The Communists kept up their harassments, haranguing and assaulting of our comrades, attacking our meetings and unions, and continuing to call their futile strikes. After they lost control of the Bakers Union, they focused their attention on the Retail Clerks Union.
The Communists had learned nothing from their defeat in the Bakers Union and their senseless, coldblooded murder of Neuerman. They conducted their struggle to gain control of the Retail Clerks Union with the same violence they had used in trying to gain control of the Bakers Union. Here again they eventually lost, but this time the battle was more complicated and prolonged, because the retail clerks had a long Communist tradition.
Even back in Czarist times, the retail clerks in Warsaw had a union. Mostly white-collar workers had belonged to this union: bank officials, purchasers, bookkeepers, traveling salesmen, office workers, and so on, mostly from the assimilated segments of the Jewish population. Even before the First World War, their union had constructed its own attractive building on Zielna 25, near the Marszałkowska, and close to the wealthy Polish neighborhoods. Yiddish-speaking folk types from the Nalewki, Gęsia, and Franciszkańska neighborhoods were, with few exceptions, not allowed into these occupations. Politically, the SDKPiL and the PPS-Lewica (PPS-Left), two Polish Socialist parties, had a great influence on these workers. On the Jewish question, these parties took the assimilationist point of view. Influential as well were the nonpolitical assimilationists who simply could not stand it that Yiddish-speaking and Jewish folk types should have any entry into their “aristocratic” union.
Nevertheless, the Bund did have a strong group in the Retail Clerks Union. One of the most active Bundists there, who often gave brilliant public speeches defending the Bund’s positions, was Comrade Lazar Epstein (now in New York and active in the Jewish Labor Committee1). The Bund faction continually demanded democratizing the union, letting in the “lower” sorts of employees, organizing literary readings in Yiddish (the official language of the union was Polish), and so on. After the First World War the Communists (the SDKPiL and the PPS-Lewica) took control of the union. But the Bundist faction also grew stronger at that same time, calling itself the “Grosser faction.” Quite a number of Bundist activists became part of this faction, for example, Mayer Wasser, Vice-Chairman of the Central Committee of the Polish Bund; his brother, Gershn Wasser; Zygmunt Muszkat; Leon Michelson; Lutek Friedman; Jana Jojlson; and others.
Before the First World War a Yiddish-speaking union of manufacturing factory workers had also organized itself in Warsaw, including employees in the Nalewki neighborhood. After the war, this union fell under the influence of the Pa’ola-Tsiyon (Labor Zionist) Party, although the Bund had a strong following in the union, and once—for the election to the Warsaw Labor Congress—the Bund even acquired a majority.
The Bund then put forward a demand that the two unions be united. Both unions, in fact, passed such a resolution, but it was never carried out. The leadership of both unions sabotaged it. The manufacturing factory workers union grew continually weaker and smaller, and did not play a significant role. Around the general Retail Clerks Union at Zielna 25, however, the battle grew ever more intense.
The Bundist faction was especially energetic in putting forward its demand that the union organize the as yet unorganized. Mostly this meant the poorly paid employees (mostly girls) in the large covered markets and in the market squares around them (for example, “Gościnny Dwór,” later “Wielopole,” etc.). These workers were Yiddish-speaking folk people, who would have had a natural affinity for the Bund. The Communists, afraid that this new stream of members would cause them to lose their grip on the union, opposed letting them in. The battle around the issue of taking them into the union grew ever more intense. The Communist opposition kept growing more and more vehemently opposed; the Bund just as vehemently for. Objectively, justice was on our side: Why shut the doors of the union to a large mass of employees? Just because they might upset the reigning party? Or because they are of a “lower” sort, earn less, and do not speak an elegant Polish? These very poorly paid workers were, in that case, all the more in need of an advocate!
In the twenties a manufacturing worker in our faction arose who attracted everyone’s attention with his energy and dynamism. His name was Dovid Wasserman. He was tall, broad shouldered, well-built, spoke with a deep bass voice, and was a person with a folksy sense of humor. He stemmed from a bourgeois family, and he himself had a well-paid position in manufacturing. He threw himself into the work of opposing the Communist leadership with all his exuberant energy. At every step of the way, as the Secretary of the Bundist faction at Zielna 25, he pointed out the unjust and antidemocratic conduct of the assimilationist Polonist-Communist union. The prestige and the following of the Bund faction continually grew. But as the influence of the Bund grew, so grew more intense the conflicts with the old Executive Board, mostly around the question of organizing the poorly paid marketplace workers. It went so far that the Communists excluded the representatives of the Bundist faction of the union to the Executive Board, for example, Comrade Chaim Wasser, Dovid Wasserman, and so on (the elections to the Executive Board were supposed to be proportional, according to the membership lists of the factions).
