The Generation: The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Communists of Poland

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

The Generation: The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Communists of Poland

Jaff Schatz

Univ. Of California Press, Berkeley, 1991.
Schatz was director of the Institute for Jewish Culture, Lunds University, Sweden.
Selections by Peter Myers, September 17, 2001;
 update October 21, 2004. My comments are shown {thus}.

Write to me at contact.html.

You are at http://mailstar.net/schatz.html.

{Poland's postwar Communist government was Jewish-dominated; the 1967 Middle East War forced Poland's Jews to finally choose between Zionism and Communism. Removal of Jews from the leadership allowed Poles to take over, who would later be more amenable to Solidarity. Jews created Communism, but the Jew-Gentile divide later destroyed it. Note that these Jewish Communists were supporters of Trotsky. Stalin's triumph upset the applecart; it made a huge difference to the fate of the Communist movement.}

{p. 11} "The truest community to which one can belong," Robert Wohl has written, "is that defined by age and experience" (1979: 203). Those who are the subject matter of this study formed such a community. Now, nearing the end of their lives, they are deeply aware of the fact that their individual biographies form part of the common history of their generation. ... This is the story of the times and path of the generation of Polish-Jewish Communists.

They were seized by the Communist vision in a time when this vision could be regarded as heralding an approaching age of fundamental general redemption. Despite frustrations and disappointments, they remained faithful to its basic core until the time of their final existential defeat. Although it went almost unnoticed, this defeat augured what was to become apparent to the world in less than two decades: the complete moral, ideological, economic, and political bankruptcy of the Communist system.

They were not the only Polish-Jewish radicals of their time but, compared to their peers, they were the most radical of all radical Jews.

In modern times, radical Jews caught the attention of the world.

{p. 12} Men and women of Jewish descent were in such a disproportionate number among the theoreticians, leaders, and rank and file of the leftist movements that, depending on one's point of view, Jews were prized or cursed for their alleged radicalism. Thus, after having uttered several anti-Jewish remarks in his early years but now deeply impressed by the role played by the Jewish leaders in the Soclallst movement and the radicalization of the Jewish proletariat in the Russian Empire, London, and New York, Engels wrote in 1890, "To say nothing of Heine and Borne, Marx was of purest Jewish blood; Lassalle was a Jew. Many of our best people are Jews. My friend Victor Adler, ... Eduard Bernstein, ... Paul Singer ... - people of whose friendship I am proud, are all Jews! Have I not been turned into a Jew myself by the 'Gartenlaube'?" In a lecture in Geneva in 1905, Lenin said, "The hatred of the czars was particularly directed against the Jews. The Jews provided an extremely hlgh percentage (compared to the total of the Jewish population) of leaders of the revolutionary movement. In passing, it should be said to their credit that today the Jews provide a relatlvely high percentage of representatives of internationalism compared with other nations." In contrast, King Fredrick Wilhelm IV of Prussia lamented "the disgrace which the circumcised ringleaders among the revolutionaries had brought upon Germany." A report written by the Prussian police in 1879 about the connection between Jews and the Social Democratic party stated that Jews support Socialist ideas financially and by advocatlng them in the press and concluded that "if we add the fact that the most prominent leaders of the revolutionary parties in the various countries are Jews, such as Karl Hirsch in Bruxelles, Karl Marx in London, Leo Fraenkel in Budapest and that the large party of Russian nihilists...consists mostly of Jews, there is reason to justify the claim that Jewry is by nature a revolutionary movement." Russian Czar Nicholas II complained to his wife that "nine-tenths of the troublemakers are Jews." Russian Minister of Interior Plehve noted that 70 percent of all political dissidents known by the police were Jews, while Count Witte told Theodor Herzl in 1903 that in his opinion, the proportion of Jews among Russlan revolutlonaries was 50 percent. Sixty-five years later, on learning of the riots at the 1968 Democratic National

{p. 13} convention in Chicago, President Nixon wondered "whether all the indicted conspirators are Jews, or whether ... only about half are."

... extreme radicals formed but a tiny minority among Jews as a whole. Theories equating Jews with radicalism have, simply, no substance and are a product of incompetence or prejudice. However, the disproportionate participation of Jews in leftist parties and movements has historically been highly significant (and highly visible).

If intellectuals as such form a "relatively classless stratum which is not too firmly situated in the social order," {this is not so; religious leaders in every society are intellectuals, but usually not destroyers of the social order} Jewish intellectuals falling in between Jewish and nonJewish segments of society must be even more so. Thus, one can find theories attributing Jewish intellectual radicalism to their positively interpreted cosmopolitanism and secular, messianic universalism, which is said to allow Jews to become true internationalists and to formulate ideas about how to reform society. This is expressed most prominently and most affirmatively by Isaac Deutscher who sees the revolutionary "non-Jewish Jew" as one who continues a specifically Jewish tradition of "transcending" the borders of Judaism when they are "too narrow, too archaic, and too restricting" in order to strive "for the universal, as against the particularist, and for the internationalist, as against the nationalist solutions to the problems of their time" (1968: 33).

{p. 14} Another group of theories seeks to explain the phenomenon of Jewish radicalism by referring to Jewish cultural heritage in which messianism is said to have special appeal. This position is best expressed by Nicolas Berdyaev, in whose view "the most important aspect of Marx's teaching" can be explained by the fact that "the messianic expectations of Israel" remained in his subconsciousness and that, therefore, the proletariat was for him "the new Israel, God's chosen people, the liberator and the builder of an earthly kingdom that is to come." Communism is for Berdyaev "a secularized form of the ancient Jewish chiliasm," because "a messianic consciousness is surely always of ancient Hebrew origin" (1961: 69-70). ... Lawrence Fuchs ... attributes a supposed Jewish yearning for justice to the effect of the Jewish religious imperative of tikkun olam (repair of the world), the prophetic traditions, the love for learning, and immunity from ascetism, which direct activity into the concrete world of economy and politics.

... Other theories point out deprivation and anti-Semitism as the main causes of Jewish radicalism. {but other peoples have been deprived too}

Thus, Hugo Valentin, arguing primarily against racist doctrines (but also against those who attribute Jewish political radicalism to cultural heritage), states simply that the only explanation for the participation of Jews in the Communist movements of Eastern Europe was their hopeless predicament of misery, prosecution, and anti-Semitism. {but other peoples have beenin this position too}

{p. 24} Poland was a multiethnic society and its national minorities- Ukrainians, Jews, Byelorussians, and Germans-constituted approximately 35 percent of its population. According to the census of 1931, there were 3,113,993 Jews in Poland. Unlike other national minorities who were concentrated in certain territories, Jews lived all over the country. After the Ukrainians (16%), Jews constituted approximately 10 percent of the population, thus being the second largest minority in Poland. Constituting one-seventh of all Jews in the world, they were, after the United States, the world's second largest Jewish community.

In a predominantly rural Poland, Jews constituted an extremely urban group, forming 2.7 percent of the inhabitants of Polish towns and cities and only 3 percent of its rural population. While only 2.7 percent of ethnic Poles, 7 percent of Ukrainians, and 3 percent of Byelorussians lived in cities, the proportion of urban Jews was 76 percent. One-fourth of Polish Jews lived in Poland's five largest cities, constituting between one-fourth and one-third of their inhabitants.

The occupational structure of Polish Jewry followed the residential one: 58.8 percent of Polish but only 4.3 percent of Jewish breadwinners worked in agriculture. Instead, Jews were primarily active in light industry, handicrafts, the professions, and commerce. As much as 36.6 percent of Jewish breadwinners were active in commercial occupations. While only 3.4 percent of ethnic Poles were found there, Jews formed approximately 60 percent of this occupational category.

{p. 25} Jews accounted for 56 percent of all doctors in private practice, 33.5 percent of those active in legal professions, and 22 percent of journalists, publishers, and librarians. All in all, Jews constituted 21.5 percent of all Polish professionals.

{p. 34} ... according to the census of 1931, Yiddish was a mother tongue for 79 percent of Jews, Polish for 12 percent, and Hebrew for 9 percent ... Most Jews were probably bilingual ... Approximately one-third of the Jewish adult population was still Orthodox or traditionalist ... They were highly visible, with their traditional style of dress and the use of Yiddish as the sole or main language of communication. They lived predominantly in small cities with large Jewish populations and had quite limited contact with non-Jews. ...

The assimilationists, who regarded themselves as Poles, Poles "of the Mosaic faith," or Poles "of Jewish descent," and for whom assimilation was a conscious program to solve the "Jewish question," constituted the opposite pole. It is estimated that they numbered approximately ... 8 to 9 percent of the total Jewish population. Socially, they could be found among the Polish-Jewish upper-middle class and intelligentsia. The young assimilationists placed their hopes in the Polish left, although some, disappointed by anti-Jewish hostility, found their way back into the Jewish world as Zionists or Bundists.

{p. 38} Their socialization took place in the network of their parental homes, among grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins, in play and more formal learning, in their neighborhoods, and among their friends. The core of cultural heritage was handed down to them through formal religious education and practice, through holiday celebrations, tales, and songs, through the stories told by parents and grandparents, through listening to discussions among their elders {i.e. the people who destroyed other people's family life, had a strong one themselves}. In other words, it was transmitted to them through direct, conscious, and intentional forms but also through myriad subtle, unintentional, and indirect ways. The result was a deep core of their identity, values, norms, and attitudes with which they entered the rebellious period of their youth and adulthood. Thls core was to be transformed in the processes of acculturation, secularlzatlon, and radicalization, sometimes even to the point of expliclt denial. However, it was through this deep layer that all later perceptions were filtered. Among the most important elements of this cultural heritage was a moralism connected to a yearning for justice, a belief in ratlonality, a respect for learning and study, and a messianic core that was to facilitate the transformation of the static, conservative ballast of tradition into fuel for radicalism.

