SOCIAL AND POLITICAL LIFE

The beginnings of political activity among Kleczew Jews date to the early 1900s. Followers of leftist ideologies and Zionism were the first to create informal political structures, initially small in membership.

The organizations were most often founded by Jewish workers or repre-sentatives of the intelligentsia who had settled in Kleczew and spread novel ideas in their new realm. Although members of the young gener-ation were extremely susceptible to innovgener-ation, the propagators of these notions encountered many obstacles, both external and internal. The suppression of Jews and any social group disseminating revolutionary ideas, or of those whom the authorities believed to be doing so, began with Russian legislation. As for internal obstacles to these new orga-nizations, the most serious was the attitude of Jewish traditionalists who eschewed any deviation from Orthodox dogma. It was impossible, however, to stop the impending changes; emancipation gradually spread despite the adverse circumstances. The foundations for the absorption of alternative conceptions to those propagated by Orthodox tradition-alists had been prepared before the outbreak of World War I. Under the newly favorable political conditions coupled with events that demanded decisions, Jews in Kleczew established a welter of organizations. During World War I, after the German army dissolved the Kingdom of Poland in 1915, the new occupier started to legalize all economic, educational, and cultural organizations that had functioned clandestinely until then and encouraged the institutionalization of political organizations that pursued conservative programs. This policy strengthened the positions of conservative pro-Zionist and anti-Zionist groups alike—the former including members of the Religious Zionist Mizrachi association, the latter comprising those of Agudas Yisroel.

The statutes of Mizrachi were officially approved on April 30, 1921, but the movement’s followers there had gotten started several years earlier.³² Its official local founders were Hersz Wolman, the organiza-tion’s local leader for a few years; Alje Adler; Nuchem Bagno; Abram Kuczyński; and Chaim Bagno. Headquartered on 1 Rynek Street³³ and using the existing organizational structure, local activists established a

5. Tze’irei Mizrachi (Mizrachi youth movement) in Kleczew (1) Seated (first left in second row): Moshe Bagno Standing: First left (in the row): Chaim Rachwalski

(Bagno private collection)

6. Tze’irei Mizrachi in Kleczew (2) Standing (third from left): Moshe Bagno

Seated: first on right—Frymet Rachwalski’s fiancé (name unknown) (Bagno private collection)

7. Members of Hashomer Hadati in Kleczew at the beginning of their organization (Bagno private collection)

branch of Mizrachi in Kleczew in May 1930. Sztachelberg, president of the Kleczew kehilla and director of the administrative board, became its leader.³⁴ The growing influence and executive abilities of the adherents of Religious Zionism led to the establishment of an illegal house of prayer at the beginning of 1932 in the very building that housed Mizrachi head-quarters.³⁵ Religious Zionists were also very active leaders of the local Mizrachi association and established a community center on Słupecka Street. It was used mainly by youth affiliated with an organization that was not mentioned by name in the records, even though thirty boys and twenty-eight girls were card-carrying members.³⁶ Photographs and testimonies of family members from Kleczew indicate that the move-ment in question was probably Hashomer Hadati,³⁷ a religious version of the Hashomer Hatzair youth movement.³⁸ Photographs 7-15 present events and people involved in Hashomer Hadati in and near Kleczew.

Photograph 16 presents member of another religious Zionist organiza-tion in Kleczew—the Torah ve-Avoda movement.

Apart from the Religious Zionists who aligned with Mizrachi, other factions of Zionists formed loose associations. The ideologically centrist General Zionists were bracketed by Revisionist Zionists on the right³⁹

8. Members of HashomerHadati at training commune in Kalisz, 1932-1933 Standing on upper left: Moshe Bagno

(Bagno private collection)

9. Members of Hashomer Hadati at training commune in Kalisz, 1932-1933.

(Bagno private collection)

10. Hashomer Hadati conference in Bartów, 1933-34 (Bagno private collection)

11. Hashomer Hadati—the Dvora group, November 25, 1934 Seated (center): the counselor, Moshe Bagno

Members of the group: Yehudit Yakobowitz, Sarah Reichman, Sarah Lebovitcz, Lea Berendt, Yehudit Litmann, Shoshanna Livushinska, Frymet Rachwalski, Tova

