General Jewish Labour Bund in Poland
Encyclopedia
- Polish Bund redirects here. For other meanings, see BundBund- Organizations :* German American Bund, a pro-Nazi pre-World War II organisation* General Jewish Labour Bund in Lithuania, Poland and Russia, a political party founded in the Russian Empire* General Jewish Labour Bund in Poland, a political party founded in Poland...
.
The General Jewish Labour Bund in Poland ( tr:Algemeyner yidisher arbeter bund in poyln) was a Jewish
History of the Jews in Poland
The history of the Jews in Poland dates back over a millennium. For centuries, Poland was home to the largest and most significant Jewish community in the world. Poland was the centre of Jewish culture thanks to a long period of statutory religious tolerance and social autonomy. This ended with the...
socialist party in Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
which promoted the political, cultural and social autonomy of Jewish workers, sought to combat antisemitism and was generally opposed to Zionism
Zionism
Zionism is a Jewish political movement that, in its broadest sense, has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement continues primarily to advocate on behalf of the Jewish state...
.
Creation of the Polish Bund
The Polish Bund emerged out of the General Jewish Labour Bund in Lithuania, Poland and Russia of the erstwhile Russian empire. The Bund had party structures established amongst the Jewish communities in the Polish areas of the Russian empire. When Poland fell under German occupation in 1914, contact between the Bundists in Poland and the party centre in St. Petersburg became difficult. In November 1914 the Bund Central Committee appointed a separate Committee of Bund Organizations in Poland to run the party in Poland. Theoretically the Bundists in Poland and Russia were members of the same party, but in practice the Polish Bundists operated as a party of their own. In December 1917 the split was formalized, as the Polish Bundists held a clandestine meeting in LublinLublin
Lublin is the ninth largest city in Poland. It is the capital of Lublin Voivodeship with a population of 350,392 . Lublin is also the largest Polish city east of the Vistula river...
and reconstituted themselves as a separate political party.
Communist split
In April 1920 the first convention of the Polish Bund was held, during which the merger of the Galician Jewish Social Democratic PartyJewish Social Democratic Party
The Jewish Social Democratic Party was a political party in Galicia and later also Bukovina, established in a split from the Polish Social Democratic Party of Galicia in 1905...
into the Bund was materialized. At the conference a dispute over whether the party should join the Communist International erupted. A majority resolution calling for the entry of the party into the Communist International was passed at the convention, but never implemented. As a result the Polish Bund was divided, with around a quarter of the Polish Bund leaving the party to form the Communist Bund
Communist Bund (Poland)
The Jewish Communist Labour Bund in Poland , generally referred to as the Kombund, was a Jewish political party in Poland. It was formed in 1922, after a split from the General Jewish Labour Bund in 1921...
in 1922 (which subsequently merged into the Communist Party in 1923).
Organizing workers
In 1921, Bund-affiliated trade unions joined the Central Commission of Class Trade Unions (-KCZZ), the governing council of the Union of Professional Associations (-ZSZ), the umbrella organization of the Polish Socialist PartyPolish Socialist Party
The Polish Socialist Party was one of the most important Polish left-wing political parties from its inception in 1892 until 1948...
trade unions. However, while part of the KCZZ, the Bund unions were not part of the ZSZ.
Merger with Vilno groups
The Bund branch in Vilno had split along the same lines as the rest of the Russian Bund in 1920, into a leftwing majority group and a rightwing minorities group. The latter was associated with the Russian Social Democratic BundSocial Democratic Bund
The Social Democratic Bund was a short-lived Jewish political party in Soviet Russia. It was formed as the Russian Bund was split at its conference in Gomel in April 1920. The Social Democratic Bund was formed out of the rightwing minority section of the erstwhile Russian Bund...
. Both groups were reluctant to join the Polish Bund, even after it had become apparent that Vilno was an integrated part of the Polish state. The Vilno Social Democratic Bund distrusted the Polish Bund for its overtures to the Comintern, stating that the Polish Bund had ceased to be a Social Democratic organization.
In 1923 both Vilno Bund groups merged into the Polish Bund.
Electoral participation
Contrarily to the other Jewish parties, the Bund advocated an electoral cooperation with other Socialists, and not just between either Jewish parties or with other minority parties (in the electoral alliance "Bloc of National MinoritiesBloc of National Minorities
Blok Mniejszości Narodowych , was a political party in the Second Polish Republic, representing a coalition of various ethnic minorities in Poland, primarily Ukrainians, Belarusians, Jews and Germans. The Bloc was co-founded by Yitzhak Gruenbaum, a Polish-Jewish politician...
