1937 I. J. SINGER: POLAND WHEN TADEUSZ BRZESINSKI WORKED FOR THE GOVERNMENT
Ad
TAGS
Download or edit the free picture 1937 I. J. SINGER: POLAND WHEN TADEUSZ BRZESINSKI WORKED FOR THE GOVERNMENT for GIMP online editor. It is an image that is valid for other graphic or photo editors in OffiDocs such as Inkscape online and OpenOffice Draw online or LibreOffice online by OffiDocs.
"The Voice of Thy Brother's Blood Crieth Unto Me from
the Ground ..."
By I. J. SINGER
The writer of this clear expose of the case of the Polish
Jew is the distinguished author of "The Brothers Ashkenazi," the
best-selling novel on industrial Poland. Several years ago his play "Yoshe
Kalb" created a furore on the Jewish stage. Singer's historical survey of
what is happening in Poland gives you the necessary background for an
understanding of the development of the Polish-Jewish-h crisis. The Editor
-----------------
Poland is in the international limelight again, but not
because it contributed to humanity another genius like Copernicus, Chopin or Madame
Curie-Skladowski. Poland now commands the attention of the world press in an
entirely different sphere. The rulers of that country, uncrowned though they
are, are emulating the crowned King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain, who,
under the influence of the Grand Inquisitor Torquemada, four and a half
centuries ago drove all the Jews from their country.
But Poland is apparently little, if at all, concerned with
historical lessons. It is a matter of historical record that Spain fared rather
poorly after the expulsion of its Jews. The rulers of Poland have nevertheless
decided to follow the example of the royal Spanish couple of the Dark Ages.
Though without the colorful auto da fe, that that example is being followed
quite closely by the Polish Republic.
Accusations Mutually Exclusive
During the Spanish Inquisition the Jews had been condemned
on accusations that they were responsible for failing crops, for the visitation
of plagues and other catastrophes. The Jews of Poland are being condemned on
accusations even more fantastic than those of the Grand Inquisitor of Spain.
They are being charged with all conceivable though often mutually exclusive
crimes. They are being attacked as both petty traders and capitalists. They are
being maligned for living in ghettos, speaking Yiddish and wearing the
traditional garb as well as for usurping Polish culture by playing a prominent
part in the Polish press, literature, arts and science.
They are pictured as the most backward and ignorant element
and as the most aggressive intellectuals of the country at once. They are
charged in the same breath with being both religious fanatics and atheists, the
money bags and the destitute public charges. In a word, they are represented as
were the witches of the Middle Ages, capable of the most impossible acts because
they are in league with the devil.
Pan Meidzinski, the Polish political leader who at the time
of writing is about to assume the important government post of minister of the
interior, stated in the Sejm that at least three million Jews must leave the
country because the most Poland is able to accommodate within its borders is
fifty thousand citizens of the Hebrew faith.
Foreign Minister Beck, whom his calling compels to use more
diplomatic language, couches it in economic terms. "Poland is overpopulated,"
he says. "It has great difficulty in solving its economic problems. And
that is why the Jews must leave the country."
The Jews then are to be driven out of Poland as undesirable
aliens.
But who are there aliens who are to be driven out of the
land?
Settled Over 500 Years
Any immigrant to the United States may become a citizen
after having lived in the country for five years. The Jews of Poland have been
living there for more than five hundred years. They went there as welcome
settlers at a time when the Polish kings were eager to establish commerce,
crafts and trades in a land overrun with knights and serfs. The Jews built
Polish cities and towns. They exported Polish grain, timber, cattle, furs,
linens and other native produce.
While the Polish gentry dissipated their fortunes, sipping
wines and gambling away at cards in foreign countries the industrious Jews
invested their toil and meager means in workshops and factories. They developed
Polish industries and cultivated vast markets in the far away regions of
Russia, thereby creating employment for millions of Polish workers.
Ever since Poland won its independence the Jewish part of
the population has been contributing more than its just share to the upkeep of
the state. The Jews pay more than their share in taxes, participate in internal
loans floated by the government and serve in the army. They work hard for
whatever they get in the land in which they are rooted a thousandfold.
The Jews are, in proportion to their number, less
represented among the criminal elements. Despite centuries of persecution and
degradation, and because of their high moral standards, they are less addicted
to alcohol, and are less afflicted with venereal. and other contagious
diseases.
Polish social workers often cite, as examples to be emulated
by the entire population, the integrity of the Jewish family, the philanthropic
activities of the Jews, their thirst for learning, their deep devotion to their
children and their high sense of responsibility.
