassination on 4 February 1936 of Wilhelm Gustloff, Party Landesgruppenleiter in Switzerland, by David Frankfurter, a Jewish rabbinical student, had not. In 1936, for instance, a special circular instruction was issued on 5 February by the

76 POLIN Reich and Prussian Minister of the Interior, Wilhelm Frick, forbidding any ‘individual actions against Jews’ because of this event. A devoted disciple of Hitler, Gustloff was accorded the rare honour of a funeral

oration by the Fuhrer himself.!° Before November 1938 German and Austrian’! Jews experienced persecution under Nazism, and before 1933 from anti-semitic Germans and organizations." It is probably true to say, however, that some of what they suffered was a consequence, not of their own position within German

society but of that of thousands of Ostjuden who, permanently or temporarily (and sometimes illegally) had made their home in Germany, particularly as a consequence of the anti-Jewish pogroms in Russia which followed the assassination of Tsar Alexander IJ in March 1881. Before and after Imperial Germany’s military defeat in November 1918, the Ostjuden of Russia, Poland, Galicia, Bukovina, and Romania saw Germany as the nearest and most convenient transit land on the way to a new life in the United States of America, or as the final place of refuge from the antiJewish persecutions and progoms of the time in eastern Europe. Even the

emergence of the post-1918 successor States did little to improve the situation of the Oséjuden in their original homelands, in some cases making

their plight worse than before.'” | The political handling of the Ostjudenfrage during the early years of the Weimar Republic was dominated by five practical considerations. Firstly,

the sheer size of the Jewish population in eastern Europe (pre-1914 it amounted to some 7 or 8 million’); secondly, the numbers of those who might seek passage through Germany as refugees on the way to other countries, or who alternatively might seek to remain within her borders: either way, many Germans feared that Germany would be ‘overrun’ by

‘hordes’ of the alien Ostjuden; thirdly, the legal and administrative measures that could be used to control the entry of immigrants; fourthly, the legal and administrative measures at hand to expel those immigrants

whose presence was no longer desired; and fifthly, and perhaps most significant of all, the perception of the special nature and characteristics of the Ostjuden by German Gentile and Jew alike.

The dominant foreign policy question of the Weimar Republic’s handling of the Ostjudenfrage concerned their expulsion from Germany,”

and in this respect Nazi Gemany’s own expulsion of Polish Jews in October 1938, causing the unfortunate vom Rath’s death because Grynszpan’s parents were among those affected, was nothing new in recent German history. The dominant internal political and social questions provoked by the Ostjuden in Germany concerned the response of native Germans, Gentile and Jew alike. ‘Provoked’ is an apt description of the reactions they called forth for one simple reason: not only were these people Jewish but they were different. On behalf of the Gentiles, Heinrich von Treitschke, Professor of History at the University of Berlin, labelled the

REICHSKRISTALLNACHT AND THE OSTJUDEN 77

Ostjuden in 1879 as ‘a horde of ambitious, pants-selling Jews whose children and grandchildren were the future controllers of Germany’s press

and stock exchange’. For Germany’s largely emancipated and sophisticated Jewish community the Oséjuden, both in fact and in myth, conjured up the alien and unknown picture of the supposedly ‘typical east European ghetto Jew: physically filthy, mediaeval, unemancipated, alien in appearance, manner, language, culture, and even in their religious extremes such as Hasidism’."” So that the young Adolf Hitler in pre-1914 Vienna was not

| the only one to remark upon ‘the apparition’ that was the Ostjude in his caftan and side-locks as being something entirely different and strange from normal western (German) society."® The link between the political and social aspects of the Ostjudenfrage in

Imperial and Weimar Germany, the later Nazi Endlosung der judenfrage from 22 June 1941 to the end of 1944, and intermediate NSDAP and Third Reich policies towards the Jews during the 1920s’? and 1930s was Adolf Hitler’s personal feelings and political ideology on the Jewish question as on everything else,”° together with his political leadership of the NSDAP and assumption of power in Germany on 30 January 1933. Two factors kept the Ostjudenfrage at the forefront of Hitlerian and Nazi _ propaganda throughout the uncertain period of the Kampfzeit of the 1920s: Hitler’s personal imperatives towards ‘solving’ the ‘Jewish question’, above

all its ‘eastern’, i.e. ‘world revolutionary Russian-Bolshevik aspect’; and the fact that the National Socialist Party Programme of 24 February 1920 contained a number of specifically anti-Jewish points which, although directly applicable to German Jews, easily betrayed the influence of the Ostjudenfrage on Hitler and the early NSDAP. Article 4, for example, read as follows: ‘only members of the nation may be citizens of the State. Only

those of German blood whatever their creed, may be members of the nation. No Jew, therefore, may be a member of the [German] nation’. Article 5 took up a well-known Volkisch-nationalist demand when it declared that ‘anyone who is not a citizen of the State may live in Germany only as a guest and must be regarded as being subject to the Alien Laws’. This obvious attack on the Ostjuden was pursued further in Article 7: ‘we demand that the State shall make it its first duty to promote the industry and livelihood of the citizens of the State. If it is not possible to nourish the entire population of the State, foreign nationals (non-citizens of the State) must be deported from the Reich’. Any doubts against whom such orders

were to apply, were removed in Article 8: ‘all further non-German immigration must be prevented. We demand that all non-Germans [i.e. _ the Ostjuden] who entered Germany subsequent to 2 August 1914 shall be _ required forthwith to depart from the Reich’.

At one level, all this could be classed as ‘normal’ party political

propaganda in the fight to gain electoral support in the Weimar Republic.”4 This was particularly true after Hitler’s imprisonment in

78 POLIN Landsberg in 1924 when the idea of a coup d’état was abandoned.” Nevertheless, this was only one part of the story. More serious is the point,

itself the subject of controversy,” that from the very beginning Hitler’s ultimate and entirely Utopian intention was to destroy, physically and deliberately, the Jews of Europe, beginning with the Bolshevik Jews of Russia. It is astonishing how clearly and publicly he expressed these ideas throughout the 1920s, although for the sake of expediency his public attacks on the Jews were toned down in the few years prior to the taking of power in January 1933, Nevertheless, Hitler never abandoned his tdee fixe from the time of conception to the time of implementation.

At first even Hitler, like thousands of Germans, appeared more concerned by the Jews from Poland. As an early and novice member of the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (DAP), he spoke on 10 December 1919 about the necessity of fighting the Jews in order to restore German power and pride: ‘we [the DAP] wish to be German, and we lead the fight against the Polish-

Jewish mob. We are a reactionary Party and prove this because we fight the Jews and grasp them by the throat’.?* Subsequently, as the NSDAP’s greatest orator (apart from Joseph Goebbels) and the Party’s early leader, Hitler repeatedly attacked the Jews in the most vile and violent language.

Throughout, he built up the image of the threatening, poisonous, annihilating Jew, this device of rhetoric enabling him, gradually but clearly, to put forward his own ideas of the Vernichtung or Ausrottung of Jewry, common enough German words, but then in Hitler’s speeches and during the 1940s to carry one meaning only. So that, for example, three

years later he was warning his audiences (on 5 October 1921) that in dealing with ‘our greatest enemy, the Jew’, they would have to be strong in deeds as in words.” Shortly afterwards, on 21 October, he emphasised that

they had to ‘get rid of the Jews’.”” But for Hitler, resolving the Jewish question was one of imperatives, not something simply to be desired and simply left at that. As he put it on 9 November 1921, ‘for us there are only

two alternatives. Either we remain German, or we succumb to the Jewish scourge’.”’ As to ‘solutions’ to the Marxist and Jewish questions, one of the

means to be used would be concentration camps after the takeover of power in Germany which, on 8 December 1921, and prophetically at that, he put in 1933.78 For, as he was to state on 23 January 1922, this was ‘not only a matter of life and death for the German people but was in reality the

truly vital question for the whole world’, sentiments which were to dominate his instructions for Operation Barbarossa, the attack on Soviet Russia on 22 June 1941.” Apart from Hitler himself and the rabid Jew-hater, Julius Streicher,” two of the most revealing statements on these matters before 1938 and 1939

came from one of Hitler’s chief lieutenants, Hermann Goring. On 23 November 1931 at a luncheon in Berlin and before British and American guests, Goring made the highly significant comment which, from the Nazi

REICHSKRISTALLNACHT AND THE OSTJUDEN 79 perspective, can only be seen as a true cri de coeur: “other countries could

never understand German hatred for the Eastern Jews’.*! Even more cryptic, although here it is charged with deep meaning in connection with Hitler’s oft-declared intention to exterminate the Jews of Europe (even before the unmistakable warning in his Reichstag speech on 30 January 1939), were Goring’s remarks in March 1936 to Ward Price, the Berlin correspondent of the Daly Mail: ‘he said Germany had a terrible surprise for the world in the event of war; it would be deemed barbarous but that could not be helped in a life and death struggle’.* Here it is suggested that these concepts of ‘barbarity’ and the ‘life and

death struggle’ are too close to the terms used constantly by Hitler throughout the 1920s to describe the ‘either or’ fight with world Jewry and the need to exterminate the duality of Jews and Bolshevism, and employed

late in 1941 by the Fuhrer and the Army leadership in orders for the campaign against Soviet Russia, for their meaning - even in 1936 - to be unmistakable.** Nevertheless, some historians seem bemused by the fact that from 1933 until 1938 and 1939 the Nazi régime appeared incapable, in modern parlance, of “getting its act together’ so far as a comprehensive or consistent anti-Jewish policy in peacetime was concerned: ‘the Nazi failure until shortly before the outbreak of war in 1939 to formulate a consistent

Jewish policy stemmed in part from economic and political obstacles which any policy had to overcome.’ From this beginning, the argument is

developed that the later policy of extermination ‘came about’ in a supposedly ‘improvised’ manner because, for example, ‘an emigration policy which had not been able to keep pace with Hitler’s peacetime acquisitions fell apart almost completely with the outbreak of war’ and because ‘during the early years of the Third Reich no one in the Nazi movement, from the Fuhrer down, had defined what the substance of a solution to the Jewish problem might be’.» A number of misconceptions are involved in this and similar expositions

about the ‘genesis’ of the policy of Endlosung. Two may be dealt with quickly. Firstly, if there was no deeply felt conviction about the idea of extermination for the Jews in Hitler’s mind and among other Nazi leaders, as and when it might be convenient to implement such a policy - and that could only be when a state of war existed - why were the Jews of occupied -

Russia and Poland not treated as all other civilians in Nazi - occupied Europe and allowed to live, instead of being singled out - deliberately — for

mass murder? Secondly, some historians suggest that the exterminations which began towards the end of 1941 in the occupied Baltic and Polish territories (developing thereby into the ‘Final Solution’), came about more

because of ‘administrative inconvenience’ in the east since the Nazi administrators there could no longer ‘cope’ with the thousands upon thousands of Jews sent to them from the rest of Europe rather than as the outcome of a deliberate and long-term intention on the part of Hitler.

80 POLIN Such arguments ignore three fundamental points. Firstly, by concentrating on the decision-making process in 1941 some historians tend, implicitly, but more often explicitly, to deny the existence of a compre-

hensive and predetermined motive behind the deliberate policy of extermination which actually began, as Hitler had always intended, with the Russian Jews on 22 June 1941 when Germany invaded Russia, and not before. Secondly, if the Nazi administrators of late 1941 (supposedly) could not cope, and resorted to extermination as a ‘solution’, how and why had the Nazi administrators of the Gouvernment-General in Poland ‘coped’

with their 22 million Jews without resorting to systematic physical

| extermination in the period between September 1939 and Operation Barbarossa on 22 June 1941? The reason is quite simple and twofold: the ideal solution of extermination was to begin only with the Russian Jews, while that situation in itself presupposed a situation of military supremacy in Europe which would (and only then) enable other groups of Jews to be exterminated. The second broad point leads directly to the third and crucial one in the argument, which is the totally deliberate nature of the Jewish exterminations throughout Operation Barbarossa. While those exterminations were an end in themselves, it is asking too much of commonsense and reason to

accept that the later comprehensive and pan-European policy of exterminations emerged later in 1941 and 1942 only because some local Nazi administrators could not ‘cope’ with the large numbers of Jews under their control. What occurred in 1941 and beyond happened because then,

and only then, Nazi Germany had a completely free hand to execute whatever policies her leadership desired.” | The assassination of vom Rath and the subsequent pogrom of 9 November 1938 are of direct relevance to these issues because some usual

interpretations of those events serve, mistakenly, to reinforce some misconceptions about the subject as a whole. This is particularly true if the vom Rath incident is perceived too narrowly as a ‘decisive turning-point’ in Nazi Germany’s anti-Jewish policies, especially if the three crucial factors of intention, consistency, and opportunity in the Nazi arsenal are ignored —

or glossed over. |

So far as the question of consistency is concerned, some important features of Hitler’s ideology and NSDAP propaganda on the Jewish © question before the Machtubernahme continued with a vengeance after 30 January 1933. They were, therefore, clearly in evidence in the Third Reich before the events of 9 November 1938 prompted Goring’s and Hitler’s threats of violence against the Jews in general but in particular the ‘JewishBolshevik’ leadership of Soviet Russia, and threats that Bolshevik policies of ‘annihilation’ against (western) society would be met with like actions on the part of the National Socialists. ‘These facts and others clearly contradict such statements as the following: ‘Hitler grasped quite early on that anti-

REICHSKRISTALLNACHT AND THE OSTJUDEN 81 semitism would be a powerful vote-catching force in Germany and that he had no compunction against riding that evil horse right up to the portals of

the Chancellery in 1933; but that once inside and in power, he ‘dismounted’ and paid only lip-service to that part of his creed’.*’ While these features continued after 30 January 1933, it is significant that increasingly the anti-Jewish theme was subsumed within the attacks

and threats against ‘Marxism and Bolshevism’ by Goebbels among others, but especially by Hitler himself. This is important for several reasons. Given the nature of the Third Reich, the Nazi régime’s increasing

control over German society, its slow but inexorable resolution of the Jewish question within Germany, and the destruction of ‘Marxism and Bolshevism’ inside Germany by the banning of the German Communist Party (KPD) following the Reichstag fire in February and the establishment of the one-party State on 14 July 1933, all this could only mean -

as during the 1920s - that the chief point of focus was the ‘JewishBolshevik’ State of Russia itself.

During the 1930s there were two main directions to the war waged against the Jews. One, that against the Jews of Germany, was a mixture of

pragmatic politics and ideology. In the vanguard of the vicious propaganda onslaught in this connection, apart from Party publications such as Neues Volk, the journal of the Rassenpolitisches Amtes der NSDAP,** were

Goebbels and Streicher, the latter’s violent and pornographic language even upsetting his Party comrades.*? Not that Goebbels was averse from using highly descriptive and evocative language of his own. At Berlin on 29

June 1935, when the Berlin NSDAP celebrated its first “Gau Day’, Goebbels, in his inimitable fashion, ridiculed those who spoke of the Jew , as a human being: ‘Yes, he is, but what a human being! To be a human being is in itself nothing at all. A flea is also an animal, but not necessarily a

very pleasant animal. We don’t want the Jew any more. He has nothing more to look for in the German community’.*® While this was part of the deliberate process to ‘dehumanize’ Jews in the perspective of Gentiles, the statement is revealing of Goebbels’ innermost thoughts of the ‘worth’ of Jews as against Aryans. Another revealing incident concerning the thoughts of a Party ‘radical’ on the Jewish question involved Julius Streicher in the summer of 1935.

But on this occasion it was the response of an ordinary Party member which was perhaps the most significant event. At one of the regular courses for Nazi student leaders of the Nationalsozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund

(NSDStB., National Socialist German Students’ Association) at the Reichsschule Bernau in Baden (Course 20 from 10-30 July 1935), Julius Streicher made the following key statement on 23 July: ‘without a solution to the Jewish question there can be no salvation for the German people. All struggle will have been in vain if the fight against the Jews leads to nothing. One can go so far as to say that it is not sufficient to banish the Jews from

82 POLIN Germany, they must be killed the world over in order that mankind will be

free of them’. Of particular importance were the observations on Streicher’s comments made the following day by Party Member Dietel: ‘Dietel opposed Streicher’s views by saying that the Jew should not be universally killed, but that it would be sufficient for us if he were to be removed from Germany. For us, the Jewish question is an educational

problem for the German people’.*! | | The comments by the unknown Nazi, Herr Dietel, are extremely

important. The fact of his declared opposition to Streicher’s universal death-sentence for the Jews alone is worthy of comment. More important is his position as a member of the NSDAP when expressing such thoughts, in particular the ambiguity about the ‘solution’ he himself envisaged for the Jewish question - the German term Ausschaltung being capable of

many interpretations, including the more moderate one within this context of simply ‘removing’ Jews from German society rather than from life itself. Above all, Dietel’s comments underlined the difficulties which Hitler had recognised even in the 1920s about implementing the extreme policy of Endlosung durch Vernichtung when the chance came: his justified doubts as to whether he could carry the rank and file of Germans with him

in this enterprise. Interestingly enough, the question of ideological conformity and discipline within the Party had been the subject of a Party circular by the Deputy Leader, Rudolf Hess, five weeks before.“

The second main plank of the Nazi onslaught against the Jews after 1933, until the military and security services preparations for Operation Barbarossa early in 1941 was, therefore, purely ideological and continued Hitler’s emphasis of the 1920s on the either-or nature of the ‘conflict of ideologies’ between National Socialism and ‘Jewish-Bolshevism’ which had established itself in Soviet Russia. Both Goebbels and Hitler himself spoke eloquently on this theme in any number of speeches between 1933 and 1939.*°

| For those at all conversant with the deeper meaning of the Fuhrer’s ideological development and intentions, such pointers were confirmation of the foreign policy principles he had arrived at by December 1922 and later represented in Mein Kampf and the this community seems to have been the first to equip itself with a chevra kadtsha, a funeral brotherhood with very hierarchised structures based on wealth and the scrupulous observance of ritual. The Chevra set itself the tasks of helping

the poor, inculcating respect for the traditions of Jerusalem and the Mishna, and taking charge of the final moments of life. In this way, a moral power in the community was created, acting as intermediary between the community and the kahal (the organism which governed the community); the chevra was conceived as a middle way between the Christian brotherhoods and guilds. Although the Chevra Kadisha was not a place for spiritual reflection, the help it gave the dying aimed to release them from the influence of Satan. The Chevra appointed people to carry out the cleansing of the corpse, the coffin, the tomb, to seal him off from the eyes of the living, in short, prepare him for the day of resurrection.

The revival of interest in death and resurrection originated in the Lurianic kabbala which was born in the East and spread to Central and Eastern Europe in the seventeenth century. It accounts for the proliferation of burial books which caused the developments of two doctrines from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. These were gilgoul, that is to say, the idea of the perpetual reincarnation of a single soul according to a cycle of accomplishments and commandments, and étkun, or final reunification. These doctrines meant that the acts of penance of the German Hasidim had to be replaced by the spiritual exercises advocated by the kabbala: tshuva (repentance) and vidui (confession). In these circumstances when death was extremely ritualised, mourning was the subject of precise prescriptions. It was divided into four unequal periods. The first, very short, marked the interruption in the relationship

between God and the living man; a second stage lasting seven days dispensed the family from observance of the commandments; during the third stage, of thirty days, the mourner did not shave; and lastly, the family kept away from festivities for a year because it was responsible for the heavenly judgement on the dead man. Not only was the ritualisation born of Biblical and Talmudic tradition, but the influence of the Kabbala also added customs, such as hakafa (the

encircling of the dead) or macabre dances or again processions to the cemetery to ask pardon of the dead. The cemetery had become the chosen place for pleas for intercession from the divine decrees. Disease, the antechamber of death, was regarded as the expression of demoniacal intervention. The pathogenic agents most frequently named

BOOK REVIEWS 399 were demons and their human agents, sorcerers. The dead could possess

curative virtues and the fashion spread in the seventeenth century of removing elements from the wrappings to treat invalids. Nevertheless, the

techniques applied to individual disease could not be used to combat epidemics, regarded as the result of the accumulation of collective sins.

All these concepts would be harshly tested by the thought of the Enlightenment which led the funeral brotherhoods to extend their mission to the maintenance of orthodoxy. Brotherhoods proliferated but care of the

dead was no longer their central element. Orthodoxy in the nineteenth century had yielded on the basic issue in order to preserve the form. The interest in death diminished at the same time as interest in demons. The reader will have gathered that Goldberg’s book is rich in information and ideas even if there are some regrettable inaccuracies’ and faults in construction. This book opens up very fertile viewpoints for further work. I will mention only two of them. First, Goldberg demonstrates that the Jews

of Central and Eastern Europe formed one body composed of common

political views and cultural features, a body parallel to that of the Christians in the same area. Secondly, the book is an important contribution to knowledge of occult practices amongst the Jews which explains perhaps the rebirth of accusations of sorcery and ritual crimes against them in the eighteenth century. Verily thinking about death always leads to thinking about life. Daniel Tollet Centre detudes juives Universite de Paris IV — Sorbonne

NOTES 1 Chaunu, P., La mort a Pans aux XVI, XVII et XVITI stecles (Paris, 1978), p. 3. 2 This view is discussed by Y. H. Yerushalmi in his preface to the book: ibid., p. 8. 3 The regulations of the chevra kadisha of Prague are only known through later texts (reproduced in an appendix to the book) and analysed on pp. 104 ff.

4 See, for example, p. 72: ‘feudalism is at its height’; for this period it would be appropriate to speak of the ‘seignorial regime’. Or again, on p. 120: ‘Contacts between Prague and Italy were close via Venice by way of the intellectual and commercial exchanges of the Prague and Venice Jews who were both under Habsburg protection.’ (It is hard to understand how the Venetian Jews of the seventeenth century could have been under the protection of the Habsburgs.)

Y. Jacobson, La pensee hassidique. Paris. 1989. Pp. 185.

Hasidism is fashionable nowadays, both in life and as a subject to study, yet few books in the French language describe its history and its equally

400 POLIN complex thought. The French translation of Y. Jacobson’s book in Hebrew on ‘Hasidic thought’ is therefore occasion for rejoicing. It is clear that so far as the history of the movement is concerned, the

author refers to the already old books by Z. Aescoly-Weintraub and S. Dubnov and has decided to discuss only its thought." This is no simple matter because Hasidism has never offered clear and

stringent teaching; a doctrine which was formulated in collections of sermons set around major axes. Its leading ideas are: divine immanence,

the psychologisation of the ideas of kabbala, the theory of devekut (devotion) neutralising ‘messianism’, and lastly the theory of the tsaddtk. Divine immanence implies the diffusion of divine energy to the heart of

everything that exists, therefore everywhere man can enter into contact with God. For the Hasidim, the reasons for this are that Nothingness contains everything and Being corresponds only to the phenomenal world. Being has been formed out of Nothingness by the self contraction of the Infinite (the idea of 7stmtsum in the Kabbala) to bring back the Light in it. The world therefore originates from the inwardness of the secret essence of divine Nothingness. The deity is therefore the only reality of the world, and it is a matter of

retrieving the unity of existence in itself. R. Schneur Zalman of Liady (1745-1813) expressed it in the formula: ‘all creatures are within their source’. There did, however, need to have been a ‘creation’ for God to have been able to raise himself in relation to his people.

God therefore reigns over the Beings who must, however, annul themselves as distinct entities in order that His kingship be everywhere revealed. This annulment permits the revelation of the kingship of the Heavens and the return to its bosom; the ultimate world lies in full revelation of the hidden Light and in the elevation which leads to the extreme point of deliverance. For Hasidism, man can raise himself individually and link himself with the deity at every moment and everywhere; the site of his spiritual struggle

is his ego. Now, this ego is a negative element since it corresponds to a situation of withdrawal into oneself. It therefore has to renounce its desires, which does not mean sinking into passivity but raising oneself by holy acts. According to R. Simhaha Bunem of Przysucha (1765-1827), the cause is sin: ‘Before sin, man constantly beheld divine grandeur, thanks to the wisdom of his soul and therefore of himself. Since sin, this unity is destroyed; however, man is led astray by his ego; yet sometimes he succeeds in contemplating the grandeur of his creator’. The quest for the annihilation of self is therefore the exclusive prize of those who elevate themselves. It demands that they make themselves void, aspire to devekut. How can this be achieved? When the movement began, R. Menahem Mendel of Przemysl (1728—1770?) warned against ‘too much study’. R. Meshullam Phoebus Heller (of Zbaraz) thought that in order to

BOOK REVIEWS 401 know the Father man had to give up everything and run towards him. The people of Israel had the capacity to recall the secret of the kiss of devekut. Later, Hasidic thinkers stated that the path to devekut lay through deeper study of the Torah. All these initiators of Hasidism identified faith with an act of devekut which involved indifference to the values of this world. The result of this was to liberate the man of the mitzvot (the commandments) and commit him to turning away from the sadness which diverted him from service to

God. God is served in joy. |

What emerges from these ideas is a moral code of life which the Maggid Dov Baer (died in 1772) of Mezertich (Miedrzyrecz) formulated. For him, the authentic man obliterates his individuality, not by a complete return to Nothingness where he aims to lose himself, but by purification, sanctifica-

, tion and spiritualisation of his flesh which enables him to meet God, who awaits him for all eternity. However, the person who attains these heights

| by divesting himself of the matter finds that he is brought back to the matter. Hasidism loves the world in its capacity as phenomenon but aspires to its purification. It must not be forgotten that, from this point of view, the struggle against evil takes place at the level of spiritual life. But it is when a man prays that

his impure thought comes to the surface. Impure thoughts then, should not be driven out but transformed into holiness, elevated to the divine root. This concept is crucial: it is the basis of the Hasidic stories. It is through listening to profane chatter that the words of the living God can be glimpsed.

