When Political Relief Turned into Rescue: The Jewish Labor Committee and the Migration of Bundists from Poland to France, 1946‑1948
Résumés
Cet article porte sur l’aide du Jewish Labor Committee (JLC) de New York à l’émigration de membres du Bund ouvrier juif de Pologne vers la France au lendemain de la Shoah et au début de la Guerre froide. À partir de la dense correspondance journalière entre le JLC et ses contacts bundistes en France, cette recherche offre une perspective transnationale, intime à échelle micro centrée sur un réseau particulier de solidarité. Elle démontre comment le JLC, dont l’action de secours était intimement liée à un projet politique, fit face à un contexte politique de plus en plus urgent.
Entrées d’index
Haut de pagePlan
Haut de pageTexte intégral
- 1 Tamiment Library, Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University, Jewish Labor Committee Reco (...)
- 2 On American Jewish aid in postwar France, see Laura Hobson Faure, A “Jewish Marshall Plan”: The Ame (...)
- 3 To a lesser extent, JLC correspondence with France also documents migration from Romania, Italy, Sw (...)
1“Today, I had a long discussion […] about the issue of reconstruction work for Jews in Western European countries. You know why I say Western European countries. Over there, behind the Iron Curtain, it’s a closed world for us,”1 wrote Benjamin Tabachinsky, a Jewish Labor Committee (JLC) leader, to his colleague Fajwel Schrager in Paris at the end of 1948. These lines illustrate how the JLC progressively transferred its support from Poland towards Western Europe, particularly France, as the doors of communist Eastern Europe were closing.2 This article examines the JLC’s endeavours to assist Jewish survivors, predominantly members of the Jewish Labor Bund, in leaving Poland for France. It analyses the moment of early post‑Holocaust Jewish reconstruction that spanned from the summer of 1946, when a massive effort to support the migration of Polish Jews to France started, to the end of 1948, when this migration was in decline.3
- 4 Daniel Blatman, For Our Freedom and Yours: The Jewish Labour Bund in Poland 1939‑1949, London/Portl (...)
- 5 Polish Bundists also went to Sweden and Belgium. On Sweden, see Håkan Blomqvist, Socialism in Yiddi (...)
2A Jewish socialist party created clandestinely in Vilnius in 1897, the Bund (General Jewish Workers’ Union in Lithuania, Poland and Russia) called on Jews to fight for the advent of socialism alongside proletarians of other nationalities. The Bund considered Jews of the Russian Empire as a nation; it opposed their assimilation into the majority population and advocated for their national cultural autonomy. Developing a secular culture in Yiddish quickly became central to this project. In interwar Poland, the Bund, opposed to both Zionism and communism, grew into a particularly influential political and sociocultural movement. During the Holocaust, the party’s membership was decimated and most of its leaders were killed or left Poland. However, the approximately 500 Bundists who survived in Poland resumed their political, social and cultural activities. They were joined in 1946 by about 1,000 comrades who had spent the war in the Soviet Union. But the attempted Bundist revival proved short‑lived; between Spring and October 1948, the Bund was required to integrate gradually into the communist Polish Workers’ Party, and its definitive liquidation was announced in January 1949.4 In the dual context of communist politics and postwar Polish antisemitism, many surviving Bundists moved westwards to DP camps in Germany, Austria and Italy, or to France, before in most cases heading to another destination overseas.5
- 6 Frank Wolff, “Eastern Europe Abroad: Exploring Actor‑Networks in Transnational Movements and Migrat (...)
- 7 On this left Zionist political party, see Samuel Kassow, “The Left Poalei Tsiyon in Interwar Poland (...)
- 8 Catherine Collomp, Rescue, Relief, and Resistance: The Jewish Labor Committee’s Anti‑Nazi Operation (...)
- 9 Natalia Aleksiun‑Mądrzak, “Nielegalna emigracja Żydów z Polski w latach 1944‑1947”, Biuletyn ŻIH, 1 (...)
- 10 Constance Pâris de Bollardière and Simon Perego, « Les migrations juives d’Europe centrale et orien (...)
3The JLC’s deep involvement in postwar France led it to support this migration. Founded in New York City in 1934 in reaction to Hitler’s rise to power, the JLC was the brainchild of Bundists who had migrated to the United States in the wake of the 1905 Russian Revolution. They integrated into local labour movements, especially in the garment industry in large urban centres, as well as into Yiddish‑speaking and socialist‑leaning fraternal organisations. As they adapted to local conditions, they developed what Frank Wolff has termed “secondary Bundism, which transferred Bundist thought and action into the functionally highly differentiated American society”.6 Influenced by some of its prominent leaders’ and members’ “secondary” Bundism, the JLC was an umbrella organisation of the non‑communist American Jewish labour movement, which also included actors and organisations with no Bundist political backgrounds, notably the left wing of the Poale Zion (Linke Poale Zion).7 It promoted a two‑pronged agenda: struggling against Nazism, fascism and antisemitism; and providing relief to victims. As Catherine Collomp has demonstrated, the JLC obtained temporary American immigration visas for socialist and labour leaders from different European countries in 1940 and 1941, thereby rescuing about 1,500 individuals and their family members. It subsequently supported Jewish and non‑Jewish socialist underground movements in France as well as Jewish resistance in Poland until the end of World War II.8 The JLC began sending aid to victims of Nazism in 1944. It prioritised the reconstruction of Jewish, and especially secular Yiddish‑speaking, life in Europe. The JLC’s aid extended to many European countries, but gradually focused more intensely on France, which had the largest postwar Jewish population in continental Western Europe. Believing that Jewish life and Yiddish culture could only develop in a democratic, non‑communist context, the JLC invested its hope in long‑term reconstruction in that country. France furthermore sat at the crossroads of European migrations at a time when Jews—mostly from Central and Eastern Europe, especially Poland—were fleeing sites of mass killings, persistent and deadly antisemitism, the loss of all personal and communal ties, economic hardship and the rise of communist governments in their countries of origin.9 As many as 75,000 Jews arrived in France from 1946 to 1950, most often in transit.10
- 11 See the bibliography presented in the introduction of this special issue.
- 12 For a presentation of this voluminous scholarship, see ibid.
- 13 Among several important references, see, for instance, Yehuda Bauer, Flight and Rescue: Brichah. Th (...)
- 14 Catherine Collomp, Rescue, Relief…, op. cit.
