What percentage of Polish Jews wanted to emigrate during the interwar era?

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Re: What percentage of Polish Jews wanted to emigrate during the interwar era?

#16

Post by Futurist » 04 Jan 2020, 21:54

It's from the online Yivo Encyclopedia--specifically from this page of it:

https://yivoencyclopedia.org/article.as ... orld_War_I

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Re: What percentage of Polish Jews wanted to emigrate during the interwar era?

#17

Post by Futurist » 09 Jan 2020, 00:28

@wm and Steve: Do you think that most Polish Jews would prefer to stay in Poland or to move to Palestine if those were the only two options that were actually available to them?


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Re: What percentage of Polish Jews wanted to emigrate during the interwar era?

#18

Post by wm » 09 Jan 2020, 03:37

It's a choice between the devil and the deep blue sea - Palestine wouldn't be able to absorb so many Jews, it was an undeveloped and poor place. So poverty was assured in both cases.

Poland would gladly get rid of the poor Jews (and of millions of landless peasants too) but couldn't afford to lose the better-off Jews.

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Re: What percentage of Polish Jews wanted to emigrate during the interwar era?

#19

Post by Futurist » 09 Jan 2020, 23:31

wm wrote:
09 Jan 2020, 03:37
It's a choice between the devil and the deep blue sea - Palestine wouldn't be able to absorb so many Jews, it was an undeveloped and poor place. So poverty was assured in both cases.
I was actually thinking of this absorption process lasting for decades or even for a century or more. Poland has about 3.5 million Jews--so, if you will spread it out for a century, you'll get 35,000 Polish Jewish immigrants to Palestine each year assuming that all Polish Jews will eventually want to go there and that there is no Holocaust or Communist rule in Poland at any point in time during this century.

Can Palestine actually absorb 35,000 Jewish immigrants per year for a century? I would think that it would, no?
Poland would gladly get rid of the poor Jews (and of millions of landless peasants too) but couldn't afford to lose the better-off Jews.
Just how many better-off Jews were there in Poland, though? Also, couldn't one argue that the presence of the better-off Jews in Poland prevented a large ethnic Polish middle class from emerging due to there being too much Jewish competition?

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Re: What percentage of Polish Jews wanted to emigrate during the interwar era?

#20

Post by wm » 22 Jan 2020, 22:43

Of course the Jews didn't own everything.
They (about 9 percent) owned 21.4 percent of national wealth. On average they lived longer 7.5 years (men), and 4 years (women) than the "natives." So, that better-off.
There was lots of space for everybody in Poland. In some places, if you were sick you could have traveled 100 kilometers without finding a doctor, or even a university-educated person.

35,000 Jewish immigrants per year would certainly trigger another Arab violent response ((15,000 was bad enough), so Palestine needed to be conquered first.

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Re: What percentage of Polish Jews wanted to emigrate during the interwar era?

#21

Post by Sid Guttridge » 24 Jan 2020, 14:28

Before we start giving away Palestine to Poland's Jews, it might be as well to remember that it had an existing population, and still has!

Cheers,

Sid.

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Re: What percentage of Polish Jews wanted to emigrate during the interwar era?

#22

Post by wm » 24 Jan 2020, 15:32

Nothing can be done about it. Since Der Judenstaat it has been inevitable.
It is the so-called effective conquest, and Israel is a perfect legal country today.

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Re: What percentage of Polish Jews wanted to emigrate during the interwar era?

#23

Post by Futurist » 25 Jan 2020, 05:40

wm wrote:
22 Jan 2020, 22:43
Of course the Jews didn't own everything.
They (about 9 percent) owned 21.4 percent of national wealth. On average they lived longer 7.5 years (men), and 4 years (women) than the "natives." So, that better-off.
There was lots of space for everybody in Poland. In some places, if you were sick you could have traveled 100 kilometers without finding a doctor, or even a university-educated person.
So, people traveled from rural areas into urban areas for medical care back then in Poland?
35,000 Jewish immigrants per year would certainly trigger another Arab violent response ((15,000 was bad enough), so Palestine needed to be conquered first.
Well, being a pioneer isn't always easy.

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Re: What percentage of Polish Jews wanted to emigrate during the interwar era?

