Jewish Disloyalty 1863 Opalski

Poles and Jews: A Failed Brotherhood, by Magdalena Opalski, Israel Bartal. 1992

Limited Jewish Support for the Poles’ Ill-Fated January 1863 Insurrection. Jewish Profiteering in the Wake of Russian Repressions Against Poles

This book surveys the attitudes of Jews and Poles to each other during the second half of the 19th century, doing so through their respective bodies of literature. Consider this backdrop: “Generally speaking, the 1850’s were marked by a sense of growing economic competition between Poles and Jews.” (p. 16).

THE JANUARY 1863 INSURRECTION: LIMITED JEWISH SUPPORT (AND THEN ONLY IN CENTRAL RUSSIAN-RULED POLAND)

Opalski and Bartal summarize Jewish attitudes towards the 1863 Polish insurrection against Russian rule as follows: “In general, pro-Polish attitudes among the Jews were most pronounced in Warsaw (where the acculturation process was most advanced) and the neighboring provinces. The tradition of loyalty to the Crown prevailed in the eastern provinces of Poland’s Russian partition, whose economic backwardness preserved traditional barriers intact…the conservative, religious masses rarely identified with Polish objectives.” (pp. 2-4). Those “conservative, religious masses’, of course, comprised the overwhelming majority of Polish Jews. However, Jewish disloyalty to Poland was not limited to the backwards element of the Jewish population. The Jewish maskilim (the enlightened) were, for the most part, also not supportive of the Polish cause. (p. 83).

For a time, the 1863 insurrection did somewhat bring Poles and Jews closer together. Opalski and Bartal provide some detail of the Jewish manifestations of support for the cause of Poland’s independence. There were, for example, patriotic songs sung in churches and synagogues, common singing of songs by Poles and Jews in public places, exchange of gifts between houses of prayer, and joint mourning for the loss of Poland’s independence. (p. 42). Some Jewish writers juxtaposed the historical experiences of the then-recent Poles with those of the ancient Jews (pp. 51-52). Thus, Poland became Zion, and the Polish fighters were identified with the Maccabees. The fall of insurrectionary Warsaw was compared to the fall of Jerusalem, and the consequences of the 1863-1864 defeat were mapped to the Babylonian captivity and the destruction of the temple.
Unfortunately, even this brief and limited thaw in Polish-Jewish relations had questionable aspects, including in the eyes of some Jews. Opalski and Bartal comment, “It should be stressed that even extreme pro-Polish attitudes of some religious authorities, such as Rabbi [Dov Ber] Meisels, were interpreted by the Orthodox as a clever strategy to cope with the potentially dangerous Polish patriots rather than as an expression of real political affinity with the Polish cause.” (p. 149).

THE END OF THE BRIEF AND PARTIAL THAW

After the failed 1863 insurrection, Poles and Jews drifted further apart. Jewish prejudices against Poles were just as real as Polish prejudices against Jews. An example of the former is the following: “The Polish nobleman, referred to as porets in Hebrew and Yiddish texts, combined in the Jewish mind cruelty, capriciousness, violence, and rashness.” (p. 149). Such prejudices sometimes divided the generations: “Accordingly, Smolenskin’s Hersh Holdheim argues bitterly with his son, trying to depreciate the Poles and their culture and values in the young man’s eyes.” (p. 80).

PROPERTY ACQUISITION: A TWO-WAY STREET. SOME JEWS TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE POLES’ DEFEAT

A great deal of recent attention (as by media-acclaimed Jan T. Gross) has been devoted to the fact that Poles acquired post-Jewish properties in the wake of the extermination of the Polish Jews during WWII. Some have portrayed this as unjust enrichment, even some type of deep moral issue, and one that furthermore cast the Poles as exploiters and plunderers. It is therefore somewhat ironic that the shoe was first on the other foot some 80 years earlier! One theme of Polish writers, following the failed 1863 insurrection against tsarist Russia, was the circumstances under which Jews had acquired Polish and post-Polish properties. For example: “Maria Rodziewiczowna attributes the sudden prosperity of a Lithuanian shtetl to Jewish trade in the confiscated property of rebels.” (p. 128). Furthermore, “The town’s Jews hurry to buy cattle confiscated during the brutal pacification of a petty nobleman’s village, whose entire population was deported to Siberia. They also take advantage of the political situation to purchase wooden lots from Polish noblemen at low prices.” (p. 129).

THE LITVAKS (LITWAKS) MOVE INTO CENTRAL RUSSIAN-RULED POLAND

Let us now consider the late 19th century. The divisive nature of the Litvaks is described as follows: “The harsh anti-Jewish policies in Russia and their consequences–pogroms, impoverishment, and massive dislocation of the Jewish population–affected the Congress Kingdom in yet another way. From the 1880’s on, there was a substantial influx of Jews from the Lithuanian, Russian, and Ukrainian provinces of the empire into the Congress Kingdom, the so-called Litvak invasion–which added a new source of Polish-Jewish tensions. The Litvaks, Russian-speaking Jewish immigrants, faced a certain amount of hostility from the local Jews because of cultural differences and economic competition. They also provided a focus for the anti-Jewish views of Polish nationalists, who accused them of being agents of Russification and the driving force behind Jewish political separatism.” (pp. 104-105).