Fighting on all Fronts (16 page)

The outbreak of war did not change the attitude of the imperialist powers. When Jan Karski, the Polish resistance fighter, escaped to the West, he brought detailed information about the situation under the Nazi occupation, including the Holocaust. Karski met political leaders including the UK foreign secretary Anthony Eden and President Roosevelt. None of the political leaders took him seriously. Roosevelt reportedly asked about the condition of horses in Poland but did not ask a single question about Jews.
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Karski concluded that the Jews “were abandoned by all world governments”.
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Beginning around March 1943 there were calls for the Allies to bomb the rails leading to the Auschwitz death camp. US military chiefs refused, arguing this would divert resources from the war effort and that the rails were hard to hit. Undersecretary of war John J McCloy fretted that such bombings might “provoke more vindictive actions by the Germans”—as if there was any worse fate than the death camps.
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The tone was set in Allied refugee policy by the US but Britain followed closely behind, “putting self-interest first”.
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Overall the Western governments displayed a shocking indifference to the fate of the Jews. Walter Laqueur concluded that, despite knowing about the “final solution” from an early date, the US, the UK and the Soviet Union showed no interest in the fate of the Jews.
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US intelligence, for example, took an interest in the movements of forced labour teams because they were a factor in the German war effort. But according to Richard Breitman in
US Intelligence and the Nazis
, the CIA’s predecessor organisation, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), “does not seem to have taken much detailed interest in German camps as they concerned the extermination of Jews”.
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Michael Neufeld, introducing a collection of essays on prospects for bombing Auschwitz, concludes: “The Holocaust simply was not an important issue on the public or military agenda of World War II”.
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Thus there was never a real prospect that the imperialist powers before the war or the Allies and the official war effort would help Jews.
Throughout the whole period, however, Zionism never swerved from its orientation to imperialism but continued basing strategies on the powers that be even when anti-Semitic. The revisionist wing of the Zionist movement had such active relations with the Italian Fascists in the 1930s that Mussolini praised them in 1935:

For Zionism to succeed you need to have a Jewish state, with a Jewish flag and a Jewish language. The person who really understands that is your fascist, Jabotinsky.
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The German Zionists actively collaborated with the Nazis in the 1930s, breaking the international boycott on German goods and transferring capital to Palestine in a deal known as the “Ha’avera” (Transfer) Agreement. Some 60 percent of all capital invested in Palestine between 1933 and 1939 was channelled this way.
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Their fundamental orientation to imperialism critically weakened the Zionists once they were confronted with the Holocaust. They were used to accommodating local and international powers, not resisting them. They were accustomed to relying on others and on wheeling and dealing. They were experts at behind the scenes manoeuvres and manipulations. And they were practised at turning a blind eye to the anti-Semitic beliefs and actions of those with whom they were negotiating.

The focus for all Zionist factions was always the promotion of emigration to Palestine, not action to resist growing anti-Semitism. Consequently support for Zionism among Polish Jews declined during the 1930s. As the slogan of the right wingers and anti-Semites was “Kikes to Palestine”, Zionists who made the same argument (although with more refined language) had some difficulty distinguishing their politics. Zionist politics was hamstrung both in fighting anti-Semitism in the 1930s and in the coming crisis of the Eastern European Jewish population.

In May 1926 Marshal Joseph Pilsudski took power in Poland through a military coup. Although a reactionary right winger, Pilsudski was not in fact a fascist nor was he an anti-Semite. Huge unemployment and increased social tensions brought anti-Semitism but while Pilsudki was in power the police in general suppressed pogroms.

After he died in 1935 conditions for Jews deteriorated considerably. There were boycotts of Jewish stores and street assaults and a form of segregated seating known as “ghetto benches” was introduced at universities.

A major wave of pogroms included one in March 1936 at Przytyk, a small town in central Poland, whose population was 90 percent Jewish. When fascists attacked Jewish stalls a Jewish self-defence group intervened. Two Jews and a Pole were killed, property was destroyed and more than 20 people were severely beaten.

This event inspired the Jewish folk poet and songwriter Mordecai Gebirtig to write
S’brent
(It burns). Using flames as a metaphor for the threat of fascist violence, the song was intended as a call to action. Widely known in Poland before the war, it was later sung in many ghettos and camps and inspired young people to take up arms against the Nazis.

It burns! Brothers, it burns!

And help can only be from you alone!

If our shtetl
²⁰
is dear to you,

Grab the buckets, douse the fire!

Douse it with your own blood

Show us that you can!
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The Jewish working class movement did fight back using all the means they had available. Although many groups and individuals participated, the main leadership was provided by the Jewish Labour Bund. Its goals were quite different to that of the Zionists:

Today as always our slogan is still true: right here [in Poland] and not elsewhere—in a relentless fight for freedom, arm in arm with the working masses of Poland—lies our salvation.
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The Bund self-defence groups consisted of militias and 24-hour flying squads. Originally set up for the defence of the Bund itself, during the 1930s they broadened to the general defence of Jews: “Their livelihood, dignity, honour and often their very lives”.
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One self-defence group was based on the Bund youth organisation
Tsukunft
(“Future”). The adult group (the
Ordenergruppe
) included Bundists and Jewish unionists and was allied with a Polish Socialist Party (
Polska Partia Socjalistyczna
, PPS) militia. A Bund leader declared their defiance at a 1937 rally:

Today, the Jewish working class is saying to the fascist and anti-Semitic hoodlums: the time has passed when Jews could be subject to pogroms with impunity. There exist a mass of workers raised in the Bund tradition of struggle and self defense… Pogroms [will not] remain unpunished.
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The squads broke up anti-Semitic pickets at Jewish stores, patrolled areas at risk and responded to fascist assaults in the universities. Sometimes they arrived early in sufficient force to prevent an attack. At other times they carried out organised retaliations. Perhaps the most important battle occurred in the Saxonian Garden, a Warsaw park, in 1938. Bernard Goldstein, a leader of one of the Bund self-defence groups, described what happened:

We organised a large group of resistance fighters which we concentrated around the large square near the Iron Gate. Our plan was to entice the hooligans to that square, which was closed off on three sides, and to block the fourth exit, and thus have them in a trap where we could give battle and teach them an appropriate lesson… When we had a fair number of Nara [fascist] hooligans in the square…we suddenly emerged from our hiding places, surrounding them from all sides…ambulances had to be called.
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Important as self-defence groups were, by necessity only relatively small numbers of committed and trained individuals could participate. The other critical component of the fightback was street mobilisations. Throughout the late 1930s there were numerous small demonstrations in the streets, many almost spontaneous. Frequently these were broken up by police. There were also large organised protests. In March 1936 a half-day general strike, originally called by the Bund to protest against the Przytyk pogrom, turned into a mass protest against anti-Semitic violence. The action was supported by the PPS, and some Polish workers—mostly socialists—joined in; much of Poland was shut down.

A year later a demonstration against the government’s failure to punish those who had incited a pogrom at Breszcz resulted in a massive turnout. And in October 1937 a two-day general strike included a mass protest in Warsaw against the “ghetto benches” and the terror at the universities. This drew in not just the Jewish community, but also PPS unions, academics and many others. The participants drove off fascist attacks. A Jewish high school student wrote:

The whole Jewish community chose to protest against this injustice… We know that after the university ghetto will come ghettos in other aspects of life… The streets were filled with [protesters]. Jewish stores were closed. The whole community showed its solidarity.
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The Bund could lead such impressive actions and mobilisations because it had a base in the working class built up over decades. These
militant workers were ready to respond to the call to action and provided an organising base. They could mobilise the broader Jewish trade union movement and students. But alone these strengths would not have been sufficient. Crucially the Bund was able to draw on support from outside the Jewish community, in particular, Polish socialists. Through them they often received tip-offs about planned attacks and their support at the demonstrations was invaluable.

It is a widespread myth that Poles are inherently anti-Semitic and that deep hatred of Jews existed throughout Polish society and history. Anti-Semitism in Poland in this period was in fact primarily a ruling and middle class phenomenon. The bulk of the Polish working class supported the PPS which understood from the beginning that the fight against anti-Semitism and the fascists was its fight.
²⁷

The absence of anti-Semitism among the working class was acknowledged by Jacob Lestchinsky, a leading Zionist scholar:

The Polish labour party may justly boast that it has successfully immunised the workers against the anti-Jewish virus, even in the poisoned atmosphere of Poland. Their stand on the subject has become almost traditional. Even in cities and districts that seem to have been thoroughly infected by the most revolting type of anti-Semitism the workers have not been contaminated.
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Facing the strong anti-Semitic currents at the universities was a layer of non-Jews who resisted. When segregated seating was first introduced at Lvov (present day L’viv, Ukraine) Polytechnic, Jewish students protested by standing rather than sitting in their places. They were joined in this action by some Polish students. When the ghetto benches were introduced throughout Poland in 1937 at least two university rectors resigned in protest and over 50 professors signed a petition against it. White Russian and Ukrainian students (also minorities in the Poland of the inter-war years) in Vilna and Lvov also joined the anti-ghetto actions.
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Peasants were divided in their attitude to anti-Semitism; it was most common among the richer ones. The Peasant Party recognised by 1937 that the anti-Semitic campaign was a ruse to divert attention from political issues relevant to them. In return Jews supported a mass ten-day general strike of peasants in August 1937 in which police killed 50 demonstrators. A Bundist youth leader reported: “During the strike you could see bearded Chassidim [religious Jews] on the picket lines together with peasants”.
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Jewish confidence in the working class was demonstrated at the time of the Nazi invasion. According to the Labour Zionist Emmanuel Ringelblum, Jews tried desperately to find hiding places in the homes of workers:

Polish workers had long before the war grasped the class aspect of anti-Semitism, the power-tool of the native bourgeoisie, and during the war they redoubled their efforts to fight anti-Semitism… There were only limited possibilities for workers to hide Jews in their home…[but] many Jews did find shelter in the flats of workers.
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The establishment of the ghettos was the first step in the Nazis’ plans to annihilate the Jews. Descriptions of life in these hundreds of walled, isolated and tightly controlled communities defy the imagination. For example, in Minsk a living space of 1.5 square metres was allotted per adult; no space at all was allotted for children. The food ration was 400 calories a day. In Warsaw people returning home with their tiny bread ration had to ignore children dying in the street.

Jan Karski commented after a secret visit to the Warsaw Ghetto, “everything there seemed polluted by death, the stench of rotting corpses, filth and decay”.
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Marek Edelman, a leader of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, described the terrible atmosphere:

The Jews, beaten, stepped upon, slaughtered without the slightest cause—lived in constant fear. There was only one punishment for failure to obey regulations—death—while careful obedience…did not protect against a thousand and one fantastic degradations… [The] conviction that one was never treated as an individual human being caused a lack of self-confidence and stunted the desire to work… To overcome our own terrifying apathy, to fight against our own acceptance of the generally prevailing feeling of panic, even small tasks…required truly gigantic efforts on our part.
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Such an atmosphere is extremely corrupting. To obtain even the basic necessities of life the ordinary population had to bribe, steal or lie. With shortages of everything and survival at the centre of everyone’s mind, some used their positions for additional personal advantage such as to avoid forced labour. The Jewish police were notorious for supporting the
Nazis in their actions and there are horrifying examples of Jews spying for the Gestapo.
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But this was not only true of the Jewish population. They were divided like all others.