General Jewish workers' union

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The General Jewish Workers' Union in Lithuania, Poland and Russia ( Yiddish אַלגעמײנער ייִדישער אַרבעטער־בונד אין ליטע, פּױלן און רוסלאַנד algemeyner yidisher arbeter-bund in lite, poyln un rusland , russian Всеобщий еврейский рабочий союз в Литве , Польше и России, which was commonly called The Bund (בו, Бунд97 ), was one of the Jewish workers from several yearsto 19 in the 35 years Eastern European countries was active. It is the nucleus of the Bundist movement and lives on today in several successor organizations (e.g. the International Jewish Labor Bund).

Beginnings

The General Jewish Workers' Union for Poland and Russia was founded on November 7, 1897 in Vilnius . The name was derived from the General German Workers' Association . At that time, Tsarist Russia also included Lithuania , Belarus , Ukraine, and much of Poland - countries where most of the Jews worldwide lived. In 1901 the name was expanded to include "in Lithuania".

Content

The main aim was to unite all Jewish workers in Tsarist Russia in one socialist party. The federal government wanted to ally itself with the Russian social democracy in order to achieve socialist and democratic changes in Russia. The aim was the legal recognition of the Jews in Russia as a separate nation with minority status.

The Bund was a secular socialist party and criticized the "reactionary nature of traditional Jewish life in Russia". The Bund also stubbornly opposed Zionism , arguing that emigration to Palestine was a form of escapism .

The federal government promoted the use of Yiddish as the Jewish national language (resolution of the 8th party congress in Lemberg in 1910 ). He turned against the Zionist project of reviving Hebrew .

Vladimir Medem summarized the doctrine of the “covenant” in 1916 as follows: “Let us assume that a country consists of several nationalities , such as Poles, Lithuanians and Jews. Each of these nationalities must found their own movement. All citizens of a certain nationality must join their own organization, which establishes an assembly of representatives in each region and a general representation at the state level. ” The nationalities should have independent financial sovereignty and the right “ to collect taxes from their members; the state can also allocate a corresponding budget share to each nationality from its public funds. ” Every citizen would be a member of a national group, but could freely choose it. This autonomous movements should develop within the framework of the laws passed by Parliament, in its areas of competence they were "but autonomous, and none of them has the right to interfere in the affairs of others." .

Members

The union won members from the ranks of Jewish artists and workers, but also from the growing intelligentsia group .

Like all Jewish organizations, it suffered from a constant decline in active members through emigration .

Development until 1917

The Bund soon became an internationally networked society of Jewish socialists , had political contacts and the like. a. to Lenin , Rosa Luxemburg and Otto Bauer and was active in many European countries.

It acted both as a political party (insofar as the political conditions permitted) and as a trade union . Together with the Zionist movement Poalei Tzion, he founded self-defense groups to protect the Jewish communities from pogroms and government troops.

Bundists with dead, 1905

The Belarusian Bundists played a decisive role in the Russian Revolution of 1905 , which they led in the Jewish cities.

In 1910 the youth organization Tsukunft was founded from the ranks of the Bundists and the Social Democrats of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania (SDKPiL) . In 1910 the first sports club " Morgenstern " ( Jutrzenka ) was established in Cracow , others followed ( Jutrznia Warsaw , 1922).

1917 to 1920

Bundist demonstration 1917

The federal government supported the Provisional Government in Russia after the February 1917 Revolution. The October 1917 Revolution was rejected by most of its members.

In 1918, a Communist League split off in Ukraine . In 1919 the entire party split into a Communist League and a Social Democratic League. The Kombund joined the Russian Communist Party in 1920.

Many Bundists emigrated after the Soviet power was consolidated.

Poland and Lithuania

Poland and Lithuania gained independence in 1918 and the Federation continued its activities in these countries, especially in the Jewish cities of eastern Poland. In Poland the Bundists raised the objection that Jews should stay and fight for socialism instead of emigrating. When the revisionist-Zionist leader Vladimir Jabotinsky traveled through Poland to promote the “evacuation” of European Jews, the Bundists accused him of promoting anti-Semitism.

The conflict between Bundists and revisionists was dealt with in the 1980s in a play by the Israeli playwright Joshua Sobol against the background of Nazi persecution. The play "Ghetto" describes the conflict between the Bundist (and librarian of the Vilna Ghetto ) Herman Kruk and the head of the Jewish ghetto police appointed by the Nazis, Jacob Gens , who was a supporter of the Jabotinsky movement.