_ According to R. Isaac ben Meir of Berdichev (1740-1810), man has therefore to detach himself from impure thought and serve the Creator. Moreover, if he serves the Creator, this love will of itself fill him because it contains all the pleasures.

The discussion then bears on the possibility of sublimating evil thoughts. Is this capacity available to everyone? Rabbi Schneur Zalman thinks that only the tsaddik can do it because the thoughts are not his own but those of his community. As can be seen, man is the basic concern of Hasidism and this because the soul is clothed in corporal vestments. Rabbi Schneur explains this fact in the perspective of the climb of the soul towards an even higher place than that whence it originates. According to the formula of R. Jacob Joseph of Polnnoye (died in 1782), ‘evil is therefore the throne of good’.

Hasidism teaches a path reserved for the elect and the superior men guided in their actions and aspirations by aristocratic consciousness but not by pretentious pride. The role of the elite of the disciples, the tsaddikim,

is to see that holiness is no longer the prerogative of a few chosen people but is lived on the social scene. ‘This elite is the pillar which links the high with the low, Nothingness with Being. The soul of the tsaddik shelters all the souls of his generation and at the same time, he makes himself one with

402 POLIN the sinner who clings to him. The ¢saddik is united with the eternal divine substance and represents the vital possiblity of entering eternity from this life.

Jacobson’s book really provides a very complete presentation of Hasidic thought. Nevertheless I have one or two small reservations. For example, is not the presentation of this thought in the form of a doctrine a little excessive? Again one can also regret that the author’s decision not to describe the history of the movement should have blocked the possibility of grasping its evolutions, and even its splits.

The author has, on the contrary, very usefully emphasised the basic divisions which exist between the ideas of the kabbala and those of Hasidism, in cosmic perspectives, theosophic concerns, the conception of the shechina (divine presence), or devekut.

Other influences which could have affected Hasidism, such as Shabbataism? or the pietist Christian movements, have still to be examined. This was not the subject of this book but forms a very open field for research. Daniel Tollet Centre d’etudes juives Universite de Pans IV — Sorbonne

NOTES , 1 Aescoly-Weintraub, Z., Le Hasstdisme (Paris, 1928); Dubnov, S., Geschichte des Chassidismus, Berlin, 1931.

2 Scholem, G.G., ‘Le mouvement sabbataiste en Pologne’, in Revue d’HMstotre des Religions, 143 (1953), pp. 77-81.

Robert Wistrich, The jews of Vienna in the Age of Franz Joseph. Oxford University Press. 1989. Pp. xiv, 696. Norbert Kampe, Studenten und ‘fudenfrage’ im Deutschen Katserretch: Due Entstehung einter akademischen Tragerschicht des Antisemitismus. Gottingen:

Vandenhoek und Ruprecht. 1988. Pp. 327. Conditio Judaica. Fudentum, Antisemitismum und deutschsprachige literatur vom

18. fahrhundert bis zum Ersten Weltkneg. Edited by Hans otto Horch and Horst Denkler. 2 vols. ‘Tubingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag. 1988, 1989. Pp.368, 375. Reviewing a volume of poems in German by a Polish Jew in 1772, Goethe

wrote, ‘It is most worthy to be a Polish Jew and renounce trade, devote

BOOK REVIEWS 403 oneself to the muses, learn German and turn out little verses; but if all in all one achieves no more than a German étudtant en belles lettres, it is, we think,

ill done to draw attention to one’s Judaism.’ The stereotypes, though expressed with the gentlest irony, are all there: the Polish Jew as an object

of contempt when in trade, and of ridicule when not; the demand that Jews might make less noise about themselves; and the assumption that it was more difficult to become a cultivated German than a native of ‘half-

Asia’ might think. The German-speaking lands formed the frontier between ‘Eastern’ and ‘Western’ Jewry; it was there that their conflicts were played out, there that both anti-semites and philo-semites used the contrast between the two types of community to emphasise the difficulties of total assimilation. _

Numerically the problem was greater in the Habsburg territories, politically it was more intense in what was to become the German Empire. | The complexity of the encounter in Austria comes out well in Wistrich’s exhaustive study of the Jews of Francisco-Josephinian Vienna. Up to the 1880s the fast-growing Jewish community of the Imperial capital was largely ‘Western’ in composition, drawn from Bohemia, Moravia and Western Hungary. It was middle-class in origin and certainly in aspiration,

liberal in its politics and German in its cultural identity. The Jewish masses of Galicia were an embarrassment, a constant reminder of the ghetto from which the Viennese had emancipated themselves, and many of their charitable efforts were devoted to ‘improving’ Galician Jewry: replacing Hasidism with enlightenment, Yiddish with German (or Polish), trade with handicrafts. The terms of the encounter were changed when

Galicians began pouring into Vienna, settling mainly in the ‘“matzos island’ of the Leopoldstadt. Few of them were rich enough to pay community taxes, which disfranchised them in community politics. They

thus became ready material for Zionist or other anti-assimilationist mobilisation against the German-Liberal oligarchy that dominated the community. Galician Jews also saw the struggle against anti-semitism in different

terms. If they had a loyalty, it was to the Habsburg dynasty, not to the (increasingly illiberal) German-Austrian element. One of their chief spokesmen, Rabbi Joseph Bloch, was much more aggressive in his assault on the anti-semites than the Viennese Jewish establishment cared for, even defending the ‘Talmud against its detractors. Patricians like Joseph Ritter von Wertheimer did not like this: “You defend the Talmud too much,’ he complained. ‘We do not know it ~ and do not want it any more.’ Wistrich’s account is comprehensive and detailed. It is a chronology rather than an analysis, without any great over-arching theme, unless it be the gradual alienation of Jews from the liberal-assimilationist ideal. His book is at its best in recounting the internal struggles within Viennese Jewry, and the second of its four parts, dealing with the decline of liberalism, the rise of

404 POLIN Zionism and the campaigns of Bloch and his Osterreichisch-Israelitische

| Union can be particularly recommended. It was his encounter with Viennese Galician Jews, with their strange speech and apparel, that turned Hitler into a racialist, if Mein Kampf is to be believed. It is more likely that for him, as for many others, ‘Eastern’

Jews were a pretext for anti-semitism. It was not starving pedlars and | , tailors who threatened the hegemony of the nationalist middle classes, but the radical Jewish intelligentsia, whether liberal or Socialist in their humanistic cosmopolitanism. This consideration emerged particularly in student anti-semitism. The Austrian version was more extreme than the German: by 1896 the Austrian duelling corporations collectively determined that ‘the Jew was devoid of honour’, that is unfit to be a duelling partner. But the student anti-semitic movement began in the German Empire. Its spearhead was the Kyffhauser-Verband, as the Verein deutscher Studenten came to be known.

| Norbert Kampe’s is the first scholarly account of student anti-semitism in the German Empire since before the war. Its great merit is that it sets its subject in a wider political and social context. The moving spirits of this in the late 1870s were the post-unification generation of student nationalists, disillusioned with the lack of idealism and the secularisation of German life. Their anti-semitism was an incidental, but not subordinate, part of a quest for spiritual regeneration and social concern. It also arose at a time of

great expansion in higher education and overcrowding of some pro_ fessions. Since not only university education but membership of the right corporation was the key to entry into a number of prestigious occupations, exclusionist tactics could be highly effective. Yet Kampe, in concluding that student politicians succeeded in ‘normalising’ anti-semitism, may be taking them too much at their own valuation. By 1902 the VdSt claimed to _ have brought about ‘the social isolation of the Jewish student’; since one does not know how the majority of those German students who belonged to no organisation and did not participate in elections thought or acted in

these matters, one should not accept this assertion uncritically. What Kampe does show is that the propaganda against the ‘flood’ of Eastern Jewish students — never very numerous and scarcely in evidence when the VdSt was founded - was, as elsewhere, an opportunistic rationalisation of an already existing prejudice. Condition Judaica, from which the Goethe quotation at the beginning of

this review comes, consists of the proceedings of a symposium of the Werner-Reimers-Stiftung in the Federal Republic. Like all such publications it is uneven. The least successful contributions are the most general. What can be said that is not superficial in a fifteen- or twenty-page

paper on Jews in English or French literature? The most successful are those by experts on a particular author - Norbert Oellers’s on the attitudes

of Goethe and Schiller to Jews, Sigurd Paul Scheichl’s on Grillparzer,

BOOK REVIEWS 405 Klaus Christian Kohnke’s on Gustav Freytag and Horst Denkler’s on Wilhelm Raabe. The last two, subtle analyses of writers often dismissed as anti-semitic on the basis of one or two characters, are especially valuable. What emerges is not necessarily a new view of the complex identity of the

Jew in Germany, but - Egon Schwarz remarks in his lecture ~ further evidence of the difficulties of any definition and therefore the foolishness of stereotyping. Peter Pulzer All Souls College, Oxford

Artur Eisenbach, Emancypaga Zydow na ziemiach polskich 1785-1870 na tle europesskim. Warsaw: Panstwowy Instytut Wydawniczy. 1988. Pp. 679.

English summary.

The British reader perhaps needs reminding that the Jews were expelled from England in 1290 and with the approval of Cromwell allowed back officially in 1655. Their legal position was not finally clarified until the nineteenth century when Baron Lionel de Rothschild was elected to Parliament for the City of London in 1847, but could not take his seat because the oath required him to swear ‘on the faith of a true Christian’. In 1858 this requirement was dropped, but Benjamin Disraeli, whose father had been converted to Christianity, had already become Chancellor of the _ Exchequer in 1852 and was to be Prime Minister in 1868. Whatever irritating restrictions were placed upon them in Britain, Jews could rise to positions of importance. Sir Moses Montefiore visited the Polish territories and Russia in 1846 to use his influence to improve the lot of the Jews under Russian rule. Rothschild and Montefiore were members of the British upper classes. Artur Eisenbach in this work notes with evident approval that from the

beginning discrimination against the Jews did not exist in the United States, but we should perhaps remind him that slavery did and that created problems which brought about a civil war. We can agree with him that the situation in Poland had its own complexities. In 1790 Stanistaw Staszic was to write that ‘the whole of Europe is ending the eighteenth century’, but ‘Poland is still in the fifteenth’. The Polish community as a result of the Partitions was to be in a state of crisis. Poland had to make her way out of the social structure which had arisen in the middle ages. The Christian population was divided into legal categories, the sz/achta, the clergy, the bourgeoisie and the peasants. Outside this social structure were the Jews for whom Poland was their homeland, but who lived a life at a tangent to Polish society as a whole and spoke Yiddish among themselves as

406 POLIN their national language. ‘They were, moreover, subject to discriminatory

taxation.

In the eighteenth century there were about 750,000 Jews in Poland, of whom 549,000 lived in the Kingdom of Poland and about 201,000 in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Jews tended to live towards the east, with 42 per cent in the Ukrainian provinces and 27 per cent in Lithuania. There was a reduction in the size of the Jewish population as a result of the First Partition, but there was an influx into Poland proper from the Austrian and Prussian areas. According to Staszic there were in 1791 about 800,000 Jews in Poland, or 6.3 per cent of the population. Three quarters of them lived in the towns. Most of them were employed in trade and handicrafts. Within the community there were divisions. The Kahal representing them in their relations with the state tended to use its power to favour the better off. This in its turn gave rise to Hasidism, the emphasis upon traditional Jewish values to counter the materialism of the Kahal. On the other hand there was the Haskala movement which sought to laicize Jewish life. With the Enlightenment there was a movement to abandon Yiddish, the Zargon, in favour of Hebrew. Thus it may be said that, while Polish society was seeking to break with the structure which it had inherited from the past, Jewish society within Poland was itself in a state of turmoil. The Code Napoleon brought an end to discrimination wherever it was applied, especially in the Low countries. Equally it had an influence in

Germany. For their part, the partitioning powers, Prussia, Austria and | Russia began to take steps towards mitigating the lot of Jews in those Pol-

ish territories which they occupied, though in Russia the war of 1812 brought reform to a halt. Broadly speaking, it is true to say that the Poles, where they had any influence, as they did have in the Duchy of Warsaw (1807) and the Kingdom of Poland from 1815, were less well-disposed towards the Jews than the partitioning powers. For practical purposes the Code Napoleon which benefited Jews in Western Europe was not applied

| in the Duchy of Warsaw or in the Kingdom of Poland in which the system of the Duchy was maintained. The author takes us through the measures which resulted in the alleviation of the Jewish lot. In the Grand Duchy of Posen some measures were taken in 1833 to bring legislation into line with that pertaining in Prussia as a whole, but the process was hastened by the events of 1848-9 both in Prussia and the Austrian Empire. Equal rights were finally granted in Austria in 1867 and the process was completed in the German Empire in 1871. In the Kingdom of Poland some measure of alleviation was achieved by Wielopolski’s compromise solution of 1862. The author has written an encyclopaedic work for which reason generalizations may be deceptive, but it is possible to see two broad schools of thought among the Poles, within which there were varying shades of opin-

ion. On the one hand, there were the Poles, usually among the upper

BOOK REVIEWS 407 classes, who thought that Jews could not be given full civic rights until they had been assimilated with the Polish population. It nevertheless comes as a shock that Archbishop Zygmunt Filinski could say in April 1862 that ‘the Jews are sent to Poland by God to be a gutter conducting in the epoch of currency exchange, trade and swindles all the filth with which pure, noble Polish hands, devoted to other purposes, ought not to be defiled’. He was opposed even to assimilation. Even those with reservations towards assimi-

lation, like Andrzej Zamoyski, never held views as hindbound as that. Wielopolski was a conservative, but it was his aim to achieve equal rights for the Jews in order to get rid of a needless complication in his struggle to achieve a transition into a more modern form of society in which the upper classes would retain their predominance. On the other hand, there were the Poles who declared that the Jews could not be assimilated until they

were given equal rights with the Christians. The historian, Joachim Lelewel, and the poet, Adam Mickiewicz, saw in the Jews brothers-inarms who, could with the Poles, fight for independence and freedom. ‘The

author at the end of his work reminds us that emancipation was not enough to dispose of the prejudices which persisted among conservative Poles. Przeglad Katolickt could write in 1900 that ‘giving equal rights to Jews

was a great mistake of the Europeans, because they yielded to “dreams” of

, the equality of people before the law, and forgot that the aim of this nation [the Jews] is “the conquest of the world”, “the overthrowal of Christianity”. It therefore praised the Russian government for maintaining restrictions over its Jewish population. Artur Eisenbach may perhaps be criticized for one aspect of his work.

When he deals with Jews he is essentially referring to Jews who had emerged in Polish society to take their part in the common fight for freedom. We get less information about the Jewish community as a whole ©

and what their attitude towards assimilation was. Young orthodox Jews attacked Jewish shops which were open during the festival of New Year, which gives a hint of opposition within the Jewish community towards assimilation with Polish society. In short, the reader may wish to know more about what was happening below the level of those Jewish leaders

who were playing their part in seeking collaboration with the Poles. Equally, we do not obtain much information about events and developments in the western guberni of Russia. In short, the author inspires us to wish to know more about the problem. He entitles his work “The Emancipation of the Jews in the Polish Territories’, but the problem extended to an area far wider than the Polish territories of today. For the contemporary historian the problem still exists, though for the Poles themselves it has, unhappily, virtually disappeared after the experiences of the Second World War. Eisenbach has written a useful work, but it is a very long one. We are

| not helped by the index, which is merely a nominal roll, whereas one would hope for a subject index, instead of the /ndeks osob which is all too

408 POLIN common in Polish historical works. The foreign reader should not be put off by the English summary, which has been written in indifferent English and does less than justice to this comprehensive work. This is a good book of reference and of great use to the reader who wishes to inquire more deeply into the problem. R.F. Lesle Charlbury

Michael Stanislawski, For Whom Do I Toil? Judah Leth Gordon and the Crisis of Russian Jewry. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1988. Pp. 263.

As a student, I was once expected to know Judah Leib Gordon’s poetic credo, ‘Awake, My People!’, by heart. I recently had occasion to note that my Israeli students were no longer familiar with Gordon’s classic poem — indeed, there were few who could correctly identify his name. Yet Judah Leib Gordon was undeniably the ‘national poet’ of modern Hebrew literature until the advent of Bialik. Apart from the vagaries of the Israeli school curriculum and the uneven historical knowledge of undergraduates, what could account for Gordon’s latter-day relative obscurity? The answer to this and many other questions about the life and times of Yalag (the abbreviation by which Gordon is generally known in Hebrew) may be found in Michael Stanislawski’s masterful biography. As becomes

clear, Gordon was a man of many contradictions, a loner, even an eccentric. His poetry was both praised and vilified by his contemporaries. They and subsequent critics seem to have seriously misunderstood or misinterpreted the man and his message, often because they seized on only one line of development in his oeuvre, sometimes because they failed to treat his works as aesthetic creations - reading them more as manifestos. By examining Gordon’s personality, his letters, his prose as well as his poetry, Stanislawski clears a path through the literary-critical underbrush and posts warning signs for the reader to beware of wrong turnings along the way. His interpretation of Gordon will surely stand up to any other, and is more convincing than most. As such, it is a major contribution to Jewish intellectual and cultural history; and, as a bonus, Stanislawski also provides a sketch of the Jewish social and cultural elite in late nineteenthcentury St Petersburg. This biography is a decidedly post-Zionist one: that is, although it takes seriously Gordon’s contribution to the Hebrew renaissance and his par-

ticipation in the public debate over Jewish settlement in Palestine, it refuses to pigeonhole the somewhat elusive Gordonian mentality as either pro- or proto-Zionist. Stanislawski makes the case for a fairly consistent

BOOK REVIEWS 409 line throughout all of Gordon’s life and work - but that line is not Palestinocentric. Gordon was a Jewish “Westernizer’, in the same sense as

were other Russian intellectuals of his day who were convinced of the cultural superiority of the West and of the need to help their nation develop along progressive social and political lines. Thus, though he expressed his approval in principle of the idea of Jewish settlement in the Holy Land, Gordon tended to eschew any notions of Jewish nationalism or

restoration that were not predicated, first of all, on a process of Europeanization. It was, of course, none other than Yalag himself who coined the phrase that epitomized the kind of synthesis he had in mind for modern Jewry: ‘Be a man in the street, and a Jew at home’. One prominent Jewish scholar once called this ‘the most anti-semitic statement ever made’, because it

allegedly distinguished between Jews and human beings. Stanislawski

makes clear that Gordon had no such proposition in mind, nor did he | mean to imply that Judaism was something disreputable, fit only to be hidden away in private. Stanislawski might have helped his own argument on this point had he

placed Gordon’s famous dictum within the terms of reference used by social theorists in discussing the modernization of consciousness. Modern-

ity was everywhere accompanied by an inner division that separated aspects of life, culture and personality that had once seemed part of a holistic unity. Aspects of Menschlichkett that in traditional society may have been coterminous with yzddishkayt no longer seemed synonymous, even if

they continued to overlap. Enlightenment culture, of which Gordon was one of the great Jewish exponents, was all about the struggle to transcend the limiting constraints of an either-or choice between the particular and

the universal in human civilization. ,

The traditional biographical mode, perhaps, does not lend itself to such wider social conceptions, and Stanislawski holds to this older, classical model of biography. That is both its strength (its empiricism) and its weakness (its necessarily limited scope). Indeed, Stanislawski does not stray very

far from Gordon’s own story in dealing with the cultural politics of nineteenth-century Russian Jewry. The narrative is professionally and admirably controlled (and the writing remarkably smooth), so that what emerges is a brilliant cameo, not a tapestry. No book can - or should - try to be everything to every reader, and there

are things that a traditional biography cannot do. The spare, elegant narrative presented to us would not necessarily have been improved by diversionary side-trips and comparative discussions. I note the possibilities

here in the interests of setting the scholarly agenda for the future. Someday, out of such portraits of outstanding figures and individual communities, a broader, more comprehensive picture of Russian Jewry will emerge.

410 POLIN Thus, we learn in this book about Gordon’s views on religious reform in

Judaism; and - because his life intersects with Gordon’s at that point about the literary polemic on that issue sparked by Moshe Leib Lilien-

blum in 1869. Similarly, Gordon’s approval of and support for the moderate Wissenschaft school of Zacharias Frankel, based in Breslau, is

cited at several points in the book. But we do not see Gordon in the broader context of the conservative religious reformers in Russian Jewry:

Isaac Ber Levinsohn, Joachim Tarnopol’, Shmuel Yosef Fuenn and Eliezer Silbermann. The failure of religious reform to take root in East European Jewry is one of that society’s most characteristic features, setting it apart from the Jewries of Central Europe and America. Why and how it

failed - and the consequences of that failure - are questions that necessarily fall outside Stanislawski’s discussion.

| In a throwaway line in his conclusion, Stanislawski does venture the hypothesis that the East European, Gordonian brand of religious reform did not entirely fail, because it resurfaced later in American Conservative

Judaism, after the mass Jewish immigration from Eastern . Europe. Although this is intellectually attractive, it is sociologically implausible: it requires us to believe that, quite apart from local, American factors, there was an ‘inner tradition’ that bridged the gap between Gordon and a later generation that ‘knew not Joseph’, having been born or at least raised in the United States. These were the people who formed the Conservative rank and file. At most, a nexus of this sort may have existed between the Americanized social and intellectual elite of Jewish ‘downtown’ culture and the Jewish Theological Seminary, which Jeffrey Gurock has described

in his book on the Jews of Harlem. Certainly, no such inner tradition resurfaced in any other centre of Russian immigrant culture: London, Paris or Palestine. Stanislawski himself, in offering the idea as tentatively as he does, may recognize that he was stretching a point.

Or again, to take the field of literary history, there are intriguing comparisons and parallels that are left out because of the classical biographical framework. We are enabled to trace Gordon’s own development as a writer, and the excerpts and quoted lines of both prose and poetry are rendered in an expert translation. But we are left in the dark (to give

but one example) about another major Lithuanian Hebraist, Abraham Mapu, whose story is certainly relevant to the context in which Gordon lived and worked. Similarly, despite the obvious differences between them, there are some interesting parallels between Gordon and the foremost Yid-

dish author of his generation, Sh. Y. Abramovich. Neither of them, for instance, was particularly impressed by the nationalist-Zionist argument in the years after 1881.

Finally, another word should be said about the scholarly agenda as it has been reflected in recent Russian Jewish historiography. I once asked a more experienced colleague and teacher why we continue to be fascinated

BOOK REVIEWS 411 by the Haskalah and by cultural modernization generally in Eastern Europe. The answer, he suggested, was simple, really: In writing and reading about the maskilim (Enlighteners), we are looking for our own

roots, perhaps our own identities. :

The small group of younger, East European Jewry specialists emerging in the academic community — of which Michael Stanislawski is a member ~ tend to be only one generation removed from immigrant parents or the immigrant culture; in some cases, only one generation removed from the religious tradition. In their own lives they have chosen to be ‘a man in the

street and a Jew at home’. They are the grandchildren of the Russian Haskalah - perhaps its authentic heirs. Here, indeed, there is an inner tradition. Knowing this will help us to understand Stanislawski’s point in restoring Gordon’s legacy, defending him against unfair and biased criticism (albeit without apologetic overtones), and tracing a coherent set of beliefs in Gordon’s life-work that remain oddly relevant, despite the intervening years and the historic cataclysms they have brought with them.

| Tel Aviv Unwersity and Eh Lederhendler

The Hebrew Uniwersity of jerusalem

Nikolai S. Leskov, The Jews in Russia: Some Notes on the Jewish Question.