At this point the Bund stepped up independently to organize the workers the Communist union did not want to accept, for example, the Yiddish-speaking retail clerks of Gęsia and Franciszkańska Streets; the peddlers in the marketplaces and around the large covered markets; the fruit peddlers (fruit selling was also concentrated around the large covered markets), etc. Out of all these categories we created a new union. Dovid Wasserman quit his job on Gęsia Street and became the Secretary of the new union.
The newly founded union grew by leaps and bounds. Soon it rented its own large meeting hall (on Mylna 7). It quickly acquired a good reputation among the broad mass of retail clerks. Also manufacturing employees, leather workers, clerks in men’s clothing stores, bookkeepers, and office workers all started coming round to the newly formed union offices.
The Communists made up their minds to destroy this newly formed union with every means at their disposal, even if it meant the spilling of blood, just as they had done with the Bakers Union. As a base for their bloody assault they chose the fruit market workers local, where they had some sympathizers, even though their union had refused to organize these workers.
The fruit workers were a unique element. They were half employees, half independent porters. As employees, they sold fruit to tradesmen wholesale, but, like independent porters, they also hauled baskets of fruit. They began working around three and four in the morning, when the fruit was brought in from the countryside to Warsaw, to the center of the wholesale fruit business in Mirowski Square, near the large covered markets. They worked hard both in summer and in winter, because even in the winter, aside from the winter fruits, there were also fruits from the hothouses.
At one point the wholesale fruit business lay completely in Jewish hands. Later Polish wholesalers also got into the business. The Jewish and Polish fruit wholesalers kept themselves apart from one another. The Polish workers belonged to the FRAC unions, which attempted to pull into their ranks the Jewish workers. Because of this there were often battles with our local union. The Communists, in order to wreck our local union, supported the FRACs. The Communists also gained the support of some of the Jewish bosses, who looked askance at the whole idea of their employees suddenly organizing themselves into a union.
It happened one time that one of the fruit workers went into business for himself, leaving a job opening for someone else. The fruit local of our union—to which everyone now belonged—decided to give the newly vacated job to an unemployed worker. At this point the Communists mixed in, deciding that this job opening should go to one of their people, the son of a fruit wholesaler, a boy who had never worked a day in his life at the fruit trade and was, of course, not a member of our fruit local. The Communists were seeking an excuse to foment trouble, rather than being actually interested in acquiring the job for this boy. He had received a call-up to serve in the reserves, in military exercises, and when this conflict flared up, he had already been called.
The Communists conducted the battle with their usual terror tactics. They disrupted a meeting of the fruit local with hurled insults and beatings. After that they shot into the apartment of our comrade, Simkhe Solnik, an active member of our fruit local. A few days later, in the afternoon, there suddenly appeared on Mirowski Square a band of Communists with their chief thug in the lead, and before we knew what was happening, they had let loose a heavy barrage of gunfire, not into the air to frighten us, but aimed straight at our comrades. The result was fatal: our Comrade Shejnowicz fell dead on the spot and comrade Simkhe Solnik fell, severely wounded.
These were not victims by chance. The Communists consciously aimed at them. At Shejnowicz, because he was a pillar of the fruit local; he had a large family, brothers, uncles, cousins—all of them fruit workers, and he brought them all into the union. At Solnik, because he was a member of the Bund Militia. In addition, the Communists committed the murder of an innocent bystander.
As soon as we heard the news about this new Communist murder, I went there with a group of our militiamen, but no trace of the Communist gunmen was anywhere to be found.
The union did some accurate investigations, and it was confirmed that several Communist members took part in preparing the bloody assault, and they were pushed out of their employment by the union.
We had great difficulties with the families of the two victims. Simkhe Solnik lay ill and recovering for a long time. The family members of the victims didn’t belong to the Bund and were not interested in hearing anything about higher party and social issues. It cost us much effort and work to succeed in persuading the families of the victims to renounce any form of vengeance, because we wanted at all costs to avoid further bloodshed.
1.Formed in 1934 by Yiddish-speaking immigrant trade union leaders and leaders of the Bund and Workmen’s Circle in response to the rise of Nazism in Germany. Its first president was the Bundist Baruch Charney Vladeck. Especially in the organization’s early period, Bundist influence was significant. The JLC worked to support Jewish labor institutions in European countries, cooperate with American organized labor, assist the anti-Nazi underground movement, and combat antisemitism. After the outbreak of World War II, the emphasis focused on efforts to save Jewish cultural and political figures, as well as Jewish and non-Jewish labor and Socialist leaders facing certain death at the hands of the Nazis. The Committee succeeded in bringing over a thousand of such individuals to the United States, or to temporary shelter elsewhere.—MZ