Rising '44: The Battle for Warsaw (18 page)

Varsovian Jewry was at least five hundred years old. In the Middle Ages, the community had been excluded from the central area of municipal jurisdiction by a decree of
non tolerandis judaeis
. But it had found little difficulty in taking root, under the protection of the nobility, in the districts immediately adjacent to the city walls. As a result, since Judaic law forbade its strict observants to reside among Gentiles, substantial Jewish quarters grew up in Vola to the west and Praga to the east. Neither the pogrom of 1881, which had followed the Tsar’s assassination, nor the boycott of Jewish businesses in 1911–12 had dented Jewish advancement for long.

Of course, one can easily make a list of religious, economic, social, political, and psychological grievances. But one must equally describe the considerable forces working in the direction of reconciliation and integration. The Polish Catholic Church, for example, which before 1914 had endured a long period of harassment and humiliation, was disappointed by its failure to obtain special status in the post-war constitution of the restored Republic, and some of its more militant members were willing to revive the ancient rivalry with Jews and Judaism. By the same token, the old-established authorities of Orthodox Jewry were coming under pressure from secularizing, modernizing, and in some circles, openly atheistic influences. Traditional Jewish prominence in finance, trade, and industry inevitably caused competition with newly founded businesses, especially in the Depression of the 1930s. The large-scale Jewish presence in the free professions, in the universities and among educated people in general was often felt to be a barrier to the ambitions of a Catholic lower class that was crossing the threshold of literacy exactly in those same decades. The rise of Roman D.’s nationalism, which promoted slogans of ‘Poland for the Poles’ and which cultivated the unsavoury association of Polishness with Catholicism, did not encourage fellow-feeling. But neither did the parallel rise of militant Zionism in the Jewish community. To objective observers, Polish and Jewish nationalisms appeared to have much in common. What is more, the deepening international crises of the 1930s
could only serve to enflame anxieties. Hitler and Stalin were not seen as desirable neighbours by any but the most eccentric.

Common sense underlines the necessity for seeing pre-war Varsovian society as it really was – with its inimitable mixtures of joys and sorrows, of pleasures no less than tensions. Here one is obliged to emphasize that Pilsudski’s
Sanacja
regime, which dominated interwar politics, was fully committed to the ideal of a multinational, pluralist Poland and that it consistently excluded the nationalists from power. It welcomed Jews to its ranks, encouraged the activities of democratic Jewish parties, introduced Jewish self-government into local affairs, and drove the political extremists, whether the fascistic ONR or the Communist KPP, to the illegal margins. Its main criterion was loyalty to the republic, and most Varsovian Jews were happy to follow.

Above all, one needs to realize that the two decades of freedom between 1918 and 1939 saw many of the old barriers crumbling. They were the decades when universal schooling all but eliminated illiteracy, and the new literacy involved competence in the Polish language. Interwar Warsaw saw a marked increase in mixed marriages and the appearance of an influential group of people who were equally at ease with their Catholic and their Jewish heritages. It saw an explosion of cultural life in theatre, literature, film, art, and music, which encouraged all Varsovians to participate and which produced a Varsovian intelligentsia where figures with varying degrees of attachment to Jewishness formed an essential element.

In this fast-changing world, it was simply not realistic to classify Varsovians as either ‘Poles’ or ‘Jews’. Such rigid and exclusive distinctions contradict the principle of multiple identities which holds good for most modern, mobile societies. They may have been appropriate a couple of centuries earlier, when Jews had belonged to a closed, legally defined religious caste, and they were to be revived first by the pseudo-scientific racism of the Nazis and later by the fundamentalist wing of Zionism. But they cannot be reasonably applied to the complexities of interwar society. Varsovians who had some sort of Jewish connection would have classified themselves either as ‘Poles of the Mosaic faith’ (if they still adhered to Judaism) or ‘Poles of Jewish descent’ (if they did not). There was also a shrinking category of people who, though Poles in the sense of being Polish citizens, spoke no Polish, shunned wider social contacts, and lived in closed, ultra-Orthodox Yiddish-speaking communities. These
ultra-Orthodox were dominant in the traditional
shtetln
or ‘small Jewish towns’ of the countryside, but less so in the larger cities, such as Warsaw.

In short, most Varsovian Jews had the same right and inclination to be regarded as Poles as New York Jews had to be regarded as Americans. One need only look at the academic world or the literary establishment. One can produce any number of names of writers who contrived to be both Polish and Jewish with no sense of contradiction. One of the best-loved lyricists, who emerged in the 1920s with the Skamander Group, Antony S., was the son of a Catholic doctor in Warsaw, whose forebears had converted some time in the nineteenth century. A cousin of his, Mikhail Leonidovitch Slonimskii, belonged to a branch of the family that had assimilated into Russian society, and became a leading Soviet writer. His colleague, Julian T., who helped found the Skamander, was also brought up in a totally assimilated and patriotic family. He formulated the concept of ‘the homeland of the Polish language’. His famous verse ‘Lokomotywa’ (‘Puffer Train’, 1938) is as well known to Polish children as
Winnie the Pooh
or ‘The Owl and the Pussy-cat’ to their English counterparts. Dr Yanush K. came from the same milieu. A qualified physician, he made his name early in the century with a book on homeless street children; he devoted his life to the study of child psychology and to the orphanage which he founded. He was to become a true martyr to his children’s cause.