Edited and translated by Harold Klassel Schefski. Princeton NJ: The Kingston Press, Inc. 1986. This is an essay from the pen of the famous Russian writer Leskov — hailed by the editor as the most philosemitic piece to be found in Russian literary history. As the well-known Jewish historian Julii Gessen (who throughout

is referred to, wrongly, as Jurii!) reported, the treatise was intended for a commission - created by Alexander III and headed by a former Minister of Justice, Count Pahlen - which had to study the ‘Jewish question’ in Russia. This commission eventually came up with a recommendation for a gradual removal of all disabilities for Jews - testifying to a relatively openminded attitude on the part of many Russian bureaucrats. If Leskov had any influence on this cannot be judged and, anyway, the government did

not follow the suggestions of the commission. In the development of Leskov himself this work of his is the most pro-Jewish statement, whereas

in other, purely literary pieces he seemed occasionally to display a somewhat more ambiguous attitude. Leskov deals in his piece with all the traditional accusations against the Jews and against the Jews in Russia in particular: with their involvement in the liquor trade, with their supposed ‘exploitation’ of the simple Russian folk, their assumed disinclination to pursue agriculture, the ‘religious

412 , POLIN danger’ they posed and so on. Quite rightly, he discounts these accusations and points out that most of them could be levelled, with the same or even more justification, at the Russians themselves. He deplores official Russian policy towards the Jews which he does not, and rightly so, see as a way to bring Russians and Jews together. If the Jews don’t love

Russia, of which they were often accused, this should not surprise anybody, Leskov argues, for this official treatment was too brutal, and Leskov depicts this in some detail. In all this, however, is a curious reversal of argument: in a mixture of irony and satire, Leskov holds out Nicholas I as an example for his contemporaries, against those politicians, that now, against the desires of that despot on the throne, wanted to restrict the Jews

_ to their own circles and even bring them back to their former position of isolationism, from which Nicholas had striven to rid them. And this is one of the points where one has some problems with the text: Leskov seems to poke fun at whoever he pleases: Nicholas I, the landowners, the bureau-

crats, the Jews. In spite of the palpable emotions in parts of this ‘memorandum’, there is an element of ‘unseriousness’ that makes it at times difficult to believe that this piece was meant to sway anti-semites or at

least the indifferent to a more positive stand on the question of the emancipation of the Jews. One just does not see these bureaucrats appreciating Leskov’s sense of humour - it is so very difficult to imagine that they had any of their own. Leskov certainly was a captive of the more traditional tendencies of the

time. He was an adherent of assimilation, and he advocated religious reform for Judaism in the sense that the influence of the Talmud was to be reduced — taking his cue from the policies of Joseph II in Austria or of Alexander I - without acknowledging the intellectual parenthood. Jews, obviously, had to earn their standing in gentile society. And he detested

Russia’s ‘kulaks’ and businessmen, not realising that for others this attitude was at the roots of their anti-semitism and their disinclination to reform. So what we have here is not a reasoned analytical dissection of antisemitism or a statesmanlike justification of reform. It is a piece of Leskov,

moving at times, satirical and occasionally even biting, with sometimes faulty history as the background, but in any case an honourable statement arguing for - given the harshness of the time - a humane and enlightened treatment of the Jews in Russia. In parts, however, the introduction by Harold K. Schefski is unacceptable. This historical literature he uses (and the level of his knowledge) stops somewhere with the developments decades ago. The newer works of Klier, Rest, Stanislawski, Zipperstein, Rogger and of the reviewer are unknown to him. Because of this the introduction is full of mistakes or half-truths. And certainly, Leskov was not the only Russian writer to defend the Jews,

a contention which Schefski points out in a footnote. To give a brighter spot to a dark picture, Schefski might have added that Russian writers de-

BOOK REVIEWS 413 manded, for instance in 1905, equal rights and the rights of full cultural autonomy (= national rights) for the Jews. But Schefski prefers a completely dark picture - maybe because it seems to be more interesting. And this is especially true of literary historians who, like Schefski, sometimes fail to understand that fiction is not the real world and is not intended to be. Heinz-Dietrich Lowe Wolfson College, Oxford Oxford Centre for Postgraduate Hebrew Studies

Jozef Chlebowczyk, Migdzy dyktatem, realiami a prawem do samostanowrenia.

Warsaw. 1988. Pp.616.

One of the characteristic features of nineteenth-century European history is the importance of national processes. On the one hand, we witness the consolidation and unification of hitherto divided nations, as, for example, Germans and Italians, to form national states. On the other hand, there are the processes which led to the breaking up of large, historical state structures, an effect of the growth of self-consciousness of small and young nations, especially (albeit not only) the Slavic and Baltic nations in Central Eastern Europe. The late Professor Jozef Chlebowczyk was an internationally recognized authority in the field of nation-forming processes in modern Central and Eastern Europe. In his first major work devoted to this problem, O prawve do bytu matych 1 mtodych narodow (Warsaw-Krakoéw, 1975, 2nd enlarged edition 1983; shortened English version: On Small and Young Nations in Europe, Ossolineum, 1980) he presented theoretical models of the nationforming processes. He distinguished between Western, and Central-East European experiences, and examined the practical consequences of the latter in the nineteenth century.

The work discussed here, published posthumously, is devoted to the problem of national movements in the first two decades of the twentieth century: from the 1905 Revolution to the end of the First World War. In four parts, divided into chapters and smaller subsections, the author discusses the ideology and activity of various ethnic groups, beginning with the Finns, through the Baltic nations, Slavs, to Turks and Albanians, in four periods: before the war, in the first two war years, in the final years of the struggle, and in creating the new European order. Among the many questions faced by a historian of national movements, the problem of the Jewish people is very special. Clearly the nineteenth

century has been a very important period in Jewish history, yet in a

414 POLIN different way, than for other national groups. It was the time of Jewish emancipation and attainment of civil rights in Europe. At the same time, the Jewish people had already existed as a nation for centuries, despite the lack of their own, independent state. With it, on all territories inhabited by

them, Jews formed a minority. Thus the theoretical models, adequate when examining newly self-forming national groups, are useless in this case. Equally useless are any parallels drawn with the West European nations, or with the situation of Polish people, who, despite the lack of a state, constituted a nation, but who, unlike Jews, lived in lands which were their own ethnically.

Chlebowczyk is conscious of this problem, and did not include the Jewish people in his earlier theoretical considerations, merely pointing several times to the difference of their situation (for example, O prawte do bytu... [1983] pp.34, 65, 83, omitted in the English version). The reviewed

| work differs in this respect, and gives Jews their due. In the first part, the author examines the situation of Jews on Polish territories within the Russian empire, as they were drawn westward by the Tsarist authorities on the turn of the nineteenth to twentieth century. The years 1905-1907 saw the emergence of new forms of national conscious-

ness, the birth and strengthening of the most important political movements, from the Zionists to assimilationists. This strengthening of the

Jewish elements on the Polish lands, and their migration westward, resulted, among others, in the growth of anti-semitism, and, in effect, in numerous pogroms (pp.25-9). During the First World War the front line, and military operations passed there and back over Polish lands. Both of the major occupying powers ~ Germany and Russia - made an effort to win over various groups,

one against another. The Jewish situation was no different, as they were used by authorities against Poles, which led to the further consolidation of the Jewish community, but, simultaneously, to the escalation of anti-Jewish feelings in Polish society (pp.167-71). Lastly, Chlebowczyk mentions the Jewish population when discussing the post-war mediations concerning the rights of minorities (pp.557-8).

Of course, these do not exhaust all the problems connected with the Jewish population presented in Chlebowczyk’s work. Jews constituted part of the very complicated reality of this part of Europe, and had their part in most events taking place there. Let me just add parenthetically, that tracing Jewish problems in the discussed work, one should not be guided by the index supplied at the end, as it is not only incomplete, but incorrect

as well. |

In all, the vastness of the territorial and problematic range covered is truly impressive, and the author’s attempt to include, at least sketchily, all the major developments (both in the practical and ideological domains) is - in my opinion — successful. Future students of this period of European

BOOK REVIEWS 415 history have been offered a very useful and important tool, which cannot be ignored in research to come. Chlebowczyk’s book is a general study, and, as such, treats the Jewish problem accordingly. The question of Jewish identity within the newlyborn or reborn national states, and of their political position, is presented

alongside the problems of other ethnic groups, without any special emphasis, or negligence. One finds here the basic information on the Jewish position in early twentieth-century Central and Eastern Europe. This forms a good starting point for a more detailed and precise research on Jewish matters within, or in respect to, the national changes taking place in Europe at the turn of the nineteenth to twentieth century. In particular investigations on the mutual attitudes between those nations, which have gained the confirmation of their nationality in the form of an independent state, and the Jewish people, who had no chance of gaining the same in this part of the world, would be extremely interesting, and should be undertaken. As it seems, the closer a certain group was to gaining its self-independence, the more phobic it grew towards other groups, regardless of its own past experience. Jakub Basista Jagiellonian University, Krakow

William O. McCagg, Jr, A History of Habsburg Jews, 1670-7978, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. 1989. Pp. xi, 289.

‘People who live in glasnost houses are likely to throw stones.’ Not only do

they cast them at their erstwhile, would be or current rulers, but all too readily and often unremittingly at each other. That much is clear and more from on the ongoing overall crises in the USSR and what until recently were its satellites. Within or without declining empires (official and unofficial) scope for protest and/or revolutionary change necessarily

augments. Inside or outside imperial domains of relative stability thoroughgoing reform can actually strengthen. Nevertheless, any changes which actually whittle away the singleness of purpose in any such polity

can, sooner or later, lead on first to potential and thereafter to actual dangers. Peril arising within the relevant polity or its spheres of influence can then be compounded by matters extraneous — hostilities moving from the possibly to the certainly effective in the process. The Habsburg Empire in the period 1670-1918 displayed a notable knack for ‘rising’ and “declining’, yet fell just the once - seemingly for good and all. Moreover, what ‘rose’ and what ‘declined’ varied significantly. The Austrian Netherlands, finally lost under the Vienna Settlement of 1815 (and undealt with in this

416 POLIN book), had a huge impact on the state of Habsburg fortunes so very many times. The recovery of the bulk of Hungary in the late seventeenth and

early eighteenth centuries by the Magyar nobility meant vast first time acquisitions for the Vienna Court; as did Polish partitions (especially the first in 1772) and the severance of the Bukovina from Moldavia in 1775. Northern Italian and Dalmatian gains (and substantial losses), taken with the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1908, also represent an extraordinary and profound shift in the Habsburg role. Not so startlingly though as that involved in a loss arguably the most serious during the last three centuries of this dynasty’s rule - that of Silesia, so crucial not only in the Habs-

burg lands, but in the Germanies. Then, too, ‘unofficial empire’ and spheres of influence, enveloping territories from the North to the Black and the Baltic to the Mediterranean seas came and went, went and came. The Holy Roman Empire, the German Confederation, vast influence among the pre-Risorgimento Italian states, and a grip on substantial tracts of Balkan Europe (frequently clinched by treaty, bilateral and unilateral alike) all in their time proved factors of absolutely prime importance to the rulers and subjects of the Habsburg Empire. In many situations it was perhaps more apposite to speak of extensions and contractions rather than of a condition of ‘rise’ or ‘fall’.

Actual form aside, Habsburg content proved invariably complex. Crownland conditions amounted to a species of metaphorical algebra. ‘The

onset of constitutional government in Cis-Leithania and the rationalisations stemming from the ‘Ausgleich’ of 1867 brought immense simplifications to its equations, if little lasting aid towards grasping the meaning of what remained. And while true that Jewish populations were all inevitably caught up in Christian complexities, they themselves compounded them in no uncertain way. As the sole fully ‘odd men out’ in both the religious and the usual heartland senses, Jews were bound to risk grave dangers and

discomforts during times when either the imperial neutrality mode, or religious pluralism, or overall mutual ethnic toleration were not supreme. The first would provide equality or near equality before the well-regulated law of a benign dictatorship preoccupied with the notion of loyalty to itself as the key criterion necessary for enjoyment of full state protection of a

citizen. Even a less than complete legal pluralism in religion could be combined (as ultimately in England) with what amounted to a toleration great alike in width and depth. With ethnicities at peace the need for a protective authority, guaranteed rights in religion, and a discrete Heimat to serve as an ark on an ‘Ararat’ receded apace. In manoeuvring through the mass of data covering Viennese control (later joined to a high degree by that of Budapest) any worthwhile assessment of a situation must have fed

into it the significance of conditions within each and every Crownland germane to the topic ~ including, of course, the special relationships such Crownlands have with the imperial authority and with one another.

BOOK REVIEWS 417 Much stress is laid by McCagg upon the attempts by the Habsburgs to create a single and then a double state structure without actually launching any fully concerted moves to build rooted polity nationalism. The truth of the charge of omitting the move imperative for outbidding centrigufal ethnic nationalisms can easily be questioned. Major ‘démarches’ like the whole Josephine reform phase, Metternichian devices, the Bach System, the switch to a Reichsrat, and above all that to the ‘Ausgleich’, lay it largely

low. The central consideration must lie in the matter of intensity of devotion to any loyalty to any political entity, whether governmental or not. No discussion of the Jews of the Habsburg lands in or out of McCagg’s

chosen period can begin to be appreciated comprehensively without an understanding of this point and what it entails. Loyalties can co-exist and most definitely did so between 1670 and 1918. The crucial issue is ~ what was their order of intensity for particular areas or groups at any given time. Next it is vital to grasp that millions of individuals were constantly on the

move towards or away from particular intensities of feeling about particular objects of political loyalty. Had no emperor or minister ever launched any ‘Kaisertreu’ campaign, numerous citizens would still have been ‘complete’ as overall Austrians (later Austro-Hungarians, CisLeithanians and Hungarians). The whole empire in the nineteenth and early twentieth century was awash with identity nuances and a plethora of mobility phenomena to boot. Down from the imperial throne led a lengthy

‘Via Ethnicita’ the foot of which stood at places where simple folk described their identity as “We are from here’. But even when selfdefinition was that of an ethnicity other than that of the polity, this did not mean the person or persons concerned did not owe top political loyalty to

Vienna (and/or Budapest after 1867). Remember too, the fact that the Habsburgs never operated a millet system and that most Crownlands had populations of mixed ethnicities and religions, naturally did much to render Jewish singularity less sharp. Though Jews, by being everywhere yet supreme absolutely nowhere, tended, in an undivided Austria, to adhere to Germanness, and latterly towards the formations Jews as individuals or categories of Jews adjudged appropriate. Naturally, any discussion of the Jews should cover all meaningful groups among them. Jews of every sectarian hue and of every degree of non-acculturation and acculturation ~ stages having high political import. In short, any definitive account of the Habsburg Jews in any period has to open with a carefully crafted contextual cradle —- square one. ‘Thereafter

all major trend shifts involving modification or reconstruction of that cradle must be noted and illustrated. The Rankean trial test would thus be satisfied. One could read the text as though viewing a three dimensional and duly sectionalised working model set under the dome of some great French clock. And yet something more is required. The historical process is also ‘Einsteinian’. Its fourth dimension is the identification of motive

418 POLIN force. What actually drives the model as it ticks away, parts in motion, under that dome? Our author sets his scene relatively well. Although not too attentive as to what constitutes the empire at any point, apart from underlining the overwhelming importance of the acquisition of Galicia in 1772, he provides excellent opening atmosphere gambits, pinpointing

Jewish mental isolation and minimal rights in the late seventeenth century, and never fails to provide data tables as to the exact location of Jews and their numbers throughout the book. The crucial role of Bohemia -and Moravia before 1772 is handled well. A standard maintained for later times, apart from the tendency to omit treatment of such unassimilated sections as remained. Silesia is nonetheless rather mangled, as its identity is assumed to be of a post-1740 character throughout. Vienna itself posed great difficulties. Most of them McCagg has surmounted, and with some distinction. What is wanting is a full explanation of what the metropolis amounted to as a “de facto’ discrete Crownland ~ a delineation of its role as an ‘His Imperial Master’s Voice’ factory, Austrianising its vast immigrations ~ an exposition on its close linkages with commerce and industry in

parts of Moravia and even Bohemia; links frequently of greater overall | depth than ones with numerous fully German-speaking areas less near and less developed. Galician and Bukovinan matters receive the degree of attention deserved. ‘The impact of an all-pervading economic and cultural

laggardly backwardness in the former on the Jewish outlook merits especial praise. Nevertheless, neither the special Polish and Ukrainian factors, separately or in interaction, receive the sort of analysis necessary for appreciating the operation of what amounted to a partial “Trialism’ and its influence on the role of Jewish groups and political parties. Matters set out so well in Nationbuilding and the Politics of Nationalism: Essays on Austrian

Galicia (ed. A.S. Markovits and F.E. Sysyn), published in 1982. And while the nature and modes of the Bukovina emerge very convincingly, no discussion appears of the much-celebrated ‘Compromise’ of 1910-1911 - a matter of no mean importance to Jews in so exposed a corner of the CisLeithanian world. More urgent than that of Moravia in 1905 (also undealt with) was for Jewry there. Hungary, of course, was sub-empire within an empire - once, that is, it had been totally recaptured from the Turks, resuscitated, and administratively united concomitantly with the ‘Ausgleich’ of 1867. The gains from Turkish decline had then already become profoundly affected by results of Polish decline. The Habsburg acquisition of Galicia had meant heavy immigration into Hungarian territories. Outstandingly good play is made here of the total freedom of movement for Habsburg Jews springing in full form from the reforms of 1781 and 1848. McCagg excels himself on this

| subject here and throughout this work. On the other hand, the nature of the all-Hungarian ambience tends to elude him. Generally speaking, given the prominent role of Hungary in civil Habsburg concerns from early in

BOOK REVIEWS 419 the eighteenth century, and given, indeed, the well nigh geometrical progression in importance up to and beyond 1867, it gets insufficient coverage. All the more as the Neolog Jews filled a most interesting and pioneering modernisation role, in alliance with the potent Protestant Magyar and liberal Catholic Magyar communities, for the making of a progressive Hungarian secular state. Something largely completed by the 1890s. Large sections of ‘Hungary and European Civilisation’ ed. G. Ranki and A. Pok, brought out in 1989 pertain to this phase and demonstrate the

solidarity of Christian-Jewish progressives against all comers. Whereas Lueger and his successor ruled Vienna with an anti-semitic label openly displayed, his Budapest equivalents were well and truly checked. Their day was to come only after the demise of integral Hungary in 1920. There is a tendency for McCagg to avoid coming in close, except through the use

of family case histories. For predominantly German and Czech areas this | tends to work comparatively well. ‘Though, the neglect of working class acculturated Jews and all Orthodox resulting from this is certainly far from

a virtue. On the personal histories of Hungarian Neolog Jews, few if any | greater experts can exist than this author. Yet he tends to hold off rather, eschewing too much the relevant individuals in Hungary. Hence a certain vagueness. Anti-semitism and the Anti-Semitic Party of the 1880s and

early 1890s are not precisely delineated. To neglect the unassimilated groups in the Hungarian scenario is also blameworthy, all the more as anti-semitism flourished electorally in areas with low percentages of resident Jews — in the west, influenced by Austro-Slovak Catholicism. A phenomenon far less shaped by Magyar upper echelon Calvinism than its

mainstream Hungarian opposite number. All that appears here on Hungary is valuable. Everything in the book is valuable. It is a good contribution to both knowledge and understanding. Yet it is often so more

through partial accident than through conscious brilliant management. Layout, as in the Hungarian case, is untidy and incomplete. There are also

elements of ‘Still Life’ around. The momentum of Magyar advance in Hungary is not presented so as to show the tenseness of the modern period. An increase of Magyars in the population of the main Hungarian kingdom from 38 per cent to 52 per cent between 1828 and 1910 betokened big gains amidst a much higher total. Germans and Jews rallying to the cause of the

sub-empire represent a large proportion of that substantial change. A

development of great political purport, amounting to an immense strengthening of Magyar solidarity, above all in cities and towns. In some ways one could compare the places of Pitsudski and Dmowsk followings in interwar Poland with those of the Liberal Tisza Party and the

Independence Party in ‘Ausgleich’ Hungary - the former in each set ‘Imperial’ minded and all-inclusive; the latter more narrow and ethnically rigid. Reference to Hungarian success McCagg makes in plenty. But the

full size, zest, and developmental speed of the country in an overall

420 POLIN Habsburg context does not register with sufficient force. Nor does the fault lie entirely within the Hungarian subject sections. The actual neglect of the

extra-Viennese territories of mass German speaking lands and the vagueness over Sudeten trends (especially over the outbursts of incipient national socialist opinion), when taken together the incoherence of CisLeithania heightened by omission of powerful centripetal forces, leaves the reader with a distorted impression as to the collective and several political and social dimensions of the non-Hungarian lands. Those producing books of this kind should neglect no opportunity for explaining the proportions of their major concerns. Among the means available for achieving this end maps are highly promising. Two maps appear here - neither listed in the table of contents. One is right on target. The subject - Vienna, its districts, and the Jewish population of each. The other typifies the failure to come in sufficiently close. It covers the whole Habsburg Empire as it stood in 1910. It indicates the distribution of every ethnic group except one - the Jews. Is not that rather extraordinary? Only consult map two of a work entitled: “The Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Policy of Count Beust’, written by ‘An Englishman’ and published in

author.

1870. ‘There the reader will find the incidence of Jews registered by several

intensities of dots. Each largest local government unit throughout the empire receives separate treatment. A straightforward means of coping

with a central question for all, and the central question (self-chosen) for our

His subject is a taxing one, its demands severe in the extreme. His achievement has been considerable and all interested in Central Europe and Jewish history stand strongly in his debt. Using the book was pleasure.

No dull or heavy patches torture the devotee. Fascinating information pours forth from every page. The sheer amount of labour and the goodnatured elegance of the presentation leave one lost in admiration. There were, however, things to add and things to call in question. Not to the point though where McCagg and his work could for a moment be denied strong ‘glory, laud, and honour’.

, Michael Hurst St fohn’s College, Oxford

Hillel J. Kieval, The Making of Czech Jewry. National Conflict and Jewish Society in Bohemia, 1870-1918. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1988. Pp. viii, 279, 8 ill.

The national consciousness of the ethnic groups in the East Central Europe was developing during the 19th century and the first half of the

BOOK REVIEWS 421 20th century. These processes were analysed by the late Jozef Chlebowcezyk, in his unfinished magnum opus.’ However Chlebowczyk did not investigate the changes in the Jewish societies of this region, mentioning some problems only on the margin of other questions. He was aware that a

more thorough study would require at least elementary knowledge of Yiddish as well as Hebrew. The task to investigate the rise and complex changes of the national consciousness of the Jews in East-Central Europe awaits as yet the future historians. The reviewed book is a big step forward in this direction. It is true that

H.J. Kieval limited himself to one country only and to the chosen questions. However the investigated period was a very important one and the Czech lands can be considered an interesting basis for all the future comparisons. The Jews were living there among two rival national societies (Czech and German), under the impact of their developing nationalisms

and in a relatively (in comparison with other states of the East Central Europe at that time) democratic political system. The Jewish society faced three national programmes: the traditional German, the rapidly developing Czech and newly emerging Zionist. The choice was dependent on the existing political, cultural and social relations.

| The author rightly observes that the traditional opinion that the Jews in general before 1918 were the basis of the German influence in Czech lands is - at least - an overstatement. He analyses important differences between

Prague and village Jews; the latter spoke mainly Czech and maintained good relations with their Czech neighbours. The demographic process migration from villages to towns and the city of Prague - influenced ethnic relations in the Czech lands in the last decades of the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th century. The towns and cities developed not only

because of the immigration of Czech peasants but the Czech-speaking Jews too. This was the social and demographic basis of the development of the Czech-Jewish movement. At the same time at the end of the 19th century there developed anti-semitism, among some groups of the German as well as the Czech population. The German anti-semitism was influenced by

similar trends in the German-speaking lands (especially Vienna and Austria proper). Czech anti-semitism used the argument that the German-

speaking Jews were helping the German influences in the capital of Bohemia as well as in the other urban centres. Kieval presents the dilemmas of Jewish society and political develop-ment. The strength of the Czech-Jewish movement was growing but the anti-Jewish views of some known Czech writers and politicans created new problems. This situation favoured the beginnings and development of the Zionist movement. The author indicates, however, that the Zionists - in spite of their ‘neutral’ attitude in the Czech-German rivalry - quite often

accepted the Czech language and were under the influence of the

422 POLIN democratic ideas of Tomas G. Masaryk - the future president of the Czechoslovak Republic.

The most thorough analysis concerns the ideology of the Prague zionists, connected with the group Bar-Kochba, being under the strong influence of Martin Buber. Buber - as it is known - was educated in East Galicia and revealed to the Western Jews the Hasidic tradition of this region. Some of the Prague Jewish intellectuals (Jiri Langer is the bestknown example, not only in Czechoslovakia) travelled to the famous tsaddikim and brought home new experiences. The appropriate fragments of the book are opening a broader question, as yet not investigated: the mutual contacts between the Jews in Czech and Slovak lands as well as in

Subcarpathian Ruthenia and in Galicia. These contacts were not interrupted in Autumn 1918, when the new independent countries emerged on the ruins of Habsburg monarchy. Some traces of them can be

found in the Polish archives. :

The last chapter of the book presents the situation of Jews after autumn 1918, in the new-born Czechoslovak Republic, where the Czech-Jewish movement had to cope with the vivid Zionist movement. According to the author the investigated period can be summarized as follows: “The transformation of Bohemian Jewry, from a village and small

town to a predominantly urban society, and from a German-centred, cosmopolitan culture to one overdetermined by national considerations, took place over the course of a half-century [ ... ]. During this time

Bohemian Jewry went through a complex process of change and adaptation, a “secondary acculturation” that had not been predicted by the Enlightenment model of Jewish emancipation’ (p.198). He is right when underlining that similar (at least to some extent) changes were going on among other Jewries in the East Central Europe in these times. However, it was not only the case of Jews. The general review of the transfor-

mations of the peoples of this part of Europe reveals that many other

nations during the same period acquired their individual national consciousness or at least were on the way towards this aim (e.g. Byelorussians, Macedonians, Slovaks, Ukrainians). The Jews who developed _their own national programme were not an exception but another case of the same rule.

