them selves on one side, and the Bund in the rest of the world, m ainly U .S. and France, on the other side. In 1948 the Bund in Poland decided to cut its ties with the Bund elsewhere, and also with the Socialist parties’ conference in London, w hich had ex- eluded left Socialist parties.

D iscussion took place toward or- ganic unity with the Jewish Commu- nists, and in Jan., 1949, the P olish Bund dissolved itself in favor of in- dividual Bundists applying for admis- sion into the Polish W orkers Party, and the policy of national cultural autonom y was renounced. H enceforth, whatever existence the Bund was to have, it would have in the capitalist world.

W hen the ashes had settled on the devastation of European Jewry after W orld War II, the remnants of the Bund were scattered over m any coun- tries, including Israel, and on five continents. We can follow the post- war fortunes of the Bund in its main lines through the official Y iddish Bund publication, Unzer Tsait (Our T im e), published in New York, and the remainder of our account w ill for the m ost part be based on issues from 1948-1950 and 1972-73, and m ainly upon the resolutions passed at world conferences of the Bund.

In M ay, 1947, the surviving Bund leaders gathered their forces to assem- bie the First Bund W orld Coordinat- ing Committee Conference in Brus- sels. This m eeting reaffirmed Bund principles and voted to join the In- ternational Socialist Conference (sue- cessor to the Second International), established a world headquarters in New York, where the largest num- ber of Bundists was now located, and a European Secretariat in Paris, and organized itself as the executive com- mittee of the surviving Bund move- ment. By the time of the Second W orld C onference in 1948 in N ew

The Bund

Revisited: iV

After W orld War II

B y L O U IS H A R A P

WHEN peace came in 1945, only a small remnant of the centuries-

old Y iddish-speaking com m unity of Eastern Europe survived the Hitler H olocaust. The working class Jewish constituency of the Bund in Poland was reduced to a sym bolic few. After the war, these Bundists cooperated with Jewish Communists in promot- ing Jewish schools and culture in Y iddish.

Extraordinarily generous provisions were provided by the Polish Commu- nist regim e. The Bund put out its own Y iddish Di Folkszaytung and Polish Glos B undu , but its position on national cultural autonom y was vigorously opposed by the Jewish Communists, who charged the Bund with nationalism . The Cold War had begun, and the Polish Bundists found

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only one part of the world Jewish problem, the Bund asserted, and not the central aspect, as the Zionist held. The main resolution passed at the W orld Coordinating Committee meet- ing in Oct., 1948 spelled out the Bund’s policy on Israel: the Jews re- m ain a world people; not only is the creation of Israel no solution to the Jewish problem , but it puts the achievement of Israel in peril from the enveloping Arab states.

The task of Jews everywhere is, as always, to struggle together with non- Jewish democratic and socialist forces for their comm on goals, and for free Jewish developm ent; to fight against assim ilation, and for Jewish culture in Yiddish. The resolution warns against 44negative relations” with Israel, and urges help in the fight for peace with the Arabs, and the ultimate achievem ent of federation of Israel with the surrounding Arab states. The Bund also appealed for the recognition of Y iddish in Israel as a national language, and that Yid- dish be taught there.

A m inority resolution, in which one- fifth of the 50 delegates concurred, was substantially the same except for som e different emphases, such as that Israel was now an 44im portant” part of the Jewish people, that Israel was justified in resisting the British m an־ date and the British-supported A rabs; warning Jews against 44illusions” that the existence of Israel had solved the Jewish Question, and that Jews out- side Israel should establish the closest relations with Israel, while rejecting the Zionists’ attempt to m onopolize Jewish efforts outside Israel, to the detriment of Jewish activists inside their own countries.

In con siderin g th e p o sitio n o f theBund on the Cold War, it should be recalled that there were strong anti- Communist (that is, anti-Bolshevik)

Y ork, Israel had em erged and the Bund, w hich had opposed the estab- lishm ent of Israel, had to come to grips with the new reality of the Jew- ish state, and to take its position in the Cold War.

C on siderin g that Z ion ism hadbeen am ong the m ain antagonists of the Bund for decades, the creation of Israel was a m ajor challenge to the Bund. For here was a com m unity of Jews actually form ed into a state, and not m erely an autonom ous na- tional assem bly. For h a lf a century the Bund had m aintained that the Jews were a 44world nation without territory” in consonance with Otto Bauer’s definition of a nation as 44a com m unity of fate.”

The ideologies of the Bund and Zionism were in several respects di- rect contraries. The Zionists agitated for the 44ingathering of the ex iles” in Israel; the Bundists regarded the Jews as an autonom ous nationality in the various states where they lived and were at hom e, and should remain there w hile cultivating their Jewish national life in the Y iddish language.