Encourage Separatism
Recently some Polish journalists in America made an attempt
to justify the persecution of Jews in their native land by publicly stating
that the Jews of Poland do not mix with the general population. Those gentlemen
made particular mention of the fact that the Polish Jews speak their own
language Yiddish wear the traditional garb and lead a separatist cultural
existence.
On the contrary, they are modern young people whose language
is Polish and whose cultural interests are no different from those of any other
educated Pole. Even university students of Jewish descent who have embraced the
Christian religion are attacked almost daily for refusing to sit on separate
ghetto benches in the lecture rooms.
Obviously the Jews of Poland are being persecuted
simultaneously both for tendencies of separatism and for inclining toward
assimilation.
Constitution Guarantees Rights
During the time of the country's struggle for its
independence Polish prophets and poets envisaged a liberated Poland, realizing
a Messianic ideal by creating a state based on equality, fraternity and justice
for all the sons of the land, irrespective of race or creed. And the first
sword that Poland won was used to destroy this Messianic ideal.
The Polish constitution guarantees equal rights to the Jews,
but here is how this equality works out in practice: Jews pay their share of
taxes to maintain the army, but they can serve only as privates and not
officers. They contribute their share to finance and maintain the government
railroads, the postal and telegraph services and all the existing institutions
of the state, but they are not given any office of government employment. They
pay municipal taxes but are not allowed to hold any municipal jobs.
Government and municipal institutions and enterprises are
closed to Jewish engineers\u2019 physicians, teachers and laborers alike. In the
general economic sphere the Jews are being fiercely discriminated against. The
government is developing and subsidizing co-operatives and commercial combines
which drive the Jewish merchants and traders out of the fields in which they
were pioneers, and at the same time they are barred from any kind of
participation in the new enterprises. Incidentally, all these
government-sponsored projects are known to be dismal failures, and are commonly
called "economic Bolshevism." Dur ing the eighteen years of Polish
independence the bulk of the Jewish population has been literally impoverished,
and Jewish distress was mitigated only to the degree to which the Jews of
America were able to render assistance.
Economic Program Furthered
According to a recent press dispatch from Warsaw Colonel
Adam Koc, commander of the Pilsudski Legionnaires and spokesman of the
government party, made the following declaration regarding the Jews: "We
can never approve violence and brutal anti-Semitic outrages, which degrade our
national dignity and honor. Calm, order and security must be upheld, but we
understand the instinct of legitimate self-defense of our people in their aim
toward economic independence."
but by sanctioning and encouraging an economic pogrom on the
Jewish population, and by giving it the high-sounding and misleading title of
"legitimate self-defense," the government itself commits a major act
of violence. The civilized world knows of few outrages as brutal as an economic
pogrom. Such a policy when it is translated into action must as it does
inevitably lead to physical violence.
The government's stand appears even more insidious when one
realizes that the cry about driving the Jews out of the country is devoid of
any practical meaning.
The Polish government is well aware that emigration on any
considerable scale is impossible. Despite the utterly inhuman treatment the
Jews receive in Germany at the hands of the Nazi regime only some tens of
thousands of them succeeded in emigrating. The rest remained in Germany simply
because the other countries are practically closed to immigrants. It is
therefore sheer folly to maintain that three million people must leave Poland.
Exodus Not Desirable
It is impossible even to assume that the present rulers of
Poland actually believe in the desirability of such an exodus. They are not so
ignorant as , not to know that the Jews are a vital and indispensable part of
Poland's economic structure, and that the departure of all of them would amount
to a major catastrophe in the economic life of the country.
A long time ago Poland inaugurated a law forbidding capital
to be taken out of the country, and by that means many wealthy Jews are forcibly
kept from emigrating. As for the . unemployed and destitute Jews, they do not
constitute a burden to the state, for no Jew in Poland receives any dole or
relief from the government.
The poor and the unemployed are taken care of by
philanthropic agencies which are supplied with funds raised in other countries
by organizations such as the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. And
the J. D. C. goes much further than this. It helps about one third of the
Jewish population of Poland through training institutions. It helps the health
and child-care programs through the health society Toz and the child-care and
feeding organizations. It also initiated and now supports the summer colony
movement whereby last year sixty thousand Jewish children were given a few
weeks of health giving sun, air and nourishment in the country.
Many Jewish families in Poland subsist on moneys received
from relatives in America. There is a continuous flow of such aid coming into
Poland in the form of millions of dollars, which are not unwelcome to the
Polish treasury.
Forced Into Industry
The Polish government leaders undoubtedly know that it is
not the economic structure of the Jewish community or its so-called racial
separatism which is responsible for the persecutions. To be sure, the economic
structure of the Jewish population is quite unlike that of the rest of the
country. Their original function in the land was to develop trade and industry.