These changes began before the end of the 19th century and it is possible to trace back their beginnings to much earlier period. However, a big step forward was connected with the first decade of the present century

and the next - | dare say - leap occurred in the years 1914-1921: war, revolution and aftermath. Some hypotheses concerning the reasons of

these changes were presented in the historiography.? It would be important to know to what extent the same - or other — factors influenced the Jewish societies of this area. It is a rare case when in the same book the author managed to present a

BOOK REVIEWS 423 fully competent analysis of demographic data as well as an interesting and

thorough presentation of philosophical problems. Detailed criticising should find some misinterpretations but of minor importance (e.g. the identification of the statistical term ‘obcovaci rec’ with ‘mother tongue’, in fact it is rather ‘language of everyday communication’ - p.61 - 1s without bad consequences; ‘plemeno’ is rather ‘race’ than ‘rabble’ - p.186). Rich archival as well as printed sources (in languages: Czech, French, Hebrew,

, English, German) are an additional value of the book. Jerzy Tomaszewski University of Warsaw

NOTES 1 J. Chlebowczyk, O prawte do bytu matych 1 mtodych narodow. Kwestia narodowa t procesy narodotworcze we wschodnie) Europie srodkowe w dobie kapitalizmu (od schytku XVIII do

poczatkow XX w.), Slaski Instytut Naukowy & Panstwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe 1983, Warsaw and Krakow; (a shortened English version: J. Chlebowczyk, On Small and Young Nations in Europe. Nation-Forming Processes in Ethnic Borderlands in EastCentral Europe, Zaktad Narodowy imienia Ossolinskich (1980, Wroctaw & other)); J. Chlebowczyk, Migdzy dyktatem, reahami a prawem do samostanowienma. Prawo do samookreslenia 1 problem granic we wschodniey Europie srodkowe) prerwsze) wojnie swratowe)

oraz po jey zakonczeniu, Panstwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe (1988, Warsaw).

2 Jerzy Tomaszewski, Rewolucje w srodkowej 1 wschodniey Europie (1977-7979), in Zbigniew Landau, Jerzy Tomaszewski, Druga Rzeczpospolita. Gospodarka - spoteczenstwo - mtejsce w swiecie (sporne problemy badan), Ksiazka i Wiedza (1977, Warsaw).

The Dreyfus Affair: Art, Truth, and Justice. Norman L. Kleeblatt (ed.), Berkeley: University of California Press. 1987. Pp. xxxiii, 315. Illustrations and 203 plates.

This volume constitutes at once a catalogue and a companion to the exhibition on the Dreyfus Affair mounted by the Jewish Museum of New York in 1987. Abundant illustrations are supported by essays on various aspects of the Affair and its implications by historians, art historians and literary scholars. Readers without a specialist knowledge of French history might hope for more background information than is provided, for while there is a lucid account of the legal complexities of the Dreyfus case by

Benjamin Martin (who criticizes both sides for violations of judicial procedure), there is only a skeletal chronology of the broader Affair, which does little to place it in the context of the development of Third Republican politics. By contrast, there are solid introductory chapters on popular antisemitism and on the French Jewish community (by Michael Marrus and

424 POLIN Paula Hyman respectively) and an evocative piece by Michael Burns on the Dreyfus family, which might serve also as a case study of the evolving social and cultural identity of Alsatian Jewry in the century following emancipation. Nevertheless, this is not a work narrowly focused on the Jewish and anti-semitic aspects of the Affair; it aims (as the museum’s director puts it in her preface) ‘to address aspects of art history as well as broad humanist themes’, across the history of a specific event. It is no slight to the contributing authors to say that the pictures hold pride of place. One must be grateful to Norman Kleeblatt (the exhibition’s principal organizer and the book’s editor) and his colleagues, both for quality —- the standard of reproduction is high and the presentation (unlike some of the material presented) tasteful and attractive - and for quantity. Over 300 (out of more than 500) exhibits are reproduced, constituting an unprecedently rich and varied array of images relating to the Affair. A proper sensitivity is shown to the relationships between images — whether the direct references which the antagonistic front pages of Psst../ and Le Sifflet made to each other, or the serial or collective arrangements which were a common feature of both sides’ visual polemic (one is offered all twelve lithographs from the Hommage des artistes a Picquart, and a representative nine of the fifty-one monsters in Lenepveu’s Musee des horreurs). The major themes and symbols of Dreyfusard and anti-Dreyfusard iconography emerge, as they should do, by repetition (complete with variations), and a wealth of perspectives enlivens the presentation of episodes like the degradation of Dreyfus and the Rennes retrial. This is easily the most comprehensive available guide to the visual aspects of the Affair, and one of

the few works which students of this episode will find it genuinely inconvenient to be without. The book’s most obvious personalities are the cartoonists and graphic

artists of the newspaper and magazine press (Forain, Caran d’Ache, Willette, Ibels, Steinlen and others). Though the ‘phenomenon of artists serving politics through involvement in journalism’ was not as new as Kleeblatt implies (one thinks of La Silhouette, Le Chanvan and La Cancature in the 1830s), he is surely right to suggest the unprecedented opportunities

~ for influence which such artists derived from their close association with the burgeoning mass press of the 1880s. Their work is amply represented here, and discussed in an essay by Dennis Cate. ‘The strongest impression imparted by the book, however, is not of the dominance of any single visual

medium or artistic group, but of the sheer diversity of iconographic material on display. This bears witness both to the rampant commercialization of the Affair (there are postcards, cigarette papers, and proand anti-Dreyfusard boardgames) and to the unparalleled range of artistic

and reportorial techniques (extended by photography and even film) available to the newsmen and polemicists of the 1890s. That the Affair (as distinct from the Case) was a phenomenon of ‘L’Age

BOOK REVIEWS 425 du papier’ (Vallotton’s picture of that name adorns the dust-jacket) something created and sustained by the press and historically novel for that reason ~ is a central theme of the book. The illustrations of Dreyfus’ retrial at Rennes nicely capture the episode’s double nature: Renouard’s and Couturier’s sketches show the court-room drama, while Gerschel’s

photographs outside, and anonymous drawings of journalists and photographers at work reveal one of the first great media events. Yet the

theme is too much taken for granted in the supporting text: one is disappointed to find no discussion of the professional methods of journalists or of the processes of newspaper production and dissemination, and only fleeting references to the technical advances which made both

photo-journalism and the mass-production of graphic images practical possibilities. The decisive cultural impact of a new-style press is repeatedly

suggested in the illustrations, but a good opportunity to examine its mechanics is largely missed.

The theme of social rupture, on the other hand, is explored in the text from several angles. The Affair brought tensions into the open, crystallizing new positions, provoking a breakdown and adjustment of old relationships. While the French Jews faced an unforeseen crisis in the relationship between ‘French’ and ‘Jewish’ identity (to which, as Hyman reminds us, a range of responses, from reinforced assimilationism to Zionism, was possible), intellectuals and artists experienced the breakdown of solidarities based on aesthetic and cultural likemindedness, under the pressure of a sudden access of ideological dualism which (as Susan Rubin Suleiman points out in an essay chiefly devoted to literary representations of the Affair) laid the foundations for twentieth-century political divisions. As Cate shows, the graphic artists whose division into Dreyfusard and antiDreyfusard camps became clear in 1899 had previously frequented the same Montmartre cafés, contributed to the same publications, shared the same contempt for ‘bourgeois’ society, and infrequently made the same free use of stereotyped ‘Jewish’ physiognomy in their attacks on the capitalist class. Linda Nochlin offers more detailed insight into the polarizing and crystallizing effects of the Affair by exploring the complexities and

obscurities of the anti-semitism of Edgar Degas. Before the Affair, the painter’s anti-Jewish sentiments, possibly rooted in ‘status anxiety’, were entrenched but somewhat inchoate: subtly discernible in works like ‘At the Bourse’, and certainly manifested in readership of La Libre parole, they did not prevent him enjoying the friendship or professional acquaintance

of numerous Jews. Only with the Affair did the sentiments harden into something which regulated the social life, notably bringing about the sudden breaking-off of Degas’ long and intimate friendship with the family

of Ludovic Halévy. According to Nochlin, it was ‘editors, columnists, and pamphleteers’ (and surely also cartoonists) who ‘constructed the anti-semitic identity of

| 426 POLIN men like Degas’. It was the press that turned anti-semitism from a prejudice into a social and political force. For those with an interest in this

process, or more generally in the relationship between the evolution of media of communication and that of popular passions, this book will be a

fund of evidence and of stimulating suggestions. | Geoffrey Cubitt St Catherine’s College, Oxford

Kamil Baranski, Przemingh zagonczycy, chliborohi, chasydzi.. . Rzecz 0 ziemi

| stanistawowsko-kotomyjsko-stryjskiey. London: Panda Press. 1988. Pp. 480. It is difficult to define this book. Certainly it is not a historical outline of the

former Stanistawow province (wosewodztwo), as established in Poland between the two world wars, if history is something more than a collection of individual facts. ‘The author defines his work as ‘the document of truth about our Polish residence on these lands, from which we were expelled by the decision of the three Big Powers’. It was not an easy task to collect all the more or less important facts about many towns and villages, to find hundreds of names of people - Poles, Ukrainians and Jews - engaged in public life on the local level. Maybe only a man who was born there - like the author - could undertake such work and could do it with love for the country and its people. However the effects are of dubious value.

The book is divided into seven parts. Three of them present the — geography and history of the region till 1918. The fourth comprises general data about the Stanistawow province 1918-1939, the fifth (most interest-

ing) - information about sixteen towns and their vicinities, mainly concerning the inter-war years, the sixth - some names of people who died

or were murdered in the years 1939-1945, and the last contains some general comments.

The author glosses over the history of Polish rule over this territory omitting or depreciating facts which are contrary to his opinions. His general thesis is that the Polish authorities ruled according to the best principles of humanism and democracy, with full equity of rights for all ethnic groups. To prove this he neglects to mention issues such as the lack

of state-owned schools with Yiddish or Hebrew as the language of instruction, the discrimination against Ukrainian schools, the discrimination against Ukrainian peasants in connection with agrarian reform, the discrimination against Jewish workers and professionals by state-owned enterprises and offices; all these and similar facts are well documented not only in archival documents but in numerous books by known scholars. All opinions contrary to his views are considered to be biased, false, and hos-

BOOK REVIEWS 427 tile to the Polish nation; however he does not try to refute the validity of any document revealing the discrimination of national minorities.

The exposition of history is chaotic and full of misunderstandings (including incorrect use of terminology). For example, the author does not understand the legal status of the Jewish religious communities and credits them with too extensive duties or rights (including that of determining the borders of ‘voluntary ghettos’, which is purely imaginary). The data about the inter-war period are no less chaotic and lacking consequence. There is, for example, much interesting information about officials and business-

men in individual towns, but without any indication when the officials occupied their posts or the businessmen lived; it is impossible that all these

twenty year period.

people did not change their offices or businesses throughout the whole In general, the book is a mixture of information concerning tragic events (especially the fate of the Polish, Jewish and Ukrainian population after 17 September, 1939), significant facts, common gossip and trifles (for example

about the love affair of some local beauty in 1910). Some questions are repeated several times, others are omitted. Even the spelling of some

names Is inconsistent or incorrect. |

I do, however, see some merits in this book. The author has managed to | collect a lot of information which can be useful for a historian. The book __ contains relatively extensive information about Jews and Ukrainians. The author - contrary to some other writers — often stresses the positive aspects

of their history (for example, the help given by Ukrainians to Poles and Jews during the German occupation). It is true that these data have to be checked carefully because of the inadequate professional skill of the author. Nevertheless, the book can contribute to some extent to studies concerning the recent past of Eastern Galicia. The many illustrations are an additional bonus. Przemko Maria Grafczynski is named as the editor of the book. I had the impression that his role was rather inconspicuous. Jerzy Tomaszewski University of Warsaw

Konrad Kwiet (ed.), From the Emancipation to the Holocaust. Essays on Jewish Literature and History in Central Europe. Faculty of Arts, University

of New South Wales. 1987. Pp. 189.

The thirteen papers in this volume treat various aspects — historical, literary, and socio-political - of the German-Jewish experience since the mid-nineteenth century. The end product is uneven, with contributions ranging from the slight to the original and interesting, the whole being

428 POLIN , _ marred by too many misprints and signs of careless proof-reading. The essays in the first, historical, section move uneasily from the structure of

Jewish entrepreneurial families in Silesia, via the career of Walther Rathenau, to the implementation of anti-semitic policies in the Third Reich. There is no attempt to tie these diffuse subjects together. John Foster takes as his starting point Werner Sombart’s crazed assumptions about how religiously-determined sexual repression allegedly contributed to the Jews’ special talents as capitalists. A carefully researched study of the Frankel textile dynasty in Silesia leads Foster to the conclusion that there

was nothing to differentiate Jewish entrepreneurial clans from their Calvinist, Lutheran or Rhenish Roman Catholic equivalents. The variegated career of Walther Rathenau has attracted the interest of many scholars, including James Joll and Hartmut Pogge von Strandmann, to which there is no reference in Ernst Schulin’s portrait of the philosophising

businessman cum politician. Schulin chronicles Rathenau’s repeated efforts to become someone else and his attempts to give his integrational problems some sort of philosophical rationalisation. The piece concludes with an unconvincing attempt to present Rathenau as a ‘modern type of

statesman’ - the Henry Kissinger of the last days of the Wilhelmine empire. There are also some meandering reflections on world peace and

disarmament which have no apparent connection with the subject of Schulin’s paper. Martin Broszat, by contrast, contributes a spare and masterly account of the constellation of forces which engineered Reichsknstallnacht. He estab-

lishes the general context, narrows the focus to how this night of government-induced anarchy came about, and suggests a potentially fascinating avenue for future research in the process of social dissociation from this ‘minorité fatale’. A report by the Highest Party Court highlights the function of intentionally veiled orders in the Third Reich.

The essays dealing with literary and socio-political aspects of the German-Jewish relationship similarly represent a mixed bag. Bernd Huppauf and Hans-Peter Bayerdorfer examine how Western writers (Jews

and non-Jews) filtered the world of the Ostjuden through their own experiences, expectations and prejudices. Huppauf’s comparative study of Doblin, Kafka and Roth is a poignant and sensitive journey through a once

vibrant culture forcibly reduced to memory and literary archaeology by the Nazi invaders. Unfortunately the quality of Broszat’s and Huppauf’s contributions is not sustained in the final, socio-political, section of the book. Kathleen Melhuish sets out to chart the careers in exile of a number of distinguished scholars, including Ernest Bramsted, Fritz Epstein, Hans Kohn and Victor Ehrenberg, but Epstein and Kohn - arguably the most interesting of this foursome - are soon dropped in favour of a detailed discussion of Ehrenberg’s intellectual development prior to his emigration. The impact of this last experience ~ the professed object of the essay ~ is not

BOOK REVIEWS 429 discussed. George Shipp’s 1984 reflections on the Vienna he left in 1938 do little to dispel the impression that the volume has been compiled from an uneven set of seminar papers that might have benefited from expansion or contraction. A serious subject, as this one undoubtedly is, deserves rather

more than Shipp’s random impressions of what he saw on Austrian television or heard in the restaurants of Vienna. Michael Burleigh London School of Economics and Political Science

Polish Jewry before the Holocaust. Editor Nachman Tamir, Design Shmuel Brand. New York: A Herzl Press Publication. London: Cornwall Books (1986). Title and text also in the Hebrew and Yiddish languages.

This book was previously published in 1983 in Tel-Aviv under the title 7he Polish Jews before the Holocaust. The only trace of this left is in the Hebrew

information on the first page. This new edition has been supplemented with a short preface by Kalman Sultanik. The book is divided into nine parts. An introductory short chapter was written by Dr. Shlomo Netzer, who presents a general view of Jewish life in inter-war Poland. Unhappily,

this is the only text written by a professional scholar. Other chapters outline selected problems. They handle: 2. The Way of Life; 3. Jewish Education; 4. Parties and Movements; 5. The Struggle for Existence; 6. Jews in Poland’s Economy; 7. Literature and Art. They are not signed and, at best, provide only superficial and simplified information and are not without errors. The reader can find such misleading statements as ‘economic policy directed as it was against the urban sector of population’ (p.145), and could derive the impression that one of the main concerns of almost all Polish government was discrimination against Jews. In another place, we read: “Anti-semitic decrees in various areas proliferated’ (p.206) which is at least an overstatement; the proof provided - ‘the prohibition of ritual slaughtering’ — is misconstrued, as there was not a prohibition, but a restriction of shekhita, and it was not introduced ‘about 1930’ (p.127) but in

1936. The claim that a ‘large section of the population were (sic) increasingly attracted by the Fascist philosophy’ (p.206) is an even more misleading overstatement. However, this book should not be evaluated on the basis of these and

other similar erroneous claims. The bulk of the volume is made up of many pictures presenting different sides of the Jewish life in Poland. These are really interesting; some are known from other books. They inform one much better than the texts we have discussed. It is a pity, however, that the publishers did not mention the names of photographers (I found - among

| 430 POLIN: others — pictures of Roman Vishniac and Moshe Raviv). This information

would be valuable to students of the history of Jewish photography in Poland. In some cases, one could question the captions. To define, for instance, Antoni Stonimski as a ‘famous Jewish writer in Polish literature’ is somewhat astonishing. | It is a pity that such interesting and valuable pictures have been supplied with so disappointing a commentary. It is also a matter for regret that in this volume - as in other similar books published in different countries the rich public and private collections existing in Poland were not made use of. Jerzy Tomaszewski University of Warsaw

Jerzy Ficowski (ed.), Letiers and Drawings of Bruno Schulz, translated by

, Pp. 256.

Walter Arndt and Victoria Nelson. New York: Harper and Row. 1988.

Bruno Schulz studied fine arts and architecture, worked as a drawing teacher in his home town Drohobycz and found literary acclaim only late, when he published his first book of fiction in 1933, aged 42. The Street of Crocodiles was followed four years later by a second volume of prose, Senatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass. It was the last Schulz published, since the manuscript of his novel The Messiah was lost during the war, and

the writer was murdered in the ghetto by the Gestapo in 1942. As Adam

Zagajewski points out in his preface, only Schulz’s literary image of Drohobycz has survived. The historical provincial shéet/ in Galicia with its

large Jewish community did not. These letters give the reader some impression of Schulz’s life in Drohobycz during the thirties. In this volume, the leading Schulz scholar Jerzy Ficowski has collected 108 letters to some twenty recipients over a twenty-year period from 1921.

Among the correspondents are the two major figures of Polish letters between the wars, S.I. Witkiewicz and Witold Gombrowicz. Laudable though it is, Ficowski’s work of painstakingly gathering Schulz’s letters hardly bears comparison with Max Brod’s, as the translator, Walter Arndt, would like to suggest in his introductory note.

In his own introduction, the editor deplores the fact that most of Schulz’s correspondence has been lost or was destroyed during the war. Ficowski emphasizes that Schulz is of particular interest as a letter writer,

since it was by way of his correspondence that he first discovered his literary gifts and saw them confirmed. Until the publication of The Street of Crocodiles, the letters were Schulz’s only literary outlet. Ficowski argues that after 1933 Schulz no longer expended his literary energy on his letter

BOOK REVIEWS 431 writing. However, no more than four of the letters collected here predate Schulz’s literary debut in December 1933, and they can hardly serve to illustrate Ficowski’s point that there was a significant change of literary substance in Schulz’s later correspondence. Ficowski’s remark (p.27) that Schulz exchanged letters with Thomas Mann in Zurich during 1938/39 cannot be verified. ‘That Mann received a German manuscript of Schulz’s fiction Die Heimkehr (The Homecoming),

is most certainly not true, and this claim should be abandoned. The reviewer has personally searched all possible sources in the Mann archives

in the hope of finding evidence to support Ficowski’s theory, but found none. From his letters we gather that Schulz was an intensely private man for whom letter writing was maybe his only form of contact with the outside world. He guards his emotions, and at the end of his letters, in the concluding set phrases, he carefully preserves his distance by formulations such as ‘with profound respect’, ‘with heartfelt thanks’, or ‘a warm handshake’.

| Even in the case of Romana Halpern, to whom of all correspondents Schulz seems to have been closest, he only extends ‘fond regards’ and, once, a ‘kiss of the hand’ (letter 64). Schulz comes across as an introverted and shy personality, tending his

delicate physical and nervous constitution, and preoccupied with the difficulty of combining his dual activities as a drawing teacher and a writer.

As a result, he seems to be constantly short of time, and he frequently opens letters by apologizing for not having responded sooner. At times there are hints of self-mockery, for instance when he writes that he is ‘maintaining a modest position on the backdrop of life’ (letter 34) or when he asks whether ‘the undertaking “Schulz” is worth carrying on’, whether it justifies “further investment’ (letter 42). But usually Schulz laments his ‘Incapacity to organize my day’ (letter 43) and his states of depression which often make it impossible for him to write, sometimes for months at a time. What strikes one, above all, in reading these letters, is that they do not take issue with the devastating political developments of the time, the humiliation and social degradation Schulz suffered as a Polish Jew. The volume includes a number of shorter texts, presented for the first time in English translation. Apart from the postscript to the Polish edition

| of Kafka’s The Tnal which Schulz edited, there are a number of book reviews and three short pieces of narrative prose: The Republic of Dreams (1936), Schulz’s utopian vision of an ‘exclusive domain of the fictive’, Autumn (1936), a hymn to the spirit of the season which ‘finds no surcease in reality’, and Fatherland (1938), an imaginative meditation on provincial

Drohobycz. |

The essay of 1936 entitled The Mythologizing of Reality contains in a nutshell what could be termed Schulz’s aesthetic, whereby Schulz defines poetry as the ‘striving of the word toward its matrix’, a ‘yearning for the

432 POLIN primeval home of words’. ‘Word’ and ‘world’ are closely related, in that words represent ‘the building materials’ by means of which the world is

erected. Every idea is derived from myth, however ‘transformed, mutilated, denatured’. The poet tries to restore these myths by way of unfolding the ‘lost meanings’ of words and ideas, making the words ‘remember’ themselves. This implies the sense of a regression, ‘a reversal of current’. This notion recurs in a letter to Andrzej Plesniewicz of about the

same time as the composition of the essay, where Schulz writes that ‘the kind of art I care about is precisely a regression, childhood revisited’; ‘My ideal goal is to “mature” into childhood. That would be genuine maturity

... (letter 41). The book is illustrated throughout by some 75 photos of the author and his circle and reproductions of Schulz’s drawings, mainly pencil sketches and cliché-verre etchings. It seems somewhat surprising that Schulz did not actually illustrate his own letters. The drawings are always figurative,

: and when the scene they depict is not drawn from the author’s own | narratives, they usually revolve around one main theme, namely female sadism and male masochism - the female nudes stretching their slim legs towards diminutive male figures in compromising poses. It is remarkable that Schulz who as an artist was so obviously obsessed by a fetishistic attitude towards the female body, never struck such an overtly sexual note in his writing.