4The last two decades have produced an extensive historiography on post‑Holocaust Jewish displacement in Europe, notably on DP camps.11 Historians initially studied the migration wave to France in relation to the 15,000 to 20,000 Jews who transited through the country on their way to Palestine and Israel, but have recently started to pay more attention to other aspects.12 Drawing on the JLC’s dense, daily correspondence with French Bundists, I address the assistance provided by a specific solidarity network. My analysis, at once micro and transnational, provides a new, intimate perspective on East European Jews’ postwar migration to France. In doing so, it furthermore presents the case of Jewish refugees who travelled outside the much larger and more documented organised Zionist networks.13 My choice of scale is particularly useful for probing the question at the core of this special issue: post‑World War II displaced persons’ and refugees’ “return to norm(alcy)”. The JLC cultivated a long‑standing practice of connecting relief to politics, targeting Jewish and non‑Jewish individuals and organisations close to its labour‑oriented, social‑democratic agenda.14 I therefore argue that in rescuing Bundist comrades and friends from Poland and helping them reach France, the JLC’s “return to norm(alcy)” meant continuing to prioritise the interweaving of relief and politics. As the JLC faced the consequences of the Holocaust and increasing communist power in Poland, how did politics—both the geopolitical context and the JLC’s own political agenda—shape its relief work? How are these political norms and their underlying values visible in its practices, strategies and interpersonal relationships? Were there continuities with the prewar and war periods? To answer these questions, the first two sections will reconstruct the chronological development of this migration in the increasingly urgent geopolitical context of the early Cold War. They will demonstrate how the JLC continuously placed political solidarity at the core of relief, and how this endeavour turned into a political rescue. I will then reflect on the political norms that guided the JLC’s attribution of relief and on the limits of those norms.
Initial efforts to assist Bundists in leaving Poland, August 1946‑July 1947
- 15 Tabachinsky to Najman, 8 August 1946, JLC i, B 32 F 21.
- 16 Julia Maspero, “French Policy on Postwar Migration of Eastern European Jews through France and Fren (...)
5As had been the case since its inception, the JLC’s postwar relief targeted organisations and individuals close to its political and social circles. In France, its relief primarily concerned the Bund and the Linke Poale Zion’s mutual aid societies—the Arbeter‑ring (Workers’ Circle) and the Arbeter‑heym (Workers’ Home)—as well as several other non‑communist, Yiddish social and cultural institutions. In Poland, though the JLC continued to support existing Jewish reconstruction, the threat of antisemitism and communism gradually pushed it to shift its efforts towards assisting comrades in leaving the country. Maintaining any continuity of non‑communist Yiddish‑speaking life was no longer possible in Poland—but political solidarity, particularly Bundist solidarity, remained the JLC’s core value, even its driving force. In the initial correspondence between New York and Paris regarding emigration from Poland to France, the priority given to political partners and close social circles is immediately apparent. The JLC’s concern for emigration was first expressed on 8 August 1946, when B. Tabachinsky discussed the “hundreds of [JLC] friends” who had decided to leave Poland “at any price”.15 His comment followed the Kielce pogrom of 4 July 1946, in which 42 Jews were killed and seventy‑seven were wounded. The pogrom triggered a wave of panic that resulted in the departure of approximately 100,000 Jews from Poland between July and December 1946. At that time, the French government opposed Jews’ immigration from Poland. However, under joint pressure from the British government and Jewish organisations, led by the Zionist Fédération des sociétés juives de France (Federation of Jewish Societies of France), French authorities agreed in August 1946 to provide 8,000 temporary and transit visas to Polish Jews (the quota was renewable once the visa holders had left France).16
- 17 Constance Pâris de Bollardière, « La pérennité de notre peuple » : une aide socialiste juive améric (...)
- 18 Pat to Ryba, 26 August 1946, Najman to Pat, 3 September 1946, Pat to Friedman, 25 September 1946, J (...)
6The JLC likewise relied on its political networks as it implemented relief measures. In order to obtain visas for people whom they referred to as their “comrades” (khaveyrim) or “friends” (fraynt), it solicited assistance from French Bundists (the two most highly involved were F. Schrager and Khil Najman) and French Socialist Party members (including Daniel Mayer, who would become labour minister in December 1946). The JLC had supported the French socialist resistance during the war, and this connection continued after the liberation: the JLC supported the French Socialist Party and its newspaper Le Populaire, and French socialists reciprocated by assisting the JLC and French Bundists in bringing their comrades from Poland and the DP camps.17 The JLC’s practice of relying on such political networks represented a continuity with the prewar period. It was rooted in the Bund leaders’ internationalist programme, which they pursued throughout the Holocaust and its initial aftermath. In September 1946, socialist leaders’ interventions helped the JLC to obtain 500 of the 8,000 visas, which it dedicated to its “Jewish worker activist friends” in Poland. Three hundred of these “friends” were on a Bundist list (which included a minority of non‑Bundist individuals whose relatives were close to various American organisations that collaborated with the JLC), and the other 200 were on a Linke Poale Zion list.18 This article focuses on the comrades and other friends included on the Bundist lists.
- 19 Najman to Pat, 15 November 1946, Pat to Schrager and Najman, 4 December 1946, JLC i, B 32 F 22.
- 20 Tabachinsky to Friedman, 6 September 1946, JLC i, B 32 F 21, Pat to Najman, 7 October and 8 October (...)
- 21 Schrager to Pat and Mayer, 13 February 1947, Najman to Pat, 18 February 1947, JLC i, B 32 F 23.
- 22 Najman to Pat, JLC i, B 32 F 23, 4 January 1947. The envoy was likely Yankev Celemenski, a Bundist (...)
7Operating at a distance from New York and Paris made organising the emigration of comrades and friends logistically challenging. After obtaining its quota of 500 visas, the JLC communicated regularly with its contacts in France for more than two years in order to facilitate the departure of hundreds of candidates from Poland. Their names and personal information were the subject of constant letter exchanges. The situation was long and uncertain for many of the actors involved, as reflected in correspondence that mention a lack of information regarding pre‑departure delays, the anxiety created by stalled procedures, the pressure from worried relatives who had placed their confidence in the JLC and from Bundists in Poland suffering from the long waiting period.19 The correspondence also indicates that this instability encouraged the spread of rumours related to visa costs or cancellations, other groups that had supposedly already received visas, and individuals placed on visa lists without their consent.20 In addition, the administrative process was demanding and chaotic. Logistical complications developed when individuals appeared on a list of authorised visas but had already left Poland for places other than France; when others “disappeared” from the lists or passed away; when administrative information was missing, inaccurate, or updated (due to changes in marital status or familial situation); or when actors in Poland jeopardised the process by attempting to turn a profit from the visas.21 Faced with this lack of progress, French Bundists decided in January 1947 to send an envoy, named Celemenski, to Warsaw in order to tour Poland and assist future refugees.22
- 23 Najman to Pat, 4 January 1947, JLC i, B 32 F 23. On the evolution of the political situation in pos (...)
- 24 Najman to Pat, 18 February and 20 February 1947, Najman to Epstein, 28 February 1947, Pat to Najman (...)
- 25 Catherine Collomp, Rescue, Relief…, op. cit. Both contexts and periods reflect the larger evolution (...)
- 26 Constance Pâris de Bollardière, « ‘La pérennité de notre peuple’… », op. cit., chap. 2 and 6.
- 27 Audrey Kichelewski, « “S’enfuir et secourir”, 1944‑1948. Brichah et l’émigration des Juifs de Polog (...)
