Jewish Disloyalty 1945 BUND Endorsed Red Rule Blatman

For Our Freedom and Yours, by Daniel Blatman. 2003

Revealing: The Bund Wholeheartedly and Openly Supported the Soviet-Imposed Communist Puppet State in Post-WWII Poland

By way of introduction, author Daniel Blatman has recently (late 2018) become the newly appointed chief historian of the ‘Warsaw Ghetto Museum’ in Poland. Ironic to some of the statements he makes in this book, described below, he has been accused by some Jews of now being a “willing tool” of the Polish government!

Much of this book is a rehash of the tired, old Jewish accusations against Poland [e. g., about General Anders: (p. 74, 78); and about wartime Polish leaders not appreciating the (presumed) special-ness of what later became known as the Holocaust:( p. 139, 221)]. Blatman freely and uncritically repeats these, although in a manner that is not as strident as most Jewish authors. Unfortunately, Blatman, among other things, uncritically relies on anti-Polish authors such as Yisrael Gutman, David Engel, and Communist Shmuel Krakowski.

Even more significant is what Blatman does not say. He paints the Bund an organization striving for good Polish-Jewish relations, and avoids the fact that the Bund did not support the resurrection of the Polish state in 1918. He repeatedly either tiptoes around the fact and magnitude of the Zydokomuna, or repeats the canned, little-thought-out exculpations for the same.

The title of this book is itself a cultural misappropriation of a longstanding Polish patriotic slogan. Moreover, it is cynically ironic. Although the author does not put it this way, it soon become obvious that the Bund did not identify with Poland’s freedom: just the opposite. As had happened so many times before in history, the Jews commonly had sided with Poland’s enemies.

POLISH ANTISEMITISM A BIG DEAL: THE SOVIET MURDER OF TWO LEADING JEWS (HENRYK ERLICH AND WIKTOR ALTER) NOT SO MUCH

Blatman describes how the USSR leadership correctly had calculated that any political damage caused by its murders of Erlich and Alter (“Jewish leaders, men of stature in the Jewish leadership of interwar Poland”: p. 224) would be minimal, “The Soviet government was not concerned about the waves of protest that the report would generate, and it was right: the protests ebbed several weeks later.” (p. 85).

Meanwhile, quite a few Jews were more exorcized by accusations of (what else?) alleged anti-Semitism in General Anders’ Army (p. 74, 78) and in the Polish Army stationed in Great Britain. (p. 115). Go figure.

Now imagine if it had been the Polish government that had slain Henryk Erlich and Wiktor Alter. We would not have heard the end of it! The media would have run nonstop stories about (what else?) Polish anti-Semitism, and about how horrible and nationalistic is Poland.

THE BUND EARLY REPEATS COMMUNIST PROPAGANDA ABOUT POLAND’S LEGITIMATE GOVERNMENT

Author Daniel Blatman goes out of his way to paint the Bund an anti-Communist organization. In doing so, he avoids discussing the previous coziness of the Bund with Communism. Now here is how Blatman discusses the attitudes of the Bund in relation to the Polish government in exile in London (March 1942):

“So who is in exile, especially in London? Most of them are representatives of the ANCIEN REGIME…Can one insist that representatives acquire an understanding of the new times that are coming? Are they capable of perceiving that the Polish masses, now fighting the invader in the trenches of the underground, are not struggling for just any Poland but for a democratic Poland, a socialist Poland, a peasants’ and workers’ Poland?’” (p. 58).

Notice that this early Bundist characterization of this legitimate Polish government, as a bunch of reactionary has-beens out of step with the “new times” that are coming, is straight out of Communist propaganda, and the memes of professed concern about the fate of the peasant and worker even more so.

But wait. It gets even better.

THE BUND SINGS THE PRAISES OF THE SOVIET-IMPOSED COMMUNIST PUPPET GOVERNMENT

Fast forward to April 1945. The Bund continued to show its true colors. It actually repeated and endorsed the Communist newspeak about Poland a “democratic” state. Blatman quotes a resolution, by Bund members in Lublin, that included the following gem,

“‘The committee expresses its gratitude and appreciation to the Soviet Union for its contribution in obliterating German fascism and German, Italian, and Japanese imperialism, and for its contribution toward the creation of a socialist and democratic society in post-liberation Poland.’” (p. 168).

THE BUND ENDORSES THE COMMUNIST ENSLAVEMENT OF POLAND, AND SMEARS POLAND’S LEGITIMATE GOVERNMENT (IN LONDON) TO BOOT

During the first national conference of the Bund in postwar Poland, in June 16-17, 1945, as described by Blatman, the following took place, “The conference…expressed full support for the Polish government in the social and economic reforms that it was planning; and voice its opposition to the Polish government-in-exile in London, which, in view of the committee members, represented the reactionary and anti-Semitic forces in Polish society that were spearheading the campaign of incitement against the Jews.” (p. 173).