Sakashawska, Pnina Leibovitcz (Bagno private collection)

12. Hashomer Hadati, Dvora group, November 25, 1934 Handwritten names (in Yiddish) on back of previous photo

(Bagno private collection)

13. Hashomer Hadati, Hashmonaim group, summer 1934

Seated (in second row): center—Moshe Bagno, the group’s counselor. First on left (same row): Shlomo

Rachwalski (Bagno private collection)

14. Shlomo Rachwalski in Hashomer Hadati uniform,

Kleczew, 1934 (Horev private collection)

15. Hashomer Hadati summer camp, Golina and Kleczew branches.

(Bagno private collection)

16. Torah va-Avoda Movement in Kleczew (Bagno private collection)

and representatives of leftist Zionism, most likely associated with Po’alei Tsiyyon,⁴⁰ on the other side. Members of these groups congregated mainly in various trade or cultural organizations. Zionists inspired the forma-tion of a branch of the Clothing Industry Workers trade union that had among its members thirty less-affluent craftsmen and workers who were employed in the relevant industry.⁴¹ Apart from satisfying the social and occupational needs of union members, the activists concentrated on cultural work, e.g., organizing a performance at the local fire station on January 25, 1930.⁴²

In the 1930s, younger-generation Zionists who held radical social and political views became more and more active. On December 15, 1930, Dr. Chaskiel Kroner, Lejzor Ettinger, and Lejb Lewi initiated and founded a branch of ‘Hashomer Hatzair’ in Kleczew. This organization, its stat-utes certified by the authorities on May 7, 1931, focused on organizing field trips once or twice a week that offered a combination of education about Palestine, scouting techniques, and ideology. The fourteen boys and twenty girls who belonged to the organization met at the commu-nity center on 20 Edwarda Heimana Street.⁴³ Although Hashomer Hatzair was a secular movement, several of its members came from Orthodox families, fomenting conflicts at home. Lea (Lotka) Krzywanowski was one such person; for more about her, see Annex 2.

Dr. Chaskiel Kroner was the patron and protector of the Jewish Scouts and remained so until the outbreak of World War II.⁴⁴ Lay groups subscribing to Zionist and leftist ideologies gathered in the Jewish library that had been established in 1922.⁴⁵ From July 1925, activities were super-vised by the newly-founded Jewish Association of the Social Library and Reading Room.⁴⁶ Zionist affiliates and fellow travelers congregated at the office of the Gemilus Chesed (Free Loan Fund), which they ran.⁴⁷

The existence of the Agudas Yisroel organization in Kleczew (also known locally as “the Orthodox”) dated to the beginning of the Second Polish Republic.⁴⁸ Its activity was backed by Hasidim after their rebbe⁴⁹ in Góra Kalwaria (Gur) so authorized. Some elements in Hasidic society turned their political activity in the specific direction of managing the kehilla. They were perceived as independent religious Jews, a.k.a.

independent Orthodox Jews or independent supporters of Orthodox

Jews. Hasidim in Kleczew leaned in two main directions, the majority preferring the court of the rebbe in Góra Kalwaria and the minority favoring the rebbe of Aleksandrów. One organization was supported by Orthodox Jews irrespective of their internal differences: Agudas Szomrej Umachzikej Szabbos⁵⁰ (Association of Sabbath Observers and Guardians). The president of the Łódź Province branch of this organization

17. Krzywanowski family, Kleczew. The photograph was taken at a family wedding c.

1936 (Ada Holtzman and Edna Dan private collection) (http://www.zchor.org/kleczew/

kleczew.htm).

Lotka (Lea) Holtzman (née Krzywanowski) (standing, second to left) is the only survivor among all these family members. Lotke was a member of the Hashomer Hatzair move-ment in Kleczew and emigrated to Palestine (pre-state Israel) several months before

the beginning of the war.

Seated: Fourth from right—Hana Krzywanowski (née Herszlik), Lotka’s mother. Seated in the front—Lotka’s two brothers, Jakob (6 years old) and Machel (8 years old).