8In addition to these constant organisational difficulties, political obstacles appeared early on and only increased with time. The first political hurdle was mentioned in January 1947, when the JLC learned that the Polish government was potentially slowing down the visa delivery process in order not to lose Jewish voters during upcoming elections to the Sejm (Polish parliament), in the hope of strengthening the communist‑dominated Democratic Bloc coalition (which indeed managed to win after resorting to dishonest strategies).23 In February, letter writers discussed more political turmoil in Poland among Bundists themselves. Departure preparations had been disrupted by the movement’s youth, who argued that their comrades should stay in Poland and work on ensuring a Jewish future there. The dispute intensified when the young people requested that the envoy from France, Celemenski, be sent back; his work subsequently took a semi‑clandestine turn.24 The JLC’s reliance on clandestine practices—which, as this article will later demonstrate, was only in its early stages—represents another continuity with earlier periods. It resulted from the importance of political solidarity in the JLC’s relief activities. As Bundists, the JLC’s founders had all participated in underground political activities in Tsarist Russia. Later, during the war years, they acted clandestinely in order to support the resistance in Europe.25 In the immediate postwar period, they continued to engage in clandestine practices constantly across all their actions in France.26 Clandestine migration practices were, however, common among DPs, including in the well‑known case of the migration from Eastern Europe to Mandatory Palestine organised by the Zionist Brichah. Beyond the Bund case, legal emigration from Poland was indeed long, complex and, in many cases, unsuccessful. According to Audrey Kichelewski, only 7,000 to 15,000 Jews left Poland legally every year between 1945 and 1947; the vast majority migrated clandestinely.27
- 28 Najman to Pat, 24 September 1946, JLC i, B 32 21. Throughout the period under study, JLC correspond (...)
- 29 Najman to Pat, 5 November 1946, JLC i, B 21 F 22.
- 30 The first group arrived in February 1948 (26 people) and the other in April (120 people). Najman to (...)
- 31 Schrager to Pat and Mayer, 13 February 1947, JLC i, B 32 F 23.
- 32 Najman to Tabachinsky, 31 March 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 10. David Slucki, The International Jewish Lab (...)
- 33 Epstein to Schrager, 11 April 1947 and Schrager to Pat, 16 April 1947, JLC i, B 32 F 24.
9Due to the extent of clandestine travel and a lack of information in JLC correspondence, it is difficult to accurately reconstruct the chronology, itineraries and number of Bundists and other JLC friends involved in migrations to France. From a letter written in late September 1946, however, we know that refugees from Poland were already “constantly coming” to the Arbeter‑ring office in Paris,28 although it is not specified if they came directly from Poland or if they had arrived illegally after transiting through DP camps in Germany and Austria, which seems most likely.29 Throughout 1947 and 1948, an indefinite number of refugees from Poland (single adults, couples and families with children) indeed arrived after transiting through the DP camps in Germany (and, to a lesser extent, Austria), apparently illegally and sometimes in organised groups of more than 100 people. Two groups also arrived legally in France from the DP camps in Germany and Austria in 1948.30 The legal procedure was lengthy, requiring countless additional formalities and correspondence. It began in February 1947, in parallel to the Polish procedure, and was coordinated with the JLC’s contacts in DP camps in Germany: Polish Bundist Natan Gierowitz (who was himself a DP in Feldafing), and Bella Meiksin, who had been rescued thanks to a JLC visa during the war and returned to Europe to work for the JLC in the DP camps.31 Once again, the intervention of French socialist leaders helped to obtain 1,500 visas (in addition to the 500 visas obtained earlier for Jews from Poland). The number was significant, in light of David Slucki’s estimation that about 1,200 Bundists were living in DP camps in 1947.32 The first small group to come legally from Poland without transiting through a DP camp did not arrive until early April 1947.33 New legal arrivals were immediately replaced on lists by other candidates for departure. Bundists and other friends from Poland continued to arrive in Paris regularly. For most of them, however, their travel routes remain unknown.
Confronting escalating political emergencies, August 1947‑December 1948
- 34 Martyna Rusiniak‑Karwat, “Bundists and the Issue of Emigration…”, art. cit., p. 155‑158.
- 35 Epstein to Schrager, 11 August and 10 September 1947, JLC i, B 33 F 1.
- 36 Epstein to Schrager, 20 October and 31 October 1947, JLC i, B 33 F 2.
- 37 Aleksander to Pat, 9 January 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 8.
- 38 Pat and Chanin to Cletta Mayer, 3 February 1948, Epstein to Najman, 26 February 1948, JLC ii, B 83 (...)
- 39 Epstein to Najman, 2 March 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 10.
- 40 Najman to Tabachinsky, 31 March 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 10, Epstein to Najman, 5 April 1948, JLC ii, B (...)
- 41 Epstein to Najman, 9 March and 23 March 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 10.
- 42 Cletta Mayer to Pat and Chanin, 16 March 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 10.
- 43 Epstein to Najman, 7 April 1948, Najman to Epstein, 13 April 1948, Tabachinksy to Cletta Mayer, 14 (...)
- 44 Najman to Epstein, 13 May and 20 May 1948, Epstein to Najman, 27 May 1948, JLC i, B 83 F 12.
10From summer 1947, the JLC’s action intensified, both logistically and emotionally, due to the evolution of Polish politics, which clearly endangered any prospect for the survival of Yiddish culture and socialist politics in Poland. The January 1947 Sejm elections and subsequent increasing communist control over Polish politics motivated Bundists and other JLC friends to leave Poland.34 A few months after the Sejm elections, the correspondence adopted a new, increasingly anxious tone. By August 1947, the JLC noted that people in Poland were “desperate” and “trying to escape.” In September 1947, a New York JLC leader highly involved in organising migrations, the Bundist Lazar Epstein, told F. Schrager that “very close friends” from Poland “all want[ed] to leave” and were sending “cries of SOS”.35 Fear of the communist regime’s increasing strength intensified over time. A month later, L. Epstein referred to the incessant requests to leave Poland, noting, for the first time, that a friend was “in great danger” and needed to leave “immediately”, before it was “too late”.36 In early February 1948, a month after a recently arrived refugee wrote to JLC general‑secretary Yankev Pat that he had “escaped” from the “Communist nest”,37 anxiety rose yet again following the Polish government’s announcement of new administrative roadblocks to obtaining Polish passports. The consequences of this decision were described in stark terms as an existential threat in the correspondence, which referred to the decision in Yiddish as a “gzeyre” (evil law or decree),38 or used the religious metaphor of people in Poland waiting “impatiently for salvation” (yeshue).39 Such “alarming” “calls for help”40 arrived constantly throughout 1948, especially until the middle of the year. From February to April 1948, the JLC and its colleagues in France added names to the (already full) lists and tried to accelerate the legal visa process for their contacts as much as they could. Evoking a possible “miracle” to help their friends leave Poland, they considered it their “duty” to help Bundists reach “the other side of the Iron Curtain as soon as possible”.41 Once again, the JLC handled this process through its connection to French socialists, who informed it in March that they had obtained an additional quota of 375 visas.42 Even though the legal procedure could “go on forever”, the JLC and French Bundists, “overwhelmed with heartrending requests to save relatives and friends”, and pressured by people in New York who were “phoning off the hook and knocking down doors” in order to know if their relatives had arrived, continued to add “urgent cases” to the list of additional 375 visas in April and May.43 In the meantime, Polish administrative and political obstacles persisted: the JLC’s friends had still not received visas from the French consulate in Warsaw, while others possessed expired visas and feared the impending expiration of their passports.44
- 45 Najman to Tabachinsky, 3 April 1948, Najman to Epstein, 8 April 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 11.
