Jewish Disloyalty 1914 Levene

War, Jews and the New Europe: Diplomacy of Lucien Wolf, 1914-19, by Mark Levene. 2009

Various Manifestations of Jewish Hostility to the Resurrection of Poland. Counterintuitively, However, Dmowski was FLEXIBLE on Jews

This book focuses on different political positions, personages, and developments concerning Jews during this pivotal time in history. Lucien Wolf was a Polonized Jew and, despite his membership in the Jewish-separatist BUND, supported Polonization among Poland’s Jews. (p. 168). Wolf recognized the Jews’ pivotal role in the 1905 Russian revolution. (p. 12). As late as at least 1917, Wolf supported the empires. (p. 179).

POGROMS IN ENGLAND: THE BRITISH SHOULD NOT WAX SELF-RIGHTEOUS ABOUT POGROMS IN POLAND

Ironic to the attention given to pogroms in eastern Europe at the time, such events also occurred in the “tolerant” west. Levene notes that, “Riots against immigrant Jewish shopkeepers in Tredegar and other Welsh towns in 1911 unsettled the conviction that Britain was exempt from manifestations of continental-type anti-Semitism.” (p. 23).

A SELECTIVE INDIGNATION OVER ANTI-SEMITISM

The premise that Jewish non-support for a resurrection of Poland owed to Polish anti-Semitism does not hold. After all, tsarist Russian Jews [which–not mentioned–were largely descended from Russified Polish Jews] had no problem being pro-Russian despite the ferocity of Russian anti-Semitism. Levene says, “Despite decades of persecution and discrimination, Russian Jews loyally rallied to the imperial cause in August 1914.” (p. 48). So Jewish disloyalty to Poland had nothing to do with anti-Semitism!

JEWISH ECONOMIC SELF-INTEREST MAKES THEM CHOOSE TO ACT AGAINST POLAND

Economic developments alone tended to make Jews supportive of the Poland-subjugating empires (and implicitly against changes in the status quo such as the resurrection of a Polish state). Levene comments, (quote) In the vanguard of nineteenth-century developments transforming peasant feudal economies into neo-capitalist ones, these Jews were encouraged, favoured, and sometimes ennobled by their imperial masters, and they in response adopted the culture of their milieu and identified with its aspirations…A trading and commercial intermediary, the Jew had little ground for identification with [various nationality] peasants bound together only by imperial rule, but did have cause for allegiance to an empire opened up by his entrepreneurial skills…S. Poliakov: `Morally and economically the Jews are interested in the unity of the Russian empire…dismemberment would be a big blow to them.’ (unquote). (p. 164).

Levene continues, (quote) Traditionally, Jewry’s overwhelming involvement in local, regional, and international trade and finance had prospered not only by dint of a vast network of family/commercial contacts but also through unimpeded access to markets. The empire favoured this state of things. Fragmentation did not. (unquote). (p. 169). In addition to all this, Jews preferred to be a large minority in one empire instead of a series of smaller minorities in many nations. (p. 185). Finally, were Poland resurrected, the Russified erstwhile Polish Jews (Litvaks, or Litwaks) would be geographically isolated from, and lose their ties to, Russia. (p. 185).

JEWS CONDEMN DMOWSKI, YET SOMETIMES ADMIT THAT HE WAS RIGHT

Although author Levene condemns Roman Dmowski as an anti-Semite, he tacitly validates many of Dmowski’s points, as is obvious from previous paragraphs of this review. Levene also tacitly realizes that Dmowski’s views of Jews were very similar to Jewish Zionists’ views of Jews, as condemned by anti-Zionist Jews: (quote) By contesting that Jews could not be elements of the political nations of Britain, France, or elsewhere but were a distinct corporate national entity, they [the Zionists] seemed to be both consciously undermining citizen rights already obtained…As J. H. Levy put it, `IF WE PROCLAIM OUTSELVES ALIENS…I AM AT A LOSS TO UNDERSTAND ON WHAT GROUND WE CAN CRY OUT THAT WE ARE BEING UNJUSTLY TREATED AS FOREIGNERS.” (unquote). (p. 110; Emphasis added).

JEWS HAD MADE THEMSELVES THE PERPETUAL OTHER

(Quote)…Max Nordau’s proclamation at the Sixth Zionist Congress that all Jews were unassimilable, however much they attempted otherwise, played straight into the hands of those who argued that the Jews would never be dependable as citizens. (unquote)(p. 110). Any why not?

THE 1912 ELECTIONS: NO VALID EXCUSE FOR POLISH JEWS NOT SUPPORTING POLISH INTERESTS

In the 1912 elections to the Duma, the candidates were Jan Kucharzewski, Socialist Wladyslaw Jagello, and Roman Dmowski. The Warsaw Jews voted for Jagello over Kucharzewski because, they said, the latter was an anti-Semite. This is a smokescreen. Kucharzewski wanted Jewish rights to develop throughout Russia before he would endorse them. (p. 181). Wolf himself rejected the contention that Kucharzewski was a Dmowski-style anti-Semite. (p. 198).

DMOWSKI NO DOCTRINAIRE ANTI-SEMITE: HE WAS WILLING TO CHANGE IF THE JEWS WOULD CHANGE

Unlike the way he is usually portrayed, Roman Dmowski was surprisingly flexible in his policies towards Jews. In November 1918, Dmowski (and in January 1919, Grabski) offered to cancel the economic boycott of Jews in return for American Jewry urging Polish Jews to support Polish national aspirations, including the re-acquisition of Polish cities and territories such as Danzig (Gdansk), Lemberg (Lwow), and Teschen (Cieszyn). (pp. 239-240).

POLAND…OR ISRAEL?

Interestingly, Tadeusz Gaszynski was open to Polish Jews providing evidence demonstrating that their aspirations and interests were in the new Polish state. Otherwise, Jews should consider themselves members of the Jewish nationality and their home was Palestine. (p. 122).

THE PLURALISM OF JEWISH INFLUENCE ON GOVERNMENTS

Levene addresses the question of Jewish power and influence. He argues that there was no monolithic body of influential Jews regarding the different sides in WWI. (pp. 26-28). Likewise, he contends that international Jewish bankers had only a limited influence on political developments. For example, although American Jewish banker Jacob Schiff and the English Rothschilds had tried to alleviate the persecution of Russian Jews by the judicious offering or refusing to offer loans, they could not persuade other Jewish bankers to do the same. (pp. 56-57). Against the contention that Jacob Schiff was pro-German, he was allegedly about to grant a loan to Russia in exchange for progress regarding its Jews. (p. 82).

SHADES OF JUDEOPOLONIA

Israel Bodenheimer, described as a prominent German Zionist (p. 52), is best known to Poles for his proposal of a German-ruled Judeopolonia [See the Peczkis review of Jews in Poland: A Documentary History], a matter to which Levene indirectly alludes. (p. 175). The Germans sponsored Bodenheimer’s Kommittee fur den Osten, and encouraged Jewish power and culture in territories the Germans held during WWI. In fact, they named Ludwig Haas, a Jew, as head of the Jewish department of the German civil administration in occupied Poland. (p. 84).