The translation reads well, and the letters show the enormous gap between the realities of Schulz’s time and the heroic feats of his extraordinary imagination found in his fiction. The letters themselves display little of the metaphor-generating power and grandiose eloquence of the author of The Street of Crocodiles. They hardly give us a glimpse of Schulz at

work as a poet, experimenting with his preferred literary themes, the nature of seasons, commercialism, and the concept of a second Genesis consisting of cheap, disposable industrial products. It appears that in his

letters, Schulz does not allow himself to get carried away by the antirealistic, anti-gravitational, and centrifugal force of his imagination in the way that he does in his fiction. As a letter writer, the true Bruno Schulz is barely visible. Richard E. Wethe University of Bonn

Michael R. Marrus, The Holocaust In History. Toronto: Lester and Orpen Dennys. 1987. Pp. xv, 267.

Since the Eichmann trial, the Holocaust has been at the forefront of historical research. A recent bibliography on the Holocaust listed two

BOOK REVIEWS 433 thousand book entries and 10,000 publications on Auschwitz alone. Until now, however, there has not been an overview of this research. Michael

Marrus’ recent work has filled this void admirably. He has written a superb study that both outlines the history of the Holocaust and puts it into a historiographic framework. To Marrus’ credit this overview is pertinent for the general reader, the student, and the scholar in the field.

His intention is to ‘integrate the Holocaust into the general stream of historical consciousness’, thereby liberating it from being just another episode in the history of the Jewish people. In so doing, he concentrates on the question of how the event occurred by examining the historical context and the historical interpretation rather than those writers, often survivors, who have sworn to take on the ‘sacred duty’ to express the suffering of the victims. Marrus sets out to understand the destruction of Jewish civilization in Europe using the same historical methods that one would apply to any other historical event. To this end he argues that we will have to rely on

the historians, even if they make mistakes, take contentious viewpoints,

and use ‘normal’ language to describe a world that was not normal.

Indeed, he asserts that we have no alternative. . The scope of the text ranges from the role of German pre-war anti-

semitism to liberation. Included are chapters on the Final Solution, Nazi allies, vanquished states and collaborationist governments, public opinion, victims, resistance, and bystanders. The central argument that the Holocaust is explicable in the same way as any other event in history is found in the chapter titled “The Holocaust in Perspective’. Marrus contends that the uniqueness of the event was in its

motivation, the extermination of a people, a motivation that arose from Nazi policy and ideology. Echoing Bauer, Marrus rejects the views that uniqueness was the result of authenticity (Fackenheim), the extermination

camps (Kren and Rappaport), or the number of Jewish victims (by juxtaposing the 14.5 million who died in the ‘terror-famine’ in the USSR in

the 1930s). In the same chapter, he submits that German anti-semitism was in itself not a sufficient precondition for the final solution. It became so only after Hitler embraced it.

The analysis of the historical interpretation of the final solution is the

strongest chapter in the text. Marrus clearly presents two schools of thought on the steps leading to the final solution. One school consists of the ‘intentionalist’ historians such as Dawidowicz, Fleming and Jackel who believe that there was a clear, direct path from Hitler’s writings to the crematoria; the other is the functionalist group led by Broszat, Mommsen and Adam, who write that the decision to murder the Jews was not made

until sometime in 1941. The author gives considerable merit to the American historian Christopher Browning, a ‘moderate functionalist’, who states that while there was no blueprint for murder until the summer of 1941, there was an ‘ideological imperative’ that called for the satisfaction

434 POLIN of Nazi racial policies. The tortuous historical arguments of both schools are summarized coherently for the general reader without trivializing the complexities of the interpretations. With respect to the question of aid to the Nazis by other states, Marrus argues convincingly that the Nazis could not have carried out their policies | without help. He outlines the role of German bureaucracy, the relation-

ship between local authorities and the Nazis, and the strategies of independent and semi-independent states. The problems in the study of public opinion in Nazi Europe centre on the interrelationship between anti-semitism and adherence to implementation of the final solution, and what knowledge there was about the Holocaust. In this chapter, there is

some discussion of relations between Poles and Jews. The views of Ringelblum, Karski, and Gutman, that Polish aid to Jews was minimal are contrasted to Lukas’ assertion that Polish Christians were also victims of a holocaust. Two other sections are handled with aplomb. First, Marrus provides an excellent overview of the question of who knew what and when they knew it in his introduction to the chapter on Bystanders. He then demonstrates that the fate of European Jewry was perceived as relatively insignificant in the global context. In summarizing the lack of response to the Holocaust in

the West, the USSR, the neutral countries, and the Vatican, Marrus indicates that more pressing matters in the conduct of the War, the inability to comprehend the horror, and a general lack of will in responding to the cry for help were crucial factors. ‘The second section is the discussion of ransom negotiations. Bauer’s contention that the negotiations were legitimate because some leading Nazis believed that currying favour with the Jews would ease the pursuit for a separate peace with the western allies, is given more credibility than Dawidowicz’s dismissal of the negotiations as a Nazi ploy.

While Marrus has achieved the near impossible task of providing a

readable framework for the major historical interpretations of the Holocaust, there are some shortcomings. Most notably, the discussion of

the camps is limited to six pages. He asserts that historians can only provide a context for the most gruesome chapter of the Holocaust, forcing the student to rely upon literature and psychology for further insight. Here

the views of the psychologist Bruno Bettelheim predominate, whereas much more articulate and thoughtful observers such as Primo Levi are ignored. In another part of this chapter entitled ‘Victims’, Marrus begins his analysis of the ‘sheep to slaughter’ position of the early 1960s as espoused by Arendt and Hilberg, but confines the evolution from this view to a discussion of the research on the fudenrate and ghetto life. He neglects

the research and description of transports, selection, slave labour, and camp life in general, leaving the reader with an incomplete perspective of the complexity of the victims’ experience.

BOOK REVIEWS 435 The chapter on Jewish Resistance also suffers from the paucity of information on the camps. Although he clearly articulates Hilberg’s restrictive definition of resistance and Bauer’s more inclusive interpretation, Marrus limits the discussion to armed resistance in the ghettos, and Jewish armed resistance in the undergrounds of eastern and western Europe. He excludes spiritual and moral resistance from the definition, and does not refer to resistance in the camps. Again this may be due to the desire to cling to strict historical analyses rather than first-hand accounts.

Yet, any discussion of resistance should include the account by Filip Muller, Auschwitz Inferno (1979).

Despite these oversights, Marrus makes a convincing case that the Holocaust should be studied in the general light of history rather than as an episode in Jewish life, or as a footnote to World War II. His study should be priority reading for courses at university level, and for all teachers in the field. With 43 pages of notes and an eight-page bibliography the student can embark on meaningful investigation of the issues and

interpretations discussed. Although numerous scholarly works have appeared since this publication, notably in the field of Polish-Jewish relations, this volume remains a necessary companion for any serious study of the Holocaust. Frankhn Bialystok Toronto

Arno J. Mayer, Why Did the Heavens Not Darken? The Final Solution in History. New York: Pantheon Books. 1988. Pp. xvii, 492.

Professor Mayer writes with drive, and knows what he is talking about. He has his own personal experience of escaping from the Nazis’ persecution of

Jews, and he describes that with dignity and feeling. He has read very widely, and though there is nothing in the book that is factually new - how could there be? - it contains a logical structure that deserves to be treated

with respect. It is also quite sensible about various things which less professionally-minded writers tend to get wrong: he does not take the view

that Hitler proposed, from the start, physically to exterminate the Jews, and says that, up to 1940, the policy was ‘to extrude, not exterminate, the Jews from the expanding Third Reich’. The decision to exterminate, he believes, came later, in the context of Hitler’s invasion of Russia and America’s entry into the War. There is much succinct detail to indicate that Professor Mayer has carried out the historian’s duty with proper professional attention. I am not sure whether he would still call himself a Marxist, but his

earlier books certainly adopt a Marxist stance - a good book about

436 POLIN Versailles, indicating that the Western Powers were at least as much concerned to defeat the Communists as to hold the Germans down, and a further book (in my opinion, less successful) arguing that feudal society in

Europe recovered in the years before 1914, and that this recovery had something to do with the outbreak of the First World War. Here, he takes on what must be a great problem for a Marxist: European anti-semitism. It does not fit into Marxist categories, and Marx himself was anti-semitic,

since he regarded Jews as both religious and capitalistic. How does Professor Mayer deal with the horrors of the Second World War? There is, to begin with, rather too much rehashing of what we already know, with some side-swipes that are questionable (in Italy, he says, ‘the old elites summoned Mussolini to take over the government in 1922’: an over-simplification, surely). The seventeenth century and the Thirty Years’

War saw general mayhem at a time of tremendous ideological (i.e. religious) change; there was much mayhem in the Middle Ages; Jews were sometimes involved as victims. Then comes a survey of Jewish existence in

the era of emancipation, all over Europe - interesting enough, but too short for what the author is attempting to do: how can you deal with the position of Jews in Stalin’s Russia in only a few pages? The line which Mr Mayer adopts is that there was no anti-semitism in the Soviet Union in the later 1930s; I wonder. Then comes a chapter called “The Syncretism of Mein Kampf’: Nietzsche, Lagarde, and, towards the end of the Weimar

Republic’, ‘Fascism prevailed in Germany ... because the old elites resorted to it to preserve their superannuated positions of class, status, and

power. Again, I wonder, and do so even more when I read that ‘normalization of anti-semitism owed as much to Germany’s traditional

elites as to the Nazi leaders and their petty bourgeois followers’. No evidence is offered for statements of this sort: Mr Mayer’s own rather points the other way, in that on p.130 we hear that Hitler’s ‘conservative partners’

demurred at the anti-semitic boycott on 1 April 1933 - Schacht, Papen, Neurath, Schwerin von Krosigk etc. Rather oddly for an historian so concerned with aristocracy, incidentally, Mr Mayer is sometimes inaccurate about nomenclature: Cardinal ‘Lapieha’ in Krakow (Sapieha) or an ‘Archduke of Mecklenburg’, which suggests that the place was ruled by a Habsburg, and also that there was only one Mecklenburg, whereas there were two (Strelitz and Schwerin). We are very nearly half way through the book when war breaks out. Mr Mayer’s survey of what happened to Germany’s Jews in the 1930s is

accurate enough, and, for all of the strictly professional tone of his approach, harrowing enough. My only fear is that we are being told what we already know from several dozen other books, with a political bias against ‘reactionaries’ thrown in which does not strike me as particularly relevant. However, the facts as we are given them are, in so far as I can judge, reliable enough, if they are really needed all over again.

BOOK REVIEWS 437 There follow about two hundred pages, summarizing what happened to

, the Jews of occupied Europe. It is all, so far as I can judge, accurate, and Mr Mayer’s professional abilities do not desert him even when he is in a maelstrom of horrible detail. He describes the various camps, Auschwitz in particular, and notes the differences between those Germans who wished

to exploit Jewish labour, and those who were only concerned to exterminate. He is particularly effective in discussing the situation in Hungary, although for my own taste he is too black-and-white about a situation in Budapest that was rather more nuance. He is robustly vague as to numbers of Jews killed - making the incontrovertible point that, in these circumstances, we cannot know how many were killed in gas-chambers,

and how many just died from exhaustion, epidemic or malnutrition. The | question of Jewish resistance is not seriously discussed at the length which other authors have found necessary; the assumption being that liberation came from the East.

The assumption throughout the second half of this book is that Jews were exterminated because they were so closely associated with Communism. That association in Nazi minds (and in the minds of anti-semites throughout Central Europe in general) was clear enough, but to infer, as I suspect Mr Mayer does, that Jews were exterminated because of leftism is hardly right. The trouble is that, to my knowledge, we simply do not have a proper book discussing the motivation, not just of a Hitler scribbling

away, but of the SS. Has anyone read through the Schwarze Korps, its

magazine, or the various journals of eugenics and what-not that it sponsored, to discover what the motivation for the concentration-camps really was? Generalizations to the effect that Jews were Left that the Nazis hated the Left because they were reactionaries, and therefore attacked the Jews are all very well, but do they justify another book on the Holocaust that has no new information to offer? To be fair, Mr Mayer’s book is quite useful for students, is well-written in places, and is an improvement on most recent ones on this subject that have come my way. But the ancien régime that persists nowadays is Marxism, and it does not help with this subject. Norman Stone Worcester College, Oxford

Michael Burleigh, Germany Turns Eastwards. A Study of Ostforschung in the

Third Rech. Cambridge University Press. 1988. Pp. 321.

Until recent months, a study of German-Polish relations this century would have seemed of largely academic interest. Now, German reunification seems imminent. Those East Germans who, we were told by

438 POLIN distinguished historians a mere few months ago, were so keen on their superior socialist welfare benefits and job security that they could never envisage or accept reunification, have forced West Germany’s hand, by mass migration to the West. Public opinion seems to be slowly coming round to an acceptance of reunification, in some federal mode or another. However, further consequences might be more destabilising. Once the division of Germany, that unintended result of Yalta and Potsdam, has been undone, will Germany go on to demand back formerly German or mixed German Polish

territory that is now Polish or Russian? Despite the massed population expulsion between 1944 and 1947, there seem to be a considerable population of polonised ethnic Germans still living in the German-Polish borderlands. The recent election result in Polish Silesia which gave victory by a short head to an ethnic German may be a shot across the bows.

This blood-curdling prospect will be a familiar spectre to those few historians who, like Michael Burleigh, have had the foresight to write about aspects of German-Polish relations. His study, which is a useful addition to the historiography of the period, deals with the politicisation of

academic attitudes to Poland in Germany. It examines institutions and personnel between the late nineteenth century and 1945, concentrating on the later period, but showing the extent to which, well before the Third

Reich, German research institutes looking at the history, anthropology and linguistics of Eastern Europe were biased by a strong germanocentric nationalism. By 1933, the personnel would already be in place who would proceed to justify Nazi aggression in the East, and plan policies for longterm ‘germanisation’ of the population, the economy and the landscape. Michael Burleigh’s monograph is a long and informative work, most of which deals with the Nazi period. He examines the careers of a selection of virulently anti-Polish propagandists, some of them, such as Kurt Luck, themselves ethnic Germans within Poland. Luck wrote an influential book on Polish history and culture, claiming that anything any good was due to German influence, and anything bad was the Polish residue. His second

book was even more effective propaganda. Dealing as it did with antiGerman prejudice in Poland, expressed through a random selection of folk-tales, proverbs, jokes and popular literature, Der Mythos vom Deutschen

aroused enthusiasm among Nazi planners, and was reprinted after Luck’s death with additions intended to retrospectively justify the Nazi invasion of

| Poland in September 1939. Burleigh tracks the role played by academic institutions on German policy-making in occupied Poland in the Second World War in an angrily incisive style. He shows beyond doubt that there was a pool of historians and other academics ready and willing to lend their skills to justify Nazi aggression in the East. Although, in a long and detailed book, it may seem , churlish to ask for more, a discussion of the many times German historians have created national myths and justified government policies in the last

BOOK REVIEWS 439 hundred years would have introduced a perspective occasionally lacking in

Burleigh’s detailed account, which leans heavily on indirect quotation from his sources.

His final chapter, “The “band of the unbroken”’, argues that most Ostforschung in West Germany after the war employed many of the old personnel, and used the same language expressing unconscious germanocentrism as before. Despite the scholarship of many of the works he cites, the burden of this criticism seems to me entirely justified. However, as Bur-

leigh points out, as the generation responsible dies off, no new wave of interpretation has resulted. One conclusion that could be drawn is that marginalisation of this area is partly a result of its unfashionable nature. It is a subject which is still too tainted by the past to be acceptable for German historians today. Burleigh’s belief that the path to an objective history lies in the internationalisation of the wider scholarly landscape may be over-optimistic.

The problems of an objective trans-national, unbiased history perhaps

need some discussion, and they do not receive it here, where the assumption seems to be that only West German historians suffer from national bias. Yet in a fascinating section earlier in the book, Burleigh describes a joint German-Polish historians’ conference that took place in 1937. Its object was to agree a mutually acceptable version of GermanPolish history. The conference ended in amicable agreement. Burleigh is rightly sarcastic at this exercise in joint cooperation and _ text-book

| weeding, but could have related this exercise to his apparent belief in the ameliorating powers of joint scholarly conferences. In his interesting

historiographical conclusion, Burleigh refers to ‘the societies and economies of eastern Europe and the USSR crystallis[ing] along differing lines’. Now that this crystallisation seems to be breaking down, this will be an exciting time for comparative Eastern European studies. Anna Bramwell Oxford

Gerard Silvain, La question jutve en Europe 1933-1945. Paris: Editions Jean-

: Claude Lattes. 1985. Pp. 422. This is an album of photographs, propaganda posters, documents of various kinds and newspaper photographs connected with Jewish affairs between the dramatic years of 1933-45, that is the years of Nazi rule in Germany and Nazi-occupied Europe. It is a pity that the work does not give a full, critical evaluation or documentation of the reproductions, where they first appeared or the publisher’s sources etc. The title of the book is misleading for over half the volume concerns only France. Of the

440 POLIN remaining countries, Germany and Austria have been singled out for special attention - 80 pages in all - little space was left to cover the rest.

Countries to the east of Germany, where extermination policies were primarily realised and where the greatest concentration of Jews was to be found, are clearly neglected, a whole group of countries is simply omitted (eg the Baltic states including Lithuania, and Roumania). Why is Poland referred to by the occupational name General-Gouvernement which refers only to the central part of the country? One is positively astounded by the few pages (pp. 354-76) dedicated to this area which is undoubtedly the most important in terms of the ‘Jewish question’ in Europe between the years 1939-45 and by the inclusion of Lodz (Litzmannstadt according to occupation terminology) in the General-Gouvernement which indicates an

obvious ignorance of facts of basic importance to the Jews and all inhabitants of wartime Poland. The choice of photographs and commentary on the Soviet Union - pp. 398-401 - only strike one by their pauc-

ity and onesidedness. In Gerard Le Marec’s introduction, pp. 13-18, which concentrates almost exclusively on France, even the date of the outbreak of the Second World War has been forgotten; there is nothing on occupied Poland or the policies of the occupiers regarding the inhabitants of the country and its Jewish citizens. It is simply inadmissible to mislead the reader in this way and to give the work such an ambitious title when

the most important centres of European Jewry of the time appear in a completely marginal fashion. Jerzy Ktoczowski

, Catholic University of Lublin Ernst Klee ‘Euthanaste’ in im NS-Staat. Die ‘Vernichtung lebensunwerten

Lebens’. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag. 1985. Pp. 11-502.

In March 1933 the Westfalische Zeitung reported, under the headline ‘Bethel also celebrates the German uprising’, that the inmates of the asylum had listened keenly to the speeches of Hindenburg and Hitler relayed through loudspeakers. “his community too,’ the article continued, ‘feels itself to be a living member of the great family of the nation’. Their response would have, doubtless, been otherwise, had they read the text of a speech Hitler delivered in Nuremberg in August 1929 - ‘If Germany was to get a million children a year and was to remove 700-800,000 of the weakest people then the final result might even be an increase in strength’ - or attended cabinet meetings in July 1933, where it was resolved to introduce a law to compulsorily sterilise the ‘feebleminded’ and people suffering from other types of allegedly ‘hereditary’ illnesses.

BOOK REVIEWS 441 Neither the idea of killing the ‘weak’ nor of sterilising the ‘hereditarily’ ill were original to Adolf Hitler. The former had been advocated by a number

of academic psychiatric pundits, most notably Karl Binding and Alfred Hoche in a book published in 1920, while the Prussian government had reached the stage of a draft law on sterilisation (albeit voluntary) by late 1932. Ernst Klee’s meticulously researched study is concerned with how the idea of destroying ‘worthless lives’ was translated into government sanctioned policy. It is not a study of ‘euthanasia’, if that term means painlessly ending the life of someone who is terminally ill either with their

consent or that of their relatives, but of the systematic murder of the mentally ill and handicapped by the state and its accomplices. The decision to sanction medical killing was taken by Hitler in early 1939, notionally in response to petitions from parents with handicapped

children. .In the course of the so-called ‘Children’s euthanasia’ programme, which was planned and organised by officials in the Chancellory of the Fuhrer, at least 5,200 children were killed and their bodies made available for ‘scientific’ research. The ‘adult euthanasia’ _ programme was implemented upon the outbreak of war. In an ad hoc form it began shortly after the occupation of Poland, where SS units shot

thousands of Polish mental patients to make space for army and SS barracks. In Germany, the approach was more systematic. In early 1939 out of the way asylums were expropriated. In the summer, meetings were held to establish global figures of those to be killed, and the Criminal Technical Institute was allocated the task of finding the most convenient method. Forms flowed in from the nation’s asylums to a bureaucratic apparatus whose connection with Hitler was disguised through apparently independent bodies like the ‘Reich Committee for the Scientific Registration of Serious Hereditarily- and Congenitally-based Illnesses’, staffed by men who used false names, which in turn operated phoney companies such as the ominous-sounding ‘Community Patients Transport Service Ltd’. The forms were worked on in batches of 150 by medical ‘assessors’ who, never having seen the patient, marked the forms with either a red ‘+’ or a blue ‘-’ to indicate whether the person should die or live. ‘The patients concerned were taken by the ‘Community Patients Transport Service’ to Grafeneck, Hadamar, Sonnenstein and other centres where they were gassed. In order to quell the anxieties of those involved concerning the legal position, Hitler was persuaded to put his signature to a cryptic and

imprecise letter of authorisation some time after the programme had started. This phase of the “T-4 programme’, named after the villa on Tiergartenstrasse 4 from which it was orchestrated, lasted until Hitler’s ‘halt’ order of 24 August 1941. According to the T-4 statisticians, 70,273

persons had been ‘disinfected’ prior to that date. The programme was ‘halted’ for two very different reasons. Firstly, the planners had reached their initial global target, secondly the programme had run into serious

442 POLIN opposition. The business of trying to conceal too many deaths in too few places overloaded the system of deceit. Hair-pins cropped up in the ashes of males; families with one relative in an asylum received two urns instead

of one; lawyers asked awkward questions about people who had been committed as wards of court. Before the censors caught up, some families

put insinuating notices in the Deaths columns of newspapers like ‘his sudden death will always remain a mystery to us’. Although corporately, neither the churches nor the lawyers protested against actions taken without any legal foundation whatsoever, individuals eventually did. Notably the otherwise glacial Clemens August Count von Galen, Bishop of Munster, who in a justifiably celebrated sermon dwelt on uncomfortably

specific details; or less consequentially, the local mayor who traced the

name “Haarmann’ (a notorious murderer) in the dust on one of the Community Patients Transport Service vans. But while some asylums, like Grafeneck, were shut down, others were used to dispose of other groups of

| victim with whom there was less likelihood of public protest. While the regime redoubled its efforts to soften up the public for a ‘euthanasia’ law through the agency of propaganda films, the physicians involved in the selection process were let loose upon the inmates of concentration camps. Up to April 1943, at least 10,000 prisoners were transferred to asylums in the course of ‘Aktion 14 f 13’, the code for the Inspectorate of Concentration Camps, followed by the number signifying the death of a sick or frail prisoner. [he diagnoses of physicians like Mennecke included ‘fanatical

Germanophobe and asocial psychopath. Main symptoms: hard-bitten Communist, unworthy to bear arms, penitentiary sentence for high treason’, while their copious correspondence with their wives harped on about the numbers of forms completed, or the quality of the canteens in Buchenwald or Dachau. Hitler’s ‘halt’ order simply stopped the mass

gassing of mental patients. Thenceforward they continued to be murdered, but by starvation or through lethal medication and injections. New killing centres were established at Meseritz-Obrawalde, Eichberg and Kaufbeuren, and new categories of victims were encompassed such as totally healthy, but racially undesirable babies of female Ostarbeiter. The cessation of mass gassings left a pool of practised psychopaths who could be redeployed elsewhere. Viktor Brack of the Chancellory of the Fuhrer,

the key figure in the T-4 operation, supplied three of his eponymous Hilfsmittel (gassing vans), to the extermination centre at Chetmno, while , virtually all of the men involved in ‘Aktion Reinhard’ had been involved in

the killing of mental patients earlier in their SS careers. ‘This included Franz Stangl, Christian Wirth, Gustav Wagner and Franz Reichleitner who variously commanded Sobibor, Betzec and Treblinka. Killings in Germany’s asylums sometimes continued until weeks after the surrounding areas had been occupied by Allied troops. Klee’s technique is to allow lengthy documentary quotations to speak

, BOOK REVIEWS 443 for themselves. This is particularly telling in the sections which show how coldly calculated murder, with its global tally arrived at ‘through a calcula-

tion on the basis of a ration of 1000:10:5:1’, which meant that one residential patient in five would be killed, was disguised in the euphemistic terms our culture has developed for dying. Behind the gross materialism of

terms such as “burdensome lives’ were people who fought daily with physical or mental handicaps. Like an eleven-year-old boy called Horst who was neither a ‘danger to the community’ or ‘hereditarily ill’, but suffered from water on the brain. On 10 October 1942 he underwent ‘intelligence tests’ which would tax the patience (and intelligence) of a healthy adult. Days were spent identifying pictures of spoons, hammers, crosses; repeating sentences like ‘snails move very slowly, but they have to

carry their home on their backs’; assembling wooden building blocks; explaining why there was a war on, and so forth. After days of this nonsense, a happy and inquisitive child who liked to sing in the mornings, was determined to be ‘incapable of improvement’. He died of a ‘diseased lung’ on 5 March, although an examination in January had declared his lungs to be entirely healthy. Determining the fate of Horst and hundreds of thousands of others were the physicians who moved easily between the

consulting room and the canteen at Auschwitz. In between these two extreme examples were ‘ordinary’ people, who may have approved of voluntary ‘euthanasia’ under precisely controlled conditions, but who would have been appalled by the reality of Hitler’s programme. One of the achievements of this outstanding example of investigative research is to convincingly recreate not just the tenacity of the victims, or the grotesque

insensitivity of their persecutors, but also the dilemmas of asylum staff,

clergy, lawyers, or country people in the vicinity of asylums. This sometimes introduces a ray or two of light into what otherwise must rank as one of the most depressing books ever written. Michael Burleigh London School of Economics and Political Science

Ernst Klee, Was sie taten- Was ste wurden. Arzte, Fustien und andere Beteiligte

am Kranken- oder Judenmord. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag. 1986. Pp. 8-355.