The Zionists regarded Jewish his- tory after the fall of the Temple as a disgraceful interval in Jewish his- tory from which they dissociated them selves, and established Hebrew as the national language. The Bund em braced the entire Jewish tradition and regarded Y iddish as the national language. The Zionists m aintained that the solution of the Jewish Ques- tion on a w orld scale lay in the crea- tion of a Jewish state; the Bund be- lieved that the creation of a Jewish state would not solve the Jewish prob- lem , but that only a dem ocratic so- cialism on a world scale could achieve full equality for the Jews.

The Bund was not swept off its feet by the creation of Israel, but clung to its basic position. Israel was

J e w is h C u r r e n t s2 4

check from the workers and the m asses, as, the resolution asserted, is the case with the workers and m asses of the capitalist im perialist countries. The conference also resolved that the just-passed M cCarran anti-com m unist act was a “grave error” because it gives the dem ocratic w orld the “w rong im pression” of A m erica, and because the Constitution and existing laws al- ready afford sufficient protection against Communist propaganda. The only greeting during the conference was to the new ly-form ed Bund chap- ter in Israel, but not to Israel itself.

A fu r th e r s tep in th e post-w ar re-construction of the Bund was the first conference of Bund groups in the U .S. and Canada, held in N ew Y ork in the fall of 1950. Bundism had been reinforced in the U .S. by im mi- gration from Poland, especially since 1939, and by the im m igration of sur- vivors from the concentration camps. W hile the significance of the con- ference was m ainly organizational, several aspects stand out.

The tem perature of the Cold W ar was apparent in the m ajor report by the top Bund leader, Dr. Em anuel Scherer, which went beyond the 1948 resolution. “Just as Hitler before 1939, so today Stalin is the greatest danger to peace in the w orld.” W hile fascism and com m unism differ in their eco- nom ic base, said Scherer, they are alike in their “im m orality and aggres- sive m ilitary im perialism .” Both “ap- peasem ent” of the Soviet U nion and a pacifist position, he said, deliver the w orld to the m ercies of the So- viets, so that rearmam ent, m ilitary preparedness and a western m ilitary alliance are unavoidable m easures of defense against Soviet aggression. Scherer quite explicitly , however, re- jects the 44preventive war” talk that was current at the tim e.

On the A m erican scene the con­

forces in the Bund leadership since the Russian Social Dem ocratic Work- ers Party Congress in 1903, when the Bund left the party. After rejoining the party in 1906, the Bund main- tained an independent position on a number of issues, but tended to be allied with the M ensheviks, finally jo in ing them in 1912, when the Men- sheviks accepted national cultural autonom y.

The m ajority, which at first favored jo in ing the Comintern and then re- fused to accept all the conditions of m em bership, dwindled with time. Some left wingers left the Bund for the Com- m unist Party. In any case, between the two world wars the Bund settled into an anti-Communist stance. The murder of Erlich and Alter intensi- fied this position, to which the Bund has adhered since.

Thus, the 1948 Bund Conference regarded itself as belonging to a 44third force” between the 44expansion- ist” Communists and the capitalists with the U .S. at the head. The dan- ger to the progress of mankind and to peace, the Bund held, stemmed from both sides. The Bund hailed the victory of the British Labor Party as a giant step toward dem ocratic world socialism and considered support of the M arshall Plan obligatory for the rebuilding of Europe.

Communism the Bund considered a danger to the future of the Jewish people because it threatened to cause the atrophy of Y iddish culture in the Soviet U nion. Only the achievem ent of world dem ocratic socialism , which the Bund differentiates from Commu-

v nism, could bring freedom and secur- ity to all Jews.

The resolution further m aintained that, although the danger of war threatened from both sides, 44aggres- sive Soviet im perialism ” and not U .S. im perialism had becom e the greater danger because it was not subject to

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Jews Uduh un dortn ,” for the Bund theory holds that their fight is Uduh ,” here on home ground. The Bundist who suggests this dual aim, said N owogrudsky, is already on the way to Zionism. The resolutions passed by the conference show that the leader- ship was firmly in the hands of the old guard.

By the time of the Bund’s 75th an- niversary in 1972, it was clear that the organization had undergone no significant change in orientation in the 1950’s and 1960’s. That gala oc- casion was celebrated at the Fifth World Coordinating Committee Con- ference in New York in April, 1972, to which delegates came from 12 countries. The Bund’s continuing be- lief in socialism was sym bolized by red covers on Unzer Tsait through- out the year. The basic platform of the Bund was reasserted: com bating assim ilation, opposition to Zionism as nationalistic, prom otion of Y iddish as the national language, autonom ous development of Jewish culture in Yiddish, belief that the Jewish Ques- tion will not be solved finally until socialism is achieved, and joint strug- gles with non-Jewish workers and so- cialists for its achievem ent.

T h e c o n fe re n c e re so lu t io n s ap-plied these principles to current is- sues. By now the Bund acknowledged that Israel is an 44im portant” event for the Jewish people, but it opposed the urging of Zionist leaders that Israel should be the potential home for all the w orld’s Jews. The Bund further urged that full dem ocratic rights be accorded to non-Jews in Israel, that Israel remove all the bar- riers to peace with the Arabs, that Israel remove all obstacles to the use of Y iddish, and that Y iddish be given full rights in public life.