Secularized elements of Jewish messianism, stimulated by factors of the social predicament, undoubtedly played a central role in forming a radical potential among these peers.

{p. 39} The essence of the messianic idea is a yearning for redemption, both for Jews and for the whole of mankind. Jewish messianism is this-worldly and emancipatory. Redemption is understood as peace, justice, harmony, and perfection, for both the individual and society. The golden age is thus not in the past but in the future. The state of redemption is the ultimate goal of humanity, a historic breakthrough to come.

The "this-worldliness" of Jewish messianism is of basic importance and must be clearly understood. Messianic redemption, the ultimate goal of history, is to take place on this earth and not in some heavenly world beyond. In this lies the basic difference between Jewish messianism and Christian variants. While Christian messianism regards redemption as "an event in the spiritual and unseen realm, an event which is reflected in the soul, in the private world of each individual, and which affects an inner transformation which need not correspond to anything outside," Jewish messianism is this-wordly and maintains "a concept of redemption as an event which takes place publicly, on the stage of history and within the community."

After the initial period of crystallization, messianism became

{p. 40} one of the most central ideas in Jewish civilization. Several times it has exploded in the form of powerful social movements, among which the movement of Sabbatai Sevi in the middle of the seventeenth century was the most potent. The Sabbataian movement shook the Jewish world of the time and, despite its failure, created an Ideological fermentation that might have stimulated the modernizatlon of Jewish social and political thought two hundred years later.

Although originating in preexile notions, the messianic ideas has been closely connected to the changing fortunes of the Jewish exile. Being exiled and exposed to the dangers of persecution has constituted the primary characteristic of the Jewish historical experience. An exile as such can be seen as a state or as a process. In the perceptlon of the exiled, exile as a state is rooted in their Immedlate soclal situation: its time dimension is the present. Seen as a process, exile has a past, present, and future dimension. The past and the future dimensions of exile furnish the exiled with the possibility of giving the present situation a meaningful interpretatlon.

{p. 41} Another tension contained within the messianic tradition is that between its restorative and utopian dimensions. The restorative dimension has been directed toward the re-creation of the past conditions, now longed for and cherished in the historical memory of the Jews. But parallel with this past-oriented tendency, there exists another, utopian-oriented longing for a future that has not yet existed.

{p. 42} ... messianic activism, called by its opponents a "wrong messianism" or "mad messianism," was never entirely wiped out. As a nearly permanent latent factor, it has repeatedly manifested itself in Jewish history in the form of different messianic movements. ... The

{p. 43} Zionists, the Bundists, and the Jewish Communists shared the same messianic activism and emancipatory ideal, the token of all modern Jewish secular politics. ... To point out the central significance of messianic traditions in modern Jewish ideology, identity, and politics does not mean that this tradition is an exclusively Jewish possession. In secularized form, elements of the messianic idea permeated the European Enlightenment and the French and Industrial revolutions. Under the influence of religious and political liberalism, urbanization, and industrialization, and united with elements of utopian thought, messianic millennialism was transformed into the modern idea of progress. However, if the messianic idea was of such great significance within the general society, it was immensely more so in the community that created and carried it throughout the ages. The messianic tradition permeated Jewish civilization to such a degree that it became one of its very central, even when latent, features and a backbone of its popular culture. It resisted the impact of secularization and acculturation, the challenge of modernity, by transforming itself into radical political options, in which activist forces were immensely strengthened.

{p. 44} Whether they lived in the classical Jewish small towns, big cities, or villages, the world of the shtetl, on the edge of modernity, once encompassed Jews throughout Eastern Europe. It formed a social, religious, cultural, and linguistic polysystem in which class antagonisms were subordinated to a common core of values ...

{p. 46} Their taste and ability for abstract, analytical thinking and a holistic perspective; their respect for learning and study as means for acquiring an understanding of the laws and directions behind seemingly chaotic events; thelr intellectualism and belief in the power of words and arguments had all been developed by their forefathers in the course of studying the Scriptures, in discussions, debates, analyses, and interpretations of religious problems. Their intense sense of duty toward Ideology and movements, and, ultimately, toward the cause of emancipating their nation or the whole human race, was a modern version of a historically developed sense of social and religious obligations. Their unusually high degree of ideological and polltlcal involvement, their conviction of the supremacy of ideologles over all spheres of their private lives, their self-denying subordination to political causes were all shadows of the past, modern verslons of religious intensity and halakic discipline. Their yearning for internatlonal solidarity and national or universal justice was an echo of the prophetic and messianic traditions as treasured and preserved in the world of the shtetl. Finally, their sense of a meanmgful history and its teleological course was the very core of the legacy of their past. ...

{p. 49} Some contemporary Marxist perceptions of the meaning of history strongly corresponded to the emancipatory, utopian, universalistic undercurrents in the Jewish tradition. This Marxist vision could be viewed as one in which God had been replaced by history, with its immanent, iron laws, and in which a human collective, the proletariat, had replaced the liberating force of the Messiah. Both visions are teleological. In both, the world moves irresistibly toward its ultimate redemption, whether by the process of human and cosmic restoration as in the kabbalist-messianic tradition or by the immanent logic and laws of societal development as in the Marxist view. ...

Likewise, both Jewish and Marxist traditions were permeated by the anticipation that the fulfillment of history meant its end. ... Messianic transition was to be realized through a series of catastrophes and dramatic upheavals at the end of which redemption would occur. This apocalyptic vision of history corresponded to the fas-

{p. 50} cination with revolution and the sense of acute anticipation of radical and violent social change ...

Both contemporary Marxism and the Jewish tradition saw human collectives (classes, nations) and not individuals as the basic entities in the historical process of redemption, which had a collective, nonindividualistic character. In general, it seems apparent that the Marxist vision shared strong millennial characteristics with the messianic tradition. If, following Norman Cohn (1957), millennialism is defined as characterized by five main features - that the coming upheaval is collective, near at hand, this-earthly, total, and miraculous - then four of these five characteristics appear to be common and central to both.

{p. 51} ... some of the radical peers were to become Bundists, some others Zionists, and still others Communists.

{p. 52} ... most Polish jews were to find death in the flames of the Holocaust. The generation of peers found itself decimated. Of the survivors, the Zionists found fulfillment of their vision in the Jewish state reborn in the aftermath of World War II. The Bundist vision lost its social substance with the physical disappearance of the large Yiddish-speaking radical Jewish working class. As the Communists took over Poland, the Bundists had to capitulate: they either became resigned fellow travelers or emigrated.

{p. 53} It must be understood that becoming a Communist, a Jewish Communist in particular ... meant rebellion against the traditional Jewish world, the values of one's parents, and the values of the general society. ... exchanging a normal life for one of total commitment, persecution, and permanent insecurity.

{p. 60} Through radio broadcasts from Moscow, through letters from relatives in the Soviet Union, through conversations or reading illegal Communist brochures, they learned about the classless Soviet society. It was widely believed that the Communist revolution had freed Soviet society from anti-Semitism, which seemed to be confirmed by the number of Jews in prominent state and party positions. Also, it was common knowledge that the Soviet state had built a whole system of Jewish education and culture. In addition, there was the sensational news about Soviet Jews being given their own autonomous territory {Biro-Bidzhan}.

{p. 75} Participation in the interwar Polish Communist movement was a fundamentally important period in the life career of these peers. On the individual level, they became committed Polish-Jewish Communists during these years. On the collective level, their generation took shape, and the focal points of a collective identity were formed. In a reciprocal way, they influenced the character and, most of all, the perception of the movement and were themselves deeply affected by its goals, values, norms, and code of behavior. ...

The organized Polish Communist movement was founded on December 16, 1918, when the PPS Lewica (the left faction of the

{p. 76} Polish Socialist party) merged with the SDKPiL (Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania) to form the KPRP (Communist Workers' Party of Poland). ...

The general ideological outlook of the thus created Polish Communist party was to a large degree influenced by the ideological positions inherited with the theoreticians and leaders of the SDKPiL. The leading figures here were Rosa Luxemburg, Leon Jogiches (Tyszko), Adolf Warszawski (Warski), Karol Sobelson (Radek), Jozef Unschlicht (Jurowski), Marcin Kasprzak, Julian Leszczynski (Lenski), Jakob Firstenberg (Hanecki), Julian Marchlewski (Karski), and Feliks Dzierzynski. ...

{p. 77} Of these ten leaders, seven were Jewish, nine belonged to the intelligentsia, and only one, Kasprzak, was an "authentic" worker. ...

Being particularly successful among ethnic minorities, the Polish Communist party set up (in 1923) semiautonomous but subordinate sections in Poland's Eastern territories, the KPZU, Communist Party of Western Ukraine, and the KPZB, Communist Party of Western Byelorussia, and integrated large splinter groups from the established Jewish parties. ...

{p. 78} ... Their early hopes for global revolutionary change were frustrated by the failure of the German revolution in 1919. The new revolutionary hopes that emerged in connection with the war between the Soviet Union and Poland in 1919-20 were also crushed: the expected rebellion of the Polish masses did not materlahze, and the Russian Red Army was defeated at Warsaw and forced to withdraw. The war ended with the peace treaty of Riga (March 1921), which gave Poland large areas of Byelorussla and the Ukraine and formal recognition of the Polish state by the USSR. These frustrations shocked the movement. Most of its leadership left the country, were imprisoned, or simply ceased to be politlcally active, and the movement's membership in the main centers of its activity fell between 40 and 80 percent. The party was forced to accept the existence of the Polish state and to change its course of action.