Hundreds of thousands of people were murdered in the successive stages

of the so-called ‘euthanasia’ programme between 1939-1945. Those responsible also supplied both the technical means, and in many cases the

personnel, deployed to murder Jews within the context of ‘Aktion Reinhard’. What became of the men and women involved, or to others who, in the course of their professional careers, furthered, or did nothing to

444 POLIN impede, crimes without parallel in history? According to Ernst Klee’s meticulously researched study of materials assembled for trials which either petered out, or never took place, the answer is ‘very little’. Physicians who worked in asylums where patients were gassed, continued to practise medicine - up to 1985. Professors, who as assessors ‘selected’ the victims, murdered infirm children, and carried out ‘research’ on organs supplied

by colleagues in extermination centres, trained the next generations of physicians, using slides and ‘specimens’ of very dubious provenance. _ Lawyers, who colluded in the concealment of a programme which they knew was illegal, remained in official positions. Even now, Roland Freisler’s widow continues to receive a supplementary pension in lieu of her husband’s hypothetical post-war earnings ‘as a lawyer or higher civil servant’! Following a brief period in the mid to late 1940s, when severe sentences

~ including the death penalty - were passed, from the early 1950s a more

sympathetic political climate ensued. The smooth re-entry of Nazi criminals into the upper reaches of civil society was only fitfully disturbed

by assiduous lawyers, or the apprehension of a former colleague who named names. Klee’s book is concerned with how, despite massive evidence of guilt, retribution failed to ensue. In a few cases this was because

those under investigation committed suicide or escaped from custody rearrest being hampered by the failure of the police to even take the fingerprints of men charged with 15,000 murders, or the ingenuity of organizations like the Stille Hilfe which spirited them abroad. Medical attestations came to the aid of those who could not get away. This book is littered with

individuals whose delicate health would have been endangered by appearances in court, but who could toil away in their gardens thirty years later. The genuine psychological ‘wrecks’ against whom proceedings were dropped, doubtless failed to reflect on what the outcome would have been, had they had the misfortune to encounter their earlier ‘professional’ selves.

Being ‘incapable of standing trial’ does not seem to have been an impediment to subsequently treating patients, although in one case, a minor concession was made to the rest of humanity by the (temporary) removal of the accused’s driving licence. Had the medical fakers known

the degree of understanding shown by the courts to the accused, e.g. acquittals or generous remission, they might have spared themselves the bother of self-induced heart conditions or the public exhibition of their interior torment. But this is not merely the story of how cunning and self-pitying old men evaded justice. It is also about how entire communities colluded with them by collectively repressing the past. One of the key mechanisms in this process was to transform the criminal into a ‘victim’, much put upon by lawyers, Jews, Marxists, and other ‘outsiders’. his was most blatant in the case of organizations like the Stille Hilfe, a group of aristocratic women who

BOOK REVIEWS 445 toiled on behalf of Nazi prisoners in Landsberg jail. Through letters to all and sundry, from the Pope downwards, Helene Princess von Isenburg, the

Comtesse Helene de Suzannet in Paris, and their colleagues (SSStandartenfuhrer) Dr Wilhelm Spengler, did their best for ‘so-called’ war criminals like Otto Ohlendorf, victims all of ‘miscarriages of justice’ involving, in his case, the murder of 90,000 people. Incredibly, along the way the Princess Helene developed an increasingly informal correspondence with the director of the Bethel asylum, resulting in the redirection of donations of clothing from Bethel to Landsberg: Certainly you are not angry with me, for you sense yourself, that the love of Christ moves this request. But I have no idea how you will manage to assist us too, in view of the countless number of your own problem children. But still I trust in it, for HIS love is inexhaustible.

This grotesque misrepresentation of Ohlendorf as a Sorgenkind apart, whole communities made representations so that they might continue to be treated by physicians who had murdered thousands of their former

patients, or continue to enjoy the society of those who had helped administer the asylums. Communities like Idstein, near Wiesbaden, which interceded on behalf of the staff of the Kalmenhof asylum. Staff like

the former deputy director, Wilhelm Grossmann, who, inter alia, redirected food from the patients to a military infirmary, ordered morphium and scopalamin from the Reich Criminal Police Office (1), threatened mentally handicapped children that ‘he would turn them into angels’, beat them with a bullwhip, and wrote letters of ‘condolence’ to their relatives which sometimes said:

The accounting office of the asylum today received your credit transfer of RM 20 - for flowers for the grave of your little girl Irmgard.

Concerning your little daughter, we can tell you that Irmgard was still overjoyed with the little jacket, and above all with the lovely little

doll, which she had in her arms until the end.

_ In January 1951 the Idstein authorities wrote to the Minister President in Hessen on behalf of Grossmann, who had been sentenced to four and a half years imprisonment: Various members of the authority have know Grossmann personally for many years, before and after 1933, and they guarantee that he has always (!) led an upright and decent life. Formally, his conviction may be correct, but it is a human tragedy and therefore thoroughly deserves a decree of pardon.

446 POLIN | The three years and five months which he had spent as an internee or in investigative custody cancelled out the whole of the sentence. He was a free man. Most of the subjects of this book also never spent a day in prison.

As for the murder of psychiatric patients in the occupied eastern territories, before 1964 the Federal Republic failed to send one justice official to inspect the evidence assembled by Polish or Russian authorities.

As Klee remarks, ‘it was as if mass murder in the East had never happened’. Mass murderers metamorphosed into resistance fighters, with one asylum director claiming to have deterred an entire motor column of

‘senior leaders’, including Artur Axmann, from entering the asylum at

Kobierzyn by shooting one of the tyres with a pistol. The column

the insane. |

- ‘apparently’ turned back, frightened of the brave director and defender of It seems invidious to end on a critical note in view of the determination with which Klee has cut through four decades of deceit, but something

more might have been said about the investigating lawyers, like Willi Dressen who provides a brief foreword, whose labours - albeit rendered futile by the courts - have supplied most of Klee’s materials. The book

contains many photographs of the good bourgeois become mass

documents. |

murderers, their victims, and several inset reproductions of contemporary Michael Burleigh London School of Economus

Hamburger Institut fur Sozialforschung (Hrsg), Die Auschuitz-Hefte. Text der polnischen Zeitschrift ‘Przeglad Lekarski’ uber historische, psychische und medizinische Aspekte des Lebens und Sterbens in Auschwitz. Aus dem

Polnischen ubersetzt von Jochen August, Friedrich Griese, Veronika Korner, Olaf Kiihl, und Burkhard Roepke. Textredaktion: Jochen August. Beltz Verlag. Weinheim und Basel 1987. 2 Bande. At the end of the 1950s in Krakow, 60 kilometres from the Nazi extermina-

tion camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Polish medical scientists began their

work of systematically examining as broadly as possible the human consequences of war and internment in Nazi concentration and extermination camps. In 1960 a two-day meeting was held at Krakow to enable

doctors of different specialisations to discuss and exchange ideas on treating the post-war problems of Nazi camp survivors — the ‘concentration camp syndrome’. This was a serious problem for Polish society in general, given the special nature of the Nazi occupation regime there from 1939 to

1945, the longest and undoubtedly the worst in Europe (apart from the Baltic States and the Soviet Union). In all, Poland lost some six million of

BOOK REVIEWS 447 her inhabitants as a result of the war and Nazi terror, Jews and Christians together. Poland’s human losses in the war amounted to one-fifth of her prewar population, while of those interned in the Nazi concentration and extermination camps, at least 80 per cent perished. But liberation also brought its own problems: camp survivors were found to die earlier than the rest of the population, while tending to suffer more from a variety of physical and psychological complaints and with greater severity. Following the 1960 conference, in 1961 the long-established (since 1862) Krakow medical journal, Przeglad Lekarsk1, published its first special issue

on the theme of the systematic medical examination of the consequences

of internment and survival in the Nazi concentration camp system, Przeglad Lekarski - Oswrgcim, which was followed by twenty-six others. In general, the contributions covered three broad fields of enquiry: medicine-

psychology-sociology; medicine-juristic and philosophy-ethical; and documentary-historical themes concerning ‘health’ in its widest sense. Above all, the evidence which was collected contributed to advances in analyses of human behaviour in the worst of all circumstances because of

its detailed reconstruction of the past. |

The thirty-three contributions reproduced in this two-volume German edition, while only representing approximately one-twelfth of all that appeared in the Polish journal from 1961 to 1985, at least enables a wider readership (because of language difficulties) to become familiar with Polish contributions to this important field of medical and academic enquiry

which has its counterparts in Israel, the United Kingdom, the United

States of America and elsewhere. The two volumes therefore cover a broad range of both historical and

post-war topics. There are contributions on the lives and existence in Auschwitz of women, children, and the so-called ‘Muselmanns’, those whose psychological defences against the Nazi terror had crumbled so much that they were virtually catatonic - those, in the words of that article, who were ‘on the border between life and death’. There are also sections

on hunger in the concentration camp, on the Hygiene Institute of the Waffen-SS and Police in Auschwitz, the first gassing of internees and | prisoners of war in Auschwitz, the pathology of ‘extermination through work’, self-help and ‘Volksmedizin’ in KZs, as well as contributions on the physical and psychological consequences of surviving such horrors. Some chapters are first-hand accounts of those internees who saw with their own

eyes what occurred and have written cogent accounts of inestimable historical importance. Other historical accounts of specific topics are based, not only on authoritative literature, but also on the direct testimony

of former camp inmates. This testimony, specifically requested for the articles in question, also adds immensely to our knowledge because it is also directly quoted. In addition, the volumes include maps of Auschwitz, a glossary, a name

448 POLIN index, a select bibliography of works on Auschwitz-Birkenau, and a complete index of the contents of Przeglad Lekarskt-Oswigcim for 1961 to

1987. For the wider study of actual developments and events inside Auschwitz-Birkenau under the Nazi terror, in addition to the more specific physical and psychological consequences of internment in such places, this work is a must for all serious students of the Third Reich’s system of terror and dehumanisation through the concentration and extermination camp system, and the Holocaust. John P. Fox London

Yitzhak Arad, Betzec, Sobibor, Trebinka. The Operation Reinhard Death

Camps. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. 1987. Pp. viii, 437.

_ Yitzhak Arad, Yisrael Gutman, Abraham Margaliot (eds), Documents on the Holocaust. Selected Sources on the Destruction of the Jews of Germany and

Austria, Poland, and the Soviet Union. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem/Oxford:

, Pergamon Press. 1981. Pp. 504.

Between March 1942 and November 1943 at least 1.7 million Jews from the General Government area of Nazi-occupied Poland were murdered in the special extermination camps of Betzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka in a

programme known as ‘Operation Reinhard’ (so-called after Reinhard Heydrich who was assassinated in Prague in May 1942). Two things about

this operation are significant in a process entirely full of significance: it began almost immediately after the Wannsee Conference of 20 January

1942, convened to arrange the administrative details of putting into operation the pan-European aspect of Hitler’s policy of the physical extermination of the Jews; while it showed just how ‘prescient’ the Nazis had been in Reinhard Heydrich’s Schnellbnef of 21 September 1939 when ordering the Jews of Poland to be gathered together in large cities, each of which would be served by large rail networks and which in 1942 and 1943 ensured the easy despatch of the Jewish victims to the death camps. Yitzhak Arad has written the first full-scale and detailed account of this operation, based largely on German and Jewish witnesses’ accounts and other documentation. He deals in sequence with the actual operation of

the extermination machine, how it was set up and operated, by whom, together with clear descriptions of the design of the camps themselves; with prisoner life in the camps, above all how the Jewish prisoners, very often the main ‘operatives’ in the extermination process, coped with their short

existence; and how escape and resistance occurred in these camps. ,

BOOK REVIEWS 449 Dr Arad’s style is so completely objective and without emotion that the full horror of what he describes, often in uncomfortable detail, impresses itself upon the reader with even greater force than if the book had been written in a much more emotional manner. From this point of view the ‘worst’ part of the book is that describing the daily operation of the death machine in each camp: the arrival of the trains containing Jews from the

major ghettos, their reception and handling by the Jewish operatives overseen by German but mainly Ukrainian guards, and their movement along the various stages to gassing by carbon monoxide in specially built

chambers. Yet the horror is compounded, less by the graphic detail in which the account is given, than by the knowledge than human beings were doing all this day in and day out to other human beings for no other reason than that ‘the State’ had given orders that it should be done - and so it was. Yet Dr Arad also shows the other side of what human beings are capable of in his account of daily life in the camp. Most of the Jewish operatives, who in a terrible way ‘ensured’ the smooth running of the operation, were doomed to a short existence anyway. Nevertheless, while the chief aim of all was to survive as long as possible, ‘normal’ human relations - including love affairs - were pursued. In fact, one of those actually involved one of the most dreadful SS men in Sobibor, Paul Groth, whose behaviour changed somewhat after falling in love with a young Jewish girl from Vienna, Ruth

(pp. 117, 195). There were also isolated incidents of humane behaviour towards the prisoners by certain SS men (p. 196). Dr Arad is also illuminating about the development of the spirit of resistance in the camps, and especially about how news of the death camps was relayed back to the major ghettos - and !n various degrees believed or more often disbelieved. His book is a major contribution to the literature of the Holocaust and should be read by every serious student of the subject although every reader should be warned that the exercise is likely to be a

depressing one. ,

The book of documents contains 213 selected documents reflecting both the major trends and developments in Nazi ideology and policy towards the Jews, and the behaviour and reactions of the Jews in the face of the Nazi challenge in Germany, Austria, Poland, the Baltic States, and the areas of the Soviet Union occupied by the Germans in the Second World War. For the expert and the novice this is an extremely useful collection, and everyone will find something new in it for their researches. John P. Fox London

450 POLIN Michat Grynberg (ed.), Pamigintkt z Getta Warszawshiego. Fragmenty 1 regesty. Warsaw: Panstwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe. 1988. Pp.452.

Illustrations. Jewish Historical Institute (Zydowski Instytut Historyczny). The gradual liberalization in Poland as well as an increased interest in the Holocaust in many countries have led to a growing number of publications

and recollections relating to the plight of the Jews in occupied Poland during 1939-1945. Although numerous ethnic groups, the Poles included, suffered terrible hardships and persecution under Nazi rule, only the Jews and Gypsies were specifically condemned to total physical extermination. Because of its central location, and in an effort to cover up all the traces of the genocide at least for some time (both the eastern and western fronts were for long far away from Poland), the territory of pre-war Poland was selected by the Germans as the site of the greatest tragedy of our century. Out of the 18 million Nazi victims of all nationalities, 11 million perished on the territory of prewar Poland. Only some 100,000 Jews emerged in Poland after the Nazi defeat. Prior to World War II, the Jewish community

in Poland constituted some 10 per cent of the total population, a percentage much higher than in any other country of Europe. In order to facilitate their task, the Nazis rounded up all the Jews in East Central Europe (including those converted to Christianity), placing them behind the walls of various ghettos, of which Warsaw’s was by far the

largest. Within an area of 307 hectares, its population reached some 460,000 people in April 1941. Cut off almost completely from the ‘Aryan’

side and subjected to the most inhumane treatment possible and starvation, the Jews there could be killed, tortured, humiliated, deprived of property, starved to death, or sent to physically exhausting labour. Small wonder that the death rate in the Warsaw Ghetto was exceptionally high.

Some 100,000 people died there prior to the application of the Final Solution. When the latter was applied, under the cover and deceitful term of ‘resettlement’, the Nazis proved ruthless, skilful, diabolically resourceful, and deadly efficient. Between late July and late September 1942, they sent some 300,000 Jews to the gas chambers. Thanks to their duplicity,

they were able to force the Ghetto Jews to make the selection for the ‘resettlement’ themselves.

Although most Jews were submissive, many in the Warsaw Ghetto (particularly the younger generation) prepared themselves for an armed confrontation with their oppressors. Others wanted at least the truth of what was going on behind the walls of the ghetto preserved for posterity. Thanks to the collection of data, recollections, and selection of important materials, which were smuggled to the ‘Aryan’ side, the West could learn

even during the war of the heartbreaking tragedy of the Jews in the

BOOK REVIEWS 451 Warsaw Ghetto. Particularly active in this respect was Dr. Emanuel Ringelblum (1900-44), a student of the great historian, Professor Marceli Handelsman (1883-1945), himself a victim of the Nazis. Ringelblum and his collaborators decided to collect, evaluate, and preserve the oral and written testimony of witnesses of Nazi brutality. They succeeded in hiding

their archive in trunks of milk containers within the Warsaw Ghetto. Fortunately for scholars, most of the Ringelblum Archive survived the Nazis and was recovered in the post-1945 period. The bulk of such records are now kept in the Archives of the Jewish Historical Institute (Zydowski

Instytut Historyczny) in Warsaw. In addition, those Jews who had survived the ordeal wrote, or were encouraged to produce, recollections of the Nazi era. Other recollections pertaining to the Warsaw Ghetto have been found, sometimes even in former concentration camps.

Michat Grynberg is a member of the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw and the author of about ninety scholarly and popular publications. His chief research interests are related to the ordeal of the Jews under Nazi rule. The present volume contains excerpts from the memoirs kept in the Archives of the Jewish Historical Institute specifically relating

to the Warsaw Ghetto. He has supplemented them with editorial comments or biographical information, if possible, about the authors. Grynberg has found 65 such recollections, written in most cases in Polish,

but occasionally in Yiddish. Most were written under Nazi rule, either within the Warsaw Ghetto, or in some hiding place on the ‘Aryan’ side. Eight authors include a cross-section of the ghetto population, among them representatives of the Jewish Council (/udenrat), Jewish Police (Ordnungsdienst), other ghetto institutions, as well as people who just happened to be there. Some authors were highly educated people, others were not. Grynberg has identified among the authors five lawyers, four physicians, three engineers, and three sociologists. Women wrote eighteen of the recollections. The youngest of the authors was Marysia Szpiro, who was eleven in 1946 when she wrote her own recollections. In some cases, it is known how particular recollections found their way into the archives, but in other cases such vital data are missing. The volume is composed of an introduction, two parts, annexes, illustra-

tions, and an index of names. Part one contains excerpts from recollections, divided into thirty topics. Occasionally, fragments of the same memoir can be found in different topical division. In part two, there are biographical sketches of authors, and a description of authors whose recollections are not included in this work. The selected extracts deal with the Jewish Council in the ghetto, the organization and the structure of the Jewish police; the central jail; social institutions; some Nazi institutions in the ghetto; the beginning of the deceitful ‘resettlement’ policy; workshops, blockades; and selections for ‘resettlement’; bunkers and other hiding places during ‘resettlement’

452 POLIN actions; orphanages; the Umschlagplaiz (the site where those selected for

‘resettlement’ had to spend their last hours or days in the ghetto); and other matters. Then Grynberg turns to the rising in the Warsaw Ghetto. Selected extracts analyze the fighting, or deal with the situation in various

hiding places. Some of the quoted fragments speak about life on the ‘Aryan’ side; the plight of those imprisoned in the ill-famed Pawiak Gestapo prison, known for extreme cruelty, as well as various diverse topics. The final part deals with the liberation of the few lucky Jews who survived the ordeal. The reader will find in these pages examples of exceptional cruelty and humanity, despair and hope, misery (particularly of the ghetto children

and of the German Jews) and resourcefulness to find some means to survive even one more day, toughness and corruption. Together with extreme misery, desperate housing conditions, impossible overcrowding, despair, and a growing indifference in face of death (dead bodies were

almost everywhere), one finds in the extracts numerous examples of exceptional enterprise. Each member of a family was involved in procuring some means, or finding some ways, to secure food. People and goods were smuggled in and out of the ghetto. Black marketeering and corruption of Nazi officials and guards defies description or imagination. One also finds

in this volume superhuman efforts of the ghetto medical services to alleviate the plight of the ghetto population, and Nazi countermeasures in the opposite directions. Besides a sincere effort of many to save as many

(particularly children) as possible, there were also cases of extreme selfishness among those who thought only about their own survival. The fragments speak about cases of passive fatalism, as well as of a will to resist.

One learns about those who were indifferent to everything, as well as others, who wanted to survive, or at least to leave some testimony for posterity. [here was also an easily comprehensible striving for revenge. One learns about those who cursed everything and everybody, and also those who desperately tried to understand the meaning of their terrible plight. The terrible ordeal brought some closer to God, but also led some away from Him. © Grynberg should be praised for preparing this volume for print. It was not an easy task. He not only had to select suitable extracts from the memoirs relating to the Warsaw Ghetto, but also to seek information about the identified and anonymous authors. In numerous cases, he has succeeded in finding out who among the authors survived or perished, and how particular memoirs reached the Jewish Historical Institute. All this required painstaking research. As the survivers had moved to all corners of the globe, the editor had to find their addresses, establish contacts to get information about their hardships during the Nazi era and thereafter. In numerous cases, he has been unable to find anything about the post-1945 life of authors who survived the genocide. The survivors were people of all

BOOK REVIEWS 453 types. Some had probably already died, others had re-established their lives and some did not want anything to do with the frightful Nazi years. Even the lucky survivors had lost their next of kin, and therefore, some among the authors decided not to reply to Grynberg’s inquiry about their post-1945 life.

Present-day researchers are often in the dark regarding various vital questions relating to the acquisition of particular items of the archival holdings of the Jewish Historical Institute. Grynberg hopes that the reader of this volume will provide him or the archive with some vital information in the future. This is a carefully edited volume, meeting all the standards of editorial work. In agreement with the policy in Poland, the volume was subjected to a critical evaluation prior to its publication by two experts, whose critical

remarks and suggestions helped Grynberg to introduce the necessary corrections. The editor’s shortcomings are minor, and one only hopes that

the publication of recollections relating to the dreadful Nazi era will continue. We owe much to those who suffered and perished, and we should at least respect their memory by becoming acquainted with their tragedy. Adam A. Hetnal — New Mexico State University

Abraham Lewin, A Cup of Tears: A Diary of the Warsaw Ghetto. Edited by Antony Polonsky. Oxford: Basil Blackwell in association with the Institute of Polish-Jewish Studies. 1988. Pp. x, 310.