Standing: Franja (14 years old) and Rosa (Ruzka) (12 years old).

Also in the photograph: Towa Watman née Krzywanowski (Lotka’s sister), her husband Szmuel (a watchmaker from Wilczyn), and Berta (Lotka’s sister), a tailor.

Other persons in the photograph are not identified. Lotka’s father, being ultra-Orthodox, refused to participate in this photograph on religious grounds.

registered the Kleczew branch, headed by Dawid Segał, on September 11, 1925.⁵¹

In the 1920s, representatives of professional groups of sundry polit-ical inclination stepped onto the stage. At the initiative of Nuchem Bagno, Jakub Sztachelberg, Abram Kuczyński, J. Fogel, and Luzerz Brysz, the Jewish Small Business Association was founded on August 18, 1924.⁵² An Association of Jewish Craftsmen also came into being under Izaak Traube (see photographs below),⁵³ Załme Leszczyński, and Chaskiel Szyke.⁵⁴ Operations of the Cooperative Fund of Jewish Merchants, amalgamating 120 members, were supervised by Gerszon Russ.⁵⁵

The aforementioned credit cooperative, People’s Cooperative Bank Ltd., was established in the mid-1930s. Located at 11 Listopada Street, it offered small traders and farmers loans at 10% annual interest. Wigdor Warmbrum, Majer Łepek, Hersz Segał, Lajb Jude Samson, and Icek Klepacz sat on its executive board.⁵⁶ The Jewish Free Loan Fund granted small loans to merchants and craftsmen in Kleczew. It had 107 members.

For many years, Chaim Markowski was its president. In the first half of

19. IzaakTraube as a soldier in the Polish army (after WWI) (Horev private collection) 18. Izaak Traube (seated, center).To his right: his

daughter Frymet; to his left: his daughter Hanna.

Behind him (center): his wife Fojgel (née Rachwalski);

to her left: her sister Frymet; to her right: her sister- in-law Pessa (Mayer Rachwalski’s wife). Photographed

in Warsaw in Mayer and Pessa’s home during the Traubes’ trip to Palestine. (Horev private collection)

the 1920s, it was led by Jakub Wolman, Zelig Gembicki, Szyje Leszczyński, Hersz Segał, and Rafał Strzeliński.⁵⁷ Appointed to its executive board on February 8, 1930, were Chaim Markowski, Abram Kuczyński, Perec Waserman, Lejb Gerszon, Ichel Prost, Josek Habe, and Szmul Łatte.⁵⁸

The evolution of an attitude remains a moot issue that is difficult to measure. Using other communities in the Kleczew vicinity as models, we may infer that many activists switched political positions and organiza-tions even if the new organization embraced a completely different plat-form. However, this happened only occasionally. More often, an indi-vidual’s personal or political alliances or interpersonal connections were at stake.⁵⁹ Kleczew offers several cases in point. From the early 1920s into the 1930s, the political preferences of leaders of the kehilla changed perceptibly. Josef Boas, initially a follower of Mizrachi, switched his alle-giance to Agudas Yisroel. Jakub Sztachelberg walked away from Agudas Yisroel in favor of Zionism. Jechel Rakowski’s views evolved from Reli-gious Zionism to a more radical branch of Zionism.⁶⁰

Apart from being active in their own milieu, Jews in Kleczew were visible players in town life. Józef Lipszyc and Hersz Bernd sat on the town council in 1918. Majer Rakowski, elected in December 1918, was a member of the Food Committee. In 1934, Chaskiel Kroner and Gerszon Russ were town councilors. (Russ resigned in 1935.) Moryc Reich was member of the town executive board. In 1939, after town council elections, two out of twelve councilors were Jewish.⁶¹ Before the parliamentary elections in 1927, Jakub Sztachelberg was named to the election committee, together with five non-Jewish Poles.⁶² Most other representatives of the community continued to support the pro-government approach. National holidays as well as Marshal Piłsudski’s birthday and the anniversary of his death were celebrated in earnest. Rabbi Hersz Zawłodawer and Dr. Chaskiel Kroner (leader of the Jewish Scouts) participated in celebrating the tenth anniver-sary of the Air and Anti-Gas Defense League (Ligi Obrony Powietrznej i Przeciwgazowej) on May 11, 1938. In 1935, patriotic and religious meet-ings were sponsored by Hersz Wolman.⁶³ These examples not only demon-strate the active role that Jews played in Kleczew’s political life but also suggest that relations between the Jewish and non-Jewish communities were correct at the very least. The accuracy of this assumption, however, is

difficult to determine due to the scarcity of source texts from that period.

