KADDISHEL
A Life Reborn
Medina, the “golden land” of America, where the streets were paved with gold and from which so much help had come. Sholom Ale- ichem wrote, “America is where all the unhappy souls go.” 10 Meanwhile, the anti-Semitic Endecja movement was gaining adherents throughout Poland. The instability of the country’s bor- ders on both the east and the west caused a “defensive nationalism” to emerge, and loyalty to the nation of Poland became extremely important. The question of whether Jews were primarily loyal to Poland or were a nation apart was debated in the context of a newly re-invigorated anti-Semitism. The question was particularly emo- tional in Volhynia because of its still-large Ukrainian population and its proximity to Russia. Small towns were fighting their way back to normalcy and strug - gling to rebuild their economic bases after World War I when the Great Depression hit at the end of the 1920s. Hard times sharpened economic competition. Jews, who controlled a high percentage of Poland’s manufacturing and other industries, were the target of jealousy and suspicion. Jewish firms not only employed more than 40 percent of the Polish labor force but were heavily represented in commerce and the professions; a 1931 survey of professionals bit- terly concluded that more than half of Poland’s doctors and a third of its lawyers were Jewish. “As everywhere in Europe, widespread joblessness and poverty stoked extremist and fanatical tendencies. In Poland, these tendencies were given additional impetus by old prejudices and new statistical realities.” 11 With Polish society under stress from the Depression and ominous signs of military buildup in Germany, outspoken anti- Semitism was condoned to a degree that would have been shock- ing in more prosperous and tolerant times. The Polish government passed laws severely restricting Jews in business, forcing once- comfortable merchants and professionals to join an overabundance of shoemakers, tailors, and carpenters or to peddle food and com- modities between villages.
254
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online