Every Bundist activist, every party professional, had his worries and his troubles. Everyone had to endure difficult struggles, and everyone was beset with dangers from every side. The particular circumstances in which I had to work unsettled me more than once.
I had no doubts about the importance and the justice of the task with which the party had entrusted me: to ensure the physical safety of our lives and of our movement against all our enemies. But I sometimes asked myself: Am I personally strong enough to carry out such a difficult task? Will my nerves hold out?
I was constantly in danger. There were continual fights, shootings, and chases. I lived in an atmosphere of fear and terror. I always imagined that someone was walking behind me who at any moment was going to jump me. I would get anxious, thinking I should turn around: perhaps it was the very last moment to fend off an attack.
But this feeling, no matter how disagreeable, was not really my main concern. I would have been ashamed if the physical dangers would have caused me to resign this party post. After all, someone else would have had to take over the work. Why should some other person have to risk his life more than I?
But what really weighed on my mind more than anything else was the moral danger I was in. I often dealt with people to whom money was nothing, people who drank, caroused, and for whom throwing their money around was a daily affair. People proposed partnerships with me in all kinds of businesses. I was offered money—great sums of money—ostensibly, as a “loan.” People wanted to clothe me: “Look Bernard, how you are dressed. It’s an embarrassment. Come to the store with me. I’ll dress you so you’ll look right. No one will know,” and so on. Some, for example, the meat workers, said this without any improper intentions. They simply could not understand why I was such a fool and wouldn’t take advantage of a comradely “favor.” The temptation was even greater because I was always short of money and had barely enough to get by for my family. More than once I received support from my brother and my sisters in America.
I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to stand up under the pressure—that I might cave in. Particularly, because I knew that it was enough to make just a small beginning, and …
People in similar positions working for other parties were frightening examples. Dr. Loketek, for instance, an educated person with a PhD. Look what became of him. And only because he did not have the strength to resist the pressure from the demimonde. How did I know I would have the strength? I must escape while I still can! After much thought and inner wrangling, I decided to go to the party and give up this post.
Whom should I tell? Comrade Noyekh, of course. I approached him, and we agreed to meet in a quiet café. It was just the two of us, so I poured out my bitter heart to him. I told him of my fears. I begged him, literally with tears in my eyes, that the Bund free me from this arduous and nerve-shattering work and give me some other function to perform. Comrade Józef, as we called him in Poland, listened attentively to me the whole time without interrupting me even once, and when I was finished, he said, in that way he had, calmly and slowly:
“If your condition is as you describe it, you will of course have to abandon this work, but I wonder if you should do that. You mentioned that something might happen to you physically. In that case, there is no option. You must be freed of this work. But you said yourself that this was not the main thing that troubled you, that the most important thing was that you were afraid you would be corrupted, compromised. But you see, about that I have no fears. I know it is possible, but it is good that it frightens you, for as long as it frightens you, it cannot pose a real threat. As long as you fear for your own corruption, you will never succumb to it. I guarantee it. I do not fear you will stumble!”
“How can you ‘guarantee’ that I will never lose myself, when I myself cannot be sure of it?” I asked him. “Perhaps you should, after all, try to get someone else?” “Well, okay then,” he answered, “by all means, please suggest someone else as a candidate.” So I named several people. Comrade Noyekh then said, “You know quite well they are not suited for this work.” I argued that no party function should depend on one person. He answered this, counting every word, as he used to when he wanted to emphasize something: “No single party task must depend on one person. It will be carried out without you, without me, without others. When we are no longer around, the Bund will still exist. But as long as we are around, we must do our part.” He continued, now at a somewhat quicker pace, “Bernard, our fate is bound up with the movement. It places each of us at our posts, and we all of us together bear responsibility for one another. We all know what kind of difficult work you do, and you know we have the fullest confidence in you. Strengthen yourself, get over this, continue your work!”
Why should I deny it: what he told me did in fact help me regain my confidence and my faith in myself.
But there was someone else who also gave me strength, very often, and that was Shloyme Mendelson.