{p. 79} ... The defeat of the moderates in the leadership of the Polish party was also connected to its support for Trotsky in his power struggle with Stalin. Trotsky was highly esteemed for his role in the October Revolution, his theoretical skills, and his internationalist profile. The Polish party supported him strongly in 1923 and 1924, thereby earning Stalin's enduring hostility. At the fifth Comintern Congress in July 1924 a commission headed by Stalin condemned the Polish leadership for interference in the internal problems of the Soviet party and for "reformist opportunism" and charged it with responsibility for the weaknesses of their movement. The leadership of the KPRP was dissolved and a new Central Committee appointed. This change was formally approved by the third congress of the Polish party in 1925, which committed itself to a militantly revolutionary course and, symbolically, changed the name of the party to KPP (Communist Party of Poland).

{p. 88} ... being a Communist meant to have served, to serve, or to be extremely likely to serve a prlson sentence. ...

The essence of the ideological climate in the Polish Communist movement was created by the members' loyalty to the cause of international Communism and to the "fatherland of international

{p. 89} proletariat," the Soviet Union. ... In addition, it was influenced by the ideological traditions of the movement and by the growing dependence on the Comintern and the Soviet party, as well as by general political trends in European and Polish politics. On top of all this, Polish-Jewish Communists had to confront the political forces operating on the "Jewish street" and the special problems that faced Polish Jewry. ... Although the Luxemburgist strategy was abandoned on the orders of the Comintern already in the 1920s, and the Luxemburgist tradition was sharply criticized on Stalin's orders at the beginning of the 1930s, the Luxemburgist legacy remained with a militant minority in the movement. For them, Rosa Luxemburg remained a revolutionary hero and a source of Communist identification.

Another element in the ideological heritage of the movement- one that was to contribute to its tragic fate - was its intensive admiration and support for Trotsky in his feud with Stalin in the 1920s. Trotsky was admired as an internationalist, a Communist theoretician, and a military leader, and the leadership of the Polish movement sided with him almost from the outset of his conflict with Stalin. In December 1923, the Central Committee of the

{p. 90} KPRP sent a letter to the Russian party in which it stated that "for our party, nay for the whole Comintern, for the whole revolutionary world proletariat, the name of Comrade Trotsky is insolubly connected with the victory of the Soviet Revolution, with the Red Army, with Communism.... We refuse to admit the possibility that Comrade Trotsky could be put outside the ranks of the leaders of the Russian Communist Party and those of the Communist International." This credo of faith in Trotsky was repeated in another letter in January 1924 and in internal Polish discussions.

But the Polish party had backed the wrong horse. Trotsky lost his fight, and in the years to come, Trotskyism was to denote not only his particular program but every attempt to oppose the official ideological line. Trotskyism was violently suppressed, and those who openly sympathized with Trotsky were purged from the movement. But the Trotskyist heritage remained, influencing party members as a source of ideological conflict, inquisitory suspicions, or personal doubt.

... the traditionally held ideological values and attitudes that had crystallized under the influence of Luxemburgist and - to a lesser extent - Trotskyist traditions were difficult to erase ... changing tactics never shook the fundamental hostility based on the conviction of possessing the exclusive political truth.

{p. 91} ... The party's attitude toward the newborn Polish state at the beginning was clearly negative, wholly in the spirit of the anti-nationalist SDKPiL tradition. As the hopes for a victorious Communist revolution in Germany, or for a Soviet victory in the Polish-soviet war, did not materialize, the Communists half-heartedly accepted Poland's independence and decided in February 1921 to join the elections ...

In retrospect, it appears that, in addition to its ethnic composition, the Communist movement's insensibility to Polish nationalism and its ambiguous attitude toward the Polish state constituted the main source of the popular hostility that surrounded it. It appears equally clear, however, that this course of action and this

{p. 92} ideological profile could hardly have been different. The age of national or nationalist communism had not yet arrived.

{p. 94} ... a mighty Nazi Germany could threaten the Soviet Union. Even in Poland, after Marshal Pilsudski's death on May 12, 1935, there began a process of semi-Fascist change. To Communists, all this seemed to imply the onslaught of fascism all over Europe.

The members of the generation lived in an atmosphere of intense tension and deep devotion to their cause. As one put it, "My old friends had families, children, but I had the party and the comrades.... We did not live our own lives, we were living the life of the party, the problems of the movement.... I was married to the party, my personal life had to wait." A Communist was a total rebel, perceived and perceiving himself or herself as the number one enemy of the present society. Rejecting nearly all principles of the current social order and being convinced of the coming revolution, they lived in two different time dimensions: that of today - the struggle - and that of tomorrow - society after the Communist victory.

{p. 95} The participation of Jews in the Polish Communist movement has given rise to many stereotypes, the most persistent of which is that of Zydokomuna (Jewish Communist conspiracy). This stereotype was very powerful in Poland between the wars, especially after Marshal Pilsudzki's death: its psychological strength lay in combining a general Polish fear of Russia with anti-Communist sentiments and anti-Jewish attitudes. In turn, because anti-Semitism was one of the main forces that drew Jews to the Communist movement, Zydokomuna meant turning the effects of anti-Semitism into a cause of its further increase.

In fact, people of Jewish origin constituted a substantial part of the Polish Communist movement. In general, however, Communist ideals and the movement itself enjoyed only very limited support among Polish Jewry.

{p. 96} ... throughout the whole interwar period, Jews constltuted a very important segment of the Communist movement. According to Polish sources and to Western estimates the proportion of Jews in the KPP was never lower than 22 percent. In the larger cities, the percentage of Jews in the KPP often exceeded 50 percent and in smaller cities, frequently over 60 percent. Given this background, a respondent's statement that "in small cities like ours, almost all Communists were Jews" does not appear to be a gross exaggeration.

The proportion of Jewish membership in the KPP reached its peak in 1930 at 35 percent. During the remainder of the 1930s the proportion is said not to have exceeded 24 percent. However there are data suggesting that it might have increased further in the large cities: Jewish membership in the Communist organization in Warsaw increased dramatically, from 44 percent in 1930 to over 65 percent in 1937.

All in all, most estimates put the proportion of Jews in the KPP at an average of from 22 to 26 percent throughout the 1930s. In the semiautonomous KPZU and KPZB, the percentage of Jewish members was at least similar to that in the KPP.

In the Communist youth organizations, the proportion of Jewish members was even higher than in the party itself. In 1930, Jews constituted 51 percent of the KZMP, while ethnic Poles were only 19 percent (the remaining number was composed of Ukrainians and Byelorussians). And in 1933, Jews made up 31 percent as compared to ethnic Poles who made up 33 percent. If we assume that Polish-Jewish Communists constituted between one-third and one-fourth of the total membership of the whole movement (KPP, KPZB, KPZU, and their youth organizations) in the 1930s, this would approximate between 5,000 and 8,400 Jewish Communists, without counting those in prison. If we include those imprisoned, the total number of Jews in the Communist movement in Poland during that period would probably rise to between 6,200

{p. 97} to 10,000 individuals. In addition, Jews were in an overwhelming maiority in the Polish MOPR (Miedzynarodowa Organizacja pomocy Rewolucjonistom, International Organization for Help to the Revolutionaries), which collected money for and channeled assistance to imprisoned Communists. In 1932, out of 6,000 members in the MOPR, about 90 percent were Jews.

The qualitative significance of Jewish Communists was even larger than their sheer numbers would indicate. Despite the fact that party authorities consciously strove to promote classically proletarian and ethnically Polish members to the cadres of leaders and functionaries, Jewish Communists formed 54 percent of the field leadership of the KPP in 1935. Moreover, Jews constituted a total of 75 percent of the party's tecnika, the apparatus for production and distribution of propaganda materials. Finally, Communists of Jewish origin occupied most of the seats on the Central Committees of the KPRP and KPP. ...

{p. 100} This firm stand against anti-Semitism did not mean, however an undivided affirmative attitude toward Jewish ethnicity. On this point, Polish Communist attitudes followed the Soviet party line and were thus ambiguous. In a longer time perspective, the "progressive" solution to the "Jewish problem" was seen in assimilation. In a shorter time perspective, the Communist movement voiced a program for secular, state-sponsored schools, with Yiddish as the language of instruction, and for vaguely described free cultural development. ...

{p. 102} The dissolution of the KPP was part of the Great Purge of 1937-38. During this purge, almost all Polish Communists who found themselves in the Soviet Union were shot or sent to concentration camps. Thls was a fate met by the entire leadership of the KPP and all those minor functionaries who fell into Soviet custody. The exact number of victims is unknown; estimations run from "several hundred" to "some five thousand." In the opinion of the respondents, the truth lies somewhere in between. The proportion of Jews among the victims of this purge was very high.

The KPP was formally dissolved by the Comintern at the end of 1938. The exact date of the decision is not known. The official reason for dissolution was the disintegration of the KPP and its infiltration by police spies and provocateurs, on one hand, and by the Trotskyists, on the other. The real reason has never been stated, not even when the KPP was rehabilitated in February 1956. Probably Stalin never forgot or forgave the support the KPP gave Trotsky. ... The only protest came from a small Trotskyist group under the leadership of Isaac Deutscher, who accused the Comintern of "ultra-rightist deviation" and anti-Semitism.

{p. 114} ... For these young Communists, there existed an increasing gap of totally different values, attitudes, and images separating them from their parents and their "world of yesterday." As the gap between the generation grew, the Communist movement increasingly became a substitute for their original families. This phenomenon was not exclusively Communist. The Zionist and Bundist movements, with their large profile of activities-

{p. 115} schools, summer camps, social clubs, and so on - and the fact of their legality, were able to function as social substitutes for the family. They "helped give party members the feeling that they resided in a 'new world,' as opposed to the 'old world' of the home and the synagogue." The Communist movement ... could offer the young rebels the most radical and drastic break with the system of values and norms of their parents, the replacement of this system with a holistic, integral world outlook, and an immense hope connected to "casting one's lot" with all those committed to reforming the world.

