CHAPTER 72

Przytyk and the Protest-Strike on March 17, 1936

On March 10, 1936, Warsaw was shocked by the news of a pogrom that had broken out a day earlier in the province of Radom, in the small town of Przytyk.

Antisemitism in Poland had by then taken on intense forms. Physical attacks on Jews had become a daily occurrence. But it had never yet descended to an organized pogrom—until March 9, 1936.

The Bund’s Central Committee convened and decided to call for a general strike on March 17 by all the Jews in all of Poland as a protest against the pogrom in Przytyk and against antisemitism in general.

In Warsaw we began hurriedly to prepare for the protest-strike. A strike committee consisting of the Bund and the trade unions was formed. The unions and the militia were given the job of seeing to it that the strike was a full on, general strike, and that the marketplaces, bazaars, and businesses would be shut down.

On the eve of the strike, on March 16, we held a meeting of the Militia, assigning the pickets for the following morning whose job it would be to ensure that the businesses were closed and that the goods in the street stalls and bazaars would not be displayed.

A day before the strike, Dr. Max Weinreich, the director of YIVO and correspondent for the New York Yiddish newspaper, Forverts¹ (Forward) came from Vilnius. I had been acquainted with him for a long time, going back to our Bund work in Czarist Russia. I first met him at a party convention in Kharkow in 1916, and subsequently at other party functions. Now he had come to Warsaw, saying he wanted to accompany me the whole day of the strike tomorrow wherever in the streets of Warsaw I would go. He wanted to see with his own eyes how the great general strike would take place. I warned him that we would have to go out into the streets early tomorrow morning, at six-thirty.

Dr. Weinreich showed up on time at the appointed place, and we went out into the streets together. First we went to the area behind the covered market in the neighborhoods of Zimna, Ciepła, Chłodna, Mirowska, in front of the Iron Gate and surroundings. The Bundist militiamen had already come a little earlier to these places and they—as well as the union pickets—went around among the stall keepers and the businesses demanding everyone close their shops and leave the marketplace. A great tumult arose, a sliding and scraping of shutters, a closing of doors, the shutting of locks and iron bars. Quite a number of police were also around. They noticed that people were constantly running up to me, then running off somewhere, and then returning to me. Several policemen approached Dr. Weinreich and me, declaring they were arresting us and taking us to police headquarters. When we protested they answered, “You can explain it all at police headquarters, but in the meantime you must come with us.” They began to lead us away. The Jewish shopkeepers noticed that the police had arrested me and another person, so several of them went up to the policemen, whom they knew very well. These were police from that neighborhood that drew a nice little supplementary livelihood from these Jewish shopkeepers. They began quietly talking to them. I did not see whether or not the police were given something into their hands right there on the spot, or just the promise of something later. In any case, the police left and we were both free to continue on our way.

From there we went to Grzybowski Square and to Bagno Street where the famous commercial courtyard “Pociejów” was located. Old furniture, old iron goods, etc., were sold there. The same scene as took place in the covered market repeated itself there: workers, employees, and shopkeepers, began closing doors and shutters. Teamsters and coachmen began shouting to each other across the great Grzybowski Square, “Leave your stations! We’re going home! Jazda! (Giddyap!).” You could suddenly hear the hoofbeats of horses over the cobblestoned pavements echoing over the whole square. The great Grzybowski Square, and all its surrounding streets, grew as quiet and empty as if it were a holiday.

Now we had to get to the second part of the Jewish neighborhood, to the Nalewki —“those other streets,” as the Grzybów Jews called them; the Nalewki Jews referred to neighborhood of the Grzybów Jews’ in the same way. We couldn’t take a droshky there because that would be breaking the strike, so although it was quite a distance, we walked there. When we arrived, everything was in order—all the businesses and shops were shuttered and closed.

The same process was taking place in the workshops and factories. Groups of inspectors from the unions went to the workshops and factories and removed the workers from their jobs. Of course, these union inspectors did not have a difficult time of it. Either the workers didn’t come to work in the first place, or they immediately left work as soon as a representative of the union appeared.

It must also be said that almost no difficulties at all in carrying out the protest-strike were encountered with the Jewish owners of the businesses, workshops, and factories. They gladly joined the strike. The whole Jewish community was deeply grateful to the Bund for taking the initiative in organizing such a resolute protest against the renewal of old Czarist pogroms in independent Poland.

In addition, almost all the students in the Jewish schools left their lecture halls and joined the strike. All the wailing and weeping of the school administrators that the students were ruining them, that the government might close down the school permanently, were to no avail. Even many of the Jewish children who attended the state elementary schools didn’t attend school that day.

Around nine in the morning, the streets in the Jewish neighborhoods were full of people. The workers and employees did not remain sitting at home. Everyone’s mood was battle-ready. Pride and uplifted spirits were felt everywhere. The Jewish population protested with their heads held high. It was a mighty mass protest. At eleven o’clock in the morning the great protest meeting called by the Bund took place at Przejazd 9. The courtyard was large and crowded with thousands of people. The meeting took place for several hours, without interruption: speakers ascended and descended from the improvised platform, and the people in the crowd came and went continually, but the courtyard continued to remain packed with people. In this way, tens of thousands of people came to the meeting at one time or another. Only at around two o’clock in the afternoon did the meeting stop: the strike had been called for a half-day, from early in the morning until two o’clock in the afternoon. At two o’clock everyone returned to their everyday work.

Figure 118. “Extra: Strike!” Special edition of the Folkstsaytung calling for a general strike of Jewish citizens in all businesses, factories, and workplaces to protest the pogrom in Pryzytyk in March 1936. From the Archives of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York.

But only superficially did everything return to normal. In fact, the protest-strike the Bund had called for and in which the whole Jewish population of Poland participated, left a deep impression. The courage with which large Jewish masses set themselves against further antisemitic acts of violence certainly had its roots in the mighty protest of March 17, 1936, which became a turning point in the continuing struggle, resistance, and rise of the Bund.²

Note

1.The first issue of Forverts (“Forward”) appeared on April 22, 1897, in New York City. The paper’s name, as well as its political orientation, was borrowed from the German Social-Democratic Party and its organ Vorwärts (it should be noted here that the standard Yiddish term for “forward” is foroys; forverts is nonstandard, considered a Germanism (daytshmerish)). By 1912 its circulation was 120,000, and by the late 1920s, the Forward was a leading US metropolitan daily with considerable influence and a nationwide circulation of more than 275,000, the largest daily Yiddish newspaper in the world.—MZ

2.“Three and a half million Jews went out on strike. At noon all Jewish workers left their work; all Jewish stores shut down; Jewish pupils walked out of school. The streets of Poland were filled with a fiery people, proud, and battle ready.”—Lucy S. Dawidowicz, The Golden Tradition (New York: Holt Rinehart, and Winston, 1967, 80).—MZ