Jewish Civil Rights Spurned For Jewish Separatism Jews Were Poor Myth Rabinowicz

The Legacy of Polish Jewry 1919-1939, by Harry Rabinowicz. 1965

The Untruth of Overall Jewish Poverty. Jewish Self-Imposed Apartheid. Proffered Civil Rights a Hindrance To, Not a Condition For, Jewish Assimilation. JUDENRAT Collaborationists Morally Responsible

In common with all too many books of this genre, Rabinowicz dwells on (what else?) Polish anti-Semitism. Yet in spite of himself, he pointedly comments: “A quarter of Polish Jews made a comfortable living. A half managed with difficulty to support themselves and the remaining quarter suffered fearful privations.”(p. 174). Bearing in mind the overall poverty of prewar Poland, and the supposed universality of Polish anti-Semitism, one is amazed to learn that three-quarters of Jews were at least holding their own! And, to top it all off, an astonishing quarter of Polish Jews were living comfortably. The inescapable conclusion is that Polish anti-Semitic attitudes and policies had been much more bark than bite.

JEWISH SELF-IMPOSED APARTHEID: WHY POLES RECOGNIZED JEWS AS THE “OTHER”

Rabinowicz is unambiguously clear as he writes, “Despite a continuous history of nearly ten centuries, the Jews were isolated from their fellow-citizens by religion, by culture, by language, even by dress. The Polish Jew had his own educational system, his own communal organization, his own youth movements, his press, theater, his party politics…Not only were there invisible walls between Jew and Pole, but there were even barriers between Jew and Jew. On the one side were the ultra-Orthodox Chassidim; on the other side were the Bundists who substituted Das Kapital of Karl Marx for the Torah of Moses.”(p. 148). (Parenthetically, this confirms that the Bund, a mainstream Jewish socialist political party, overlapped significantly with Communism.)

The Jews’ hostility to Poland was not only passive. Israel Zangwill, for instance, referred to Poles as “beggars on horseback”. (p. 183).

JEWS ACTUALLY PREFERRED TO PROTECT THEIR SEPARATISM THAN TO ACCEPT FULL CIVIL RIGHTS WITH POLES!

There is a common belief that Poles forced Jews into ghettos, when in actuality it was the WWII German conquerors who walled off the Jews. Prewar Jewish isolation was actually nonphysical in nature and self-imposed in origin. Thus, Rabinowicz describes this Jewish self-segregation, “Although there were no specific ghettos, the Jews invariably clustered together, building their fragile defenses against menacing neighbors. Differences of morals and mores set them apart from their non-Jewish neighbors and they fought to preserve their identity. IN GENERAL, THEY WERE DETERMINED NOT TO PURCHASE CIVIC EQUALITY AT THE PRICE OF ASSIMILATION…” (p. 11; Emphasis Added).

This is counterintuitive, to say the least! We are usually told that Jews did not want to assimilate so long as they were denied full equality with gentiles. Rabinowicz makes it clear that it was the other way around, and that the anti-assimilationist Jews (the majority) wanted to keep it that way.

JEWS AND COMMUNISM

Rabinowicz (p. 43) attempts to discount the Zydokomuna by citing estimates of no more than 10% of 1918-era Jews being Bolsheviks. But this percentage is many times that of the corresponding Polish percentage, and it does not factor the many Jews in influential positions in Communism that came out of this 10%.

JEWISH PEER PRESSURE: HENRY MORGENTHAU’S INVESTIGATION OF ALLEGED POLISH POGROMS CONDEMNED

Amazingly, Rabinowicz (p. 41) impugns American Jew Henry Morgenthau’s assimilationist motives, going as far as accusing him of whitewashing [!] the Poles with regards to the 1918 pogroms (only 280 Jewish deaths, not tens of thousands as reported in the press). Those readers familiar with Morgenthau’s investigation realize that he was actually quite critical of Poles (and, yes, also the Jews). Perhaps what Rabinowicz didn’t like was Morgenthau’s criticism of the latter. Of course, once one starts impugning motives, one could just as easily point out the Zionists’ intentional “awfulizing” of Diaspora Jews’ experiences (notably in prewar Poland) for the purpose of Jewish political power.

THE JEWISH ECONOMIC HEGEMONY OVER POLAND

The reader may understand why Poles sought to limit Jewish influence, through formal and informal discriminatory policies, once one remembers the competition for scarce opportunities in poverty-stricken Poland combined with the very lopsided Jewish presence in many fields of endeavor. At 10% of the population, Jews constituted a staggering 74% of those engaged in trade and commerce (p. 70). Also, according to Rabinowicz, “Some trades, such as grain and timber, were almost exclusively developed by Jews. Jews supplied 40 percent of all shoemakers, 35 percent of all bakers, more than 33 percent of all glaziers and 75 percent of all barbers. They controlled 95.6 percent of all the leather and fur industries, 25 percent of the metallurgical and chemical works, and 40 per cent of the printing industry.”(p. 67). Just before WWII, Jews accounted for 53% of all lawyers (p. 76) and a declining range of 55.5 percent through 35.8 percent of all physicians (p. 75). In the early 1920’s, before the numerus clausus, 24.6 percent of all university students were Jews, and the percentage was much higher in some departments. Using modern parlance, formal Polish discriminatory policies (e. g., the numerus clausus, state monopolies, etc.) can be thought of as manifestations of affirmative action, designed less to constrain the Jews than to expand the opportunities for Poles in Jewish-dominated fields. This can also be applied to informal discriminatory polices (e. g., economic boycotts), which can be framed in terms of “Support your fellow Polish merchant” rather than “Don’t buy from a Jewish merchant.”

THE 1937 SCHECHITA LAW IN POLAND WAS NOT DIRECTED AT JEWISH RELIGION

Rabinowicz (p. 179) sees government-sponsored anti-schechitah legislation, ostensibly for the humane slaughter of animals, as being actually motivated by the desire to reduce the degree of Jewish dominance of the meat and cattle trade. However, it is interesting to note that the method pressed by the Polish government (stunning of animals before cutting their throats) is the very procedure that is almost universally used today by developed nations.

YES, JEWISH-NAZI COLLABORATORS CAN BE RESPONSIBLE FOR THEIR ACTIONS

Rabinowicz quotes Rabbi Samuel Solomon and his denunciations of WWII Jewish collaborators: “’Whoever treads the lintels of the Judenrat [the Jewish council appointed by the Nazis],’ he warned, ‘will forfeit both worlds, for they are aiding the Nazis in the extermination of the Jews.’”(p. 140).