Melech Epstein
Encyclopedia
Melech Epstein was a Jewish American journalist and historian. His two most famous books, Jewish labor in U.S.A. and The Jew and communism are considered standard works.
, Grodno Guberniya, Imperial Russia (now in Belarus). His family was unsure of his exact birth date, but assigned him March 15, 1889, the second day of Purim
. During his teenage years he became active in the Jewish territorialist movement. Beginning shortly before the 1905 revolution he was a cadre in the Zionist Socialist Workers Party
in Białystok, Lodz
, Warsaw
, Kiev
and Odessa
. His activities included writing for party journals, organizing unions and Jewish cultural societies and, in Białystok manning an armed guard of the Jewish neighborhood during a pogrom
. He served three intermitant periods in the Czarist prisons. Becoming dissatisfied with the ultimate aims of the territorialists he emigrated to America in 1913. He arrived at Ellis island
on December 24, 1913.
In New York, Epstein settled in Brownsville, Brooklyn
and became involved in the local Jewish radical scene. In 1915 became became labor reporter for a new Yiddish daily The Day. Soon he became labor editor, which was an ideal place to observe the burgeoning Jewish labor and radical movements. After The Day came out in favor of foreign intervention against the Bolsheviks Epstein left the paper and joined the staff of Zeit, a Labor Zionist paper edited by David Pinsky. While working for Zeit he exposed financial improprieties involving Lucy Lang, the Forward and the United Hebrew Trades
. As a result the UHT forced his expulsion from its affiliate, the Yiddish Writers Union, which Epstein had helped to found in 1917. Despairing of mainstream union bureaucracy, he left the Socialist party in 1921, as part of the Workers Council of the United States. When this group merged with the communists to form the Workers Party of America
Epstein was offered a place as labor editor on the communists' new Yiddish daily, Morgen Freiheit
.
faction within the party he resigned the editorship in spring 1929 during intense factional warfare within the party. In August 1929 both Epstein and Moissaye Joseph Olgin
, the new Freiheit editor were censured by the party for taking a pro-Yishuv
stand in reporting on the out break of violence in Palestine. Under party pressure the paper changed its analysis reporting the revolt as a national liberation movement against the British and their Zionist collaborators. That fall Epstein was relieved of all other party offices and was sent to the Soviet Union to "improve his communist morale".
He returned in 1931. No longer on the staff of Freiheit, he became educational director of the TUUL Needle Trades Workers Industrial Union and editor of its weekly Needle Worker. He was allowed to return to the Freiheit during the transition to the popular front period in the mid-1930s. In 1936 he was sent to Palestine, officially as a Freiheit correspondent, but actually as an emissary to the Palestine Communist Party
. The out break of yet another revolt strained relations between the CPUSA and American Jewry. The Comintern was silent on what stance to take, so they decided to send a personal envoy to the sister party to co-ordinate strategy. Epstein learned that the party was being rapidly "Arabized" and was taking a more and militant stand against the Zionists and the Yishuv in general. While in Palestine Epstein learned of the out break of the Spanish Civil War
. Without waiting for word from the party or Freiheit he sailed to Barcelona
and became one of the first American journalists on the scene. He stayed in Spain for three months sending dispatches back to Freiheitfrom the front lines.
and then the show trials in the late 1930s. He went off to Mexico where he visited Leon Trotsky
and Diego Riviera. When he came back to America he briefly joined the staff of The Forward
, but was fired soon after because he wouldn't go before the Dies committee or write sensationalistic material about the Communist Party. In 1943 he was hired by the Jewish Labor Committee
to go on fund raising tours for the underground Jewish resistance movement in Poland. Finally, in 1945 he became public relations director of the Cloakmakers Joint Board of ILGWU.
In the fall of 1947 he settled in Florida. There he wrote his two major books Jewish labor in U.S.A. and The Jew and communism, independently published through a "Trade Union Sponsoring Committee" which was partly funded by ILGWU.
Early life
Epstein was born in RuzhanyRuzhany
Ruzhany is a small town located in Pruzhany Raion of Brest Voblast, Belarus.-Geography:Ruzhany is situated on the river Ruzhanka and surrounded by picturesque hills...
, Grodno Guberniya, Imperial Russia (now in Belarus). His family was unsure of his exact birth date, but assigned him March 15, 1889, the second day of Purim
Purim
Purim is a Jewish holiday that commemorates the deliverance of the Jewish people in the ancient Persian Empire from destruction in the wake of a plot by Haman, a story recorded in the Biblical Book of Esther .Purim is celebrated annually according to the Hebrew calendar on the 14th...
. During his teenage years he became active in the Jewish territorialist movement. Beginning shortly before the 1905 revolution he was a cadre in the Zionist Socialist Workers Party
Zionist Socialist Workers Party
Zionist Socialist Workers Party , often referred to simply as 'Zionist-Socialists' or 'S.S.' by their Russian initials, was a Jewish socialist territorialist political party in the Russian Empire and Poland, that emerged out of the Vozrozhdenie group in 1904. The party held its founding conference...
in Białystok, Lodz
Lódz
Łódź is the third-largest city in Poland. Located in the central part of the country, it had a population of 742,387 in December 2009. It is the capital of Łódź Voivodeship, and is approximately south-west of Warsaw...