During the Second World War, the federal government continued to operate as an underground organization in Poland. He played an important role in building resistance in the Warsaw ghetto . During the war he was directed by Leon Feiner in Poland and by Szmuel Zygielbojm in exile . Marek Edelman was one of the members . But the massacres of Polish Jews during the Shoah destroyed both his personnel base and the belief that he would be able to achieve his goals. Until 1945 only a few of the surviving Jews of Eastern Europe believed in the Bund's special vision of socialism or in a future for Jews in Europe, and most of the survivors emigrated to Israel. The forcible establishment of a communist regime in Poland destroyed what was left of the federal government.

Successor organizations

The Bundist movement survived as a minority movement in Jewish communities in the United States , Canada and Australia, as well as in Israel ("Jewish Socialist Labor Bund"). Bundists were already active in the Jewish émigré community in New York City between the world wars . In 1947, at a conference in Belgium, the successor organization International Jewish Labor Bund was founded. The last known remaining activist of the Israeli section of the federal government, Yitzhak Luden, died in November 2017.

literature

  • Orel Beilinson: Judaism, Islam and the Russian Revolution: Considerations from the perspective of comparative history , in: Work - Movement - History , Issue II / 2017, pp. 65–85.
  • John Bunzl : Class struggle in the Diaspora: on the history of the Jewish labor movement . With a foreword by Karl R. Stadler . Vienna: Europa-Verlag 1975
  • Gertrud Pickhan : "Against the current". The General Jewish Workers' Union "Bund" in Poland 1918-1939. Writings of the Simon Dubnow Institute Leipzig Volume I, Leipzig 2001.
  • Jack Jacobs: Jewish Politics in Eastern Europe: The Bund at 100 , Palgrave, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England 2001 ISBN 0-333-75462-X .
  • Jack Jacobs: Bundist Counterculture in Interwar Poland , Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, New York 2009 ISBN 978-0-8156-3226-9 .
  • Daniel Blatman : Notre liberté et La Vôtre - Le Mouvement ouvrier juif Bund en Pologne, 1939-1949. 2002, ISBN 2-204-06981-7 .
  • Peter Heumos: Jewish Socialism in Exile. On the political program of the representation in exile of the General Jewish Workers' Union in Poland during World War II , in: Exilforschung. An international yearbook. Volume 4, 1986, The Jewish Exile and Other Topics, Munich 1986, pp. 62–82.
  • Robert S. Wistrich : Rosa Luxemburg, Leo Jogiches and the Jewish Labor Movement, 1893-1903. In: Ada Rapoport-Albert; Stephen J. Zipperstein (Ed.): Jewish History: Essays in Honor of Chimen Abramsky. Halban, London 1988, pp. 529-545 [Festschrift Chimen Abramsky ].
  • Joshua D. Zimmerman : Poles, Jews and the Politics of Nationality: the Bund and the Polish Socialist Party in Late Tsarist Russia, 1892-1914 . Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2004

Web links

Commons : General Jewish Labor Union  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Yiddish נ. א. בוכבינדער: די געשיכטע פֿון דער ייִדישער ארבעטער־באװעגונג אין רוסלאנד. לױט ניט־געדרוקטע אַרכיװ־מאטעריאלן. טאמאר, 1931.
  2. ↑ Shmuel Ettinger: From the 17th Century to the Present. The modern age (= history of the Jewish people , edited by Haim Hillel Ben-Sasson ). CH Beck, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-406-07223-2 , p. 231.
  3. ↑ Shmuel Ettinger: From the 17th Century to the Present. The modern age (= history of the Jewish people , edited by Haim Hillel Ben-Sasson ). CH Beck, Munich 1980, pp. 231-232.
  4. ↑ Shmuel Ettinger: From the 17th Century to the Present. The modern age (= history of the Jewish people , edited by Haim Hillel Ben-Sasson ). CH Beck, Munich 1980, pp. 2321-233.
  5. ↑ Shmuel Ettinger: From the 17th Century to the Present. The modern age (= history of the Jewish people , edited by Haim Hillel Ben-Sasson ). CH Beck, Munich 1980, p. 233.
  6. ↑ Yves Plasseraud: The Forgotten Story of personal autonomy . Le Monde , June 16, 2000. In: taz archive, accessed on February 22, 2019.
  7. ↑ Ofer Aderet: The last Bundist. In: Rosa Luxemburg Foundation Israel Office. December 15, 2017. Retrieved December 18, 2017 .