{p. 116} ... either be a Communist or live a normal life.

{p. 117} To study ... was an integral part of being a member of this movement. ... individual intellectual and ideological-political formation produced the core of their commonality ...

{p. 211} Most surviving Jews left Poland, but for those who decided against emigration there seemed to be new and exciting prospects for social mobility. The war decimated the country's intelligentsia and cultural elite. ... Out of a population of approximately 20 million, one-fourth were illiterates, half of them ages 18 to 50.

{p. 212} ... these Jews were a reservoir that could be trusted and enlisted in its efforts to rebuild the country. Although not old, "tested" comrades, they were not rooted in the social networks of the anti-Communist society, they were outsiders with regard to its historically shaped traditions, without connections to the Catholic church, and hated by those who hated

{p. 213} the regime. Thus, they could be depended on and used to fill the required positions. ...

Although they were trusted, however, there were limits to their usefulness and therefore to their upward social mobility. These were created by the regime's efforts to attain national legitimacy by presenting itself as genuinely Polish, which under current conditions meant avoiding identification with Jews. This resulted in a reluctance to man the new functionary positions with Jews and an ambition to fill them, it possible, with non-Jews {this is how Stalin became leader}. But implementation of such a policy was hindered by the lack of ideologically and professionally reliable cadres. Important key positions and so-called sensitive posts in the party apparatus, the state administration, the army, and the security forces could only be staffed by those most trusted. This applied also to the fields of ideology, education, and culture and was desirable even for middle positions in all areas of social, political, and economic life. The prewar Communists, Jewish or not, obviously met such requirements. Moreover, the members of the generation had informal contacts, with old comrades from the prewar Communist movement, from the ZPP or the army, and were known to others who were now in important positions. Thus, while their ethnic descent limited their usefulness, their party record, ideological reliability, and network of informal contacts were to their advantage.

The practical consequences of these conflicting factors were demands and pressures for Polonization prior to or following their employment. Despite exceptions, this was the major trend. Those who could pass as ethnic Poles, who changed their names into typi-

{p. 214} cally Polish ones and severed contact with Jewish life were preferred to others whose usefulness was circumscribed by appearance, accent, or unwillingness to comply with such demands. The former were sent to work in different positions in the general, that is, non-Jewish, sector and, as a rule, were more successful in their careers than the latter.

This personnel policy of negative selection provided a very strong incentive for further assimilation. Later, the philosophy underlying this policy was to reinforce the depth of their final existential defeat. At present, some felt hurt and ridiculed the policy and its executors, who were often Jews themselves. ... While in the 1930s most Jews worked in commerce and trade, now most worked in industry or administration. A Jew could now become a minister or a general, a company manager or a university professor, the only limitation being his or her ideological and personal qualifications. It seemed that socialism created conditions that for the first time allowed Jews to become fully respected Poles.

{p. 215} ... Among the demobilized ... Some were directed to the "Jewish sector," but most were sent to work on the "general front": as the saying went, the party gave one a "Jewish job" or a "general job." ... Some were directed to the fields of propaganda and culture, and others to the police and security apparatus. ... All joined the party and were active Communists.

{p. 216} ... When the anti-Jewish purge swept the army at the beginning of the 1950s and, again, after the de-Stalinization in Poland in 1956 ("the Polish October" or "the thaw"), the operational officers were less affected than the political officers or the commissars. Although the purges that continued into the next decade constantly decreased their number, some remained in the army as officers, military researchers, and educators until the late 1960s. ...

The political offficers were much more ideologically motivated. They saw themselves as educators and as watchdogs against ideological diversion. They advanced in grade, and an important segment reached central political significance, acting in the army's

{p. 217} Main Political Command. Together with the economic commissars they were, however, heavily affected by the purges of the early 1950s and after the thaw when, in accordance with the policy of odzydzanie armi (de-Judaizing of the army) and "nationalization of the cadres," Jews were released from sensitive army positions. ...

The category of the apparatchiks and administrators was formed of those members of the generation who were employed in the party apparatus, state administration, and the economic sector in central, regional, or local positions. As such, they were part of the new class that was managing the administration, politics, and economy of postwar Poland. What distinguished apparatchiks and administrators was their officially defined main field of activity: the party apparatus, on one side, and the almost all-encompassing state sector of administration and economics, on the other. The common denominator was the overlap and interlacing of their fields of action and the frequent personal rotation between them. Those who left the party apparatus were most often transferred into the state administration and the economy, while those who were conspicuous in these spheres acted on behalf of the party, being its nominees and making up part of its activists or cadres.

These cadres encompassed the leadership of all units in the party structure as well as all party members in leading positions on all levels of the society outside the party itself. Indispensable for the

{p. 218} implementation of the party's policy, the cadres were regarded as crucial for the Socialist transformation of the society. ...

The experienced, reliable, and relatively well-educated prewar Communists were thus indispensable, at least during the early years. Although few - the former KPP and KZMP members constituted a mere 8 percent of the party's paid political employees in 1950 and 6.2 percent in 1952 - they constituted the trusted core of the party cadres, occupying key positions on the central and regional levels.

{p. 219} Many held double positions, being employed outside the party structure and having political functions within it. Each of their positions in the power structure was part of the nomenklatura system that, like a gigantic spider web, enclosed every post of significance in the entire society (and, in practice, many wholly insignificant ones as well), subjecting them to approval by a higher or parallel party committee. ...

{p. 220} Others found refuge in the newly re-created Jewish cooperatives, becoming craftsmen or clerks. ... The intellectuals and ideologists formed an extremely important category, comprised of those working in the fields of culture, science, education, and propaganda. ... Symptomatic of their qualitative and quantitative importance was their presence on the editorial staff of the party's main theoretical organ, Nowe Drogi, and the daily organ of its Central Committee, Trybuna Ludu. Especially beginning in the second half of the 1950s, however, most were conspicuous outside the party network, in the mass media, the arts, academia, the liberal professions, and the publishing companies.

{p. 221} In their own and the political leadership's perception, the sphere of propaganda, education, and culture was regarded as decisive for the rapid transformation of social consciousness in the direction of Communist ideals. From this perspective, their role was crucial. They were the midwives of a mental revolution expected to radically change the consciousness of the society.

{p. 222} Policemen constituted a category comprised of those who became members of the state police and security apparatus. Unlike others, this category ceased to exist in the late 1950s, when most Jews were purged from this area.

Until the thaw, the Polish security apparatus was totally controlled by the Soviet secret police. Seen as a whole, the security apparatus had a double function: it served as an instrument of Soviet control over Poland and its regime while, at the same time, securing the Polish Communist party's monopoly of power. This apparatus consisted of the military counterintelligence called the Informacja, the civilian security service known in common parlance as the Bezpieka, and the so-called Department Ten, whose task was to supervise the loyalty of the highest strata of party and state leadership. ...

The Informacja was created in November I944 as a Polish version of the Soviet counterintelligence agency, Smersh. It was formally placed under the Polish Ministry of Defense but was in fact the most important instrument of Soviet domination in Poland. The head of the Informacja was formally responsible to the Polish politburo but actually reported directly to the head of the KGB in Moscow, keeping under permanent surveillance not only Poles but also their Soviet supervisors.

{p. 223} The number of Jewish Communists in the civilian security service was much larger. ... A Jewish section was organized within the frame of the political department of the ministry of public security. In this period, it was manned almost solely by functionaries of Jewish descent and carried out an intensive surveillance of all institutions within the Jewish sector, their activities, employees, and clientele. The party leadership depended on the Bezpieka to ensure social obedience and to pacify all potential resistance to its social, economic, and cultural policy. In addition, as the leadership depended on the Bezpieka for information about the nation's real state of mind, it also functioned as a police version of the public opinion polling institute. Thus, the apparatus of the Bezpieka grew fast: by the end of 1949, it numbered some 50,000 functionaries operating through a network of approximately 150,000 informers. Obedience was accomplished through terror and the widespread fear that this terror created. ...

{p. 224} The signals coming from the USSR since 1948 and the first warnings given by Rajk's trial in 1949 were followed by the Slansky trial in 1951-52, which made it clear that Polish-Jewish Communists were next in line for accusations of cosmopolitanism and Zionist conspiracy. In fact, the Department Ten had already been deeply engaged in establishing a connection between the "Gomulkaites" and the "Zionists." ... There is no doubt that large anti-Jewish trlals were being planned in connection with the planned trial of the "right-wing nationalist deviators" and that only Stalin's death and the Polish leadership's passive resistance prevented them from taking place.

{p. 225} How many Jews, in general, and how many prewar Communists, in particular, served in the security service is impossible to say. Their number and role must have been much smaller than the propaganda campaign, undertaken by Soviet intelligence and aimed at putting all blame for 'errors and distortions" on Jewish officials, had it.

{p. 227} Thus, while the ideologists' response to the lack of popular support was their conviction that "the nation must be taught," that is, indoctrinated, the essence of the policemen's ethos was a belief that the primary means for achieving a revolution in social consciousness and behavior was the cure of sword and fire.

Ruthlessness was seen as necessary: in their perception, it was more important and more realistic to make the actual or potential opponents fear them than to love them. ... they were always on guard and severely limited in their ability to enjoy relaxed human contact. The tensions inherent in their situation led them to increasingly reject even the shadow of a doubt, accept the most im-

{p. 228} probable accusations, and carry out the orders whose ruthless performance replaced their former great ideals. The prospect of the Communist emancipation, which was the initial motive and ultimate justification of their activities, became increasingly dim: its actuality was transmitted to a distant future. In short, they became demoralized and their vision deeply deformed.