Reports from local police or authorities to higher administrative echelons do not mention hostile behavior toward Jews. The political situation in the village of Skulsk was much the same;⁶⁴ relations between the Jewish and non-Jewish populations appear to have been sound there.

Nevertheless, external factors that may have had indirect effects on the residents of Kleczew should be taken into account. Peaceful coexis-tence prevailed at certain times and places; antagonism abounded else-where. For example, throughout the interwar period, especially in the second half of the 1930s, Jews were consistently loathed in most constit-uencies of Eastern Greater Poland. Organized propaganda and intimi-dation against Jewish companies began in the early twentieth century.⁶⁵ A visceral wave of tension swept the country in the formative stages of Polish nationhood and during the Polish-Bolshevik war (1918–1921). The local authorities in Słupca (30 kilometers from Kleczew) frowned on Jews ever since Poland regained its independence. The starosta (chief admin-istration officer) of Konin noticed that Jews had greeted Poland’s inde-pendence without enthusiasm. The Jews did not try to assimilate and did not support the new authorities. It was emphasized that the Jews, unlike the Polish population, had been favorably disposed toward the German occupation authorities in 1914–1918. In November 1918, several Polish–

Jewish clashes took place. Members of the Polish Military Organization initiated antisemitic incidents. To quell them, a ten-member commission was established on November 16, 1918, to contact the authorities and thereby eliminate misunderstandings and offenses against Jews.⁶⁶

In the years that followed, especially during the Great Depression and the evolution of the Polish political system after Piłsudski’s death in 1935, economic boycotting of Jewish-owned shops and stalls became a common occurrence. Anti-Jewish posters and leaflets were distributed in many neighboring towns. In Słupca, for example, posters loudly advising

“Jews to the ghettos” were hung on fences and walls in February 1938.⁶⁷ Jews were also not spared from physical assault. In Pyzdry (50 kilo-meters from Kleczew), on February 5, 1936, Jews were thrown out of a fair in Zagórów (43 kilometers from Kleczew) by National Party combat squads from the two localities. Afterwards, the squads started to demolish

Jewish-owned shops.⁶⁸ In December 1937, Konin County police reported an escalation in the boycotting of Jewish enterprises. Incidents such as the slashing of goods with razor blades in Jewish-owned shops took place.

The most popular form of boycott was the picketing of shops and stalls, mainly on fair days. The picketers were financed by Polish merchants affil-iated with the National Party and the National Union Camp. Leaflets with anti-Jewish slogans and endorsements of Polish trade were distributed in large quantities. Customers buying in Jewish-owned shops were perse-cuted. In the mid- and late 1930s, attempts to forcibly divide the market between Jews and Christians were made. In Władysławowo, under pres-sure from Polish national groups, these efforts succeeded.⁶⁹ Several cases of antisemitic vandalism were reported.⁷⁰ On February 16, 1936, local members of the National Party, supported by activists from Sompolno (25 kilometers from Kleczew), planned a pogrom against Jews who had come to the fair in Ślesin (11 kilometers from Kleczew). Thanks to police intervention, it ended as a small demonstration resulting only in the shat-tering of four windows of Jewish-owned houses.⁷¹ On January 12, 1938, a Jew was beaten in Ślesin.⁷² In the town of Golina (23 kilometers from Kleczew), Polish merchants affiliated with the National Party and the National Union Camp paid picketers to harass customers in Jewish-owned shops. Several life- and health-threatening acts of anti-Jewish misconduct were reported in Golina, e.g., the spilling of foul-smelling toxic liquids in Jewish-owned shops.⁷³ In December 1938, an attempt was made to force Jewish merchants to pay a 100-złoty protection fee to a racketeer in order to end the boycott. The man behind this initiative was arrested.⁷⁴

These examples of events that reflected a change in the attitude toward Jews in the near neighborhood must have influenced relations between Poles and Jews in Kleczew. Since no source texts document hostilities in this town, we can go no farther than to assume that Polish–Jewish tension in Kleczew escalated during the 1930s.