- 46 Najman to Epstein, 8 April 1948, Najman to Tabachinsky, 10 and 17 April 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 12.
- 47 Najman to Tabachinsky, 12 and 19 April 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 11.
- 48 Najman to Tabachinsky 14 May 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 12, Najman to Epstein, 25 June 1948, JLC ii, B 83 (...)
- 49 Najman to Epstein, 25 June 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 13.
- 50 Schrager to Epstein, 27 October 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 17.
- 51 Najman to Tabachinsky, 12 April 1948, to Epstein, 13 April 1948, B 83 F 11; Najman to Esptein, 8 an (...)
- 52 Najman to Epstein, 29 May 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 12.
11On the eve of the creation of the State of Israel, coordinating with a Zionist organisation and, more generally, acting in the midst of Zionist fervour added another layer of political difficulty. In April, the JLC asked Bundist leaders in Poland to assist their comrades in obtaining passports and arranging travel to France in collaboration with the Palestinian Office (Pal‑Amt) in Poland, which was connected to the (Zionist) Jewish Agency, “the only agency to officially and legally deal with emigration affairs”, according to K. Najman.45 Only a few days after this turn towards the Pal‑Amt, the “bitter truth” that it refused to assist Bundists’ departure from Poland emerged—presumably due to the Bundists’ opposition to Zionism, although JLC correspondence always remained elusive when it came to conflicts with political organisations in Poland.46 Refusing to “despair”, French Bundists immediately tried a new strategy of asking their comrades not to claim their visas in groups (which could presumably be associated with the anti‑Zionist Bund), but rather individually.47 Conflicts with Zionists also occurred in the DP camps. In May and June 1948, while the State of Israel was in its infancy, French Bundists received “alarming” correspondence from their “terrorised” comrades in Germany who were discriminated against and even “threatened” because “they refused to mobilise for Palestine”.48 B. Meiksin consequently advocated accelerating a departure planned for June.49 French Bundists were torn between their impossible mission to assist the newcomers properly, their desire to assist their comrades’ flight from wherever they were and their fear that those comrades would be arrested at the Franco‑German border.50 In May 1948, for instance, when French Bundists had come to consider their work of organising emigration from Poland as a “rescue” effort and a “sacred duty” that did “virtually not let them rest”, one French Bundist suggested focusing first on “sav[ing] their comrades in Poland”, who were “[quite] simply threatened in their physical existence”, and postponing the arrival of comrades from Germany.51 However, two weeks later, K. Najman believed that “the most important” task was now ensuring that people “ha[d] left the camps”.52
- 53 Najman to Tabachinsky, 12 and 19 April 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 11.
- 54 Najman to Tabachinsky, 6 May 1948, Tabachinsky to Najman, 15 April 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 12.
- 55 Najman to Epstein, 13 and 24 April 1948, Epstein to Najman, 21 April 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 11, Epste (...)
- 56 Najman to Epstein, 13 and 14 May 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 12.
- 57 Schrager to Gierowitz, 23 December 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 20.
- 58 Ryba to Gierowitz, 30 November 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 18, Schrager to Epstein, 21 December 1948, JLC (...)
- 59 Starting in late 1949, the JLC did, however, receive requests to assist Bundists returning from Isr (...)
12By turning to clandestine work, the JLC was attempting to circumvent the multiple political hurdles it faced under increasingly pressing conditions. Following K. Najman’s suggestion, the JLC agreed to allocate more funds to this new covert channel, which were transferred—with difficulty—through France to Poland.53 The underground system likely involved payments to smugglers, although the letters’ elusive content prevents definitive confirmation. The correspondence quickly reflected this turn towards clandestine methods. Beginning on 15 April, letters adopted code words, referring, for instance, to “bring[ing] patients from Poland who [were] in bad shape”, especially “the sickest” among them. Such code words were used regularly to discuss new details, such as the “medicine” (money) necessary to help the sick, the patience requested because “this sickness [could] not be cured within a few days”, and a possible cure to be provided in a local (French) “sanatorium”.54 At the end of April 1948, ten to thirteen of the most at‑risk families, who would be in “danger [if they] stay[ed] in Poland”, followed by women whose husbands already had visas, were prioritised for illegal departure. They were followed by forty‑four other families in early May.55 In mid‑May, the JLC explored another channel outside the legal visa process. It was to be done through a “travel agency” with a Parisian office, which could create “travel possibilities” for friends in Poland, by obtaining French visas for them, partnering with an agency in Poland to deliver foreign passports and organise transportation. Although sceptical, the JLC attempted this method that same month for four families, with relatives covering the fees.56 No further news about the progress of these illegal procedures appears in the correspondence after September 1948. Faced with multiple roadblocks, in December 1948 F. Schrager started transferring French visas from Warsaw to the JLC’s representatives in German DP camps.57 But from October to December 1948, letters went so far as to question the need to bring DPs to Paris, as they sought to “leave Europe at any price” and only considered France as their first “mokem‑menukhe” (place of refuge).58 In December, some of the newcomers had indeed already left Paris for new destinations; those most discussed in the correspondence were Australia and Canada. There was no mention of plans to go to Palestine and, later, Israel.59
- 60 It is also unclear whether all the lists of newcomers have been preserved in the JLC’s archive, and (...)
- 61 David Slucki, Sing This at My Funeral: A Memoir of Fathers and Sons, Detroit, Wayne State Universit (...)
- 62 On these other factors, see, for example, Thomas Chopard, « Refaire famille en migration après la S (...)
13This heightened reliance on clandestine methods further complicates any attempt to quantify the number of refugees from Bundist circles who arrived in France. From the various lists of newcomers who turned to the Arbeter‑ring upon arrival, which are preserved in JLC correspondence, it is possible to identify 657 people who arrived either directly from Poland or through the DP camps between March 1947 and December 1948. Of those, 394 came in 1947 and 263 arrived in 1948. These numbers, however, only should be considered an estimate.60 Although the JLC’s correspondence with France contains some quantitative data, it reveals little to no information about individual migration trajectories. However, other sources, such as family correspondence and interviews, do provide such details. Among the few documented cases is the Bundist Jakub Slucki (1901‑1978), who survived the war in the Soviet Union, returned to Poland in mid‑June 1946 and settled in Wrocław; from there, he wished to join his cousin living temporarily in Paris. As he wrote to relatives on 1 September 1946, he personally would only consider migrating legally: “If I don’t receive legal permission to emigrate, I won’t leave this place. I no longer have the strength to wander aimlessly.” Jakub and his wife, Eda, arrived in Paris in early 1948, where their son Charles was born, and left for Melbourne, Australia, in February 1950.61 In J. Slucki’s case, as in others during the period analysed in this article, the JLC did not interfere in refugees’ decisions regarding their departure from Poland or their final destination. Furthermore, Bundists from various backgrounds and profiles benefited from the JLC’s support without differential treatment, with the exception of close acquaintances or comrades in particularly dangerous situations. Although the JLC took care to keep nuclear families together or to reunite them, other factors—such as refugees’ gender, occupation or age—were not discussed in its correspondence with France.62
The frameworks and limits of political solidarity as a core relief norm
- 63 For another example, see Alex Grobman, Battling for Souls: The Vaad Hatzala Rescue Committee in Pos (...)
