Mr. Mills, thank you for the very interesting exerpts from Eugene Black's essay, with which I had not previously been familiar. I hope that I may be able to locate a copy of Polonsky's collection of essays here in Houston, although the library resources to which I have ready access are somewhat lacking in that area.
But I can only submit that it would take a cast of mind bordering on paranoia to construe the position taken by some of the more radical Jewish representatives at the Paris Peace Conference as opposing the "re-creation of an independent Polish state", as Professor Stachura would have it. Of course if "independent" is interpreted as meaning free to abuse the Jewish minority at will, which may indeed be the way Dmowski and his wing viewed it, then I suppose Stachura may have a point. But radical and anti-Semitic as Dmowski presumably was, I can't believe that he was so irrational as to believe that the Allied Powers (and particularly Wilson and Lloyd George) would permit the new State of Poland, which after all was the child of their own creation and which ultimately embraced almost one-third of a non-Polish population, to exist without a firm and binding committment as to the fair treatment of its minority population - particularly in the face of Poland's open warfare with the Ukraine and in light of the fact that reports of Polish abuses of its minorities, and particularly Jews, were already flowing in in almost tsunami proportions during the their deliberations in Paris.
Here is a discussion of the situation from the American point of view, which strikes me - particularly the Jadwin and Johnson report - as probably a pretty fair analysis of the situation:
Much of the fighting on Poland's eastern frontiers in the early month of 1919 was partizan warfare. The participants were sometimes mobs, sometimes contingents of armed men, without uniforms and undisciplined. Civil authority did not exist, and hoodlums and criminals let loose from the jails carried on their depredations without restraint. The regions from Vilna to Lemberg, where the worst disorders occurred, contain the greatest concentration of Jews in Poland outside of Warsaw, and it was the Jewish corn-munities which suffered most. Such was the case at Lemberg in November, 1918, during the struggle for the town between mobs of Polish and Ukrainian sympathizers; in Vilna and Pinsk in April, during fighting of like character between Poles and Bolsheviks; and in Minsk under similar circumstances a few months later. Accounts of these affairs quickly spread abroad, greatly exaggerated, [footnote omitted] until it was widely believed that the new Polish government had organized pogroms against the Jews. The Jewish communities of other lands, notably of England and the United States, becoming greatly alarmed, held meetings of protest, drew up resolutions condemning the Polish authorities, and brought great pressure to bear, directly and through public opinion, on the officials of the Allies and the United States.[Footnote # 23] The protestations of the Polish government that it was not anti-Semitic, that the reports were distorted and exaggerated, failed to stem the rising current of hostile opinion. The atrocity charges did great damage to Polish prestige in world opinion and at the Peace Conference, and rival claimants to disputed territories did not fail to make use of the implication that the Poles were a barbarous and undisciplined race, unfitted to administer the border lands which contained other races as well as Jews.
Sensing the disastrous effect of these reports on the international standing of the young republic, and desiring to prevent further trouble for both Poles and Jews, Hoover asked Premier Paderewski to appoint an investigating commission. This the Premier did, but the feeling had gathered such headway that a Polish commission had little effect. A few weeks later Hoover suggested that Paderewski ask President Wilson to appoint an independent committee to investigate on the ground, to report its finding, on the basis of which the Polish government should take proper action, and to advise the Jewish community in Poland in regard to its relations with and interest in the new democracy. On June 2, 1919, Hoover wrote President Wilson, urging the appointment of such a commission.
The President appointed Mr. Henry Morgenthau, Brig. Gen. Edgar Jadwin, and Mr. Homer Johnson on this commission, which visited the localities in which the serious disturbances had occurred and endeavored to learn exactly what had taken place and fix responsibility. The British Government also appointed a commission headed by Sir Stuart Samuel for the same purpose. Mr. Morgenthau made his report in December, 1919. His conclusions are given in the following paragraph:
"Just as the Jews would resent being condemned as a race for the action of a few of their undesirable co-religionists, so it would be correspondingly unfair to condemn the Polish nation as a whole for the violence committed by uncontrolled troops or local mobs. These excesses were apparently not premeditated, for if they had been part of a preconceived plan, the number of victims would have run into the thousands instead of amounting to about 280. It is believed that these excesses were the result of a widespread anti-Semitic prejudice, aggravated by the belief that the Jewish inhabitants were politically hostile to the Polish State. When the boundaries of Poland are once fixed, and the internal organization of the country is perfected, the Polish Government will be increasingly able to protect all classes of Polish citizenry. Since the Polish Republic has subscribed to the treaty which provided for the protection of racial, religious and linguistic minorities, it is confidently anticipated that the Government will whole-heartedly accept the responsibility, not only of guarding certain classes of its citizens from aggression, but also of educating the masses beyond the state of mind that makes such aggression possible."