The resolution recognized the 44great achievem ents” of Israel, but deplored

ference discussion centered on the op- portunities opened to the Bund by the post-war interest in and activity about Jewish life in all lands. The First W orld Coordinating Conference in 1947 had judged that the U .S. would now becom e 44the m ost im- portant center of Jewish national renaissance.” The Bund in the U .S. should fight against assim ilationism and for the 44free developm ent, deep- ening and expansion of Y iddish cul- ture,” fight for the rights of the Yid- dish language, for Jew ish people’s schools in Y iddish, for dem ocratic K ehillas and other autonom ous Jewish activities, and for secularism .

But a second report, by Dr. Em anuel Pat, aroused the ire of the old line Bundist leaders, for they scented com prom ise in P at’s critical remarks. Pat did indeed criticise the Bund for its insufficient attention to Am erican Jew ish problem s, and charged that the Bund had not fully exam ined its rela- tions to organizations in which Bund m em bers were influential, such as the W orkm en’s Circle and the Jewish La- bor Committee. He chided the Bund for its opposition to the creation of Israel, and for the fact that the Bund’s relationship to Israel is not positive, and that the Bund had not related it- self properly to the dem ocratic social- ist m ovem ent in Israel. He regarded A m erican Jewish interest in both A m erica and Israel as of equal im- portance, and called for a 4'synthesis of duh un dortn” (here— U .S .— and there— Israe l), and support for the dem ocratic socialist m ovem ent in Israel.

The two leading Bund theoreticians, Dr. Em anuel Scherer and E. N owo- grudsky, made it clear in the ensuing discussion that they rejected P at’s criticism on the score of Israel. Both men asserted that Pat was treading on dangerous ground when he as- serted that Am ericans must fight for

J e w is h C u r r e n t s2 6

H A R R Y L E V I T A N H O N O R E D

Renowned in Philadelphia for decades as a civ il liberties and la- bor lawyer, Harry Levitan was honored by the Philadelphia Law- yers Guild at a dinner March 16. W ith 300 admirers crow ding the U niversity Museum quarters to capacity, tributes were paid to Levitan by veterans of progressive legal battles, Arthur K inoy and W illiam Kunstler of New York and Joseph Forer of W ashington. D.C. Enthusiasm ran high.

A telegram for the occasion sent by our Editor, M orris U. Schappes, read :

44The wretched of the earth in Philadelphia have found in Harry Levitan a P eople’s D efender, a man made fearless by his social idealism in the pursuit of social progress. I salute him. We of Jew ish Currents are honored to have him as one of our L ife Sub- scribers.”

Congratulations are also in order to Elsie Levitan, his w ife, known to our readers for her reviews, articles and poem s.

nism and not dem ocratic socia lism ” that is the 44leading force in the fight against colonialism and dom estic re- action .” The Bund favored quick withdrawal from all Southeast A sia (this is April, 1972) ; it also pro- tested econom ic and political exploi- tation of the 44Third W orld” and ad- vocated full disarm am ent under inter- national controls. F inally, the Bund called on all socialists in the 44demo- cratic lands” to put more 44dynam ism and v igor” into their struggle for 44structural reform s that would open the way to the free socia list society .”

(To be concluded)

its 44false and harmful orientation to the politics of Z ionism .” The Bund criticised the 44H ebraization” of Jew- ish culture in Israel and the negative attitude toward Y iddish literature and culture, as well as the official status of the religious approach to civil life. Criticising the oppression of the Arabs within Israel, the resolution pointed to the official Egyptian offer of Feb., 1971 to recognize Israel in spite of the barriers set up by Arab extremists. A nnexationism is a dan- gerous policy for Israel, concludes the resolution, and the path to peace lies in fulfilment of the 1967 United Na- tions R esolution 242.

The position on Soviet Jews and their em igration to Israel is consis- tent with Bund principles. The resolu- tion on this question calls attention to 44national-cultural” discrim ination against Jews in the Soviet U nion in all phases of Jewish expression, de- spite formal Soviet recognition of the Jewish nationality in passports. The Bund therefore demanded Soviet pro- vision for Jewish cultural life and re- ligious freedom for Jews. The Bund favored em igration of Jews as a hu- man right not only for Soviet Jews but for all Soviet citizens. The Bund criticized the Israeli and Zionist leadership for agitating exclusively for em igration while ignoring the struggle for Jewish national rights within the Soviet U nion for the ma- jority of Soviet Jews, who will remain there. The resolution deplored the fact that most Am erican Jews have, under Zionist inspiration, given up the struggle for national rights for Soviet Jews because they are w holly preoccupied with supporting emigra- tion to Israel.

Im placable opposition to Commu- nism and the Communist states per- sists in the Bund, as expressed, for instance, in its view that it is a 44trag- edy” that in V ietnam it is 44commu-

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