Bernard Goldstein 
Twenty Years with the Jewish Labor Bund 
A Memoir of Interwar Poland

Bernard Goldstein’s memoir describes a hard world of taverns, toughs, thieves, and prostitutes; of slaughterhouse workers, handcart porters, and wagon drivers; and of fist-and gunfights with everyone from anti-Semites and Communists to hostile police, which is to say that it depicts a totally different view of life in prewar Poland than the one usually portrayed. As such, the book offers a corrective view in the form of social history, one that commands attention and demands respect for the vitality and activism of the generation of Polish Jews so brutally annihilated by the barbarism of the Nazis. In Warsaw, a city with over 300, 000 Jews (one third of the population), Bernstein was the Jewish Labor Bund’s “enforcer, ” organizer, and head of their militia—the one who carried out daily, on-the-street organization of unions; the fighting off of Communists, Polish anti-Semitic hooligans, and antagonistic police; marshaling and protecting demonstrations; and even settling family disputes, some of them arising from the new secular, socialist culture being fostered by the Bund. Goldstein’s is a portrait of tough Jews willing to do battle—worldly, modern individuals dedicated to their folk culture and the survival of their people. It delivers an unparalleled street-level view of vibrant Jewish life in Poland between the wars: of Jewish masses entering modern life, of Jewish workers fighting for their rights, of optimism, of greater assertiveness and self-confidence, of armed combat, and even of scenes depicting the seamy, semi-criminal elements. It provides a representation of life in Poland before the great catastrophe of World War II, a life of flowering literary activity, secular political journalism, successful political struggle, immersion in modern politics, fights for worker rights and benefits, a strong social-democratic labor movement, creation of a secular school system in Yiddish, and a youth movement that later provided the heroic fighters for the courageous Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Foreword

Translator’s Preface

Acknowledgments

Bernard Goldstein: A Chronology

Translator’s Note

Original Introduction by Dr. Emanuel Sherer, General Secretary of the Jewish Labor Bund

1. I Go Home

2. Back in Warsaw

3. Praga

4. The Seven Lions

5. The First of May Demonstration in Praga, 1920

6. Pogrom at the Praga Bund Club

7. Janek Jankelewicz

8. The Cracow Convention

9. A Hail of Persecutions

10. Illegal Work—Once Again

11. The Danzig Convention

12. Coming to the Defense of the Movement

13. Organizing the Bund Militia

14. The Communists and the Underworld

15. The 1922 Election Campaign

16. Unifying the Trade Union Movement

17. The Slaughterers Union

18. Three Slaughterer Dynasties

19. The Transport Workers Union: Back Porters

20. Back Porter Types

21. Rope and Handcart Porters

22. The Food Workers Union

23. The Bakers Union

24. Bagel Bakers and Peddlers

25. A Day in a Slaughter House

26. Jewish and Polish Meat Workers

27. At Parties and Celebrations

28. Resistance: The First of May Demonstration, 1923

29. Struggles over the Saturday Edition of the
Folkstsaytung

30. Commissar Cechnowski

31. Kalmen the Bootmaker’s Death

32. The Piłsudski Coup, the PPS, and the FRACs

33. The FRAC Militia

34. A New Gang of Communist Strong-Arms

35. Communists Shoot at a Workers Convention

36.
Morgnshtern

37. The Labor Sports Olympiad in Prague

38. Ominous Dark Clouds on All Sides

39. Concerns about Self-Defense

40. A Wave of Wildcat Strikes

41. An Attempted Murderous Assault on Me

42. In Zakopane

43. Attacks on a Night School

44. The Medem Sanitarium Attacked

45. Another Attempt on My Life

46. Krochmalna Street

47. Fat Yosl

48. Khaskele

49. “Malematke”

50. Yukele

51. Troubles with Cultural Awakening

52. The Militia Comes to the Aid of Bundist Members on the Warsaw City Council

53. First of May Demonstrations Under the Piłsudski Regime

54. A Joint First of May Demonstration with the PPS

55. In Red Vienna

56. Street Fights with the Polish Hitlerites

57. Battles over the Boycotting of Jewish Businesses

58. The “Ghetto Benches” in the Universities

59. My Son at the SKIF Camp

60. The Bakers Union Turns Away from the Communists; The Murder of Neuerman

61. Nathan (Nokhem) Chanin’s Visit to Warsaw

62. Three Bloody Attacks in One Day

63. Temptations and Doubts

64. Shloyme Mendelson

65. In the Trap of the Shetshke Gang

66. The FRACs Try to Take Over the Newspaper Deliverers Union

67. The FRAC Transport Workers Union and Itshe “Zbukh”

68. Returning Stolen Goods to a Leather Merchant

69. Among the Retail Clerks; Another Worker Murdered

70. Auctioning off the
Folkstsaytung

71. A Defeat for the Priest, Father Trzeciak

72. Przytyk and the Protest-Strike on March 17, 1936

73. The Pogrom in Minsk-Mazowiecki

74. Antisemitic Hooligans Kill a Jewish Child during a First of May Demonstration

75.
Oenerowcy Leaders Are Taught a Lesson

76. Guarding the
Folkstsaytung

77. The Pogrom in Brisk

78. The Bund’s Warsaw Locales

79. A Bombing of the Bund Offices—And Our Answer to the
Oenerowcy

80. An
Oenerowcy Attempt to Murder Comrade Henryk Erlich

81. December 18, 1938

82. A Final Look at Our Youth

Glossary of Terms, Names, and Acronyms

References

Index

Über den Autor

Bernard Goldstein dedicated his life to the Jewish labor movement in Poland. An ordinary worker, he rose to a position of prominence in the Jewish Labor Bund, the premier political representative of the Jewish working class in pre-WW II Poland. His life and work were intimately entwined with the Bund. He was its chief trade union organizer in Warsaw, and its militia organizer and commander. He wrote two books, this one and The Stars Bear Witness.

Marvin S. Zuckerman has edited several volumes of Yiddish literature in English translation, has written college English textbooks, and has published articles in various periodicals, some in Yiddish and some in English. A retired professor of English, he served as chair of the English Department for fifteen years at Los Angeles Valley College and as dean of Instruction for six years, before retiring in 2002. He is the son of Yiddish-speaking Bundists from Warsaw, Poland.