4. ORGANIZATION AND FUNCTIONING OF THE JEWISH COMMUNITY

The status of Jewish communities in newly independent Poland was determined on February 7, 1919, by a decree from the Chief of State

titled “Changes in the Organization of Jewish Communities in the Terri-tory of the Former Congress of Poland.” The new edict slightly modified the regulations that the German occupation authorities had laid down on November 1, 1916. The confessional character of the Jewish religious communities was preserved. Membership in religious communities remained compulsory. A new five-point electoral law was introduced, limiting suffrage to male citizens over age twenty-five (active suffrage) or over thirty (passive suffrage) who resided within municipal limits for at least one year. The state authorities’ ambit concerning Jewish represen-tations was broadened. The Ministry of Religious Denominations and Public Enlightenment (Ministerstwo Wyznań Religijnych i Oświecenia Publicznego—MWRiOP) approved elected rabbis and the appointments to religious councils, which would be the main authorities of the Jewish Reli-gious Association. However, since this Association had not been consti-tuted, MWRiOP was effectively the highest decision-making authority when it came to approving the budget and validating resolutions of the kehilla administrative board. MWRiOP made decisions on the imposition of mandatory contributions from Jewish community members and how large the contributions should be. The minister was represented by the starost and the voivode (province governor) of the region.⁷⁵

A decree from MWRiOP on April 5, 1928, concerning “announce-ment of a uniform text of the decree of the President of the Polish Republic on October 14, 1927, systematizing the legal status for the organization of Jewish religious communities in the Polish Republic, with the excep-tion of the province of Silesia,”⁷⁶ stated that a Jewish religious commu-nity might be formed by residents of a single political municipality if they could afford to finance it or (Article 2) by those of several municipalities if they could not. The legislator divided Jewish communities into small (Article 4) and large ones, the latter having more than 5,000 members (Article 14). Smaller communities would be ruled by executive boards initially comprising four—and after the 1931 elections, eight—elected members, including the kehilla’s rabbi in every case (Article 4). The work of the kehilla would be led by the president of the administrative board, to be elected from its members (Article 9). Large communities would be administered by an administrative board composed of an executive body

and a community council. The administrative board would have legisla-tive powers. Separate regulations from MWRiOP determined the number of hired officials.⁷⁷ The elections were prepared by election commissions that were staffed by three members of the administrative board, seven members of the kehilla, and three deputies in smaller communities; and five administrative board members, eleven kehilla members, and five deputies in larger ones (Article 14).⁷⁸

The administrative board was the only organ that supervised the administration of the kehilla, except for powers vested in the commu-nity council by the legislative body. Its functions included approval and revision of the budget, setting and collecting dues and contributions, contracting loans, establishing and managing foundations and enterprises, and electing the rabbi and assistant rabbis (Article 21). Regardless of their size, all kehillot were to meet their members’ religious needs, including organizing and maintaining the rabbinate, synagogues, houses of prayer, mikvaot (plural of mikve, ritual baths), and cemeteries, arranging religious education for the young, procuring kosher meat, and managing commu-nity assets. Kehillot were empowered to engage in charity and to establish institutions in order to fund it (Article 3).

The rabbi was the principal figure in the kehilla. His attitudes, views, and actions strongly influenced the community. The posts of rabbi and assistant rabbi could easily be told apart: assistant rabbis were uncommon

The rabbi was the principal figure in the kehilla. His attitudes, views, and actions strongly influenced the community. The posts of rabbi and assistant rabbi could easily be told apart: assistant rabbis were uncommon

Im Dokument The Jewish Community of Kleczew and the Beginning of the Final Solution (Seite 119-158)