Undemonizing Dmowski Ury

Barricades and Banners: The Revolution of 1905, by Scott Ury. 2012

Jew-on-Jew Violence. Jewish Social Problems. Roman Dmowski Undemonized. Endek Activism and Boycotts of Jews

CASUISTRY IN ACTION

Scott Ury provides unusual, and sometimes arcane, detail on the social dislocations caused by the rapidly growing Jewish population of Russian-ruled Warsaw about 1900. For example, some religious Jews circumvented Sabbath prohibitions against financial transactions by paying for their drink on Friday, and then bringing the receipt on Sabbath day (Saturday) so that they could drink beer or wine on the Sabbath. (pp. 325-326).

POGROMS: JEWS AGAINST JEWS

Social problems developed. Prostitution (pp. 61-on), violence (pp. 70-on), fraud (pp. 76-on), etc., were quite common among the Jews. For all the customary general attention given to goy-on-Jew violence (pogroms), the reader may be surprised to learn of significant Jew-on-Jew violence. (p. 73, pp. 81-on).

UNDEMONIZING ROMAN DMOWSKI AND THE ENDEKS A BIT

The author goes beyond Brian Szucs-Porter and his leftist “Endek politics of hate” notion to focus on the growing mass appeal of the National Democrats. Many of Ury’s ideas are self-refuting. For instance, he tries to make the Litvak (Litvake, Litwak) problem into some kind of Endek bogeyman, on parallel with the later Zydokomuna (Bolshevized Judaism). (p. 235, 240). Ury then turns around and admits that some Jews themselves opposed the Litvaks and used this very term! (p. 204, 355). In addition, as shown later in this review (Chronology), Ury himself indirectly acknowledges the validity of the Litvak problem, albeit without then using the term.

Ury berates the Endeks for thinking of Jews as perpetual foreigners, and disloyal to Poland. (see Endek quote, p. 253, which states, “Poland accepted You, and settled You on her lands at a time when You were persecuted and expelled from everywhere else…However, Polish lands were never a motherland for You. And now, at a moment when the entire people stand in a battle for their national rights and liberation, the entire population has found an enemy in You instead of a partner…Abandon this dangerous game or You will bring unhappiness on yourself.”).

To put matters in perspective, Jewish aloofness to the Polish cause had long preceded even the birth of Dmowski (1864) (again, see Chronology below). In fact, the strong Jewish sense of particularism and separatism, based originally on religious considerations, went back to antiquity.

Early Jewish political initiatives were aimed at the accentuation of Jewish particularism, not in the building of bridges to Polish national aspirations. Thus, the communal GMINA (self-government, in this case Jewish, dating from at least 1870 in Warsaw: p. 36) was essentially elitist, and directly accountable to the Russian rulers of Poland. (p. 49).

Jewish publications, as in Warsaw, inveighed against the Endeks as “chauvinists” and “the party of pogroms” (p. 202). In reality, Endeks welcomed Pole-supporting Jews (see next paragraph), sometimes endorsed Jewish candidates (p. 202), and specifically opposed any form of violence against Jews, even in the event of Jews turning completely against Poles and the Polish cause. (See quoted paragraph, p. 252).

Without intending to, Ury demolishes the premise, that Endeks were chauvinists and anti-Semites, when he quotes from an April 1906 Endek flier that makes it clear that Endeks were not against ALL Jews. The excerpt states that, (quote) This means that Jews, who represent one third of the population of Warsaw, prefer that our capital send their representatives to the Duma, representatives who will advocate their interests and not defend the rights of the country. We are not talking about all Jews without exception; we are not talking about those who truly feel like Poles, but about the overwhelming majority. That majority feels no solidarity toward the country or toward Polish society. If that were not the case, then they would not go out on their own and would not separate from us during the elections. (unquote)(p. 231).