- 64 On the JDC and social aid after the Holocaust, see Laura Hobson Faure, A “Jewish Marshall Plan”…, o (...)
- 65 Ibid. supra, chap. 3.
- 66 James Rice to Najman, February 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 9, Epstein to Najman, 10 May 1948, JLC ii, B 83 (...)
- 67 Pat to Najman, 13 February 1947, Najman to Pat, 18 February 1947, JLC i, B 32 B 32 F 23, Schrager t (...)
- 68 Schrager to Pat, 15 and 24 April 1947, JLC i, B 32 F 24, 27 June 1947, JLC i, B 32 F 25; Laure Four (...)
14As it largely limited aid to Bundists, the JLC belonged to a set of relief organisations that targeted specific populations;63 this practice differentiated it from the much larger American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), which assisted all Jewish victims of Nazism in need, regardless of their origin or politics, and which developed major relief services that were essential for the monumental task of rebuilding Jewish life while addressing its structural needs.64 However, the JLC’s and JDC’s assistance to Bundist refugees arriving from Poland served complementary goals. Such refugees could, for instance, receive a first round of social assistance from the Arbeter‑ring (which was supported in great part by the JLC), but also, at least in some identified cases, benefited from the larger social services of the Comité juif d’action sociale et de reconstruction (COJASOR, Jewish Committee for Social Action and Reconstruction), a centralised, professional Jewish relief agency created under the influence of the JDC in 1945.65 In addition, the JDC helped finance transportation costs for the emigration of individuals from certain JLC circles—first from DP camps in Germany and Austria, and beginning in May 1948, from Poland.66 Making arrangements with the JDC was a lengthy and sometimes diplomatically complex process in both New York and Paris. However, only French Bundists described the relationship as difficult, criticising the JDC’s attempts to monopolise migration efforts in France.67 They were also suspicious when, for example, JDC leaders refused to finance illegal Bundist migration but supported clandestine channels to Palestine, clandestine Jewish Orthodox migration, and communist reconstruction in France.68
- 69 Epstein to Najman, 23 October 1946, JLC i, B 32 F 22.
- 70 Pat to Najman, 8 October 1946, JLC i, B 32 F 22.
- 71 Pat to Najman, 18 February 1947, JLC i, B 32 23.
15In contrast, French Bundists considered the JLC a trustworthy political partner, but trust within JLC and Bundist circles was not systematic. It is therefore important to examine how the JLC implemented relief norms grounded in political solidarity, and whether these norms strained its relationship with Bundist refugees. First, how were the latter selected for migration assistance? The JLC’s correspondence with France rarely provides details about individual requests from Bundists, or their relatives and friends, for assistance in leaving Poland. When communicating as they compiled candidate lists, French Bundists and JLC leaders usually mentioned that a certain number of “comrades”, “friends”, “Jewish worker activist friends” or “Bundist groups, their friends and their circle” wanted to migrate and should therefore be registered. This vocabulary suggests that varying degrees of prewar connections to the Bund, or personal connections to other organisations or people close to the JLC, were a prerequisite. But how did candidates for emigration justify that they indeed belonged to the JLC network? Only a few traces remain of any identification procedures concerning future refugees who already had close ties with JLC circles. For instance, the JLC was willing to help a 17 year‑old boy from the children’s home in Otwock who had an aunt in Paris, and whose relatives in the United States were its “closest friends”;69 it likewise assisted two women from the family of a “deceased comrade”, with whom an activist close to the JLC was connected.70 In some cases, JLC leaders themselves knew the future refugees, as, for example, when Y. Pat wrote to K. Najman about “one of [their] friends” in Poland, who in his youth had been a student in “[their] schools and later a close colleague”.71
- 72 Nowogrodzky to the JLC, 9 September and 11 December 1946, JLC i, B 49, F 9; and Nowogrodzky to the (...)
- 73 Letter from Weinberg, 6 September 1946, JLC i, B 9 F 25.
- 74 Håkan Blomqvist, Socialism in Yiddish…, op. cit., p. 23.
- 75 Samuel Kassow, “The Historiography of the Bund”, Polin. Studies in Polish Jewry, vol. 29, 2017, p. (...)
- 76 Frank Wolff, “The Collateral Prisoner. A Bundist Holocaust Survivor between Nazi Perpetrators, Anti (...)
- 77 Such concerns about identifying and trusting activists have been documented by Nicolas Delalande in (...)
- 78 Nowogrodzky to Roitman, 21 October 1947, JLC i, B 49 F 9.
- 79 Najman to Epstein, 28 June 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 13.
16Unfortunately, the JLC’s correspondence with France offers no information on initial requests to leave Poland from future refugees who lacked personal recommendations. However, correspondence has been preserved from Bundists who first established contact with another organisation housed in the same building as the JLC at 175 East Broadway in New York City: the American Representation of the Bund (ARB). Led by Bundist refugees who had arrived in the United States on the eve of World War II or in 1940‑1941, the ARB, unlike the JLC, directly emanated from the prewar Polish Bund. When its leaders received requests for visas or material aid from comrades in Europe, they forwarded at least some to the JLC office.72 Applicants who were not personal acquaintances of ARB members presented their Bundist background. In one case, a 40 year‑old Bundist in Poland wrote that he had been a member of the party since 1926, and described his fate during the war, the loss of his entire family and the consolation he found in returning to Bundist activities in Warsaw. He hoped that his American comrades would be able to help him leave the country, where he could not find work in his profession, and go to Sweden, where he had comrades.73 In his book on the Bund in postwar Sweden, Håkan Blomqvist cites similar correspondence from Bundists that “testified to the catastrophe behind them, to abandonment and despair, but also to the hope that someone would hear their cries of distress, that the world would listen”.74 As Samuel Kassow writes, “a shared sense of vulnerability and responsibility nurtured an ethos which saw the party as a family” and “the Bund’s sense of khavershaft (comradeship) and mishpokhedikeyt (belonging to a common family) proved to be an ever more reliable anchor”.75 D. Slucki and F. Wolff confirm the continuity of such patterns after the Holocaust, when “many surviving, escaping, or simply migrating Bundists tell that their first harbor in the process of migration was […] one or another Bundist circle, the bundishe mishpokhe” (Bundist family).76 Yet a few sources indicate that people in Poland were not always immediately trusted as Bundists or considered close comrades, even if they introduced themselves as such.77 In one letter, an ARB Bundist needed to confirm that someone requesting aid was a member of the party.78 Another case concerned a newcomer to Paris, who said that he had arrived via the JLC and had been “one of [its] friends” in Krakow, but no one in Paris knew “anything about him” and K. Najman wanted to confirm “who had recommended him”.79
- 80 Najman to Epstein, 14 July 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 14.
- 81 Najman to Tabachinsky, 9 April 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 11.
- 82 Epstein to Najman, 10 May 1948, Najman to Epstein, 13 May 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 12, Schrager to Taba (...)
- 83 Epstein to Schrager, 12 October 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 17.
- 84 Pat to Vitsentovski, 28 January 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 8.
- 85 Schrager to Tabachinsky, 18 October 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 17.
