Encyclopaedia Judaica
Jews in Poland 06: Revival 1944-1947
Rescue of Jewish children after 1944 - installation of new Jewish institutions - racist Zionists dominating the non-Zionists - Polish Jews coming back from central Russia or staying in Russia - cultural life
from: Poland; In: Encyclopaedia Judaica 1971, vol. 13
presented by Michael Palomino (2008)
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<AFTER WORLD WAR II.
Rescue of Jewish Children.
[Jewish orphans]
When Poland was liberated in 1945, thousands of orphaned and abandoned Jewish children were wandering through villages and in the streets of the towns. Many were found in Polish homes and in convents. Some had been baptized, and some had been exploited by the peasants as a source of cheap labor. The official Jewish committees (komitety) established institutions for homeless children. Jewish parents applied to the Jewish organizations for help in finding children, who had been entrusted to non-Jewish families in order to save their lives but later disappeared without trace. Some Poles refused to return Jewish children, either because they had become attached to them or (col. 777)
because they demanded financial remuneration for maintaining the child and for the risk they had incurred in hiding Jews from the Germans. There were a few cases of Jewish children living under conditions of starvation and terror. With the mass repatriations from the Soviet Union, 31,700 children under 14 years of age returned to Poland, including many hundreds of orphans, who also needed immediate care.
[Work with Jewish orphans: Official Jewish committees - Jewish Religious Council - racist Zionist movement "Coordination"]
Three separate bodies worked to save Jewish children. The first of these, the official Jewish committees, acting under the auspices [[protection]] of the authorities, maintained 11 boarding schools with a total of 1,135 orphans, and day schools and nurseries which cared for about 20,000 children. The youth department of the committees cared for about 7,700 boys and girls. Material conditions were good, but education was oriented toward Polish assimilation.
The second, the Jewish Religious Council (Kongregacja), sent people to redeem [[purchase back]] children from Polish homes, particularly at the request of religious relatives. These children were delivered to their relatives abroad, or sent to be adopted by Jewish families in the [[criminal, racist]] United States, Great Britain, and other countries.
The third organization was established by the [[racist]] Zionist movement, and given the abbreviated name of the "Coordination" (Koordynacja). Its emissaries wandered through Poland to rescue children, very often risking their lives in doing so. The Koordynacja established four children's homes, which housed hundreds of children aged between two and 12. The older children were sent to "children's kibbutzim" of the youth movements. Funds were supplied mainly by the *American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC).
[Special teacher training after the Holocaust]
The special psychological problems of the Holocaust period, such as fear and hatred of Jews, necessitated the establishment of a special seminary for educators at Lodz. The Koordynacja systematically sent children abroad, with the intention of finally enabling them to reach Palestine. By the end of 1947, more than 500 children had been taken out of Poland. Together with their teachers and educators they entered *Youth Aliyah institutions in Germany, Austria, and France, most of them settling later in the State of Israel. Scores [[big groups]] of Jewish children are believed to have remained in Poland, mainly in Catholic institutions and convents.
[S.N.] (col. 778)
Renewal of Jewish Life.
[New Jewish Committee with survivors - renamed "Central Committee of the Jews in Poland" - newspapers]
The first attempts to renew Jewish life took place in Lublin, the seat of the Polish Committee of National Liberation. In a manifesto issued on July 20, 1944, this committee published a solemn declaration assuring equal rights and full rehabilitation to the survivors of Polish Jewry. The Jewish Committee was formed to extend emergency aid to Jews converging [[coming together]] on Lublin from the liberated parts of Poland.
[[This part was not "liberated" but is was occupied by Soviet Communist forces. Encyclopaedia Judaica never mentions Gulag and mass death under the Soviet system]].
This group included adults who returned from the forests and other hiding places or who miraculously survived the concentration camps, and children who found refuge in convents or with individual Polish families.
In October 1944 the Jewish Committee was renamed the Central Committee of the Jews in Poland and moved to Warsaw when the Polish capital was liberated. The committee was composed of representatives of the various Jewish parties and was presided over by the [[racist]] Zionist Emil *Sommerstein. At first it was primarily concerned with providing material assistance to the Jewish survivors and facilitating their return to a productive life. Before long, however, the committee extended the range of its activities to social and cultural spheres.
By 1945 it comprised ten districts (wojewódstwa), two subdistricts, and about 200 local committees. Several dozen Jewish cooperatives, in a variety of trades, and 34 Jewish farms run by several hundreds of Jewish agricultural laborers were founded. A considerable number of Jewish weeklies and bi-weeklies, representing every shade of Jewish (col. 778)
political opinion, made their appearance. Among them was the organ of the Central Committee, Das Naye Lebn [[The New Life]].
[Founding of Jewish schools]
An elementary school having Yiddish as the language of instruction with Hebrew as a compulsory subject was established in Lodz. There was also a society of Jewish writers, journalists, and actors in that city, while in Lower Silesia the Jewish Society for Art and Culture was formed. After the [[racist]] Zionist pioneering youth movements were reorganized, they established hundreds of training farms, children's homes, etc., and prepared their members for aliyah.
[Work of the Joint in Poland since 1945 - ORT schooling network - TOZ with mobile medical clinics]
In July 1945 the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) entered the Jewish scene in Poland. Through the Central Committee, it subsidized a variety of social welfare agencies, emphasizing the care of children, the aged, and the sick. In addition the JDC provided food, clothing, and medicine to educational and cultural institutions, and supported a variety of plans to help able-bodied men and women become productive again. The following year, *ORT began its work in Poland, creating a network of vocational schools. In the medical field TOZ provided the assistance. At the beginning of 1946, this organization was running eight mobile clinics, seven hospitals, and medical aid stations in all major cities.