"). Thence, Agudat Israel
Agudat Israel
Agudat Yisrael began as the original political party representing the ultra-Orthodox population of Israel. It was the umbrella party for almost all ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel, and before that in the British Mandate of Palestine...
, Folkspartei
Folkspartei
The Folkspartei was founded after the 1905 pogroms in the Russian Empire by Simon Dubnow and Israel Efrojkin. The party took part to several elections in Poland and Lithuania in the 1920s and 1930s and did not survive the Shoah.-Ideology:...
and the various Zionist parties were represented in the Sejm
Sejm
The Sejm is the lower house of the Polish parliament. The Sejm is made up of 460 deputies, or Poseł in Polish . It is elected by universal ballot and is presided over by a speaker called the Marshal of the Sejm ....
, but the Bund never was, mostly because its potential partner, the Polish Socialist Party
Polish Socialist Party
The Polish Socialist Party was one of the most important Polish left-wing political parties from its inception in 1892 until 1948...
(PPS), was reluctant to appear as a pro-Jewish party.
The party obtained 81,884 votes (0.9%) at the 1922 Sejm election
Polish legislative election, 1922
The Polish legislative election, 1922 lasted from 2 to 12 November and was the second election in the Second Polish Republic. The elections were won by Polish Right party, National Populist Association , however it did not obtain a majority - it got only 98 out of 444 seats...
, approximately 100,000 (0.7%) in the 1928 Sejm election
Polish legislative election, 1928
The Polish legislative election, 1928 lasted from 4 to 11 March and was the third election in the Second Polish Republic. Bezpartyjny Blok Współpracy z Rządem ) - a coalition of the Sanacja faction - won the highest number of seats The Polish legislative election, 1928 lasted from 4 to 11 March and...
and 66,699 at the largely rigged 1930 Sejm election
Polish legislative election, 1930
Polish legislative election, 1930, also known as the Brest elections , were the elections to the Sejm on 16 November 1930. The pro-Sanacja Bezpartyjny Blok Współpracy z Rządem party took 56% of the votes...
.
In the autumn of 1933 the party issued a call initiated to the Polish public to boycott of goods from Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, in protest of the Hitler regime.
In December 1938 and January 1939, at the last Polish municipal elections before the start of the Second World War, the Bund received the largest segment of the Jewish vote. In 89 towns, one-third elected Bund majorities. In Warsaw
Warsaw
Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...
, the Bund won 61.7% of the votes cast for Jewish parties, taking 17 of the 20 municipal council seats won by Jewish parties. In Łódź the Bund won 57.4% (11 of 17 seats won by Jewish parties). For the first time, the Bund and the PPS had agreed to call their electors to vote for each other where only one of them presented a list. This however did not go so far as common electoral lists. This alliance made it possible for a Left electoral victory in most great cities: Warsaw, Łódź, Lwow
Lviv
Lviv is a city in western Ukraine. The city is regarded as one of the main cultural centres of today's Ukraine and historically has also been a major Polish and Jewish cultural center, as Poles and Jews were the two main ethnicities of the city until the outbreak of World War II and the following...
, Piotrkow
Piotrków Trybunalski
Piotrków Trybunalski is a city in central Poland with 80,738 inhabitants . It is situated in the Łódź Voivodeship , and previously was the capital of Piotrków Voivodeship...
, Kraków
Kraków
Kraków also Krakow, or Cracow , is the second largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in the Lesser Poland region, the city dates back to the 7th century. Kraków has traditionally been one of the leading centres of Polish academic, cultural, and artistic life...
, Białystok, Grodno
Hrodna
Grodno or Hrodna , is a city in Belarus. It is located on the Neman River , close to the borders of Poland and Lithuania . It has 327,540 inhabitants...
, Vilnius
Vilnius
Vilnius is the capital of Lithuania, and its largest city, with a population of 560,190 as of 2010. It is the seat of the Vilnius city municipality and of the Vilnius district municipality. It is also the capital of Vilnius County...
.
After its municipal electoral successes in December 1938 and January 1939, the Bund hoped for a breakthrough at the parliamentary elections due in September 1939, but these were de facto cancelled by the German-Soviet invasion.
Organization
The party organization was based on local and regional groups, which formed the lowest level of party cells. Each group had its local party committee. The highest authority of the Bund resided with the Party Congress, which elected the Central Committee and the Party Council, an advisory group. The Central Committee was composed of delegates designated by the larger local parties.In 1929 the organization of the party was changed. The Party Council was replaced by the Head Council, which was still organized by the Party Congress, but now the members of Council were selected from the members of the Central Committee.