17Given the multiple difficulties of helping newcomers establish themselves in postwar Paris, Bundist “family” bonds also faced limits. These constraints were primarily logistical, including French Bundists’ difficulties in legalising newcomers from Poland and the DP camps, particularly as many of them had arrived illegally under false identities.80 They also struggled to provide new arrivals with enough resources to reserve hotel rooms and to assist them in finding jobs. Though they were happy to see their Parisian Bundist group reinforced—proof that “a healthy Jewish life in the Diaspora was possible”81—they were nevertheless overwhelmed and exhausted from attempting to meet the significant needs of newcomers, who had limited (and sometimes a complete lack of) resources. Relational tensions also arose. Despite efforts to create a “heymish” (welcoming and familiar) environment, French Bundists reported ingratitude, even resentment and criticism: they were blamed by “bitter” or “suspicious”82 refugees for bringing them to Paris. Some almost wished to return to Germany, and at least one wrote to comrades still in the DP camps to complain that no one was taking care of them.83 Another newcomer directed his anger and claims directly at the JLC, threatening to leave the Bund if he did not receive greater assistance84. According to F. Schrager, such behaviour derived not only from refugees’ material difficulties, but also from their experiences “in Russia during the war years”, which had “somewhat instilled in them the Soviet atmosphere of suspicion and mistrust”.85
- 86 Najman to Epstein, 11 March 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 10.
- 87 Tabachinsky to Dubinsky, 16 July 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 14.
- 88 Meiksin to Najman and Ryba, 25 April 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 11.
- 89 Pat to Elek, 10 January 1949, JLC ii, B 83 F 21.
18Did the JLC suspect that certain refugees came from other political groups? It began to raise such concerns in March 1948, when K. Najman sought confirmation that the refugees that the JLC was bringing to France had indeed been recommended by people it knew well. He had been told that “a few Communists might have come from Poland on [their] lists. And that [was] not suitable.”86 In another letter regarding a comrade willing to leave Italy for Canada, the JLC determined that there was not “the least doubt” about this person’s “political and moral position” and “loyalty to the democratic doctrine of the labor movement”.87 The correspondence contains only one mention of refugees from other networks who were suspected of falsely pretending to belong to JLC circles: in April 1948, newcomers turned to the Arbeter‑ring after arriving from the DP camps through the (Zionist) Jewish Agency.88 The JLC sometimes sidestepped requests made by Jews of other social and cultural backgrounds. In response a December 1948 Linke Poale Zion request to assist Jewish children from North Africa, the JLC said that it did not have the appropriate funds and that other agencies could no doubt provide assistance.89
⁂
- 90 Constance Pâris de Bollardière, « ‘La pérennité de notre peuple’… », op. cit., chap. 6.
19As this article has demonstrated, the JLC and French Bundists’ political solidarity with their comrades in Poland in the late 1940s required dealing with multiple administrative, logistical, and political roadblocks. Very soon after the end of the war and the Holocaust, surviving Polish Jews were confronted with new sets of antisemitic and political hostilities, dangers and displacements. Times were particularly challenging for the Bundist political minority. While the arrival and strengthening of communism in Poland represented an escalating existential threat, both to individual comrades as a result of their political activities and to the Bundist political movement as a whole, conflicts with Zionist organisations during the months leading up to the State of Israel’s creation only compounded existing difficulties. The JLC’s correspondence with France provides glimpses into the framing of political relief and rescue, such as decisions on who to include within the group and how. This same source reveals more widely the centrality of political solidarity: the tone of the correspondence reflects the increasing anxiety among actors from the United States, France and Poland as the early Cold War unfolded. Despite tensions among Bundists from different countries, their emotions and efforts to adapt to the situation reveal a shared sense of urgency to preserve a future for their political movement, for which fleeing Poland was a prerequisite. Ensuring a future for Bundist ideas in a democratic country after the Holocaust meant facing multiple other challenges. In France, in parallel to its leadership of the effort to rescue Bundists from Poland, the JLC responded by supporting Yiddish culture, Yiddish‑speaking social life and French socialist politics, and by contributing to fighting communist influence within Jewish life and beyond.90
Notes
1 Tamiment Library, Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University, Jewish Labor Committee Records, Part ii, WAG.025.002, Box 83 Folder 19, Tabachinsky to Schrager, 29 December 1948. Unless specified, the letters quoted in this article all come from JLC correspondence with France, WAG.025.001, Box 32, Folders 18‑25 and Box 33, Folders 1‑4 for 1946‑1947 (hereafter JLC i), and WAG.025.002, Box 83 Folders 8‑20 for 1948‑1950s (hereafter JLC ii).
2 On American Jewish aid in postwar France, see Laura Hobson Faure, A “Jewish Marshall Plan”: The American Jewish Presence in Post‑Holocaust France, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2022 [2013].
3 To a lesser extent, JLC correspondence with France also documents migration from Romania, Italy, Sweden, Shanghai, and Belgium.
4 Daniel Blatman, For Our Freedom and Yours: The Jewish Labour Bund in Poland 1939‑1949, London/Portland, Vallentine Mitchell, 2003, p. 210‑218; David Slucki, The International Jewish Labor Bund after 1945: Toward a Global History, New Brunswick/London, Rutgers University Press, 2012, p. 56‑74; Martyna Rusiniak‑Karwat, Nowe życie na zgliszczach: „Bund” w Polsce w latach 1944‑1949, Warsaw, Instytut Studiów Politycznych PAN, 2016.
5 Polish Bundists also went to Sweden and Belgium. On Sweden, see Håkan Blomqvist, Socialism in Yiddish: The Jewish Labor Bund in Sweden, Huddinge, Södertörn University, “Södertörn academic studies, 87”, 2022 [2020].
6 Frank Wolff, “Eastern Europe Abroad: Exploring Actor‑Networks in Transnational Movements and Migration History, The Case of the Bund,” International Review of Social History, vol. 57, no. 2, 2012, p. 229‑255, here p. 243, Doi: 10.1017/S0020859012000211.
7 On this left Zionist political party, see Samuel Kassow, “The Left Poalei Tsiyon in Interwar Poland,” in Zvi Y. Gitelman (ed.), The Emergence of Modern Jewish Politics: Bundism and Zionism in Eastern Europe, Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press, “Pitt series in Russian and East European studies”, 2003, p. 71‑85. Although the Linke Poale Zion (LPZ) in interwar Poland was, until the late 1930s, a pro‑Soviet party, it collaborated with the Bund on Yiddish cultural matters. Biographical entries on the leader of the small American branch of the LPZ, Paul L. Goldman, mention that the American LPZ often disagreed with the LPZ in Poland. I suggest that Goldman’s critical attitude towards Soviet communism explains how the LPZ could join the anticommunist JLC.
8 Catherine Collomp, Rescue, Relief, and Resistance: The Jewish Labor Committee’s Anti‑Nazi Operations, 1934‑1945, Susan Emanuel (trad.), Detroit, Wayne State University Press, 2021 [2016], p. 88‑225.
9 Natalia Aleksiun‑Mądrzak, “Nielegalna emigracja Żydów z Polski w latach 1944‑1947”, Biuletyn ŻIH, 1995/1996, no. 2‑3, p. 67‑90 and Audrey Kichelewski, Les survivants : les juifs de Pologne depuis la Shoah, Paris, Belin, « Contemporaines », 2018, p. 72‑81.