#24

Post by Futurist » 25 Jan 2020, 05:43

Sid Guttridge wrote:
24 Jan 2020, 14:28
Before we start giving away Palestine to Poland's Jews, it might be as well to remember that it had an existing population, and still has!

Cheers,

Sid.
Yeah, the Palestinians could quite naturally object to Israel considering that they would be (and in fact probably are) second-class citizens there. In contrast, Hispanics are rapidly becoming a powerful political force in the Southwestern US (and also in Florida) right now. So, the US took a bunch of land from Spain and Mexico, made extremely good use of it, made it so attractive that a lot of Hispanics voluntarily moved there, and now has so many Hispanics that they are on the verge of outnumbering non-Hispanic whites in these territories (if not already outnumber whites, such as in California)!

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Re: What percentage of Polish Jews wanted to emigrate during the interwar era?

#25

Post by Futurist » 25 Jan 2020, 05:44

wm wrote:
24 Jan 2020, 15:32
Nothing can be done about it. Since Der Judenstaat it has been inevitable.
It is the so-called effective conquest, and Israel is a perfect legal country today.
Some Jewish settlement in Palestine was certainly inevitable, but as much Jewish settlement in Palestine as in real life? I'm not so sure.

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Re: What percentage of Polish Jews wanted to emigrate during the interwar era?

#26

Post by gebhk » 25 Jan 2020, 11:47

The answer to the question as it stands is an utter unknowable which changed from day to day.

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Re: What percentage of Polish Jews wanted to emigrate during the interwar era?

#27

Post by Sid Guttridge » 25 Jan 2020, 12:05

Hi Futurist,

So, the ethnic make-up of the population of the south-west USA is returning to what it was before the USA took it over.

There is a moral in that somewhere!

Cheers,

Sid.

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Re: What percentage of Polish Jews wanted to emigrate during the interwar era?

#28

Post by wm » 25 Jan 2020, 13:02

Futurist wrote:
25 Jan 2020, 05:44
Some Jewish settlement in Palestine was certainly inevitable, but as much Jewish settlement in Palestine as in real life? I'm not so sure.
It was geographically distributed, usually locally financed (although Baron Rothschild and his pallets of money weren't unwelcome) efforts driven by attractive and global ideology. The efforts were protected by ambitions of great powers and their capitulation treaties.
"Next year in Jerusalem" was unstoppable.

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Re: What percentage of Polish Jews wanted to emigrate during the interwar era?

#29

Post by Futurist » 26 Jan 2020, 01:01

Sid Guttridge wrote:
25 Jan 2020, 12:05
Hi Futurist,

So, the ethnic make-up of the population of the south-west USA is returning to what it was before the USA took it over.

There is a moral in that somewhere!

Cheers,

Sid.
The moral is that wars for Lebensraum are sometimes (NOT in the case of Nazi Germany, of course!) worth it! After all, the Southwestern US would probably be in much worse shape right now had the US never actually annexed it. We certainly have the rest of Mexico as a basis of comparison for this. Indeed, even the Hispanics who live in the Southwestern US right now probably live much better than they would have lived had these territories remained part of Mexico up to the present-day. What makes the US's pursuit of Lebensraum during the Mexican-American War much more moral is that, at least in the long(er)-run, the existing population of these territories and/or their descendants likewise significantly benefited from the US conquest of the relevant territories. Now, compare this with Nazi Germany, where the Nazis certainly did not aim to benefit the existing Slavic and Jewish populations of their desired Lebensraum in any way whatsoever--instead planning to deport and/or murder these groups in extremely massive numbers! :(

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Re: What percentage of Polish Jews wanted to emigrate during the interwar era?

#30

Post by Futurist » 26 Jan 2020, 01:03

@Sid Guttridge: For what it's worth, Central Asia's demographics are also returning to what they were before the Russian conquest of Central Asia in the 19th century. For instance, Kazakhstan was overwhelmingly Kazakh in the 19th century and is rapidly becoming this way once again today.

Likewise, the demographics of Eastern Europe nowadays are actually very similar to what they were in the year 1000 or so. AFAIK, back then, Eastern Europe had few Germans and few Jews--and it likewise has few Germans and few Jews today. Indeed, Poland's current borders are actually very similar to what they were back in the year 1000.

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