The party was a member of the Labour and Socialist International
Labour and Socialist International
The Labour and Socialist International was an international organization of socialist and labour parties, active between 1923 and 1940. The LSI was a forerunner of the present-day Socialist International....
between September 1930 and 1940.
Position towards emigration
In Poland, the activists argued that Jews should stay and fight for socialism rather than emigrate. Marek EdelmanMarek Edelman
Marek Edelman was a Jewish-Polish political and social activist and cardiologist.Before World War II, he was a General Jewish Labour Bund activist. During the war he co-founded the Jewish Combat Organization. He took part in the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, becoming its leader after the death of...
once said "The Bundists did not wait for the Messiah, nor did they plan to leave for Palestine. They believed that Poland was their country and they fought for a just, socialist Poland, in which each nationality would have its own cultural autonomy, and in which minorities' rights would be guaranteed.". When the Revisionist Zionist
Revisionist Zionism
Revisionist Zionism is a nationalist faction within the Zionist movement. It is the founding ideology of the non-religious right in Israel, and was the chief ideological competitor to the dominant socialist Labor Zionism...
leader Vladimir Jabotinsky toured Poland urging the "evacuation" of European Jewry, the Bundists accused him of abetting anti-Semitism. Another non-Zionist Yiddishist Jewish party at the time in Lithuania and Poland was the Folkspartei
Folkspartei
The Folkspartei was founded after the 1905 pogroms in the Russian Empire by Simon Dubnow and Israel Efrojkin. The party took part to several elections in Poland and Lithuania in the 1920s and 1930s and did not survive the Shoah.-Ideology:...
.
World War II
On August 26, 1939, the party signed the joint statement of socialist parties in Poland, calling for the people to fight against Hitlerism (other signatories included the German Socialist Labour Party of PolandGerman Socialist Labour Party of Poland
The German Socialist Labour Party of Poland was a political party organizing German Social Democrats in interbellum Poland.Nominally, the DSAP was founded at a conference in Chorzów on August 9, 1925, through the merger of the Silesia/West Prussia-based German Social Democratic Party of Poland ...
).
After the 1939 German-Soviet invasion, the Bund continued to operate as an underground anti-Nazi organization in German-occupied Poland. Several Bund leaders and structures stayed in Soviet-occupied Poland and endured the Stalinist repression. Two most eminent Bund leaders, Wiktor Alter and Henryk Erlich were executed in December 1941 in Moscow on Stalin's orders under accusations of being agents of Nazi Germany.
In 1942, the Bundist Marek Edelman
Marek Edelman
Marek Edelman was a Jewish-Polish political and social activist and cardiologist.Before World War II, he was a General Jewish Labour Bund activist. During the war he co-founded the Jewish Combat Organization. He took part in the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, becoming its leader after the death of...
became a cofounder of the Jewish Fighting Organization that led the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was the Jewish resistance that arose within the Warsaw Ghetto in German occupied Poland during World War II, and which opposed Nazi Germany's effort to transport the remaining ghetto population to Treblinka extermination camp....
, and was also part of the Polish resistance movement
Resistance movement
A resistance movement is a group or collection of individual groups, dedicated to opposing an invader in an occupied country or the government of a sovereign state. It may seek to achieve its objects through either the use of nonviolent resistance or the use of armed force...
Armia Krajowa
Armia Krajowa
The Armia Krajowa , or Home Army, was the dominant Polish resistance movement in World War II German-occupied Poland. It was formed in February 1942 from the Związek Walki Zbrojnej . Over the next two years, it absorbed most other Polish underground forces...
(Home Army), which fought against the Nazis
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising
Warsaw Uprising
The Warsaw Uprising was a major World War II operation by the Polish resistance Home Army , to liberate Warsaw from Nazi Germany. The rebellion was timed to coincide with the Soviet Union's Red Army approaching the eastern suburbs of the city and the retreat of German forces...
.
From March 1942, Samuel Zygelbojm
Szmul Zygielbojm
Szmul Zygielbojm was a Jewish-Polish socialist politician, leader of the Bund, and a member of the National Council of the Polish government in exile...
, a member of the Bund Central Committee since 1924, was the Bund's representative on the National Council of the Polish government in exile in London. He committed suicide on May 12, 1943 to protest the indifference of the Allied governments in the face of the Shoah
The Holocaust
The Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...