10 Constance Pâris de Bollardière and Simon Perego, « Les migrations juives d’Europe centrale et orientale en France au lendemain de la Shoah », Archives Juives, vol. 54, no. 1, 2021, p. 4‑24, Doi: 10.3917/aj1.541.0004.
11 See the bibliography presented in the introduction of this special issue.
12 For a presentation of this voluminous scholarship, see ibid.
13 Among several important references, see, for instance, Yehuda Bauer, Flight and Rescue: Brichah. The Organized Escape of the Jewish Survivors of Eastern Europe, 1944‑1948, New York, Random House, “Contemporary Jewish civilization series”, 1970.
14 Catherine Collomp, Rescue, Relief…, op. cit.
15 Tabachinsky to Najman, 8 August 1946, JLC i, B 32 F 21.
16 Julia Maspero, “French Policy on Postwar Migration of Eastern European Jews through France and French Occupation Zones in Germany and Austria,” Kwartalnik Historii Żydów, vol. 246, no. 2, 2013, p. 319‑333; Laure Fourtage, Et après ? Une histoire du secours et de l’aide à la réinsertion des rescapés juifs des camps nazis (France, 1943‑1948), PhD dissertation in history, Anne Grynberg (dir.), Paris I, 2019, p. 465‑481 ; Laure Fourtage, « Secourir dans la division. Les organisations juives et l’aide aux migrants d’Europe centrale et orientale (1945‑1948) », Archives Juives, vol. 54, no. 1, 2021, p. 46‑64, Doi: 10.3917/aj1.541.0046.
17 Constance Pâris de Bollardière, « La pérennité de notre peuple » : une aide socialiste juive américaine dans la diaspora yiddish, le Jewish Labor Committee en France (1944‑1948), PhD dissertation in history, Nancy L. Green (dir.), Paris, EHESS, 2017, chap. 6.
18 Pat to Ryba, 26 August 1946, Najman to Pat, 3 September 1946, Pat to Friedman, 25 September 1946, JLC i, B 32 F 21.
19 Najman to Pat, 15 November 1946, Pat to Schrager and Najman, 4 December 1946, JLC i, B 32 F 22.
20 Tabachinsky to Friedman, 6 September 1946, JLC i, B 32 F 21, Pat to Najman, 7 October and 8 October 1946, Epstein to Najman, 23 October 1946, JLC i, B 32 F 22, Pat to Najman, 10 March 1947, JLC i, B 32 F 23.
21 Schrager to Pat and Mayer, 13 February 1947, Najman to Pat, 18 February 1947, JLC i, B 32 F 23.
22 Najman to Pat, JLC i, B 32 F 23, 4 January 1947. The envoy was likely Yankev Celemenski, a Bundist refugee from Poland living in France who had worked as an underground courier for the Bund in Poland during the Holocaust, and who was in France from 1946 to 1948. I wish to thank Bernard Flam for the information he gave me on Celemenski’s presence in Paris.
23 Najman to Pat, 4 January 1947, JLC i, B 32 F 23. On the evolution of the political situation in postwar Poland, see Audrey Kichelewski, Les Survivants…, op. cit., chap. 1 and 2.
24 Najman to Pat, 18 February and 20 February 1947, Najman to Epstein, 28 February 1947, Pat to Najman, 10 March 1947, JLC i, B 32 F 23. On Bundists’ heated debate about whether to stay or leave Poland, see also Martyna Rusiniak‑Karwat, “Bundists and the Issue of Emigration from Poland after the Second World War,” European Spatial Research and Policy, vol. 28, no. 1, 2021, p. 149‑159, Doi: 10.18778/1231-1952.28.1.07 and Natalia Aleksiun, “Where was There a Future for Polish Jewry? Bundist and Zionist Polemics in Post‑World War II Poland”, in Jack Jacobs (ed.), Jewish Politics in Eastern Europe: The Bund at 100, New York, New York University Press, 2001, p. 227‑242.
25 Catherine Collomp, Rescue, Relief…, op. cit. Both contexts and periods reflect the larger evolution of pre‑twenty‑first century political clandestine behaviour, as discussed by Virgile Cirefice and Grégoire Le Quang in their introduction to Virgile Cirefice, Grégoire Le Quang and Charles Riondet (dir.), La part de l’ombre : histoire de la clandestinité politique au xxe siècle, Ceyzérieu, Champ Vallon, “Époques”, 2019.
26 Constance Pâris de Bollardière, « ‘La pérennité de notre peuple’… », op. cit., chap. 2 and 6.
27 Audrey Kichelewski, « “S’enfuir et secourir”, 1944‑1948. Brichah et l’émigration des Juifs de Pologne », Bulletin de l'Institut Pierre Renouvin, vol. 38, no. 2, 2013, p. 49‑68, Doi: 10.3917/bipr.038.0049.
28 Najman to Pat, 24 September 1946, JLC i, B 32 21. Throughout the period under study, JLC correspondence refers to the displaced as either “refugees” (pleytim, flikhtlinge), “emigrants” (emigrantn), “new immigrants” (nay-ayngevanderte), “newcomers” (nay-gekumene), the “arrived” (ariber-gekumene—with a notion of arriving despite obstacles) or “newly arrived refugees” (nay arayngekumene pleytim). I refer to them in English as “refugees” once they left Poland, due to the dangerous social and political situation that motivated their departure.
29 Najman to Pat, 5 November 1946, JLC i, B 21 F 22.
30 The first group arrived in February 1948 (26 people) and the other in April (120 people). Najman to Pat, 28 February 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 9; Meiksin to Najman and Ryba, 25 April 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 11.
31 Schrager to Pat and Mayer, 13 February 1947, JLC i, B 32 F 23.
32 Najman to Tabachinsky, 31 March 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 10. David Slucki, The International Jewish Labor Bund…, op. cit., p. 48‑49.
33 Epstein to Schrager, 11 April 1947 and Schrager to Pat, 16 April 1947, JLC i, B 32 F 24.
34 Martyna Rusiniak‑Karwat, “Bundists and the Issue of Emigration…”, art. cit., p. 155‑158.
35 Epstein to Schrager, 11 August and 10 September 1947, JLC i, B 33 F 1.
36 Epstein to Schrager, 20 October and 31 October 1947, JLC i, B 33 F 2.
37 Aleksander to Pat, 9 January 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 8.
38 Pat and Chanin to Cletta Mayer, 3 February 1948, Epstein to Najman, 26 February 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 9.
39 Epstein to Najman, 2 March 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 10.
40 Najman to Tabachinsky, 31 March 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 10, Epstein to Najman, 5 April 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 11.
41 Epstein to Najman, 9 March and 23 March 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 10.
42 Cletta Mayer to Pat and Chanin, 16 March 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 10.
43 Epstein to Najman, 7 April 1948, Najman to Epstein, 13 April 1948, Tabachinksy to Cletta Mayer, 14 April 1948, Najman to Tabachinsky, 15 April 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 11, Epstein to Najman, 10 May 1948, Najman to Esptein, 23 May 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 12.