Abraham Lewin was one of nearly 380,000 Jews who found themselves sealed in the ghetto of Warsaw in November 1940. A forty seven-year-old teacher in a private Jewish secondary school, Lewin lived with his wife Luba and his fourteen-year-old daughter, Ora. None of the three survived,

although Abraham and his daughter did manage to escape the Nazis longer than most - likely until some time in January 1943. A sensitive and astute observer, Lewin was neither a great writer nor a political leader; he was not a theoretician of note, in a Jewish society in which many aspired to

be just that; nor was he an adventurous or distinguished activist in the Zionist world in which he participated. Yet Abraham Lewin will be remembered, thanks to the remarkable diary which he so assiduously kept, describing his own and his people’s ordeal. One of the most precious testimonies of the Warsaw Ghetto, this diary now appears for the first time

in English, with the imprint of the Institute for Polish-Jewish Studies. Antony Polonsky’s excellent introduction, together with more than fifty

454 POLIN pages of valuable notes, anchors the work firmly in its terrible historical context. Although Lewin is the sole author, his diary was in an important sense a collective effort. In recording what he saw, heard and felt about existence

in the Warsaw Ghetto, he was part of the extraordinary underground archive Oneg Shabbes headed by the historian Emmanuel Ringelblum - the

clandestine group ghetto inmates determined to record what had happened and to communicate with those outside the Nazi inferno. As part of this effort, Lewin took special care to investigate, to interview, to check details, and to assess ghetto opinion from time to time. Other members of the Ringelblum group knew of the diary and provided him with information. They also hid his pages, along with the rest of their documentation, in secret caches where they were uncovered after the war. Not all of Lewin’s diary survived. We know from Ringelblum himself that the author had been keeping it from the middle of 1941. What we have

begins at the end of March, 1942, and extends until January 16, 1943. Much, therefore, has been lost. More than anything else, Lewin’s diary conveys the pervasive terror of the ghetto - the bone-chilling dread that grips the author as he writes page after page, no matter what his subject, and no matter even if he is recording a shred of hope that does, occasionally, appear before the ghetto inmates.

Thereby, Lewin’s evidence provides an important accompaniment to recent hypotheses about Nazi policy prior to the great deportations from Warsaw in the summer of 1942. According to Christopher Browning’s detailed investigations, some of the German authorities determined, as early as May the previous year, to build a viable ghetto economy and to arrest, thereby, the catastrophic death rate among the inmates who had been decimated by starvation and disease after the ghetto was sealed. These Nazi ‘productionists’, as opposed to the more bloodthirsty ‘attritionists’ who wanted to wipe out the Jews immediately, eventually tiumphed,

and turned the ghetto into a workshop for the Reich - albeit neither efficient, humane, or rationally managed (see Christopher Browning, ‘Nazi Ghettoization Policy in Poland: 1939-1941’, Central European History, XIX (1986), 343-68). However, even under the ‘productionists’ Lewin and

the other inmates not only experienced famine, epidemics and harassment, but also the constant irruption of violence and murder within the ghetto walls. ‘Terror was central and constant in Nazi policy. It seems plain from Lewin’s description, for example, that the Germans were winking at the smuggling of food into the ghetto in exchange for whatever valuables

remained - a daring and extensive traffic from the Jewish standpoint, - conducted nightly, often by little children who crawled through spaces in the ghetto walls and otherwise sneaked through obstacles set in their path.

Yet along with smuggling, there was its savage repression. Some smugglers, including children, were regularly shot for what others were

| BOOK REVIEWS 455 permitted to do. ‘News arrives constantly of the slaughter of Jews,’ Lewin recounts on May 21, 1942, the eve of the festival of Shavuot. He tells again

and again of Jews murdered suddenly, arbitrarily, sometimes after meaningless encounters with their tormentors. Improvements in the food supply must also be seen in a context of continuing starvation: “The ghetto is most terrible to behold with its crowds of drawn faces with the colour drained out of them,’ he writes on the same day. ‘Some of them have the look of corpses that have been in the ground a few weeks. They are so horrifying that they cause us to shudder instinctively’. Cut off from the outside world by the ghetto walls, the Jews nevertheless maintained many contacts, which Lewin carefully describes. Work parties, individual labourers and smugglers went constantly to the ‘Aryan’ side, and relayed bits of news when they returned. German newspapers, radio broadcasts, and Nazi administrators all provided information - some true, some false, usually with elements of each. New deportees to the ghetto told of their experiences. In the void created by the lack of reliable evidence, rumours flew. Lewin faithfully records these stories, most of which he disbelieved but which many accepted: that Jewish policies were to be hardened, or that they were to be softened; that the Germans were using poison gas against the Russians on the Eastern front; that an anti-Nazi revolution was brewing in Germany; that Hermann Goering was plotting

citizenship. |

against Hitler; that 25,000 Jews would soon return to Warsaw from Treblinka; that surviving Jews would automatically be granted American

Terror rose to a crescendo with the massive deportations that began in July, 1942. Lewin reports the cover story about Jews being resettled in the east. But for him, and for the others of Oneg Shabbes, there was little doubt that deportation meant murder. On August 6 he speculates that Treblinka might be ‘the place of execution’. Three days later he writes that “99 per cent of those transported are being taken to their deaths’. “The Jews,’ he continues in the now-familiar and mis-used phrase, “are going like lambs to the slaughter.’ On August 12 Lewin pens his own personal tragedy: ‘My Luba was taken away during a blockade on 30 Gesia Street ... She went

out in a light dress, without stockings, with my leather briefcase.’ Shattered, he nevertheless carries on, worried now about his daughter, his mother, and his own gnawing, never-ending hunger. For a time, Lewin seems to have hoped against hope that Luba might be alive. Then, like the other survivors of the first wave of deportation, he lapsed into pessimism, summoning energy only for the struggle for survival and periodic calls in his diary for revenge. Finally, the worst was confirmed. The diary recounts the miraculous arrival in the ghetto of several escapees from Treblinka and the confirmation of the terrible information about mass extermination. Then, within days of its announcement, Lewin learned about the protest against the murder of Jews issued by the various Allied governments in

456 POLIN December 1942. Even as the tension eased and the deportations subsided, the terror continued. On January 4, 1943 he tells of ‘the perpetual dread that never lets up for one moment and eats away at us like a moth’. Interestingly, Lewin seems to have remained unaware of the confluence of Jewish resistors about this time, and their plans for a violent uprising against the Germans. Although he found sanctuary in the same workshop as many of them, he did not know of the Jewish Fighting Organization which assassinated the deputy head of the Jewish police, Jakub Lejkin, on

October 29. Too old to be part of the youth groups that formed the backbone of the fighting underground, the possibility of a violent response

apparently never occurred to him. Like the overwhelming majority of those who survived the first wave of deportations, he had no inkling of the Jewish resistance that was in the offing. But on the experience of ordinary Jews, as this diary eloquently indicates, he was an authority. And because of that, his work is an achievement of a very high order.

| Michael R. Marrus University of Toronto

Zofia S. Kubar, Double Identity. A Memoir. New York: Hill and Wang. 1989. Pp. vu, 208.

Forty five years after the end of the Second World War the written testimonies of the Holocaust survivors are still surging. Soon it will come to an end, the source of the first-hand accounts of the time of the gas chambers will dry up in a natural way. Therefore, any work of such kind, be it an old diary or a recently written memortr, is precious. Like myself, Zofia Kubar is a latecomer to the not-yet-extinguished tribe of Holocaust witnesses who, at one point, resolved to share their memories with relatives and strangers. Born in Poland, she had survived the Nazi occupation in Warsaw and left her native country only in 1971. Living now in the United States and being over seventy, she recollects the time when, as a young woman, she fought her hard fight for survival. ‘I spent two and a half years of my life in the Warsaw ghetto,’ she begins her story. But Double

Identity is not about the Warsaw ghetto. This is a story of Zofia ~ Rubinstein’s (Kubar is her married name) life on the ‘Aryan side’ after her escape from the ghetto. For a run-away Jew, the chances of surviving among Christian Poles depended on several factors. The most important, I believe, was to have

devoted and reliable Christian friends. Next, it was the right looks and impeccable speech: if you had fair hair and blue eyes that did not betray too much sadness, if your Polish was fluent and your accent untainted with

Yiddish, you stood a chance. The third factor was money. Out of those

BOOK REVIEWS 457 most important things Zofia had only one, namely perfect command of the Polish language, when she decided to leave the ghetto. ‘I had no money to pay for a hiding place or for ransom to the blackmailers. I was virtually a

stranger in the city and I had only two Polish friends’. One was her old headmistress with whom she had been out of touch for seven years. The other was her childhood friend’s non-Jewish husband. They might have been out of reach or simply let her down. But she managed to find them and they proved helpful. They found somewhere for her to live and helped

to acquire a forged birth certificate. Then ‘I was no longer Zofia Rubinstein. The story of Zofia Sielczak had begun’. The picture on the jacket shows a well-worn Kennkarte - the obligatory identification card - with Zofia’s photograph. The young woman’s face clearly betrays her Jewish origin. Aware of the danger, Zofia still had to live openly, with ‘the Aryans’, pretend to be one of them. There was no other way, she could not afford a hiding place and she had to work to support herself. Brave and resourceful, she was never without a shelter or a job. When one had burnt out due to blackmail or for some other reason, she would soon find a new shelter or a new job. Quick-witted and endowed with a strong instinct of self-preservation, she often took great risks and never failed. She was making new friends. Lots and lots of them. They were people of various walks of life. Some knew who she really was but some did not. Some were most helpful, others were a threat. Almost daily she came across blatant examples of anti-semitism, corruption, and cruelty but also met people of great courage and integrity. Eventually she survived the war.

But the person who emerged from the war was no longer Zofia Rubinstein. During the two years of living dangerously, of trying to adapt herself to new surroundings and become indistinguishable, of constantly pretending to be someone else, she had, in fact, become someone else. The

disguise took root and changed her personality. She rejects her Jewish identity. She prefers to remain Zofia Sielczak for ever. But this is not all that easy. ‘My need to belong somewhere was accompanied by a desire to run away from my Jewishness. To achieve these ends, it was not enough to stick a smile on my face or a flower in my hair. .. . It was necessary that I not only assume her role but that I identify with Zofia Sielczak. ... To

accomplish this, I had to supress the image of Zofia Rubinstein who stubbornly kept emerging from the past.’ Such responses were possible, but could also occur the other way round. In my own case, for instance, something opposite happened: only after having gone through the ordeal of hiding and pretending, did I come to terms with my Jewishness. Unlike most of the memoirs written by Holocaust survivors, Double Identity does not end with the Nazi defeat. The last five chapters of the book

(out of 31 altogether) tell briefly the author’s story after she had been rescued from the Nazis by the Red Army. This part of her memoir is,

458 POLIN , perhaps, the most revealing because not enough has been said about this

period so far. For many Jews, including Zofia and myself, it was like waking from a nightmare to face the devastating truth that anti-semitism, reinforced and fanned in Poland by the Nazis during the war, had not died out with their retreat. Out of mortal danger, miraculously saved thanks to what was best and noblest in the Polish nation, now we had to live with it or leave our own country. None of us did. At least not then. One could blame Zofia Kubar for having said too little or too much. Not all episodes in her book seem truly significant to the reader, others could have been better explored. Very many characters are involved in the story and which is sometimes confusing for the reader. Some names cropping up in the final chapters may mean something to a handful of Polish readers but to no one else. And yet, I believe, Double Identity should not be judged from this point of view. The author has recorded all that mattered for her. | She certainly had the right to do so; and the result is for this very reason illuminating. In all survival stories from the time of the Holocaust one can find records

, Leeds of historical facts that are well known by now, alongside accounts of

unique, revealing personal experiences. In the latter respect, Zofia Kubar’s book is a welcome addition to Holocaust literature.

Janina Bauman

Bruno Shatyn, A Private War: Surviving in Poland on False Papers,

1941-1945. Foreword by Norman Davies. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. 1985. Pp. xxi, 285.

Among the increasing number of memoirs of the survivors from the Holocaust Shatyn’s is exceptional not only by its literary quality, but because it partially redresses the balance among the avalanche of that type of literature and also because this is an optimistic story. The story of aman who due to his cold calculation, foresight, intelligence and the help of his Polish friends was able to save not only himself but also his whole family.

The publication of that book in Poland in 1983 was a literary event. Shatyn, a young lawyer from Krakéw (now living in Latin America), was one of those Jews whose manner and appearance were similar to those of Poles, and he was therefore able to live on false documents. His chances of

survival on the Aryan side were considerably increased, although they were still only 1 in 10. Consequently Shatyn views the Nazi occupation of Poland from a dual perspective - that of a Pole and that of a Jew - and this gives him the opportunity for some original insights into Polish-Jewish

BOOK REVIEWS 459 relations. He avoids sweeping generalizations. He presents the Poles as honourable people, thanks to whom both he and his relatives survived.

Shatyn saw through the nature of Nazism from the beginning and resolved to struggle for survival. Dangers and stratagems unfold in a fascinating picture. A valuable part of the book lies in the descriptions of the environment in which the author was brought up. He remembers with fondness his grammar school (gymnasium) at Jarostaw, studies at Krakow University, the beginnings of legal practice, and he describes the life of Krakow Jewry. He does not hide the fact that anti-semitism existed in Poland, but he shows that the majority of Polish Jews lived quietly and normally. Shatyn has managed to convey something which is seldom

encountered in Western literature concerning Polish-Jewish relations before 1939, relations which are seen usually from the perspective of the Holocaust. While two distinct peoples lived on Polish soil, peoples whose relations from the end of the nineteenth century were marked by gradually increasing antagonism, and although a considerable section of the Polish population professed anti-semitic prejudices between the wars, they nevertheless developed a certain intimate relationship accepted freely over centuries. The distinguishing feature of this relationship was not enmity, but a mutual acknowledgement of each other’s worlds which came into contact only at the margins. Polish cultural anti-semitism - as a rule - never had any features of Russian or German anti-semitism, which bordered on racism, since, although in Russia or Germany there lived an ethnic minority, in the Polish territories there existed a ‘Jewish nation’, organically linked to the Polish nation. After all, a minority group and particularly such a large one, could not create an institutionally guaranteed culture in a hostile environment, or in an environment which was opposed to it. For this reason, neither the ‘Jewish nation’ nor Jewish culture, in the sense that it developed in Poland during the years 1918-39, could have come into being

in Russia or in the Soviet Union. |

Shatyn portrays that climate of intimate attachment in a subtle manner. There are some moving scenes in his book which convey more about this specific Polish-Jewish contact than many more extensive tracts might do. Some of those scenes are the testimony to the long history of the unique,

and intimate relationship between the Polish Jews and the Polish aristocracy. There is especially one episode between Count Potocki and old Jew Schneiderman which is a moving, beautiful and painfully tragic

symbol of the closing of that unique chapter of coexistence of Polish aristocracy and Polish Jews, the story still waiting to be written. This is a good and honest book although, as with all memoirs, it gives us only the truth of personal experience. Andrzey Bryk

Marquette Unwersity, Milwaukee _

460 POLIN Carol Rittner, RSM and Sondra Myers, (eds.), The Courage To Care. Rescuers of fews During the Holocaust. New York and London: New York University Press. 1986. Pp. xvii, 158.

The memoirs of several people who had the courage to ‘give assistance’

(the courage to care) and several of those who benefited from this assistance, comprise the main part of this fine book. Half the authors come from France, while the rest are from Holland, Poland, Denmark, Norway,

Italy and Bulgaria. They also include several German officers, formerly

part of the occupation authorities. The volume begins and ends in reflections by prominent thinkers, historians and lawyers, such as Elie

Wiesel, Moshe Bejski and others. :

The international conference, Faith in Humankind: Rescuers of jews

During the Holocaust, organised in the USA in 1984, provided the stimulus

for this publication. A film of the same title, “The Courage To Care’, comprising interviews with the authors of some of the memoirs published

within it, appeared simultaneously with the book. 7 During the Holocaust, the rescuers and those they saved who describe their experiences were, for the most part, young. Only a few remained in

Europe. The majority settled in the USA after the war. They include university professors, doctors, public figures and representatives of other professions.

The majority of rescuers received the high distinction of ‘Righteous Among The Nations’ awarded by the Yad Vashem Institute in Jerusalem.

They describe what they did during the war without pomp or pathos without highlighting their own merits. The assistance they gave varied. Rescuing Jews on one’s own was considered the most nerve-wracking. It was easier if a family or groups of neighbours or friends took part in the rescue, and easier still if these groups had backing within the resistance movement. Jews from Holland, Norway or France were often rescued precisely in this way. The most famous was the escape to Sweden of 7,200

Danish Jews, organised by the Danish resistance movement. Over three nights, they were transported across the strait in small barges.

The authors of the book are not, apparently, aware that the Polish underground (Council for Assistance to the Jews - Zegota) and the Jewish underground also co-operated in rescue operations, as they pass over this in silence. The accounts describe only instances of individual assistance, organised in highly dramatic circumstances, given that any Jews or Poles helping them were executed if captured by the Germans.

The defence of Jews in Italy, and particularly in Bulgaria, that is in countries which were allied with Germany, took place in entirely different circumstances. Here, the intervention of local organisations and institutions, and overt assistance produced positive results.

BOOK REVIEWS 461 | As the title suggests, the book is devoted to care provided for Jews. | Nevertheless, there are passages which show that the entire population did not take part-in this assistance. Although none of the contributors even mentions the actions of the Vichy government or the French police, G. Cohen writes about France: ‘On one and the same street, you would find a family, who could do terrible things; another person who did nothing .. . and someone who took terrible risks and helped’ (p.73). M. Pritchard’s assessment of the situation in Holland is similar: “The point I want to make is that there were indeed some people who behaved criminally by betraying their Jewish neighbours and thereby sentencing them to death. There were some people who dedicated themselves to actively rescuing as many people as possible. Somewhere in between was the majority . . .’(p.32). E. Tanay gives an account of Polish anti-semitism and denunciations of Jews.

As a teenage boy, he was rescued by Poles. He thinks, however, that a considerable part of the population was ill-disposed towards the Jews. As this review shows, the authors of the memoirs focus their attention on the attitudes and behaviour of individuals, social groups or whole societies. And these attitudes and behaviour are often seen as resulting solely from

philo-semitism or anti-semitism, .irrespective of other realities and circumstances. The clearest example of such an over-simplified evaluation

is 1. Greenberg’s statement, contained in his ‘Introduction’ (p.3). He writes: “The difference in Jewish survival in the various European countries is enormous. It ranged from 95 per cent surviving in Denmark to

90 per cent dead in Poland, Latvia and Lithuania. Why the incredible variation in rates of Jewish survival? ... The difference lay not in Jewish behaviour ... nor in Nazi behaviour ... murderous everywhere. The single critical difference was the behaviour of the bystanders. The more bystanders there were who resisted, the greater was the chance that Jews would survive’. (The author’s ‘resisted’ refers, of course, to the resistance to the ‘Final Solution’.)

Can this argument really be justified by comparing the Polish and Danish situations? Let us begin with the figures which are not cited anywhere in the book. Before the war, there were about 3,500,000 Jews in Poland (10 per cent of the entire population) and 7,200 in Denmark (barely 0.2 per cent) Is it as simple to save 3,500,000 people as it is to save 7,000?

Other differences must also be taken into account. An ethnic group constituting 0.2 per cent of the entire population tends to integrate into the surrounding society, whilst a group which amounts to 10 per cent stands apart in many respects (in this instance, language, customs, and so on) and consequently, is considerably more easy to distinguish and more difficult to conceal (which Tanay writes about, p.52). The members of this group also have fewer contacts and fewer ties with the surrounding population, which makes rescue more difficult. Apart from this, as Greenberg himself states, the German terror and the

462 POLIN occupier’s control over the lives of the population were among the most

severe in Poland and among the mildest in Denmark. In Poland, the

Germans would have immediately put an end - brutally - to the movement of people on a scale which, in Denmark, they did not even notice. And finally, only a narrow strait separated Denmark from a neutral

Sweden, whereas Poland was surrounded by states either engaged in the , war or under occupation. In the light of this, can the objective circumstances under which the Jews were rescued be regarded as the same in Poland and Denmark, whereas the differences are perceived solely in ‘the behaviour of the bystanders’?

There can be no doubt that the anti-semitism pervading part of the Polish society hindered and diminished the provision of assistance to Jews. But it was not this that decided the enormous losses of Polish Jewry. In the autumn of 1942, one of the Bund leaders, Leon Feiner, being aware of the

balance of power and the situation in Poland’s occupied territories, told Jan Karski, the underground’s emissary, who was going to London: “We are helpless in the face of the German criminals ... our entire people will be annihilated. Perhaps a handful will be saved, but 3,000,000 Polish Jews are condemned. No force here, in Poland, is capable of preventing this’ (J. Karski, Story of a Secret State, Boston, 1944, p.323). Were it not for anti-semitism or more often lack of courage on the part of

some of the bystanders, this handful could have been bigger (and it is a much regretted loss that it was not), but it would still have remained a mere handful - no more than that. The above judgement is not the only one in the book with which one can

argue. Nevertheless, the majority of reflections and statements are indisputable. These are, in particular, those based on a thorough analysis of experiences of people living in the abnormal conditions of the Nazi

conquest, and the choices they made. We should be grateful to the publishers for the many fine pages of wisdom in this book.

, Teresa Prekerowa Warsaw

Otto Dov Kulka, Paul R. Mendes-Flohr (eds), Judaism and Chnsttanity Under the Impact of National Socialism. Jerusalem: The Historical Society of Israel and The Zalman Shazar Centre for Jewish History. 1987. Pp. 558.

This volume contains twenty-nine of the most authoritative, detailed, and closely-argued essays one is likely to find in a single volume on different aspects of the generic but contentious subject indicated by the title. It is the product of a symposium convened by the Historical Society of Israel in

Jerusalem in June 1982 under the title, ‘International Symposium on

BOOK REVIEWS 463 Judaism and Christianity under the Impact of National Socialism, 1919-1945’, and like that symposium is organized around three main

| themes and associated problems.

First is the question of the continuity-discontinuity of National

Socialism’s anti-Jewish ideology and policy in relation to historical antisemitism. Was Nazi anti-semitism — and, if at all, to what extent - a continuation of the historical antagonism toward the Jews, in its Christian and in its secular expression? These issues are discussed in sections on the historical background and the secularisation of ‘an historical antagonism’. Jacob

Katz, Shmuel Ettinger, and Uriel Tal show how the complex dialectical process of the Judeo-Christian relationship in the modern world can be traced back to the Hellenistic period but above all to the adoption of Christianity as the official state religion of the Roman Empire in 360 AD. In conjunction with the State, the Church now became an agent in the political and legal oppression of the Jews, the whole complex becoming even more tortuous in the period of the Enlightenment with the separation of Church and State. Thereafter, and in so many countries, the State came into conflict with doth the Church and the Jews.

Secondly, there is the question of the Jewish-Christian theological encounter in Weimar Germany, an encounter which took place against the background of the menacing intensification of anti-semitism and the emergence of National Socialism. While Leonore Siegele-Wenschkewitz,

Rudolf Lill, and Hermann Greive discuss Protestant and Catholic attitudes towards Jews in the Weimar Republic, most interesting is Paul Mendes-Flohr’s contribution on the Jewish- Christian theological encounter in the Republic. These papers show that the nascent NSDAP’s violent attacks on German and world Jewry were not entirely singular or isolated, but in fact proceeded against a background of debate and discussion in which ‘the Jewish Question’ was very much to the fore of clerical and lay thinking.