General Jadwin and Mr. Johnson submitted a separate report. Their conclusions were similar to Mr. Morgenthau's:
"By way of summary, we find that beginning with the armistice, about November 11, 1918, and for six months and more during the establishment of orderly government in Poland, many regrettable incidents took place throughout both Congress Poland and the regions, the future of which is still in doubt. The occurrences in Congress Poland were not so serious in number of deaths, but there have been violent collisions accompanied by riots, beatings, and other assaults, which are apparently traceable in large part to anti-Jewish prejudice. In every case they have been repressed by either the military or the civil authorities, but only after grievous results. In the territory occupied or invaded by Polish troops, civilian mobs have followed the soldiery, and the two elements have engaged in robbery of shops and dwellings, and, in cases where resistance was offered, in assaulting and killing the owners or occupants. The circumstances of some of these incidents have been aggravated by intoxication, due to the looting of liquor stores, with the usual adjuncts of criminal irresponsibility and mob rage. We believe that none of these excesses were instigated or approved by a responsible governmental authority, civil or military. We find, on the other hand, that the history and the attitude of the Jews, complicated by abnormal economic and political conditions produced by the war, have fed the flame of anti-Semitism at a critical moment. It is believed, however, that the gradual amelioration of conditions during the last eleven months gives great promise for the future of the Polish Republic as a stable democracy." [Footnote omitted]
The causes of the disturbances, it was generally agreed, were first, the disturbed and disorganized condition in the eastern regions where the number of Jews is greatest; second, the anti-Jewish feeling, which was partly the result of anti-Semitic propaganda of certain Polish groups, andpartly due to the belief that the Jews had sympathized with the ruling powers during the occupation and were now sympathetic to the Bolsheviks in their struggle with the Poles; and third, the attitude of Jewish political groups which were hostile to the Polish state and not satisfied with equality of rights with Polish citizens, but demanded a national autonomy within the state. [Footnote 25]
The publication of these reports, the stabilization of political conditions, quieted the agitation over the Jewish question; they did not solve it. The problems of the Jews and other racial or religious minorities retained an unfortunate prominence in the affairs of Poland and the other new states. The well-intentioned Minorities Treaties, [Footnote 26] which the Supreme Council required the new states to sign were an answer to the criticisms of territorial awards which seemed to violate the nationality principle and to Jewish demands for "emancipation," as well as an attempt to mitigate the friction which minorities engendered. Poland, like several other states, objected to the treaty because it was unilateral in its obligations. Poland had to assume obligations respecting Germans in her territories, but Germany was required to make no similar undertaking respecting Poles, and none of the Principal Allied Powers made any treaties whatever covering the treatment of their minorities.
___________________________________
Footnote 23. On May 21, 1919, a number of American newspapers carried advertisements in which it was stated that Jews were being slaughtered in Poland, that pogroms were being organized from Lemberg to Vilna, from Warsaw to Pinsk, and that the Jewish people had never been set upon by an enemy more merciless, more brutal, more determined, or more powerful. That evening Jewish leaders addressed a great mass meeting of protest in Madison Square Garden. The same day Mr. Goldfogle introduced a resolution in the House of Representatives, asking the President to cause steps to be taken to prevent a recurrence of massacres of men, women and children "in Poland, Rumania and Galicia."
Footnote 25. This Jewish nationalist formula was supported by the Zionists, and the right and left Jewish Socialists. The orthodox Jews advocated merely emancipation and equality of rights. The conflict, therefore, was not with "Poles of the Jewish faith," but with "Polish citizens of the Jewish nation."
Footnote 26. Polish representatives signed the Minorities Treaty on June 28, 1919, at Versailles. It provided that all inhabitants, whether citizens or not, are entitled to protection of life and liberty and to the free exercise of religion, and that all racial, religious or linguistic minorities are guaranteed equality in civil and political rights and the right to use their own language. They are given the right to organize their own religious, educational and charitable institutions and in districts where the minority is a "considerable proportion" of the population, instruction in its language is to be given in primary public schools. Besides Poland, Czechoslovakia, Jugoslavia, Rumania, Greece, Armenia, Austria, Bulgaria, Hungary and Turkey signed similar treaties.
H. H. Fisher,
America and the New Poland (The Macmillan Company, 1928) at 155-9. [I'm not sure of Fisher's credentials, but believe he was a Professor at Stanford University.]
And here is an excerpt from the diary of Stephen Bonsal ( who won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1945) and who was the assistant to Colonel House, President Wilson's right hand at the Paris Conference, which provides some insight into Domowski's anti-Semitism:
January 3,1919
Today, not for the first time, the Colonel turned Dmowski over to me for a talk on the tangled affairs of Poland. He stayed with me over an hour, and I trust the words he poured out and the facts that I extracted from him will prove helpful. He speaks equally well in French or English, as I learned when last year Smulski, the Chicago Polish leader, brought him to see me at the War College (Washington). Dmowski is regarded by many as in large measure responsible for the anti-Jewish feeling so noticeable among the great majority of the Poles, and indeed it was upon this subject I was told to "feel" him out.