[Polish Jews coming back from central Russia]
In addition to the 80,000 Jews already in Poland
[[add to this many were as D.P.s in western Germany, in Austria and in other parts of western Europe staying in the western Zones of Europe, not going back into the Communist zones, or fleeing from the Communist zones. Many also had changed their name or changed their religion with forged documents installing a new home and never were counted as Jews again]]
over 154,000 Polish Jews were repatriated from the U.S.S.R. in the summer of 1946, bringing the total Jewish population of Poland close to 250,000.
[[These were those Jews who had survived central Russia and came back. There were many they had been draft to the Soviet army and had died or stayed in western Europe, and there were another many who stayed in central Russia and in the Caucasus region believing that Communism would be a "good" system]].
The Polish government and the Communist-dominated ruling party (the Polish Workers' Party - PPR) encouraged the Central Committee in its social and cultural activities and lent support to the Jewish efforts to establish new economic foundations and restore communal life. At the same time, the government placed no obstacles in the path of Jews who wished to emigrate. It permitted the [[racist]] Zionist movement to exist and displayed a friendly attitude to the aspirations of the yishuv [[Jews in Palestine before Herzl Israel foundation, before 1948]] in Palestine and later to the [[racist Zionist Free Mason CIA Herzl]] State of Israel. Polish government support (or at least tolerance), aid from world Jewry, and, especially, the growth of the community by mass repatriation from U.S.S.R., led many Polish Jews in the immediate postwar period to believe that the conditions being created in the "new" Poland would enable them to live a free and full Jewish life.
[[Generally the conditions 1945-1948 in the Communist state were better for the Jews because the Stalin regime hoped that Israel would become a Communist satellite on the Mediterranean Sea. When it turned out that Israel would become a satellite of the criminal racist "USA" the Stalin regime turned it's line against the Jews and the conditions for the Jews in the Communist state deteriorated in general. In Poland the conditions already deteriorated in 1946 because of the strong anti-Semitism in the Polish population]].
Cultural, Religious, and Economic Life. [Jewish theater - publishing house, libraries, schooling]
At first these hopes had some basis in fact. In 1946-47 two Yiddish theaters were founded - in Lodz and Wroclaw [[Breslau]] - and employed some 80 actors. In 1950 they joined forces as the Jewish State Theater with a government subsidy under the direction of Ida *Kaminska. The theater discontinued its activities after 1968, when most of the Jews emigrated from Poland.
A publishing house and a literary monthly came into being. the Society for Art and Culture founded Jewish libraries, promoted amateur societies in various cultural fields, and arranged public lectures. The *Jewish Historical Institute embarked upon a program of collecting and publishing historical material on the Holocaust. According to figures published in the anniversary edition of Dos Naye Lebn [[The New Life]] (1945-47), the Central Committee's Board of Education served 34 Jewish schools staffed by 179 teachers and attended by 2,874 children.
[Religious schools and rabbis - Union of Religious Communities - Jewish cemeteries]
Jewish religious life was renewed in every town where Jews resettled. In prewar Poland there had been 2,000 rabbis, 8,000 ritual slaughterers and religious teachers, and 10,000 yeshivah students. Of these, only a few dozen rabbis, slaughterers, and about 100 yeshivah students survived the war, mainly in the U.S.S.R., but only a few of them refrained [[said no]] from emigrating and remained in postwar Poland.
Nevertheless, the Union of Religious Communities was established, comprising some 30 communities. The Union attended to Jewish religious needs by refurbishing [[renovating]] and using two synagogues which had (col. 779)
not been destroyed - one in Warsaw and the other in Wroclaw [[Breslau]] - establishing prayer-houses in all the communities, providing mazzot (maẓẓot) [[unleavened bread]] for Passover, arranging for the supply of kasher meat, and founding kasher public kitchens.
In cooperation with the Central Committee, the Union rededicated Jewish cemeteries and reburied according to Jewish rite the victims of Nazism buried in mass graves. (col. 780)
[Professions of Jews in Poland in 1947]
At the end of 1947, there were 200 Jewish cooperative societies, with a membership of 6,000. About 15,000 Jews were employed in communal institutions, coal mines, heavy industry, textile factories, and a variety of government and private factories; 124 Jewish families were employed on farms. By the end of 1946, ORT was conducting 49 different vocational courses staffed by 81 instructors and attended by over 1,100 pupils. Contact with Jewish communities outside of Poland was maintained by both the Central Committee and by the various [[racist]] Zionist groups which were active in the early postwar years. In the beginning of 1948, the Central Committee joined the *World Jewish Congress and participated in its meetings and conferences. (col. 780)
[1946-1947: Different Jewish mentalities: Jewish Communist want to stay in Poland - others want emigration - pogroms and flight movement under racist Zionist leadership]
The revival of a sound Jewish community life in Poland was the declared aim of those Jews who had been Communists before the war. They believed that the conditions were now ideal for the renewal of Jewish life and argued that a revived Jewish community would both demonstrate the vitality of the Jewish people and the failure of Nazism and other forms of anti-Semitism.
The majority of Polish Jews, however, including those who were being repatriated from the Soviet Union, did not want to reestablish their lives in Poland, where the Nazis had found thousands of collaborators among the local population eager to cooperate in the extermination of the Jews. (col. 780)
Sources
Encyclopaedia Judaica (1971): Poland, vol. 13, col. 777-778
Encyclopaedia Judaica (1971): Poland, vol. 13, col. 779-780