Even so, a considerable degree of separateness pertained. An activist of the Socialist Jewish Bund, who vehemently opposed Zionist ideas, conceded the point:

Thanks to the right of local autonomy, granted by the
Sanacja
regime, Jewish Warsaw enjoyed a wide measure of independent politics:

Without doubt, the most forceful opinion about Polish-Jewish identity was penned in August 1944 in London by an exile from Warsaw. Its author was none other than Julian T., who belonged to the most influential intellectual circles of his generation. Entitled
We Polish Jews
, it gives all sorts of reasons why a Jew should want to be a Pole and concludes:

Above all – I’m a Pole because that’s how I like it

Julian T. offered another key thought. ‘I divide Poles,’ he said, ‘as I divide Jews and other nations,’

No one before 1939 knew anything about the terrible tragedies to come. Concerns were certainly expressed on the future of Catholic– Jewish relations in Warsaw, but no one was proposing a violent solution. Public opinion was divided, on the one side between the Pilsudski-ites and the National Democrats, and on the other side between Bundists and Zionists. So it is quite unhistorical to imagine Warsaw Jewry
being ‘On the Edge of Destruction’ or to adopt other post-war myths as the basis for discussion. Britain’s leading academic on the subject at the time, in a book published in the summer of 1939, saw the existing problems largely in terms of overpopulation and socio-economic competition:

What is the rising generation of peasants’ sons and daughters to do? The amount of free land has become very small indeed. Emigration facilities are cut off. The youth on leaving school find themselves, in the American phrase, ‘all dressed up with nowhere to go.’

Already in the twenties, a beginning was made in the setting up of ‘Christian’ shops . . . as a means of challenging the monopoly of petty trading hitherto enjoyed by the Jews . . . [With this] went a certain amount of picketing of Jewish shops by the youth that provoked the use of violence on the part of those threatened, and led in places to open riot and bloodshed . . .

This particular conflict has little or nothing to do with what is called anti-Semitism and is almost wholly rooted in the pinch of poverty and the congestion of population . . . Poland, one of the poorest countries of [Europe], has nearly one-quarter of all the Jews in the world . . . For generations they have been the victims of discrimination, and they deserve a better fate . . .
⁶

Such contemporary opinions offer a good starting point. Ironically, the Zionists had wide support from the Polish Nationalists in holding that Jews should emigrate to Palestine. The Bundists, like the rest of the Polish Left, argued that Polish Jews should stay in the land of their birth and help build a better world for everyone.

The conflict over higher education, which surfaced in the mid-1930s, was often seen to have socio-economic causes. It stemmed, first and foremost, from the discrepancy between the educational needs of the newly literate peasantry, who until the third quarter of the nineteenth century under Russian rule had been serfs, and those of a burgeoning and increasingly assimilated Jewish bourgeoisie. Jews, though around 10 per cent of the overall population, accounted for a markedly higher percentage of the student body. In the University of Warsaw they represented a dominant element of the law and medical faculties. As a result, in certain places and at different times, as in comparable places in Britain and America, a
numerus clausus
was introduced:

Serious objection is raised by Jewish leaders to this
numerus clausus
, and one can understand why. But not to introduce it would create worse trouble. Young men would be admitted to studies from which they would not have the slightest chance of getting a living.
⁷

There can be no doubt that a degree of discrimination was involved. But the policy’s advocates, like the advocates of women’s advancement, saw it as a necessary form of ‘positive discrimination’. Nor can the associated unpleasantness be excused. On the other hand, it would be quite out of place to regard these relatively petty disputes of the 1930s as a prelude to the generalized tyranny which would soon be implemented by the Nazis.

Warsaw Jewry enjoyed its share of affluence. In many ways, it was a vibrant, dynamic community. There were Jewish politicians of many shades, Jewish artists, Jewish actors, Jewish boxers, Jewish film-makers, Jewish millionaires . . . No doubt, there was a darker side. But to describe these people exclusively in tragic shades is a mistake, and a disservice to their memory.

Pre-war Warsaw life undoubtedly had its black spots, notably in the overcrowded slums and in the gross unemployment of the Depression years. Yet pride bloomed alongside the problems. For the Capital, whose ills until recently could always be blamed on foreigners, was now the sole responsibility of those who lived there. And there had certainly been much progress. Most of the suburbs were adorned with extensive public parks. Promenades on summer evenings in the Saxon Garden or round the lake in Lazhenki Park were extremely popular. Cafes and music halls, often with a bohemian flavour, were thriving. With universal schooling and the vogue for scout groups and sports clubs, youth had never had it so good. Young women, in particular, had never been so liberated. The standards of public hygiene were high. Hospitals were provided by a mixture of religious, charitable and municipal organizations, serving rich and poor alike. Religious life, whether at the Cathedral of St John or at one of the fifty or so parish churches, whether at the Great Synagogue on Tlomat Street or at one of the crowded Chassidic meeting-places, was strong. Generally speaking, believers respected believers. The Christian Sabbath on Sundays, and the Jewish Shabbat on Saturdays formed an age-old part of everyone’s routine.