Dmowski took it very well and, so it seemed to me at least, talked quite rationally upon the thorny subject. It is to be hoped that when he achieves power [he became minister of foreign affairs briefly in 1923] he will act in the same reasonable way. He points out, however, that there are distinctive features in the Jewish problem of Poland which are not met with in other countries. To begin with he asserts that the Ostjuden (Eastern Jews) are a peculiar, a most peculiar, clan and that their activities and characteristics are very trying to those who must live in daily contact with them. "We have in Poland more than one quarter of all the Jews of the world. They form 10 per cent of our population, and in my judgment this is at least 8 per cent too much. When there is only a small group of Jews in our villages, even when they are grasping storekeepers or avaricious money lenders, as they often are, everything moves along smoothly; but when more come, and they generally do come, there is trouble and at times small pogroms.
"We have too many Jews, and those who will be allowed to remain with us must change their habits; and of course I recognize that this will be difficult and will take time. The Jew must produce and not remain devoted exclusively to what we regard as parasitical pursuits. Unless restrictions are imposed upon them soon, all our lawyers, doctors, and small merchants will be Jews. They must turn to agriculture, and they must at least share small business and retail stores with their Polish neighbors. I readily admit that there is some basis in the Jewish contention that in days past it was difficult for them to own land or even to work the fields of others as tenants; that they were often compelled by circumstances beyond their control to gain their livelihood in ways which are hurtful to Polish economy. Under our new constitution all this will be changed, and for their own good I hope the Jews will avail themselves of their new opportunities. I say this in their own interest as well as in the interest of restored Poland. Now, and I fear for decades to come, Poland will be too poor to permit one tenth of its population to engage in pursuits which to say the least are not productive."
************************[irrelevant portion omitted]*********************
I reported Dmowski's views verbally to the Colonel and at his request I put them in writing. His comment was, "I am sure the Poles will try to do the fair thing, but it will be a long time before these religious and racial animosities subside. I agree with the President that before the Poles receive the charter of their independence they must make an iron-clad pledge to give fair and equal treatment to religious as well as racial minorities."
Stephen Bonsal,
Suitors and Suppliants: The Little Nations at Versailles (Kennikat Press 1969, reissue of 1946 ed.) Chapter 7, " Among the Many Poles: Paderewski and Dmowski", page not identified.
Mr. Mills commented that:
Note also the prescient comment by Judge Julian Mack that the Eastern Jews were mad and headed for destruction. The catastrophe that befell the Jews of Eastern Europe just over 20 years later proved Mack and his American Jewish colleagues right, although it would be difficult to find an American Jewish leader today who would admit that that catastrophe was largely the making of the Jewish nationalists like Ussishkin.
Two or three years ago I was chided by Mr. Mills for never having heard of Menachem Ussishkin, and his criticism moved me to attempt to acquire just a modicum of knowledge about the fellow. From what little I've unearthed, he seems to have been an arrogant, hot headed, loud mouthed, and generally disagreeable sort of fellow who was a leader of the radical wing of the Russian Zionist movement. I have the impression that although certainly a Jewish nationalist, his primary interest was in establishing a Jewish state in Palestine, where he took up perminant residence around 1919. He may indeed have set the teeth on edge of individuals such as Roman Dmowski, but it seems to me too great a burden to lay on Ussishkin and his like-minded cohorts the blame for the catastrophe that the Third Reich caused to descend upon the Jews of Europe over 20 years later. Indeed, at least according to Bonsal's report in his diary quoted above, which I admit probably does not tell the whole story, Dmowski would have been delighted to see Ussishkin's dreams come true, and the bulk of the Polish Jews transported to Palestine.
One final comment. Mr. Mills wrote:
.... Headlam-Morley was predicting that Polish extremists would murder the Jews. And it was really only the German conquest of Poland in 1939 which prevented the murder being carried out by the Poles themselves, and placed that task in German hands.
It seems to me from the context that Headlam-Morley was in fact agreeing with Wolf that the Jewish extremists were as mad as the Polish extremists and there was nothing to choose between Dmowski and Ussishkin, and, in a fit of probably justified frustration, made the remark that they will
all be murdered - Polish and Jewish extremists alike - by each other. Mr. Mill's reading, with all respect, is just too great a stretch for me to grasp. For whatever reason, Dmowski himself (except I think for a vey brief period as Foreign Minister) never held a position of power in the Polish government, and if Pilsudski suffered from anti-Semitism it must have been of the blandest strain, for as far as I'm aware no formal legislation was adopted during his lifetime, or thereafter by the regime of "The Colonels", which was designed to seriously oppress the Jewish minority in Poland, although there were apparently informal and unofficial measures which made life for the Jews increasingly difficult during the late 1920s and early 30s. Undoubtedly anti-Semitism was a significant problem in Poland between the wars, but it was overall far milder than the virulent variety which smouldered in Germany throughout the 20s and was ignited and burst into flame when Adolph Hitler finally came to power.
I am still rummaging through my library in search of Vital's
A People Apart , which as I recall deals at length and brilliantly with this subject, and if I turn it up I shall return.
Sorry for the length of this post, but it's an interesting topic and prolixity is a notorious failing of my profession!
Regards, Kaschner