Thirdly is the issue of the place of Judaism and Christianity in the ideology and policy of National Socialism, and the Catholic and Protestant

reactions to the anti-Jewish measures of the Nazi regime. A common theme which emerges from the essays by Klaus Scholder, Konrad Repgen,

and Richard Gutteridge on the role of the Catholic and Protestant Churches in the Third Reich, although well-known, bears a degree of emphasis: that not only was Nazism as implacable an enemy of Christian-

ity as it was of Judaism, but had Nazi Germany been victorious in the Second World War then Christianity too would have been subjected to a particular form of “Christian Final Solution’. Otto Dov Kulka’s essay on ‘Popular Christian Attitudes in the Third Reich to National Socialist Policies towards the Jews’ is an excellent and valuable summary of its subject. There then follow three sections on the role of the Churches and Nazism

464 POLIN _ during the Second World War: the Churches and the Jews in Western and Central Europe; the Churches and the Jews in Eastern Europe; and the Vatican, the World Council of Churches, and the Nazi Persecution of the Jews. Written by specialists in their fields, two main conclusions may be

drawn from their findings. The first, particularly emphasised by Meir Michaelis and John Conway, is that one should withdraw some way from blanket condemnations of Pope Pius XII and his alleged ‘silence’ on Nazi Germany’s persecution and extermination of the Jews. Secondly, a point especially underlined by Zygmunt Zielinski on his paper on the activities

of Catholic Orders on behalf of Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland but one repeated by other authors for other countries, is that generalisations about the alleged ‘indifference’ or ‘inactivity’ of Christians, both lay and cleric, in the face of the Nazi anti-Jewish persecutions should likewise be modulated by more detailed or ‘micro-analysis’. In conclusion, Arthur Cohen and others discuss the significance of the Holocaust for contemporary Jewish-Christian encounter. This extremely important volume is not for those seeking easy answers,

| or indeed an easy read. All the contributions underline not only the immense complexity of the issues and subjects covered, but indeed how

insulting it is for some academics to dismiss “Holocaust Studies’ as unworthy of special academic attention or merit. The papers in this volume emphasize two key points time and again: that the nuances they bring to play on previous assumptions that the ‘Church-Jewish-Nazi’ question should only be seen in terms of black and white continues to transform the wider historical debate about the role of anti-semitism in modern Western society and culture. And secondly, following on from

this, they transform - and if they have not done so already then they should - the debate about the nature of the Nazi regime within the wider historical discussion of the role of the modern State and in particular bureaucracy’s life-and-death role over the individual citizen. This is indeed a volume to

| London

grapple with. |

John P. Fox

Gal-ed. On the History of Polish Jews. Volume IX. Tel-Aviv: Diaspora

Research Institute. 1986. Pp.336

The Hebrew word, Gal-ed, means ‘hill of testimony’. It is an appropriate title for the Tel-Aviv based journal on the history of Polish Jews. Volume nine, like the preceding ones, offers the reader a mountain of information covering a wide range of themes. The articles are richly evocative of a past that has been tragically wiped away. The style and content is character-

BOOK REVIEWS 465 istically dense and intricate. It seems to disavow present day trends toward a renewal of the Polish-Jewish dialogue. After all, monuments are erected

for the dead and buried. One senses here the execution of Simon ,

Dubnow’s appeal to posterity, shreib un bashreibt, ‘Write and Record’. Most of the contributors are themselves Polish Jews, who witnessed the destruction of the culture from which they emerged. The articles in this volume focus on the social and economic life of Polish

Jews in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The only article to extend back into the period of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth is Jacob Barnai’s analysis of the interaction of Turkish and Polish Jewish sages in the seventeenth century. Barnai challenges the prevalent assumption that

the spiritual life of Ashkenazi Jews developed in isolation from their Sephardic brethren. His textual analysis of kabbalistic, aggadic and legalistic literature demonstrates that the Sabbatean movement provided a

conduit for the dissemination of mystical literature from the Ottoman Empire into Central Europe. This free-flow of information in the realm of Midrash and Kabbalah was not paralleled in the area of Jewish Law. The

declining influence of the Turkish Jewish academies, and the growing authority of a codified legal system following amendments to the Shulkhan Arukh, inhibited cooperation between Ottoman and Polish Jewish rabbis on Halakhic matters. Shmuel Verses’ study of an early Galician maskil, Yaakov Shmuel Bik (1772-1831), reveals a complex character. His sympathy for the ideals of both the haskalah and the hasidic movement piqued other contemporary

maskilim whose anti-Hasid line was a stock-in-trade of the Jewish Enlightenment movement. In a totally different vein, Ruth Shenfeld’s treatment of the semi-autobiographical novels of Julian Stryjkowski (Pesach Sthtark, 1905-) enlarges our understanding of this Polish-Jewish literary figure. His trilogy about the social life of an east Galician shtetl at

the turn of this century, raises many of the perennial questions about Jewish diaspora existence that also preoccupied Bik. His diagnosis of the

Jewish condition is expectedy different, writing from the nostalgic perspective of an old-time communist in a post-Holocaust world. Despite the cultural and temporal abyss that divides the two personalities, both drew on Hasidic tales to illuminate their message. The inclusion of three articles on Jewish education in Poland yields an interesting regional perspective on the social development of Polish Jewry. The ongoing struggle for cultural hegemony between Poles and Russians

on the one hand, and Yiddishists and Zionists on the other, naturally focused on conquering the Jewish school system. This is particularly evident in Warsaw, where russificatory pressures intensified following the failure of the 1863 Polish Insurrection. Sabina Levin’s history of private

Jewish schools in Poland between 1860-1900 illustrates how Jewish secular schools successfully fought the introduction of russification into the

466 ~ POLIN classroom, thereby contributing to the strengthening of a polonised Jewish intelligentsia. ‘This article is part of a wider study on all facets of Jewish education in Poland, published in previous volumes of Gal-Ed. Efraim Shmueli’s memoirs are valuable in that they provide an insider’s view of one of the many educational institutions that proliferated in interwar Poland. He recaptures the spirit of the Jewish Gymnasium in Lddz,

established by Rabbi Dr Marcus Braude as a compromise between the Zionist Tarbut network and the Polish secular schools. Another memoir authored by Emmanuel Goldberg on the fate of Jewish schools in Swistocz (Belorussia) in the period of Soviet control (1939-1941), once again reveals

how educational orientations were affected by wider political currents. Within the spate of these two years, the local nationalist Hebrew school became a secular Yiddish institution. Moreover, many middle-class Jews rejected the specifically Jewish educational option for their children, choosing instead the newly-established Russian school. Bina Garncarska-Kadary’s research on the changing material situation of Jewish workers in Poland between 1930-39 is a contribution to the ongoing debate about the socio-economic position of Jews in inter-war Poland. Based on a statistical analysis of archival material, she argues that the Jewish proletariat suffered serious material deprivation relative to the non-Jewish worker. Indeed, Jewish wages fell well below the average amount of industry as a whole, creating a situation where 80 per cent of Jewish families lived below the poverty line. Garncarska-Kadary attributes the cause of the decline in Jewish income to a confluence of factors: the boycott of Jewish work, a general depression, and the subsequent influx of a cheap labour force from the villages into the cities. The picture portrayed

in this article is all the more striking when read against her previous research on the growth of a Jewish bourgeoisie in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The ever-widening financial gap between the Christian and Jewish workers in this period, she intimates, was part of a deeper exclusion of Jews from Polish society in the years preceding the Holocaust.

Other articles include Mishkinsky’s analysis of the attitude of Polish socialism to the Jewish Question before the founding of the PPS and SDKP, and Israel Oppenheim’s evaluation of the relationship between the

, Polish Left Poalei Zion and the Hechalutz Movement. There is also a useful section containing book reviews and bibliographic updates on the historiography of Polish Jewry. Monika Krajewska’s contribution on the symbolism of Polish tombstones is a kind of modern day pinkus hevra kadisha, a surrogate for the lost communal record-books of the Jewish cemetery associations. This is not

necrology for its own sake. The tombstones which range from the oversized sarcophaguses reminiscent of those built for the German Jewish bourgeoisie, to the unadorned and humble slabs, enhance our apprecia-

BOOK REVIEWS 467 tion of the social history of Polish Jewry. Krajewska’s article is part ofa greater productivity — both literary and indeed, toward the restoration of

Polish Jewish tombstones. Reading it, I am led to the photographs of Roman Vishniak. They complement one another as a ‘gal-ed’, a monument to Polish Jewry.

| Mark Baker University of Melbourne

Gal-ed Volume X. Tel Aviv: Diaspora Research Institute. 1987. Pp 576

The contributions to this volume fall largely into two categories: the Jewish position in Polish politics, and Polish-Jewish history as seen through the

literary medium. Summaries in English and Yiddish accompany each article. Other items of interest are an assessment by Zvi Ankori of the late

Raphael Mahler’s monograph on the Karaites, originally published in 1949; and two hitherto unpublished letters by the Bund leader, Viktor

Alter, killed in December 1941. The first of these brings back for reconsideration Mahler’s thesis that the Karaites used a religious idiom in

order to express the urge for national redemption and a class-conscious aspiration to social reform. This argument differed radically, of course, from the prevailing trend in Karaite research. How well has Mahler’s thesis withstood the test of time? Ankori has no difficulty in showing that Mahler exaggerated the uniformity of Karaism over the centuries but he also concedes that Mahler’s historico-sociological approach is still capable of fructifying Karaite research. Alter’s letters of 1941, one written to the Bund’s leaders in the United States, and the other to leaders of the British trade union movement, were found by Professor Korzec in the archives of Mikotajczyk, deputy-premier of the Polish government-in-exile. They were written in September 1941, shortly after Alter and his political colleague, Henryk Erlich, were released from a Soviet prison. The two letters describe with great bitterness Alter’s experiences in prison and call on their respective addressees to agitate for a

political amnesty in the Soviet Union as a means to reinforce the enthusiasm of the population in the fight against the Nazis. The letters are

introduced by Korzec and do much to elucidate the background to the murder of Erlich and Alter in December 1941. The volume also contains reviews of recent publications in the field of

modern Polish and Jewish history. All in all, an issue of Gal-ed that maintains to the full the reputation established by its predecessors. Lionel Kochan Oxford

468 POLIN George E. Berkley, Vienna and its Jews: The Tragedy of Success, 1880- 1980s.

Cambridge, MA: Abt Books, 1989. Pp. xxi, 376.

Vienna was once home to one of the greatest Jewish communities in modern times. Much of what we have come to see as central to our modern culture was the result of the achievements of Viennese Jews. Freud is the

most famous example, but there were many, many others. In Jewish history as such, Vienna has a rather different reputation, for the city is seen as having been one of the most ‘dangerous’ centres of assimilation, and as such a threat to Jewish survival. Whatever view is espoused, however, there

is no denying the significance of Viennese Jewry. This community effectively disappeared during the Second World War. It deserves a fitting epitaph; Berkley’s book is not it.

Berkley has plainly written his book as a response to the Waldheim Affair. His aim, as he states clearly, is to find out whether the Austrians were, and are, really anti-semitic, and why, nevertheless, Vienna’s Jews so loved their city. These are not particularly difficult questions, and Berkley

manages to answer them correctly: yes, the Austrians were very antisemitic, and are still quite anti-semitic; the Jews loved Vienna because it is avery appealing place, and they managed to fool themselves into believing the Viennese were not the monsters they appeared to be, until it was too

late. The answer to the first question is more convincing than that to the second, but nevertheless they are acceptable. What is less acceptable is the way Berkley comes to these conclusions, that is to say the book itself. He has read widely, but not deeply. There is precious little in the way of original material to be found here. Indeed the book is of little use to scholars in Viennese Jewish history and related fields, for there are no footnotes as such, only vague references at the end of the

book to sources. This means that is is impossible to really check up on what Berkley writes. To experts in the field, however, it will be plain that much of what he writes consists of half-digested summaries of other books, and inaccurate summaries at that.

, My own field of expertise happens to lie in the period covered in the first third of the book, where Berkley discusses the pre-First World War situation. My impression is that this is the part of the book where Berkley did least work, relying on rather questionable sources as his basic material; the parts of the book dealing with the interwar years and the Holocaust look much better, although this might just be due to my ignorance. The number of petty inaccuracies which appear in the first third of the book is too great to deal with all of them in a short review. However, some are too good to pass without comment. Sigmund Mayer wrote two books: an autobiography entitled Ein Judischer Kaufmann, and a history of the Jews of Vienna, which remains one of the most interesting books on the

BOOK REVIEWS 469 subject. Berkley obviously never got far enough in his research to read this

history. One can tell this by the fact that he refers to a ‘Sigmund Meyer Kaufmann’, when he obviously means Mayer: Berkley has conflated Mayer with his profession, of merchant! This kind of gaffe, while slightly comical, is, | suppose, excusable, given the nature of the exercise. What is less excusable for a person who purports to be a political scientist is to call the leading French socialist in the Dreyfus Affair (Jean Jaures) by the name of Juarez, a mistake which seems to betray either a large ignorance of the history of socialism, or a particularly sloppy attitude to editing.

If one can shut one’s eyes to such small inaccuracies, then one can appreciate Berkley’s book as a summary of some of the copious literature which relates to this subject, and one cannot really fault Berkley on that count. It is regrettable, however, that he does seem to have missed much of

the rapidly growing current scholarship on this topic, most notably the work done by Ivar Oxaal and Walter Weitzmann, which appeared in the Leo Baeck Yearbook of 1985, the year in which Berkley started his research. The result is that much of what Berkley has to say is either not original,

or somewhat wide of the mark. Harry Zohn’s gracious foreward to the book puts its finger on one of its major flaws, which is Berkley’s lack of emphasis on the strength of feeling which most of Vienna’s acculturated Jews possessed with regard to the German language, and German culture. Nor does his Zionist perspective always allow him to be quite fair to what he calls the ‘integrationists’, with their liberal ideology of emancipation and assimilation. The emphasis is always on the idea that the way the Jews could have resisted anti-semitism was not by trying to erase their Jewish identity, which must, it seems, lead to a lack of (Jewish) self respect, but rather by standing up as a Jew. There is something to be said for this. On the other hand, it ought to be

borne in mind that when the horrible end came, the Viennese Jews actually did rather well in escaping the Holocaust. Over half of the community was able to survive, most of those going to Great Britain and America, with much fewer going to Palestine. That is to say that one of the most assimilated communities in Europe saved over half its number, and that half probably consisted of the more assimilated. This compares to the vast numbers of Polish Jews, who, safe in their traditional Jewish identity, nevertheless were brutally wiped out, whole communities being engulfed in the flames of the incinerators. If it is merely a matter of survival, then the

ultra-assimilated Viennese Jews did much better than those Jews who proclaimed their Jewishness. This irony is one of the many aspects of the history of Viennese Jewry

which Berkley does not address in this rather disappointing book. We await a more satisfactory account. Steven Beller

Peterhouse, Cambndge |

470 POLIN Adam Bromke, The Meaning and Uses of Polish History. Boulder: East

European Monographs. 1987. Distributed by Columbia University Press, New York. Pp. viii, 244.

This volume, sloppily edited and swarming with misprints, consists of two parts: one is Professor Bromke’s exposition of his own views on Poland’s

past and present, which closely follow the traditions of Polish national democrats; the other is an anthology of writings of people - from Roman

Dmowski, the national democrats’ main theorist, to Aleksander Hall,

eminent contemporary publicist and founder of the underground Movement of Young Poland - identified, either by themselves or by the author, as adopting a similar political attitude. In his discourse on Poland’s history and its lessons for today, Bromke obsessively divides all political ideas and action into two categories: — Dmowski-like and Dmowski-unlike (‘Pitsudski-ite’ seems to be the worst form of the latter). The legacy of Dmowski is considered wholly and

unquestionably good; his rabid anti-semitism is, for instance, never mentioned; in fact, Bromke mentions with scorn an ‘allegation’ that national democrats were ‘xenophobes’ (p. 86). And to make his position

secure, he deletes from the texts printed in his anthology all remarks critical of various aspects of Dmowski’s position. Such censorship results notably in a gross distortion of the views of Aleksander Hall, surely the most interesting follower of Dmowski in Poland today. Another author, favoured (selectively) and anthologized by Bromke, Professor Andrzej Walicki, wrote: “The problem is that the idea of “hard realism” in political action was by him [Dmowski] combined with a host of opinions justifying political immoralism, aggressive xenophobia, and a readiness to use a wholly irrational, obsessive idea of a “Jewish and freemasonic conspiracy”. The principle |... ] that in politics one must not be directed by emotions but has to consider the emotions of the masses - in the practice of a majority of Dmowski’s adherents has evolved into playing on the lowest instincts of the masses, while keeping a critical distance to noble idealism of mass movements.’ (A. Walicki, “'radycje polskiego patriotyzmu’ [Traditions of Polish patriotism], Aneks No. 40 (1985), pp. 76-77; Bromke knows and quotes this essay, but to other purposes.) To multiply the ranks of those who agree with him, Bromke frequently resorts to subterfuge. The most important instances are those of John Paul II (whose views he never describes but still claims that there are ‘echoes’ of Dmowski’s discernible there) and of the late Cardinal Wyszynski; the most glaring that of Professor Tadeusz Lepkowski, whom he quotes in support of his thesis of a necessity of “compromise with the dominant powers’ -

which is a travesty of truth, as Lepkowski belongs among the most outspoken believers in the role of active resistance.

BOOK REVIEWS 471 Bromke is evidently happy to declare that ‘Poland [...] emerged from World War II as one of the most homogeneous nations [!] in the world’ an evaluation distinctly NOT shared by a majority of Polish intellectuals today, who are fascinated by the multi-nationality and cultural complexity

of the First and Second Polish Commonwealth. (He is, by the way, characteristically tactful in NOT mentioning what happened in 1939-44 to

non-Poles on present Polish territories...) | Professor Bromke’s message to Poles for the present (sent in July 1986,

the date of the Introduction to the book) was to lie low, not rebel, be ‘realistic’; he thought ‘Solidarity’ a closed chapter and believed that an increased stability in the Soviet Union (which the US ought to help produce) would be conducive to liberalizing changes in Poland. While reading this volume, I wondered for whom it could be useful. Not for Poles, as it is published in a foreign language and contains a re-hash of well-known (and stale) opinions. Not for foreigners, as his presentations

are confusing and biased, and his anthology has been edited to such a degree that the authentic views of the authors cannot be recognised. Perhaps its value consists in the fact that it can be taken as an auto-parody (incidentally, Professor Bromke’s most frequently cited author is Adam

Bromke) of a Polish national democrat. But then other, more critical followers of that tradition - like Hall - should justly feel offended. Kdzistaw Najder Warsaw

Wiez No. 333-334. Warsaw: July-August 1986. Pp. 224.

Discrimination, hatred, persecution of one social group by another are commonplace in the history of mankind; also as a case of genocide the Holocaust is not unique. Pawet Spiewak in a theme-setting introductory article surveys all the possible causes of anti-semitism (the theory of the scape-goat, the ‘authoritarian syndrome’, excesses of nationalism etc.) which, however, could also be invoked to explain any other case of massive

social discrimination. Anti-semitism seems to transcend them all by its persistence and universality. Curiously, the author does not go further back in history than the Enlightenment, but points out that anti-semitism is an attitude shared by people who are very different in all other respects: the 18th century philosophes (Voltaire), arch-conservatives, socialists and

communists (including Marx!), the great Romantics (Goethe). The question which remains unanswered is why it is always the Jews who are the target. According to the author, it is precisely the Holocaust which provides the answer. The Holocaust was the culmination of a movement

472 POLIN | which originated in the age of the Enlightenment, an aggressive assertion of the self-sufficiency of man and his independence of any transcendental standards. These standards have been proclaimed to the world by Israel,

the authors of the Old and the New Testament, and transmitted in the Judeo-Christian tradition which has shaped our civilisation. Hitler drew the ultimate conclusion of all this: the incomparable, but also impossible, moral requirements imposed by God on man could not be tolerated, and the prime carriers of the tradition, the Jews, had to be destroyed root and branch. The great rebellion amounted to a new Fall of mankind. This is the title of the article: ‘Shoah, the Second Fall’. The subject is then taken up in a long discussion (35 pages) among members of the editorial board, including Pawet Spiewak. The grand metaphysical thesis does not go unchallenged. Is there any evidence that

the Nazis consciously entertained such an idea? Why, then, was the onslaught not directed with equal vehemence against Christians? The original question recurs, why precisely the Jews? How is it that there could

have been Christian anti-semites? Or was this only a doctrinal ‘antijudaism’ on the part of the Church? More down-to-earth forms of antisemitism are discussed, including Polish anti-semitism. While it is true that there were convinced anti-semites who risked their lives to help the hunted Jews, is it also true that Polish anti-semitism was not merely quantitatively but qualitatively different from Nazi anti-semitism? Still, the grand theme of Pawet Spiewak towers over the discussion, and a number

of interesting insights emerge. It is surely noteworthy that the Nazis seemed to be convinced that they were carrying out an unpleasant but necessary civilizational duty which demanded that not even a Jewish baby should be allowed to survive. Somebody draws attention to the striking

observation of Stanistaw Lem that the method of extermination, with stripping the victims naked, seemed to be an attempt, perhaps unconscious, to play out in the gas chambers the vision of the Last Judgement as traditionally presented in European art. The discussion is somewhat chaotic, but none the worse for that. The constant interplay of various aspects of the theme, great and small, vividly illustrates the complexity of the problem, its unique character and universal significance at the same time. The same could be said about the other contributions which make up the thematic bloc. The moral-theological approach is evident in most of

them (as is proper on the pages of a religiously committed periodical), | even, paradoxically, in Piotr Wrobel’s detailed account of Martin Buber’s involvement in the search for practical ways of safeguarding the Jewish identity during and after the First World War, when Buber was directing the monthly Der jude. For it was a rather untypical involvement of the author of ‘I and Thou’, entered out of a sense of duty, against his own deeper inclinations and convictions. Buber was always an essentially religious thinker, and Jewish identity for him consisted above all in the

BOOK REVIEWS 473 Jewish contribution to the spiritual welfare of mankind, in what he then

, termed ‘Hebrew humanism’. It may be a bit surprising that the issue should contain an article by the Dominican Jacek Salij on ‘Whether it was the Jews who crucified Jesus?’

Apparently, there still are, twenty years after the Vatican Council, Christians who need to be put right on the matter. The same sort of pastoral concern seems to have prompted the inclusion in the issue of the Vatican document on “Jews and Judaism in the preaching of the Word’

issued in 1985 by the Commission for Relations with Judaism under Cardinal Willebrands. Among other, less weighty, items worthy of attention is the article by Irena Nowakowska which broaches the problem Who is a Jew? It was prompted by an article in the party weekly Polityka (No.46) in which Professor Andrzej Grzegorczyk, incidentally a Catholic,

argued that with the emergence of a Jewish state the time has come to consider as Jews only those who profess loyalty to the state of Israel, in other words, that Jews may at last become an ‘ordinary’ nation, like any other nation. As against this, the author insists on the importance of the

religious tradition as a factor defining Jewish identity (and that, apparently, whether or not the individual happens to be a believer). Along the way, as it were, Ms Nowakowska demolishes the racial criterion by

quoting Professor Hirschfeld who has established that the serological structure of Jewish blood is broadly identical with that of the surrounding non-Jewish population. The most telling part of the article, however, are heart-rending testimonies of Polish Jews who saw themselves forced to assert their Jewishness above, and even against, their Polishness. In the case of the poet Julian Tuwim what forced the re-assertion was ‘the blood’, —

‘not the blood in the veins, but out of veins’, that is, the blood of the

martyred millions. In the case of Aleksander Hertz, however (see ‘Confessions of an Old Man’ published in London in 1979) it was the mass

of Poles who, thoughtlessly, denied him the Polishness which he had thought to be part of his very being. ‘wo cases of the criterion of Schicksalgemeinschaft asserting itself with a vengeance.

An exchange of views between Michat Horoszewicz and Jézef Pucitowski OP on ‘Pius XII, his silences - and deeds’ (the agnostic Horoszewicz considers Pius to have been the first truly modern pope) adds little to what is known on the subject. A report by Fr Marian Wolicki on “The camp experiences of V.E. Frankl’ is a heart-warming spiritual portrait of the heroic eminent psychologist. Quite a mixed bag - and none the worse for it. It is worth noting that the whole issue is remarkably free of any tendency to bend backwards in case the slightest critical remark about Jews is taken as a symptom of residual

anti-semitism. Not quite honest pro-semitism, to which some wellmeaning Poles are prone, is also harmful, if only because it is likely to provoke an anti-semitic reaction. Thus, in the discussion, Donata Eska

474 POLIN does not hesitate to say that the nationalistic deformation of ‘always opting

for my own kind’ is to be found among Jews no less often than in other nations. It is a human failing, and Jews are human, and want to be treated as human. Indeed, as Donata Eska points out, in the case of Jews this tendency is reinforced by the sense of being the chosen people and by their immensely long and rich tradition. Let me add that it is something that the

Jews can hardly help. There is no other nation which has managed to maintain its definite identity for so long, which simply cannot cease to be

itself and has contributed so much to mankind. It is also virtually impenetrable from outside, notwithstanding the desire of Jews themselves to become more open. A chosen race, indeed, at least in this factual sense,

if not in a metaphysical sense. It may be that this is what makes it so difficult, for others and for the Jews no less, to treat them as any other ‘ordinary’ people. It is something that both Jews and non-Jews have to come to terms with, for this may also be the deep underlying cause of antisemitism. Antoni Pospieszalski London

Xnak special issue, ‘Jews, Poland and Christianity’, no. 396-397. May-June 1988. Pp. 238.

The catalogue of articles on Jewish subject matter appearing in this periodical is long and impressive. Listed on the cover are 45 articles and other works along the same lines which have appeared in