44 Najman to Epstein, 13 May and 20 May 1948, Epstein to Najman, 27 May 1948, JLC i, B 83 F 12.
45 Najman to Tabachinsky, 3 April 1948, Najman to Epstein, 8 April 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 11.
46 Najman to Epstein, 8 April 1948, Najman to Tabachinsky, 10 and 17 April 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 12.
47 Najman to Tabachinsky, 12 and 19 April 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 11.
48 Najman to Tabachinsky 14 May 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 12, Najman to Epstein, 25 June 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 13.
49 Najman to Epstein, 25 June 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 13.
50 Schrager to Epstein, 27 October 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 17.
51 Najman to Tabachinsky, 12 April 1948, to Epstein, 13 April 1948, B 83 F 11; Najman to Esptein, 8 and 13 May 1948, to Brumberg, 11 May 1948, French Bundist to Tabachinsky, 13 May 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 12.
52 Najman to Epstein, 29 May 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 12.
53 Najman to Tabachinsky, 12 and 19 April 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 11.
54 Najman to Tabachinsky, 6 May 1948, Tabachinsky to Najman, 15 April 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 12.
55 Najman to Epstein, 13 and 24 April 1948, Epstein to Najman, 21 April 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 11, Epstein to Najman, 5 May 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 12.
56 Najman to Epstein, 13 and 14 May 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 12.
57 Schrager to Gierowitz, 23 December 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 20.
58 Ryba to Gierowitz, 30 November 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 18, Schrager to Epstein, 21 December 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 20.
59 Starting in late 1949, the JLC did, however, receive requests to assist Bundists returning from Israel to Europe; letters indicate that it decided not to dedicate its limited means and energy to these comrades, who were not in danger. Schrager to Pat, 30 December 1949, JLC ii, B 84 F 9, Pat to Schrager, 16 November 1950, JLC ii, B 84 F 21. Efforts to allow Bundists to migrate to France continued with less intensity in 1949 and the following years. At least three Bundists who appeared on JLC visa lists in 1946 arrived in 1957, during the next Jewish emigration wave from Poland. See COJASOR files no. 42 220, 42 342 and 41 334.
60 It is also unclear whether all the lists of newcomers have been preserved in the JLC’s archive, and the preserved lists are sometimes incomplete. Moreover, letters rarely mention whether people who had arrived were Bundists or belonged to other circles close to the JLC.
61 David Slucki, Sing This at My Funeral: A Memoir of Fathers and Sons, Detroit, Wayne State University Press, 2019, p. 71. On other sources documenting individual paths, see Laure Fourtage and Laura Hobson Faure, « Les survivants de la Shoah d’Europe centrale et orientale », Hommes & Migrations, no. 1312, 2015, p. 134‑137, Doi: 10.4000/hommesmigrations.3520.
62 On these other factors, see, for example, Thomas Chopard, « Refaire famille en migration après la Shoah. Les Juifs polonais et les organisations internationales au sortir de la guerre », Annales de démographie historique, vol. 1, 2023, p. 149‑173, Doi: 10.3917/adh.145.0149.
63 For another example, see Alex Grobman, Battling for Souls: The Vaad Hatzala Rescue Committee in Post‑Holocaust Europe, Jersey City, Ktav Pub., 2004.
64 On the JDC and social aid after the Holocaust, see Laura Hobson Faure, A “Jewish Marshall Plan”…, op. cit.
65 Ibid. supra, chap. 3.
66 James Rice to Najman, February 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 9, Epstein to Najman, 10 May 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 12.
67 Pat to Najman, 13 February 1947, Najman to Pat, 18 February 1947, JLC i, B 32 B 32 F 23, Schrager to Pat, 15 and 24 April 1947, Najman to Epstein, 1 June 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 13.
68 Schrager to Pat, 15 and 24 April 1947, JLC i, B 32 F 24, 27 June 1947, JLC i, B 32 F 25; Laure Fourtage, « Secourir dans la division… », art. cit.
69 Epstein to Najman, 23 October 1946, JLC i, B 32 F 22.
70 Pat to Najman, 8 October 1946, JLC i, B 32 F 22.
71 Pat to Najman, 18 February 1947, JLC i, B 32 23.
72 Nowogrodzky to the JLC, 9 September and 11 December 1946, JLC i, B 49, F 9; and Nowogrodzky to the JLC 3 May 1946, and Mendelsohn to Tabachinsky, 24 June 1946, JLC i, B 9 F 25.
73 Letter from Weinberg, 6 September 1946, JLC i, B 9 F 25.
74 Håkan Blomqvist, Socialism in Yiddish…, op. cit., p. 23.
75 Samuel Kassow, “The Historiography of the Bund”, Polin. Studies in Polish Jewry, vol. 29, 2017, p. 121‑139, here p. 136, Doi: 10.3828/polin.2017.29.121.
76 Frank Wolff, “The Collateral Prisoner. A Bundist Holocaust Survivor between Nazi Perpetrators, Anti‑Communism and British World Politics”, The International Newsletter of Communist Studies, vol. xvii, no. 24, 2011, p. 78‑91, here p. 79, <https://incs.ub.rub.de/index.php/INCS/article/view/304/262>.
77 Such concerns about identifying and trusting activists have been documented by Nicolas Delalande in the case of the International Workingmen’s Association. See La lutte et l’entraide : l’âge des solidarités ouvrières, Paris, Éd. du Seuil, « L’Univers historique », 2019, especially p. 53‑56.
78 Nowogrodzky to Roitman, 21 October 1947, JLC i, B 49 F 9.
79 Najman to Epstein, 28 June 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 13.
80 Najman to Epstein, 14 July 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 14.
81 Najman to Tabachinsky, 9 April 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 11.
82 Epstein to Najman, 10 May 1948, Najman to Epstein, 13 May 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 12, Schrager to Tabachinsky, 18 October 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 17.
83 Epstein to Schrager, 12 October 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 17.
84 Pat to Vitsentovski, 28 January 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 8.
85 Schrager to Tabachinsky, 18 October 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 17.
86 Najman to Epstein, 11 March 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 10.
87 Tabachinsky to Dubinsky, 16 July 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 14.
88 Meiksin to Najman and Ryba, 25 April 1948, JLC ii, B 83 F 11.
89 Pat to Elek, 10 January 1949, JLC ii, B 83 F 21.
90 Constance Pâris de Bollardière, « ‘La pérennité de notre peuple’… », op. cit., chap. 6.
Haut de pagePour citer cet article
Référence papier
Constance Pâris de Bollardière, « When Political Relief Turned into Rescue: The Jewish Labor Committee and the Migration of Bundists from Poland to France, 1946‑1948 », Diasporas, 44 | -0001, 117-137.
Référence électronique
Constance Pâris de Bollardière, « When Political Relief Turned into Rescue: The Jewish Labor Committee and the Migration of Bundists from Poland to France, 1946‑1948 », Diasporas [En ligne], 44 | 2025, mis en ligne le 03 décembre 2025, consulté le 13 février 2026. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/diasporas/18168 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/159td
Haut de pageDroits d’auteur
Le texte seul est utilisable sous licence CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Les autres éléments (illustrations, fichiers annexes importés) sont susceptibles d’être soumis à des autorisations d’usage spécifiques.
Haut de page