. Zygielbojm's seat in the Polish exile parliament was overtaken by Emanuel Scherer.
However, as a Bundist resistant later wrote, the situation differed between the government in exile and the National Polish Council inside Poland, even in July 1944:
The illegal National Council within the country consisted of four parties, the PPS, the Peasant party, the National Democrats, and the Christian Democrats. These groups were represented in the London parliament-in-exile. So was the Bund, represented first by Artur Ziegelboim and then by Emanuel Scherer. But in Poland the National Council would not accept a representative of the Bund.
Post-World War II
After the end of the Second World War, the Bund reorganized itself in Poland. Whilst Zionists organized mass emigration to Palestine after the war, the Bund pinned its hopes to a democratic development in Poland. At the time the Bund had between 2,500-3,000 members. Around 500 lived in Łódź. Michal ShuldenfreiMichal Shuldenfrei
Michal Shuldenfrei was a Polish Jewish politician, lawyer, a delegate to the first Sejm of post World War II Poland....
was the president of the party, Dr. Shloyme Herschenhorn the vice president. Salo Fiszgrund was the general secretary, assisted by Jozef Jashunski. The party had functioning branches in Warsaw, Łódź and Wrocław. The party ran three publications, Folkstsaytung, Yungt veker and Głos bundu (in Polish
Polish language
Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...
).
The Bund began setting up various production cooperatives. Together with Jewish communists, the Bund was active in promoting Polish Jews to settle in areas in Silesia
Silesia
Silesia is a historical region of Central Europe located mostly in Poland, with smaller parts also in the Czech Republic, and Germany.Silesia is rich in mineral and natural resources, and includes several important industrial areas. Silesia's largest city and historical capital is Wrocław...
that were previously German territories.
Antisemitic activities continued in Poland after the war, and in Łódź (the main centre of Jewish population in post-war Poland) the Bund retained a militia structure with a secret armory.
The Bund took part in the Polish elections of January 1947
Polish legislative election, 1947
The Polish legislative election of 1947 was held on January 19, 1947 in the People's Republic of Poland. The anti-communist opposition candidates and activists were persecuted and the eventual results were falsified...
on a common ticket with the Polish Socialist Party
Polish Socialist Party
The Polish Socialist Party was one of the most important Polish left-wing political parties from its inception in 1892 until 1948...
(PPS) and gained its first and only Sejm seat in its history, occupied by Michal Shuldenfrei (already a member of the State National Council
State National Council
Krajowa Rada Narodowa in Polish was a parliament-like political body formed in the late stages of the Second World War in the Soviet Union, as part of the formation of a new Communist Polish government...
since 1944), plus several seats in municipal councils.
In 1948 around 400 Bund members illegally left Poland. The Bund was dissolved, along with all other non-communist parties, in 1948 following the consolidation of single-party rule by the Polish United Workers' Party
Polish United Workers' Party
The Polish United Workers' Party was the Communist party which governed the People's Republic of Poland from 1948 to 1989. Ideologically it was based on the theories of Marxism-Leninism.- The Party's Program and Goals :...
. Schuldenfrei was then ousted from the Communist-led Parliament.
In 1976, Marek Edelman
Marek Edelman
Marek Edelman was a Jewish-Polish political and social activist and cardiologist.Before World War II, he was a General Jewish Labour Bund activist. During the war he co-founded the Jewish Combat Organization. He took part in the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, becoming its leader after the death of...
, a former Bundist activist and leader during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was the Jewish resistance that arose within the Warsaw Ghetto in German occupied Poland during World War II, and which opposed Nazi Germany's effort to transport the remaining ghetto population to Treblinka extermination camp....
, became part of the Workers' Defense Committee and later part of the Solidarity trade union movement. During the period of martial law
Martial law in Poland
Martial law in Poland refers to the period of time from December 13, 1981 to July 22, 1983, when the authoritarian government of the People's Republic of Poland drastically restricted normal life by introducing martial law in an attempt to crush political opposition to it. Thousands of opposition...
in 1981, he was interned. He took part in the Round Table Talks
Polish Round Table Agreement
The Polish Round Table Talks took place in Warsaw, Poland from February 6 to April 4, 1989. The government initiated the discussion with the banned trade union Solidarność and other opposition groups in an attempt to defuse growing social unrest.-History:...
and served as a member of parliament
Sejm
The Sejm is the lower house of the Polish parliament. The Sejm is made up of 460 deputies, or Poseł in Polish . It is elected by universal ballot and is presided over by a speaker called the Marshal of the Sejm ....
from 1989 until 1993.