Interestingly, some Warsaw-area Jews did vote for Endek and Endek-supported candidates. Some did so sincerely, for which the separatist-oriented Jews attacked them as MA YOFES (“Uncle Toms”). (p. 196, 345; see also p. 201). However, most fascinating of all is a Jewish publication that reveals the REAL reason animating the usual Jewish conduct. It was not merely hostility to Endeks. It was hostility to POLAND, pure and simple. The publication, a 1907 edition of IDISHES TAGEBLAT, states, (quote) “not for you, Jews, but for the good of Poland, and for the happiness of the Polish people.” (unquote)(p. 202, 346).

ENDEK ACTIVISM AND PUBLIC MANIFESTATIONS

Endek-led rallies in Warsaw sometimes had over 100,000 participants. In October 1905, there was a massive Endek demonstration in Warsaw in which the participants sang BOZE COS POLSKE and Z DYMEM PORANOW [actually Z DYMEM POZAROW], and carried drawings of the Polish Eagle, as well as signs such as “Long live a free and independent Poland.” (pp. 133-134). This corrects the common misconception of Endeks as ones who were “pro-tsarist” and interested only in Polish “organic work”.

THE MUCH-CONDEMNED ENDEK BOYCOTTS OF JEWS IN PERSPECTIVE

Finally, it turns out that the eventual Dmowski-led retaliatory boycott of Jews in 1912 had precedent, even in the narrow context of Duma-related politics. In 1906, most Jewish revolutionary parties listened to the Bolshevik call to boycott the elections to the First Duma. (p. 181).

————

Now Consider some Chronology:

Author Scott Ury introduces Jewish history in the context of pre-Partition and post-Partition Poland. Ury mentions the Jewish supporters of Polish independence, such as Rabbi Markus Jastrow (1823-1903) and Rabbi Dov Ber Meisels (1798-1870), but acknowledges the fact that most of Poland’s Jews, even in the capital, Warsaw, at no time felt any sense of duty towards the foreign-occupied Polish nation. He writes, (quote) On the political plane, the Polish insurrections of 1830-1831 and 1863 are often seen as moments of truth for Warsaw’s Jewish integrationists and their designs for large-scale reforms of “the Jews”. Caught between Russian desires for imperial rule, on the one hand, and Polish desires for national autonomy, on the other, most of Warsaw’s Jews avoided taking open public positions on these questions. (unquote)(p. 34).

After the fall of the January 1863 Insurrection, the tsarist authorities sharpened their repressions of Poland, In fact, the Russians delegitimized Poland entirely referring to her central part as Vistulaland. (p. 6).

The Litvak (Litwak) problem became a significant one that early antagonized Poles and Jews. (The Litvaks, coming from not only Wilno (Vilnius), but also other parts of former-Poland’s heavily tsarist-ruled eastern territories, increasingly infecting the relatively autonomous Warsaw-area Jews with Russification, atheism, Communism, and especially anti-Polonism.)

Although Ury does not introduce the actual term Litvak until later, and then, as noted earlier, to hit the Endeks for thinking it, he tacitly acknowledges its long-precedent reality. He comments, (quote) In Warsaw, the rapid growth of the entire Jewish population in the FOUR DECADES PREDEDING THE REVOLUTION OF 1905 shocked both the larger society and Jewish residents as the city came to dominate social, financial, and cultural spheres in Congress Poland. While some scholars have pointed to a relatively high birth rate among Jews as the primary cause of this population explosion, Shaul Stampfer, Stephen Corrsin, and others have argued convincingly that Jewish in-migrants from other parts of the Russian Empire contributed considerably to the population boom. As a result of these demographic changes, some 50 percent of the city’s Jewish residents in 1897 were born outside of the city. (unquote)(emphasis added)(pp. 50-51).

Note that the Litvak problem began about 1865, which was long BEFORE the “rise of Polish anti-Semitism”. Thus, Jan Jelenski’s ROLA did not begin until 1883, and then its circulation and influence remained small for some time. (p. 37). Furthermore, according to Theodore R. Weeks, Jelenski’s “Judeophobic” views remained a minority voice in Polish society until about 1900. (p. 286). As the title of this review states, Jewish-Polish hostilities were largely concurrent. (p. 20).

The Endeks themselves were a relatively recent development. The Polish League was formed in 1887, and was subsequently renamed the National League in 1893 and the National Democrats (Endeks), in 1897. (p. 30).