POLES AND JEWS
The conflict between the Poles and Jews dates back to the earliest period of Jewish life in Poland.
In its early stages it was purely religious. The Church Synod of 1542 declared that: “Whereas the Church tolerates the Jews for the sole purpose of reminding us of the torments of the Savior, their number must not increase under any circumstances.”[15]
The Synod of 1733 reiterated this gospel of hate by declaring that the reason for the existence of the Jews is:
“That they might remind us of the tortures of the Savior, and by their abject and miserable condition might serve as an example of the first chastisement of God inflicted upon the infidels.”[16]
In its later stages the struggle was chiefly political and economic. When Russia acquired Poland, through the several partitions in the eighteenth century, it frankly adopted the old Roman principle of DIVIDE ET IMPERA. It persistently fomented hostilities between the Polish and Jewish population by crowding them together in a restricted area where neither could make a decent livelihood, by pitting them against each other in an economic struggle conducted on the lowest possible plane and on the most hopeless terms, by playing off religious and racial prejudices and by every other device possible to a government with unlimited power and an unprincipled policy. And the Poles, politically undeveloped, instead of combining with the other victims of Russia against the common oppressor, turned upon their fellows with a ferocity truly unparalleled in European history.
Several years before the war broke out this struggle came to a climax over the election of a deputy to the Duma. The Jews of Poland felt that they were entitled to at least one member to represent them in the Duma, particularly in the city of Warsaw, where they constitute nearly half of the population. It happened, however, that in the city of Lodz they unexpectedly elected one Jewish deputy, Bomash. The Jews, therefore, seeking to conciliate the Poles and not to wound their national pride by insisting upon the election of a Jewish deputy from Warsaw, the ancient Polish capital, offered to compromise, stipulating only that the Polish candidate be not an avowed anti-Semite. The Poles, however, insisted upon putting up a notorious anti-Semite. The Jews, equally unable to support such a candidate in self-respect or to elect one of their own, united on a Polish Socialist candidate, electing him to the Duma. This led to retaliation in the form of a boycott directed not only at Jewish tradesmen, but even at Jewish physicians, artisans and other workingmen, which soon spread destitution throughout Poland, affecting, as it did, Jews and Poles alike. So ugly and bitter a form did the boycott assume that at times even the Russian government was compelled to take the part of the Jews as against the Poles.
Anti-Semitism in Poland
A significant observation upon the economic character of the Polish-Jewish struggle was made by the well known Russian journalist, Madam A. E. Kuskova.
“I found red-hot anti-Semitism everywhere in Poland. We have anti-Semitism in Russia, but of a different kind.... Anti-Semitic papers like ‘Dva Grosha’ accused all Jews of all sorts of crimes, without protest from the Progressive press, and succeeded in arousing the Polish people. In Pyasechna, a ruined place near Warsaw, where ten-day battles took place, I spoke to many peasants who accused the Jews of many of their troubles, but could never explain what they really blamed them for. We Russians held a meeting to try to find the causes of this feeling.... We came to the conclusion that ... the Polish-Jewish question is really a Russian-Polish-Jewish question, and touches us as much as the Poles. They have not room enough to live, and more and more Jews are coming there. Even democratic organizations are compelled to take cognizance of this. One peasant organization expresses through its organ the idea that it is true that the Jews are a burden to Poland, but it warns the peasants against anti-Semitism nevertheless.”[17]