They shared this moral and ideological development with their non-Jewlsh comrades. Where they differed, however, was in their fate when the thaw lightened the Stalinist darkness. When the might of the security apparatus was curtailed, the blame for its previous misdeeds was almost solely put on its Jewish functionanes. This was demonstrated when a special committee appointed by the politburo in 1954 to investigate the activity of Department Ten found only three culprits, all of them Jewish. Similarly, in the party's central committee resolution of May 1957, there was one ethnic Pole but six Jews mentioned as responsible for the "errors and distortions." Neither the Soviet offficials and "advisors" nor the non-Jewish leaders, functionaries, and politicians responsible for the securlty sector were mentioned. Thus, Jewish security men were singled out and made scapegoats.

The security apparatus was soon cleared of most of its Jewish functionaries. ... Most were helped by Jewish organizations, which, with financial help from American Jewry, opened vocational training schools and started artisan cooperatives. ...

{p. 229} They formed only a segment of the diplomatic service. However, as they often manned key positions, their visibility was very high ...

{p. 230} Originating in earlier Polish and Polish-Jewish initiatives in the USSR at the end of the war and formally created at the end of October 1944 in the liberated city of Lublin, the CKZP was composed of representatives from all the prewar Jewish political parties, with the exception of the Revisionists. It was chaired by the recognized Zionist leader, Emil Sommerstein ... Basing its activites mainly on financial aid from American Jews but also from the Polish government ... The work guided by the CKZP resulted in the creation by 1948 of over 30 Yiddish- and Hebrew-language schools with approximately 3,000 pupils, 11 orphanages, and 60 homes for the aged (this in addition to the Hebrew and the religious schools created outside the framework of the CKZP). Vocational training was providing by 49 ORT schools and medical care by the Society for Health Care. There were 20 Jewish sport clubs, 2 Yiddish theaters, and a rich variety of Jewish publications in Polish, Yiddish, and Hebrew. Books were published, and cultural events and political activities took place in over 200 local Jewish committees. The Jewish Historical Institute, the Jewish Institute of Art, and the Jewish Pen Club were founded. The CKZP coordinated repatriation, settlement, and aid to the repatriates, and the Zionist parties conducted their vocational and military training preparing some of the returning youth for emigration to Palestine. A network of 220 Jewish light industry cooperatives, built with aid from the American Joint Distribution Committee, was coordinated on a central level by the umbrella organization, Solidarnosc (Solidarity), which sold their products through the network of 24 shops and one department store. ,,,

The activists sincerely believed that the Jewish problem in Poland, in the prewar sense of the word, no longer existed: there were only the concrete needs of the Jewish population to be solved. In their view, the future of Polish Jewry lay in Socialist Poland: as the phrase went, Jews should "unpack their valises," roll up their sleeves, and start working on building a common Polish-Jewish Socialist future. ...

{p. 232} ... In 1948 they (and the Bund) had to join the Zionists in fund-raising, the recruitment of volunteers for Haganah (which soon became the official Israeli army), and in military training, all carried out with the quiet blessing of the authorities. On Israel's victory in the war for independence, several Jewish Communists were provided with party contacts and sent to Israel with officially proclaimed wishes for good luck in the task of building socialism there.

{p. 234} Communist-Jewish politics evolved in a way paralleling the general changes in Poland's political life ... Its essential points were the belief in some kind of Jewish collective existence and, at the same time, a rejection of such an ethnic communion, as it was thought incompatible with class divisions and harmful to the general political struggle; strivlng to mamtain a specific kind of Jewish culture and, at the same time, a view of this as a mere ethnic form of the Communist message, instrumental in incorporating Jews into the Polish Socialist community; and maintaining separate Jewish institutions while at the same time desiring to eliminate Jewish separateness as such.

{p. 235} Representing a kind of Jewish affirmativeness and, at the same time, reducing it to the ethnic form of an ideological content, they both wanted to keep the Jewish cake and, in time, eat it. ... The soldiers, the apparatchiks and administrators, the intellectuals and ideologists, the policemen, the diplomats, and the Jewish activists formed relatively clearly distinguishable categories. They were concentrated in the capital and a few of the larger cities of the country.

{p. 237} At the other pole, there were those who reacted to the Holocaust and the entire postwar situation with a reinforced tendency toward assimilation. The Jewish world in Poland no longer existed, and Poland, to which their lives were united, was now a one-nation state. ... In addition to being Communists, they consciously opted for full ethnic conversion, which often involved a change of name, eliminating the remaining traces of Jewish customs and habits, and taking on what they perceived to be genuinely Polish practices and traditions. In their own perception, they thus real-

{p. 238} ized the classical promise of Socialist assimilation, where their ethnic and political subidentities appeared to complete each other in a harmonious way. Although not limited to the conscious assimilationists, mixed marrlages were much more frequent among this group than among the others. As a rule, the assimilationists lived in the capital and the large provincial cities; they were better educated and reached higher positions on the social ladder than the affirmative Jews. ... Most of them changed their names prior to or during the intensive "renaming" period between 1948 and 1949. They avoided association with any Jewish organization and defined themselves as Poles (or, sometimes, as Poles of Jewish descent) in addition to being Communists. In extreme cases, they went so far as to change the names of their parents on birth certificates and questionnaires, to discourage their children from personal and organizational Jewish association, or, even, to keep their children in complete ignorance of their origins.

Although they defined themselves as Poles and thought that others ought to regard them as such, they were keenly aware that their self-identification was often questioned and that behind their backs others might still regard them as Jews. They were extremely sensitive to this and regarded all reference to their ethnic origins as "Nuremberg reasoning." ... although they eagerly took on "typical" Polish habits ... they were less nationalistic, more pro-Soviet, and more universalistic than most of their compatriots. Also, they were completely insensitive to the affinity between Polish and Catholic traditions.

{p. 240} ... although subjectively individualistic, they were objectively collective.

In between these two poles of persistent Jews and conscious assimilationists lay the majority: all those who neither consistently denounced their Jewishness nor affirmed it. ... Although the Jewish Jews acknowledged everyone's right to choose his or her own way, they often mocked the assimilationists, especially those who in their eyes put on a performance to facilitate their personal careers. These were called careerists or, sometimes, "Aryan Jews." The assimilationists, however, paying lip service to the right to cultivate Jewish culture, regarded the others as culturally retarded, seeing their unwillingness (or inability) to assimilate as one of the reasons for continuing anti-Semitism.

... the differences between the Jewish Jews and the assimilationists were more of a quantitative than of a qualitative kind.

{p. 242} ... despite these divisions that weakened its cohesion, the generation continued to form an affective totality. All this was to be confirmed by the circumstances surrounding their existential defeat.

{p. 243} The Stalinist period in Poland began in 1948 with the ousting of Gomulka and his associates from party leadership. It lasted until 1954, reaching its peak from 1949 to 1953. The general background was created by international postwar political conditions and by the situation in the Communist movement.

{p. 244} The international Communist movement came out of the war strongly reinforced. The Communist parties increased both in number and membership and up to 1947, participated in governments in France, Italy, Belgium, Iceland, Norway, Finland, Austria, Denmark, and Luxembourg. The process of Communist ascension in Central and Eastern Europe was intensified between 1947 and 1948. To formulate and control a worldwide strategy, at a meeting of the Italian, French, and all ruling Communist parties (Szklarska Poreba, Sept. 22-27, 1947), the Soviet leadership set up the Cominform (Communist Information Bureau), a new organization to replace the previously dissolved Comintern. Also in the air was the Communist uprising in Greece ( 1946-1949), the growing German crisis, and Soviet aspirations in the Middle East. The Western perception of the Soviet threat, symbolically expressed in Churchill's speech at Fulton on March 5, 1946, found more concrete expression in the Truman doctrine, which gave to the United States the right and duty to support "free nations threatened by totalitarian regimes." In line with this and the Kennan doctrine of containment, Western assistance was given to Greece and Turkey. The Marshall aid plan, within which Poland was to be a main recipient, was rejected by the Soviet bloc. The defense pact called the Western Union, later to be replaced by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, was signed in l948 by Great Britain, France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands. As the cold war intensified, the Soviet leadership was determined to close ranks in the Communist movement. This determination was strengthened by the conflict with the Yugoslavian party, which had federalist ambitions in the Balkan states and claimed the right to formulate its own foreign and domestic policies. This conflict culminated in mid-1948 with the ousting of the Yugoslavian party from the Cominform. From then on, the Communist movement would be a monolith in which the USSR would tolerate no divergences.

This was bound to have repercussions on the Polish Communist party. Gomulka and his associates, far from rejecting Soviet leadership of the Communist movement, were resentful of the Cominform and the uniformity it imposed. Gomulka was also hesitant regarding the condemnation of the Yugoslavian party and its oust-

{p. 245} ing from the Cominform. His concept of the "Polish way to socialism" advocated specific tactics and politics corresponding to Polish traditions and conditions, the temporary coopcratlon with non-Communists, and a rejection of any sweeping collectivization of agriculture.

{p. 251} The situation of the Jewish activists was specific and slightly different from those belonging to the other categories. ... The Polish government's policy of facilitating Jewish emigration and the Soviet foreign policy in the Middle East forced them to collaborate or at least accept Zionist activities and aspirations. Their relief and a turning point in the history of the Jewish sector came when the hopes that the USSR had placed in the creation of an anti-Western Jewish state were defeated. This was a new situation, allowing them to act in accordance with their traditional ideological convictions and political instincts. As one put it, "The love affair with the Zionists was over."