, 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...
, Kiev
Kiev
Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....
and Odessa
Odessa
Odessa or Odesa is the administrative center of the Odessa Oblast located in southern Ukraine. The city is a major seaport located on the northwest shore of the Black Sea and the fourth largest city in Ukraine with a population of 1,029,000 .The predecessor of Odessa, a small Tatar settlement,...
. His activities included writing for party journals, organizing unions and Jewish cultural societies and, in Białystok manning an armed guard of the Jewish neighborhood during a pogrom
Białystok pogrom
The Białystok pogrom occurred between 14–16 June 1906 in Białystok, then part of the Russian Empire, now in Poland. During the pogrom between 81 and 88 people were killed, and about 80 people were wounded....
. He served three intermitant periods in the Czarist prisons. Becoming dissatisfied with the ultimate aims of the territorialists he emigrated to America in 1913. He arrived at Ellis island
Ellis Island
Ellis Island in New York Harbor was the gateway for millions of immigrants to the United States. It was the nation's busiest immigrant inspection station from 1892 until 1954. The island was greatly expanded with landfill between 1892 and 1934. Before that, the much smaller original island was the...
on December 24, 1913.
In New York, Epstein settled in Brownsville, Brooklyn
Brownsville, Brooklyn
Brownsville is a residential neighborhood located in eastern Brooklyn, New York City.The total land area is one square mile, and the ZIP code for the neighborhood is 11212....
and became involved in the local Jewish radical scene. In 1915 became became labor reporter for a new Yiddish daily The Day. Soon he became labor editor, which was an ideal place to observe the burgeoning Jewish labor and radical movements. After The Day came out in favor of foreign intervention against the Bolsheviks Epstein left the paper and joined the staff of Zeit, a Labor Zionist paper edited by David Pinsky. While working for Zeit he exposed financial improprieties involving Lucy Lang, the Forward and the United Hebrew Trades
United Hebrew Trades
United Hebrew Trades was an association of Jewish labor unions in New York.It was founded by the Socialist Labor Party's Yiddish Branch 8 and Russian Branch 17 together with Jewish unions in in New York in October 1888. Among the founding members were Morris Hillquit and Bernard Weinstein...
. As a result the UHT forced his expulsion from its affiliate, the Yiddish Writers Union, which Epstein had helped to found in 1917. Despairing of mainstream union bureaucracy, he left the Socialist party in 1921, as part of the Workers Council of the United States. When this group merged with the communists to form the Workers Party of America
Workers Party of America
The Workers Party of America was the name of the legal party organization used by the Communist Party USA from the last days of 1921 until the middle of 1929. As a legal political party the Workers Party accepted affiliation from independent socialist groups such as the African Blood Brotherhood,...
Epstein was offered a place as labor editor on the communists' new Yiddish daily, Morgen Freiheit
Morgen Freiheit
The New York city-based Morgen Freiheit was a daily Yiddish language newspaper affiliated with the Communist Party, USA, founded by Moissaye Olgin in 1922. After the end of World War II the paper's editors developed criticisms of the Soviet Union and thereby clashed with the leaders of the...
.
In the Communist Party
After a factional skirmish Epstein was made acting editor in 1923 and official editor in 1925. As editor he tried to steer the Freiheit into a more broad left direction and resisted pressures to make its content dogmatically communist. A member of the LovestoneJay Lovestone
Jay Lovestone was at various times a member of the Socialist Party of America, a leader of the Communist Party USA, leader of a small oppositionist party, an anti-Communist and Central Intelligence Agency helper, and foreign policy advisor to the leadership of the AFL-CIO and various unions...
faction within the party he resigned the editorship in spring 1929 during intense factional warfare within the party. In August 1929 both Epstein and Moissaye Joseph Olgin
Moissaye Joseph Olgin
Moissaye Joseph Olgin was a Russian-born writer, journalist, and translator in the early 20th century. He began his career writing for the Jewish press in support of the Russian Revolution in 1910. During the First World War, he moved to the United States in 1915, settling in New York City, where...
, the new Freiheit editor were censured by the party for taking a pro-Yishuv
Yishuv
The Yishuv or Ha-Yishuv is the term referring to the body of Jewish residents in Palestine before the establishment of the State of Israel...
stand in reporting on the out break of violence in Palestine. Under party pressure the paper changed its analysis reporting the revolt as a national liberation movement against the British and their Zionist collaborators. That fall Epstein was relieved of all other party offices and was sent to the Soviet Union to "improve his communist morale".
He returned in 1931. No longer on the staff of Freiheit, he became educational director of the TUUL Needle Trades Workers Industrial Union and editor of its weekly Needle Worker. He was allowed to return to the Freiheit during the transition to the popular front period in the mid-1930s. In 1936 he was sent to Palestine, officially as a Freiheit correspondent, but actually as an emissary to the Palestine Communist Party
Palestine Communist Party
The Palestine Communist Party was a political party in British Mandate of Palestine formed in 1923 through the merger of the Palestinian Communist Party and the Communist Party of Palestine...