Poland had enough tillers of the soil, and did not need Jews in agriculture.
Moreover, Jews were forbidden to settle on the land, and the
only fields open to them were commerce, trades and crafts in the towns. As a
result 35 per cent of Polish Jews are industrial workers and artisans, 35 per
cent are storekeepers, traders and commercial employees, only 6 per cent are in
agriculture, and the rest are in the professions, domestic service, etc.
Certainly the economic structure of Polish Jewry is not of its own choosing but
a result of the country's historical development. It is entirely nonsensical to
blame any section of the population for it.
Poland does not claim that it has too much commerce and
industry; quite the contrary. The objection raised is that the Jews are too
numerous in these fields. Thus the issue is not economic, but racial or
religious, with the purpose of replacing Jewish citizens by Christian citizens
in certain fields.
But even here the government's policy is glaringly
inconsistent. Were the government really concerned about the disproportionate
number of Jews in trade and commerce the logical remedy would be to help them
enter the ranks of labor But, oddly, the practice of the Polish government has
been in an entirely different sense.
Dismissed After War
As soon as Poland won its independence thousands of Jewish
railroad workers in Galicia and in other regions which Germans had occupied
during the war were summarily dismissed. Thousands of Jews who for years had
been civil servants in Galicia under Francis Joseph were mercilessly removed
from their posts.
In the tobacco industry which the government took over, but
which had been developed by Jews the Jewish workers were dismissed en mase, and
refused re-employment. The 200,000 Jews engaged in agriculture are being
systematically hounded and driven from their farms. Jews are not even accorded
the privilege of working as street cleaners or snow shovellers. They are
actually being forced to become traders and peddlers, and are then assailed as
an unproductive element. No one doubts that the rulers of Poland are intelligent
enough to understand all this as well as the impossibility of Jewish mass
emigration. If they still pursue their inhuman policy it is for entirely
different reasons : First, to divert the anger of a destitute population by
offering the Jews as the cause of all the country's economic ills; secondly, to
temper the Endek attacks on the government by offering this opposition party
the Jews on whom to vent their spleen.
Both these reasons spring from formidable, mainly political
factors.
Russian Market Lost
Poland's economic situation is precarious indeed. But not
because three million of its citizens worship God in the synagogue instead of
in the church. It is because with the end of the world war Poland lost its
greatest market Russia. Because of its comparatively backward state Polish
industry is unable to gain other markets. And the Polish peasant has little or
no land.
Polish labor and the peasantry are well aware that neither
the chronic industrial depression nor the desperate agricultural situation were
brought about by the Jews. The large factories, even those still owned by Jews,
employ Gentile labor almost exclusively. The great estates are not owned by
Jews. Neither industrial labor nor the peasantry stands to gain anything by
driving the Jews out of the country. Hence the reason why the Polish labor
movement and the Peasant party oppose anti-Semitism.
The peasant leaders demand lane reforms, a redistribution of
the great estates. The workers demand energetic steps toward reviving industry
so as to give them better working conditions. The unemployed demand jobs the
destitute demand relief. The Polish government cannot satisfy some of the
demands, and is unwilling to institute the necessary reforms, les the powers
that be become antagonized. Therefore, it chooses a scape goat for its own
weaknesses.
The great Polish novelist Maria Dombrowska has put it quite
succinctly when she says that it is an old Polish custom to blame others for
one's own incapacities. And the Jew, being helpless and defenseless, serves the
purpose better than any other element of the population.
Buffer Between Parties
The Jew also is a
convenient buffer between the Endek opposition and the government. The hatred
of the Endeks and the Pilsudskiites, dates back to the first days of Polish
independence, became red-hot in 1926, when Pilsudski gained power. Afraid of
Pilsudski's iron hand, they then turned their attention to the Jews and accused
them of ruining the country by controlling the Pilsudski government Pilsudski
himself, recognizing their use of anti-Semitism as a political expedient, kept
the movement in check to a great extent.
With Pilsudski's death, however, the government grew weak,
and handed the Jews over to the Endeks to satiate the latter for a time. And
the government leaders themselves embraced economic anti-Semitism in order to
persuade the destitute masses that it was they, the leaders, and not the Endeks,
who make every effort to aid the poor. And by their monstrous
declaration that the economic extermination of the Jew is welcome the government
leaders have handed the Jews over to the mob. No amount of diplomatic and suave
talk can compensate for the Jewish blood that flows so freely fin the streets
of Poland, or justify an econom pogrom. The governm
Free picture 1937 I. J. SINGER: POLAND WHEN TADEUSZ BRZESINSKI WORKED FOR THE GOVERNMENT integrated with the OffiDocs web apps