{p. 252} They were definitely unhappy about the government's policy to allow Jewish emigratlon in 1949-50 and tried not only to sabotage it by delaying and otherwise obstructing the issuance of documents required for exit applications but also to counteract it through intense anti-emigratlon propaganda in their newspapers and at specially arranged local meetings.

An important ideological signal that precluded the final Communist offensive in the Jewish sector was Ilya Ehrenburg's Pravda article of September 21, 1948. This obviously offficially sanctioned article condemned Zionism as "mysticism," denied that there was any afffinity between Jews of different countries, condemned Jewish nationalism, stressed the necessity of class struggle in the newly created Jewish state, and declared that Communism and not the bourgeois-governed State of Israel was the solution to the Jewish problems.

{p. 254} ... This was soon followed by deep and lasting political and organizatlonal changes in the Jewish sector. Separate Jewish schools, which previously had been subordinated to the CKZP, were at the beginning of the 1949-50 school year taken into the state budget and soon wholly incorporated into the national school system. The vocational ORT schools were taken over by the state in 1950. Toward the end of 1949, against the wishes of the CKZP and the Communist activists, the American Joint Distribution Committee (AJDC) was ousted from Poland as part of the severing of contacts with the West. The Jewish welfare institutions and the Jewish theater, which had been operating with AJDC aid, were nationalized. Jewish libraries were merged with non-Jewish ones, the Jewish Writers Association, Jewish youth organizations, and the lands-

{p. 255} manshaften were either dissolved or merged with national organizations. At the end of 1949, the Jewish cooperative movement Solidarnosc was merged with its Polish counterpart. After having been under intense ideological attack, the Bundists were made to retract their "rightist-nationalist tendencies" and reject their "separatist" program of national-cultural autonomy. Sharing the fate of the PPS, the Bund was dissolved on January 16, 1949, and some of its members admitted to the Communist party. The Zionist parties and organizations were disbanded later that year. The Union of Jewish Religious Congregations changed its name to the Union of Congregations of the Mosaic Faith, and its contacts with Jewish organizations abroad were greatly limited. Finally, the by then totally Communist-dominated CKZP was in October 1950 officially merged with the Jewish Cultural Society to form the TSKZ. Thus, the Jewish sector was reshaped. It was reduced and reconstructed beyond recognition and its remaining institutions placed under exclusive political and ideological Communist domination. From being merely a minor factor among Polish Jewry, Jewish Communists were now in total command of what remained. From their point of view, history had proved them right. A sense of triumph that dominated the members of the generation in the first Stalinist years was increasingly mixed with and clouded by fear and suspicion. This contradictory mixture of revolutionary impatience, triumphant anticipation, anxiety, and dread formed the basis of an i

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

Two related books of interest:

Jews and the German state: the political history of a minority, 1848-1933
 By Peter Pulzer

The emergence of modern Jewish politics: Bundism and Zionism in Eastern Europe
 By Zvi Y. Gitelman

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

Kevin MacDonald's review of a book by J. Schatz, The Generation: The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Communists of Poland (1991)

in Kevin MacDonald, THE CULTURE OF CRITIQUE: An Evolutionary Analysis of Jewish Involvement in Twentieth-Century Intellectual and Political Movements (Westport, Connecticut & London, 1998). Page numbers are in MacDonald's book. Comments by Peter Myers are shown {thus}. Date September 16, 2001; update October 21, 2004.

Write to me at contact.html.

You are at http://mailstar.net/poland.html.

{Poland's postwar Communist government was Jewish-dominated; the 1967 Middle East War forced Poland's Jews to finally choose between Zionism and Communism. Removal of Jews from the leadership allowed Poles to take over, who would later be more amenable to Solidarity. Jews created Communism, but the Jew-Gentile divide later destroyed it.}

{p. 61} Communism and Jewish Identification in Poland

Schatz's (1991) work on the group of Jewish communists who came to power in Poland after World War II (termed by Schatz "the generation") is important because it sheds light on the identificatory processes of an entire generation of communist Jews in Eastern Europe. Unlike the situation in the Soviet Union where the predominantly Jewish faction led by Trotsky was defeated, it is possible to trace the activities and identifications of a Jewish communist elite who actually obtained political power and held it for a significant period.

The great majority of this group were socialized in very traditional Jewish families

{quote} whose inner life, customs and folklore, religious traditions, leisure time, contacts between generations, and ways of socializing were, despite variations, essentially permeated by traditional Jewish values and norms of conduct.... The core of cultural heritage was handed down to them through formal religious education and practice, through holiday celebrations, tales, and songs, through the stories told by parents and grandparents, through listening to discussions among their elders.... The result was a deep core of their identity, values, norms, and attitudes with which they entered the rebellious period of their youth and adulthood. This core was to be transformed in the processes of acculturation, secularization, and radicalization sometimes even to the point of explicit denial. However, it was through this deep layer that all later perceptions were filtered. {end quote} (Schatz 1991, 37-38; my emphasis)

Note the implication that self-deceptive processes were at work here: Members of the generation denied the effects of a pervasive socialization experience that colored all of their subsequent perceptions, so that in a very real sense, they did not know how Jewish they were. Most of these individuals spoke Yiddish in their daily lives and had only a poor command of Polish even after joining the party (p. 54). They socialized entirely with other Jews whom they met in the Jewish world of work, neighborhood, and Jewish social and political organizations. After they became communists, they dated and married among themselves and their social gatherings were conducted in Yiddish (p. 116). As is the case for all of the Jewish intellectual and political movements discussed in this volume, their mentors and principle influences were other ethnic Jews, including especially Luxemburg and Trotsky (pp. 62, 89), and when they recalled personal heroes, they were mostly Jews whose exploits achieved semi-mythical proportions (p. 112).

Jews who joined the communist movement did not first reject their ethnic identity, and there were many who "cherished Jewish culture ... [and] dreamed of a society in which Jews would be equal as Jews" (p. 48). Indeed, it

{p. 62} was common for individuals to combine a strong Jewish identity with Marxism as well as various combinations of Zionism and Bundism. Moreover, the attraction of Polish Jews to communism was greatly facilitated by their knowledge that Jews had attained high-level positions of power and influence in the Soviet Union and that the Soviet government had established a system of Jewish education and culture (p. 60). In both the Soviet Union and Poland, communism was seen as opposing anti-Semitism. In marked contrast, during the 1930s the Polish government developed policies in which Jews were excluded from public-sector employment, quotas were placed on Jewish representation in universities and the professions, and government-organized boycotts of Jewish businesses and artisans were staged (Hagen 1996). Clearly, Jews perceived communism as good for Jews: It was a movement that did not threaten Jewish group continuity, and it held the promise of power and influence for Jews and the end of state-sponsored anti-Semitism.

At one end of the spectrum of Jewish identification were communists who began their career in the Bund or in Zionist organizations, spoke Yiddish, and worked entirely within a Jewish milieu. Jewish and communist identities were completely sincere, without ambivalence or perceived conflict between these two sources of identity. At the other end of the spectrum of Jewish identification, some Jewish communists may have intended to establish a de-ethnicized state without Jewish group continuity, although the evidence for this is less than compelling. In the prewar period even the most "de-ethnicized" Jews only outwardly assimilated by dressing like gentiles, taking gentile-sounding names (suggesting deception), and learning their languages. They attempted to recruit gentiles into the movement but did not assimilate or attempt to assimilate into Polish culture; they retained traditional Jewish "disdainful and supercilious attitudes" toward what, as Marxists, they viewed as a "retarded" Polish peasant culture (p. 119). Even the most highly assimilated Jewish communists working in urban areas with non-Jews were upset by the Soviet-German nonaggression pact but were relieved when the German-Soviet war finally broke out (p. 121) - a clear indication that Jewish personal identity remained quite close to the surface. The Communist Party of Poland (KPP) also retained a sense of promoting specifically Jewish interests rather than blind allegiance to the Soviet Union. Indeed, Schatz (p. 102) suggests that Stalin dissolved the KPP in 1938 because of the presence of Trotskyists within the KPP and because the Soviet leadership expected the KPP to be opposed to the alliance with Nazi Germany.

In SAID (Ch. it was noted that identificatory ambivalence has been a consistent feature of Judaism since the Enlightenment. It is interesting that Polish Jewish activists showed a great deal of identificatory ambivalence stemming ultimately from the contradiction between "the belief in some kind of Jewish collective existence and, at the same time, a rejection of such an ethnic communion, as it was thought incompatible with class divisions and harmful to the general political struggle; striving to maintain a specific kind of

{p. 63} Jewish culture and, at the same time, a view of this as a mere ethnic form of the communist message, instrumental in incorporating Jews into the Polish Socialist community; and maintaining separate Jewish institutions while at the same time desiring to eliminate Jewish separateness as such" (p. 234). It will be apparent in the following that the Jews, including Jewish communists at the highest levels of the government, continued as a cohesive, identifiable group. However, although they themselves appear not to have noticed the Jewish collective nature of their experience (p. 240), it was observable to others - a clear example of self-deception also evident in the case of American Jewish leftists, as noted below.

These Jewish communists were also engaged in elaborate rationalizations and self-deceptions related to the role of the cornmunist movement in Poland, so that one cannot take the lack of evidence for overt Jewish ethnic identity as strong evidence of a lack of a Jewish identity. "Cognitive and emotional anomalies - unfree, mutilated, and distorted thoughts and emotions - became the price for retaining their beliefs unchanged.... Adjusting their experiences to their beliefs was achieved through mechanisms of interpreting, suppressing, justifying, or explaining away" (p. 191). "As much as they were able to skillfully apply their critical thinking to penetrative analyses of the sociopolitical system they rejected, as much were they blocked when it came to applying the same rules of critical analysis to the system they regarded as the future of all mankind" (p. 192).