. The out break of yet another revolt strained relations between the CPUSA and American Jewry. The Comintern was silent on what stance to take, so they decided to send a personal envoy to the sister party to co-ordinate strategy. Epstein learned that the party was being rapidly "Arabized" and was taking a more and militant stand against the Zionists and the Yishuv in general. While in Palestine Epstein learned of the out break of the Spanish Civil War
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
. Without waiting for word from the party or Freiheit he sailed to Barcelona
Barcelona
Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...
and became one of the first American journalists on the scene. He stayed in Spain for three months sending dispatches back to Freiheitfrom the front lines.
Post-communist years
Melech Epstein broke with the party in August, 1939 after the Nazi-Soviet pact. This was the final event which sealed his disillusionment with the party, though he had been having misgivings for a decade since the beginning of the Third PeriodThird Period
The Third Period is a ideological concept adopted by the Communist International at its 6th World Congress, held in Moscow in the summer of 1928....
and then the show trials in the late 1930s. He went off to Mexico where he visited Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky , born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and theorist, Soviet politician, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army....
and Diego Riviera. When he came back to America he briefly joined the staff of The Forward
The Forward
The Forward , commonly known as The Jewish Daily Forward, is a Jewish-American newspaper published in New York City. The publication began in 1897 as a Yiddish-language daily issued by dissidents from the Socialist Labor Party of Daniel DeLeon...
, but was fired soon after because he wouldn't go before the Dies committee or write sensationalistic material about the Communist Party. In 1943 he was hired by the Jewish Labor Committee
Jewish Labor Committee
The Jewish Labor Committee is an American secular Jewish organization dedicated to promoting labor union interests in Jewish communities, and Jewish interests within unions. The organization is headquartered in New York City, with local/regional offices in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago...
to go on fund raising tours for the underground Jewish resistance movement in Poland. Finally, in 1945 he became public relations director of the Cloakmakers Joint Board of ILGWU.
In the fall of 1947 he settled in Florida. There he wrote his two major books Jewish labor in U.S.A. and The Jew and communism, independently published through a "Trade Union Sponsoring Committee" which was partly funded by ILGWU.
Yiddish
- סאקא־װאנזעטי : די געשיכטע פון זײער מארטירערטום Saḳo-Ṿanzeṭi di geshikhṭe fun zeyer marṭirerṭum Nyu Yorḳ : Aroysgegebn fun der Yidisher seḳtsye ṿorḳers (ḳomunisṭishe) parṭey 1927
- אמעריקע : דער אינדוסטריעלער קריזיס און די רעװאליוציאניזירונג פון ארבעטער־קלאס. Ameriḳe: der indust̥rieler ḳrizis un di reṿolyutsyonizirung fun arbeṭer-ḳlas. Nyu Yorḳ : Inṭernatsyonaler arbeṭer ordn 1930
- סאוועטן־פארבאנד בויט סאציאליזם ווי אזוי דער פינף־יאר פלאן רופט זיך אפ אויף אלע געביטן פון לעבן / Soṿeṭn-Farband boyṭ sotsyalim ṿi azoy der finf-yor plan rufṭ zikh op oyf ale gebiṭn fun lebn Nyu Yorḳ : Inṭernatsyonaler arbeṭer ordn 1931
- די געשיכטע פון ארבעטער-קלאס אין אמעריקע Vol. 1,די געשיכטע פון ארבעטער-קלאס אין אמעריקע Vol. 2 Di geshikhṭe fun arbeṭer-ḳlas in Ameriḳe [New York] Farlag Internatsianaler Arbeter Ordn, 1935
- ישראל פײנבערג : קעמפער פאר פרײהײט און סאציאלער גערעכטיקײט Yiśrael Faynberg ḳemfer far frayhayṭ un sotsyaler gerekhṭiḳayṭ Nyu-Yorḳ : [o. fg.]
English
- May Day, 1934 New York City: Communist Party, New York District,
- Israel Feinberg, fighter for freedom and social justice New York : Lerman Pub. Co., 1948
- Jewish labor in U.S.A.; an industrial, political and cultural history of the Jewish labor movement.Vol. I 1882-1914. New York, Trade Union Sponsoring Committee 1950
- Jewish labor in U.S.A.; an industrial, political and cultural history of the Jewish labor movement. Vol. II 1914-1952. New York, Trade Union Sponsoring Committee 1953
- The Jew and communism; the story of early Communist victories and ultimate defeats in the Jewish community, U.S.A., 1919-1941. New York, Trade Union Sponsoring Committee 1959
- Profiles of eleven; profiles of eleven men who guided the destiny of an immigrant society and stimulated social consciousness among the American people. Detroit, Wayne State University PressWayne State University PressWayne State University Press , founded in 1941, is a university press that is part of Wayne State University. It publishes under its own name and also the imprints Painted Turtle and Great Lakes Books....
, 1965 - Pages from a colorful life; an autobiographical sketch Miami Beach, Fla., I. Block Pub. Co., 1971
- Random thoughts of a dying man Miami Beach, Fla., Jetti Epstein, 1979