No Way Out: The Politics of Polish Jewry 1935-1939 (review)

THE JEWISHQUARTERLYREVIEW,XCII,Nos. 1-2 (July-October, 2001) 175-179 EMANUEL MELZER. No WayOut: ThePolitics of Polish Jewry 1935-1939. Monographs of the Hebrew Union College 19. Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1997. Pp. xii + 235. Writingin 1989, reviewing the literatureon Polish Jewish history in the Hebrew language, David Engel noted that the most lamentable aspect was the fact that the large body of literaturein Hebrew was virtually unknown outside of Israel. For obvious financial reasons, he found it unlikely that the majorityof books on Polish Jewish subjects in Hebrew would ever be translatedinto otherlanguages. Engel'sunsurprisingconclusion: those who wished seriously to pursuethe historical study of Polish Jewry as a major focus of their academic work would need to consider Hebrew essential for involvement in the field at the top level. ' For the most part,the publishing history in subsequent years has borne out Engel's prediction, the one significantexception being the ongoing appearanceof translationsinto Polish of works in English and Hebrew on Polish Jewry, reflecting the growing interest in both scholarly circles and the general public in Poland in the Polish Jewish heritage. Here too, the numberof translatedworks remains relatively small. For this reason, the recentpublication of EmanuelMelzer'sNo WayOut as partof the Hebrew Union College monographseries representsa major additionto the English-language bookshelf on interwarPolish Jewish history .Melzer'sbook, a reworkingandupdatingof his 1982 workin Hebrew Ma'avaq Medini be-Malkodet: YehudeiPolin 1935-1939 (Political Strife in a Blind Alley: The Jews in Poland 1935-1939), which itself was a revised edition of his doctoraldissertationcompleted several years earlier,is partof a group of notable monographic studies on Polish Jewish politics, completed in Israel over the past threedecades. These studies, which cover most of the interwarperiod, focus in the main on the political struggles of the Jewish minority in Poland:the struggle for minority rights and the implementation of the Minorities Treaties and the Polish constitution on the one hand, andthe internalstruggle for hegemony in the Jewish community and the ongoing debate over the nature of Jewish identity on the other. These works include, among others, the books of Shlomo Netzer2 and Moshe Landau,3 as well as a large number of articles published in the 1David Engel, "WritingPolish Jewish History in Hebrew,"Gal-Ed 11 (1989) 29. 2Ma'avaq YehudeiPolin 'al Zekhuyotehemha-Ezrahiyotveha-Le'umiyot (19181922 ) [The Struggle of Polish Jewry for Civil and National MinorityRights (19181922 )] (Tel Aviv, 1980). 3Mi'ut Le'umi Lohem: Ma'avaq YehudeiPolin 1918-1928 [The Jews as a National Minority in Poland, 1918-1928](Jerusalem, 1986). 176 THEJEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW journal Gal-Ed. To meet, in part, the need stated above, this journal has moved from an all-Hebrewto a half-English, half-Hebrewformat. The new edition of No WayOutis more than simply a condensed translation of the Hebreworiginal.Melzerhas indeedtrimmeddown the original volume fromthe 384 pages in the Hebreworiginalto a muchmorecompact 235 pages in the English version. The authorhas managedthis feat without sacrificingclarity.The readercan follow withoutdifficultythe intricateflow of events, changing governmentpolicies and political debates among Jewish andPolish parties.Furthercontributingto the overall clarityof the narrative was Melzer's wise decision to consolidate his presentation of the events of 1935-1939 into one continuousnarrative,ratherthan follow the model of the Hebrew version of the book, which divided the period into two sub-periods and presentedthe various topics under discussion in two separate frameworks.Thus, for example, the anti-Jewish policies carried out in the Polish universities and the Jewish attemptsto deal with these events are described in one well-structuredpresentation, and the reader need notjump aheador back in the book to follow the story. As its sub-title indicates, the focus of No WayOutis the unenviablepolitical situation of Polish Jewry in the years between the death of Joseph Pilsudski in 1935 and the outbreakof WorldWarII. The book opens with a short and somewhat idiosyncratic introductorychapteron the Pilsudski years, 1926-1935, which provides some general information on the economic situation of Polish Jewry, thenjumps to a discussion of Polish and Jewish politics in those years. In general, this period is the one least covered in historical literatureon interwarPolish Jewry, and Melzer's truncated discussion goes little beyond existing works on the era. When...