This combination of self-deceptive rationalization as well as considerable evidence of a Jewish identity can be seen in the comments of Jacub Berman, one of the most prominent leaders of the postwar era. (All three communist leaders who dominated Poland between 1948 and 1956, Berman, Boleslaw Bierut, and Hilary Minc, were Jews.) Regarding the purges and murders of thousands of communists, including many Jews, in the Soviet Union in the 1930s, Berman states:

I tried as best I could to explain what was happening; to clarify the background, the situations full of conflict and internal contradictions in which Stalin had probably found himself and which forced him to act as he did; and to exaggerate the mistakes of the opposition, which assumed grotesque proportions in the subsequent charges against them and were further blown up by Soviet propaganda. You had to have a great deal of endurance and dedication to the cause then in order to accept what was happening despite all the distortions, injuries and torments. (In Toranska 1987, 207)

As to his Jewish identity, Berman responded as follows when asked about his plans after the war:

I didn't have any particular plans. But I was aware of the fact that as a Je~shouldn't or wouldn't be able to fill any of the highest posts. Besides, I don't mind not being in the front ranks: not because I'm particularly humble by nature, but because it's not at all the case that you have to project yourself into a position of prominence in

{p. 64} order to wield real power. The important thing to me was to exert my influence, leave my stamp on the complicated government formation, which was being created, but without projecting myself. Naturally, this required a certain agility. (In Toranska 1987, 237)

Clearly Berman identifies himself as a Jew and is well aware that others perceive him as a Jew and that therefore he must deceptively lower his public profile. Berman also notes that he was under suspicion as a Jew during the Soviet anti-"Cosmopolite" campaign beginning in the late 1940s. His brother, an activist in the Central Committee of Polish Jews (the organization for establishing a secular Jewish culture in communist Poland), emigrated to Israel in 1950 to avoid the consequences of the Soviet-inspired anti-Semitic policies in Poland. Berman comments that he did not follow his brother to Israel even though his brother strongly urged him to do so: "I was, of course, interested in what was going on in Israel, especially since I was quite familiar with the people there" (in Toranska 1987, 322). Obviously, Berman's brother viewed Berman not as a non-Jew but, rather, as a Jew who should emigrate to Israel because of incipient anti-Semitism. The close ties of family and friendship between a very high official in the Polish communist government and an activist in the organization promoting Jewish secular culture in Poland also strongly suggest that there was no perceived incompatibility with identifications as a Jew and as a communist even among the most assimilated Polish communists of the period.

While Jewish members saw the KPP as beneficial to Jewish interests, the party was perceived by gentile Poles even before the war as "pro-Soviet, antipatriotic, and ethnically 'not truly Polish' " (Schatz 1991, 82). This perception of lack of patriotism was the main source of popular hostility to the KPP (Schatz 1991, 91). On the one hand, for much of its existence the KPP had been at war not only with the Polish State, but with its entire body politic, including the legal opposition parties of the Left.

On the other hand, in the eyes of the great majority of Poles, the KPP was a foreign, subversive agency of Moscow, bent on the destruction of Poland's hard-won independence and the incorporation of Poland into the Soviet Union. Labeled a "Soviet agency" or the "Jew-Commune," it was viewed as a dangerous and fundamentally unPolish conspiracy dedicated to undemmining national sovereignty and restoring, in a new guise, Russian domination. (Coutouvidis & Reynolds 1986,115)

The KPP backed the Soviet Union in the Polish-Soviet war of 1919-1920 and in the Soviet invasion of 1939. It also accepted the 1939 border with the USSR and was relatively unconcerned with the Soviet massacre of Polish prisoners of war during World War II, whereas the Polish government in exile in London held nationalist views of these matters. The Soviet army and its Polish allies "led by cold-blooded political calculation, military necessities, or both" allowed the uprising of the Home Army, faithful to the noncommunist

{p. 65} Polish government-in-exile, to be defeated by the Germans resulting in 200,000 dead, thus wiping out "the cream of the anti- and noncommunist activist elite" (Schatz 1991, 188). The Soviets also arrested surviving noncommunist resistance leaders immediately after the war.

Moreover, as was the case with the CPUSA, actual Jewish leadership and involvement in Polish Communism was much greater than surface appearances; ethnic Poles were recruited and promoted to high positions in order to lessen the perception that the KPP was a Jewish movement (Schatz 1991, 97). This attempt to deceptively lower the Jewish profile of the communist movement was also apparent in the ZPP. (The ZPP refers to the Union of Polish Patriots - an Orwellian-named communist front organization created by the Soviet Union to occupy Poland after the war.) Apart from members of the generation whose political loyalties could be counted on and who formed the leadership core of the group, Jews were often discouraged from joining the movement out of fear that the movement would appear too Jewish. However, Jews who could physically pass as Poles were allowed to join and were encouraged to state they were ethnic Poles and to change their names to Polish-sounding names. "Not everyone was approached [to engage in deception], and some were spared such proposals because nothing could be done with them: they just looked too Jewish" (Schatz 1991, 185).

When this group came to power after the war, they advanced Soviet political, economic, and cultural interests in Poland while aggressively pursuing specifically Jewish interests, including the destruction of the nationalist political opposition whose openly expressed anti-Semitism derived at least partly from the fact that Jews were perceived as favoring Soviet domination. The purge of Wladyslaw Gomulka's group shortly after the war resulted in the promotion of Jews and the complete banning of anti-Semitism. Moreover, the general opposition between the Jewish-dominated Polish communist government supported by the Soviets and the nationalist, anti-Semitic underground helped forge the allegiance of the great majority of the Jewish population to the communist government while the great majority of non-Jewish Poles favored the anti-Soviet parties (Schatz 1991, 204-205) The result was widespread anti-Semitism: By the summer of 1947, approximately 1,500 Jews had been killed in incidents at 155 localities. In the words of Cardinal Hlond in 1946 commenting on an incident in which 41 Jews were killed, the pogrom was "due to the Jews who today occupy leading positions in Poland's government and endeavor to introduce a governmental structure that the majority of the Poles do not wish to have" (in Schatz 1991, 107).

The Jewish-dominated communist government actively sought to revive and perpetuate Jewish life in Poland (Schatz 1991, 208) so that, as in the case of the Soviet Union, there was no expectation that Judaism would wither away under a communist regime. Jewish activists had an "ethnopolitical vision" in which Jewish secular culture would continue in Poland with the cooperation and approval of the government (Schatz 1991, 230). Thus while the govern-

{p. 66} ment campaigned actively against the political and cultural power of the Catholic Church, collective Jewish life flourished in the postwar period. Yiddish and Hebrew language schools and publications were established, as well as a great variety of cultural and social welfare organizations for Jews. A substantial percentage of the Jewish population was employed in Jewish economic cooperatives.

Moreover, the Jewish-dominated government regarded the Jewish population, many of whom had not previously been communists, as "a reservoir that could be trusted and enlisted in its efforts to rebuild the country. Although not old, 'tested' comrades, they were not rooted in the social networks of the anti-communist society, they were outsiders with regard to its historically shaped traditions, without connections to the Catholic Church, and hated by those who hated the regime. Thus they could be depended on and used to fill the required positions" (Schatz 1991, 212-213).

Jewish ethnic background was particularly important in recruiting for the internal security service: The generation of Jewish communists realized that their power derived entirely from the Soviet Union and that they would have to resort to coercion in order to control a fundamentally hostile noncommunist society (p. 262). The core members of the security service came from the Jewish communists who had been communists before the establishment of the Polish communist govemment, but these were joined by other Jews sympathetic to the govemment and alienated from the wider society. This in tum reinforced the popular image of Jews as servants of foreign interests and enemies of ethnic Poles (Schatz 1991, 225).

Jewish members of the internal security force often appear to have been motivated by personal rage and a desire for revenge related to their Jewish identity:

{quote} Their families had been murdered and the anti-Communist underground was, in their perception, a continuation of essentially the same anti-Semitic and anti-Communist tradition. They hated those who had collaborated with the Nazis and thosc who opposed the new order with almost the same intensity and knew that as Communists, or as both Communists and Jews, they were hated at least in the same way In their eyes, the enemy was essentially the same The old evil deeds had to be punished and new ones prevented and a merciless struggle was necessary before a better world could be built. {end quote} (Schatz 1991, 226)

As in the case of post World War II Hungary (see below), Poland became polarized between a predominantly Jewish ruling and administrative class supported by the rest of the Jewish population and by Soviet military power, arrayed against the great majority of the native gentile population. The situation was exactly analogous to the many instances in traditional societies where Jews formed a middle layer between an alien ruling elite, in this case the Soviets, and the gentile native population (see PTSDA, Ch. 5). However this intermediary role made the former outsiders into an elite group in Poland, and

{p. 67} the former champions of social justice went to great lengths to protect their own personal prerogatives, including a great deal of rationalization and self-deception (p. 261). Indeed, when a defector's accounts of the elite's lavish lifestyle (e.g., Boleslaw Bierut had four villas and the use of five others [Toranska 1987, 28]), their corruption, as well as their role as Soviet agents became known in 1954, there were shock waves throughout the lower levels of the party (p. 266). Clearly, the sense of moral superiority and the alhuistic motivations of this group were entirely in their own self-deceptions.

Although attempts were made to place a Polish face on what was in reality a Jewish-dominated govemment, such attempts were limited by the lack of trustworthy Poles able to fill positions in the Communist Party, government administration, the military and the intemal security forces. Jews who had severed formal ties with the Jewish community, or who had changed their names to Polish-sounding names, or who could pass as Poles because of their physical appearance or lack of a Jewish accent were favored in promotions (p. 214). Whatever the subjective personal identities of the individuals recruited into these govemment positions, the recruiters were clearly acting on the perceived ethnic background of the individual as a cue to dependability, and the result was that the situation resembled the many instances in traditional societies where Jews and crypto-Jews developed economic and political networks of coreligionists: "Besides a group of influential politicians, too small to be called a category, there were the soldiers; the apparatchiks and the administrators; the intellectuals and ideologists; the policemen; the diplomats; and finally, the activists in the Jewish sector. There also existed the mass of common people - clerks, craftsmen, and workers - whose common denominator with the others was a shared ideological vision, a past history, and the essentially similar mode of ethnic aspiration" (p. 226).

It is revealing that when Jewish economic and political domination gradually decreased in the mid- to late-195Os, many of these individuals began working in the Jewish economic cooperatives, and Jews purged from the internal security service were aided by Jewish organizations funded ultimately by American Jews. There can be little doubt of their continuing Jewish identity and the continuation of Jewish economic and cultural separatism. Indeed, after the collapse of the communist regime in Poland, "numerous Jews, some of them children and grandchildren of former communists, came 'out of the closet'" (Anti-Semitism Worldwide 1994, 115), openly adopting a Jewish identity and reinforcing the idea that many Jewish communists were in fact crypto-Jews.

When the anti-Zionist-anti-Semitic movement in the Soviet Union filtered down to Poland following the Soviet policy change toward Israel in the late 1940s, there was another crisis of identity resulting from the belief that anti-Semitism and communism were incompatible. One response was to engage in "ethnic self-abnegation" by making statements denying the existence of a Jewish identity; another advised Jews to adopt a lower profile. Because of the

{p. 68} very strong identification with the system among Jews, the general tendency was to rationalize even their own persecution during the period when Jews were gradually being purged from important positions: "Even when the methods grew surprisingly painful and harsh, when the goal of forcing one to admit uncommitted crimes and to frame others became clear, and when the perception of being unjustly treated by methods that contradicted communist ethos came forth, the basic ideological convictions stayed untouched. Thus the holy madness triumphed, even in the prison cells" (p. 260). In the end, an important ingredient in the anti-Jewish campaign of the 1960s was the assertion that the communist Jews of the generation opposed the Soviet Union's Mideast policy favoring the Arabs.

As with Jewish groups throughout the ages (see PTSDA, Ch. 3), the anti-Jewish purges did not result in their abandoning their group commitment even when it resulted in unjust persecutions. Instead, it resulted in increased commitment, "unswerving ideological discipline, and obedience to the point of self-deception.... They regarded the party as the collective personification of the progressive forces of history and, regarding themselves as its servants, expressed a specific kind of teleological-deductive dogmatism, revolutionary haughtiness, and moral ambiguity" (pp. 260 261). Indeed, there is some indication that group cohesiveness increased as the fortunes of the generation declined (p. 301). As their position was gradually eroded by a nascent anti-Semitic Polish nationalism, they became ever more conscious of their "groupness." After their final defeat they quickly lost any Polish identity they might have had and quickly assumed overtly Jewish identities, especially in Israel, the destination of most Polish Jews. They came to see their former anti-Zionism as a mistake and became now strong supporters of Israel (p. 314).

In conclusion, Schatz's treatment shows that the generation of Jewish communists and their ethnically Jewish supporters must be considered as an historic Jewish group. The evidence indicates that this group pursued specifically Jewish interests, including especially their interest in securing Jewish group continuity in Poland while at the same time attempting to destroy institutions like the Catholic Church and other manifestations of Polish nationalism that promoted social cohesion among Poles. The communist government also combated anti-Semitism, and it promoted Jewish economic and political interests. While the extent of subjective Jewish identity among this group undoubtedly varied, the evidence indicates submerged and self-deceptive levels of Jewish identity even among the most assimilated of them. The entire episode illustrates the complexity of Jewish identification, and it exemplifies the importance of self-deception and rationalization as central aspects of Judaism as a group evolutionary strategy (see SAID, Chs. 7, . There was massive self-deception and rationalization regarding the role of the Jewish-dominated government and its Jewish supporters in eliminating gentile nationalist elites, of its role in opposing Polish national culture and the Catholic Church while building up a secular Jewish culture, of its role as the agent

{p. 69} of Soviet domination of Poland, and of its own economic success while administering an economy that harnessed the economy of Poland to meet Soviet interests and demanded hardship and sacrifices from the rest of the people.

{p. 98} Jews thus achieved leading positions in these societies in the early stages. but in the long run, anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union and other Eastern European communist societies became a well-known phenomenon and an important political cause among American Jews (Sachar 1992; Woocher 1986). As we have seen, Stalin gradually diminished the power of Jews in the Soviet Union, and anti-Semitism was an important factor in the decline of Jews in leadership positions in Eastern European communist governments.

The cases of Hungary and Poland are particularly interesting. Given the role of Jewish communists in postwar Poland, it is not surprising that an anti-Semitic movement developed and eventually toppled the generation from power (see Schatz 1991, 264ff). After Nikita Khrushchev's de-Stalinization speech of 1956 the party split into a Jewish and anti-Jewish section, with the anti-Jewish section complaining of too many Jews in top positions. In the words of a leader of the anti-Jewish faction, the preponderance of Jews "makes people hate Jews and mistrust the party. The Jews estrange people from the party and from the Soviet Union; national feelings have been offended, and it is the duty of the party to adjust to the demands so that Poles, not Jews, hold the top positions in Poland" (in Schatz 1991, 268). Khrushchev himself supported a new policy with his remark that "you have already too many Abramoviches" (in Schatz 1991, 272). Even this first stage in the anti-Jewish purges was accompanied by anti-Semitic incidents among the public at large, as well as demands that Jewish communists who had changed their names to lower their profile in the party reveal themselves. As a result of these changes over half of Polish Jews responded by emigrating to Israel between 1956 and 1959.

Anti-Semitism increased dramatically toward the end of the 1960s. Jews were gradually downgraded in status and Jewish communists were blamed for Poland's misfortunes. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion circulated widely among party activists, students, and army personnel. The security force, which had been dominated by Jews and directed toward suppressing Polish nationalism, was now dominated by Poles who viewed Jews "as a group in need of close and constant surveillance" (p. 290). Jews were removed from important positions in the government, the military, and the media. Elaborate files were maintained on Jews, including the crypto-Jews who had changed their names and adopted non-Jewish external identities. As the Jews had done earlier, the anti-Jewish group developed networks that promoted their own people throughout the government and the media. Jews now became dissidents and defectors where before they had dominated the state forces of Orthodoxy.

The "earthquake" finally erupted in 1968 with an anti-Semitic campaign consequent to outpourings of joy among Jews over Israel's victory in the Six-Day War. Israel's victory occurred despite Soviet bloc support of the Arabs, and President Gomulka condemned the Jewish "fifth column" in the country.

{p. 99} Extensive purges of Jews swept the country and secular Jewish life (e.g., Yiddish magazines and Jewish schools and day camps) was essentially dissolved. This hatred toward Jews clearly resulted from the role Jews played in postwar Poland. As one intellectual described it, Poland's problems resulted essentially from ethnic conflict between Poles and Jews in which the Jews were supported by the Russians. The problems were due to "the arrival in our country ... of certain politicians dressed in officer's uniforms, who later presumed that only they - the Zambrowskis, the Radkiewiczes, the Bermans - had the right to leadership, a monopoly over deciding what was right for the Polish nation." The solution would come when the "abnormal ethnic composition" of society was corrected (in Schatz 1991, 306, 307). The remaining Jews "both as a collective and as individuals ... were singled out, slandered, ostracized, degraded, threatened, and intimidated with breathtaking intensity and ... malignance" (p. 308). Most left Poland for Israel, and all were forced to renounce their Polish citizenship. They left behind only a few thousand mostly aged Jews.

The case of Hungary is entirely analogous to Poland both in the origins of the triumph of communist Jews and in their eventual defeat by an anti-Semitic movement. Despite evidence that Stalin was an anti-Semite, he installed Jewish communists as leaders of his effort to dominate Hungary after World War II. The government was "completely dominated" by Jews (Rothman and Lichter 1982, 89), a common perception among the Hungarian people (see Irving 1981, 47ff). "The wags of Budapest explained the presence of a lone gentile in the party leadership on the grounds that a 'goy' was needed to tum on the lights on Saturday" (Rothman & Lichter 1982, 89). The Hungarian Communist Party, with the backing of the Red Army, tortured, imprisoned, and executed opposition political leaders and other dissidents and effectively harnessed Hungary's economy in the service of the Soviet Union. They thus created a situation similar to that in Poland: Jews were installed by their Russian masters as the ideal middle stratum between an exploitative alien ruling elite and a subject native population. Jews were seen as having engineered the communist revolution and as having benefited most from the revolution. Jews constituted nearly all of the party's elite, held the top positions in the security police, and dominated managerial positions throughout the economy.

{end selection}

Marxist policy on farming: Small private farms cf communal farms and state farms: marx-vs-the-peasant.html.

Jaff Schatz, The Generation: The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Communists of Poland: schatz.html.

Lech Walesa attended the canonization of Josemaria Escriva: http://www.opusdei.org/art.php?w=32&a=1643.

This, coming from the Opus Dei website, indicates that he is a member of Opus Dei. Therefore it's likely that he knew about CIA funding of Solidarity - even though other Solidarity leaders did not - and was complicit in it.

Vladimir Pozner on Why Jews left the Soviet Union - Max Shpak on Why the West Betrays Russians: jewish-emigration-ussr.html.

More from Kevin MacDonald's book The Culture of Critique: macdonald.html.

To buy Kevin MacDonald's The Culture of Critique: http://www3.addall.com/New/submitNew.cg ... e+critique.

Write to me at contact.html.

http://mailstar.net/poland.html