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46 2 On the Ruins of the Old World The Bund in Central and Eastern Europe In 1945, the Jewish community in Poland was tiny, with Bundists only a tiny minority of those who remained or returned from the east. Many Jews who found themselves liberated from Nazi concentration camps sought permanent relocation far from the site of their devastation, and many of those returning from the Soviet Union used Poland only as a transit point en route to North and South America, Palestine, or Australia. That is not to say that Bundist survivors did not try to revitalize their party in postwar Poland. Many did attempt this, and for around three years after the war, there was a small and vocal, if not hugely popular, Bundist presence in Poland. The Displaced Persons camps in central Europe also became a temporary site of Bundist activism, as former Polish Bundists sought to assist and comfort each other. Bundist groups, as well as Bund executives, were established throughout the camps of Germany, Austria, and Italy. Polish Bundists attempted to rebuild above the struggling embers of Jewish life in the Old World, their final efforts to organize in Central and Eastern Europe. They tried to find a new voice under the shadows of annihilation. Meanwhile, those who found themselves trapped in the displaced persons camps of Europe, who yearned for a new life in the new world, could not escape the old world where their lives had been turned upside-down. This is a story of uprooting, and of trying to establish new roots; of the struggle to find meaning in destruction, and of the desire to leave the pain behind. As Bundists tried to cope with their trauma, they remained unsure if they would be able to create new lives in postwar Europe. They hoped that they would once again dream of a better tomorrow, despite the constant reminder of the extermination of their mothers and fathers, their brothers and sisters, their children, and their comrades. Finally, they wondered whether or not ON T HE RUINS OF T HE OLD WOR LD 47 they would rebuild their houses, schools, meeting halls, and libraries on the ruins once their homes. Displaced Persons Writing about Bundists in the Displaced Persons camps of Germany, Austria, and Italy presents a major challenge. Outside of the Bundist press and the Bund Archives in New York, there is little material on the subject. Bundist sources tell a very different story from both that related by the mainstream Zionist press in the camps, and that told by contemporary historians. These latter newspapers, journals, and correspondences depict camp life as overwhelmingly governed by a Zionist politics that cared little about the survivors but primarily about establishing a Jewish state, whatever the cost. Correspondents to the Bundist press in Paris and New York leveled accusations of violence, economic intimidation, political repression, electoral tampering, and victimization against the camp leadership in general, and against the Zionist parties in particular. There was even an accusation of murder in one Italian camp. However, there seems no evidence to substantiate these claims. The only Bund sources we have to draw upon, however, are the official Bundist ones. Even correspondences—at least those preserved in the party archives—were more often than not directed through official Bund bodies. 1 This paucity of evidence may indicate that the Bundists’ accusations simply were not true, or else that they were grossly overstated. It is likely that the materials that may have confirmed some Bundist charges, such as letters from camp officials, were discarded in the camps by the survivors, who did not see the importance of preserving the official documentation. It is also possible that there was a cover up of the kind of violence of which Bundists claimed to be victims. It was not in the interests of the camps’ Zionist leadership to admit to a sustained campaign of intimidation against its political opponents, and so it is possible that a sympathetic press did not report on it, nor did the camps maintain any official records in this regard. Whatever the reason, the Bundists’ charges against the Zionist movement have been so far unsubstantiated. Historians of the camps have, therefore, generally interpreted the Bundist claims as exaggerated. Yehuda Bauer dismissed these claims as a marginal phenomenon, conceding that, although there may have been instances of violence directed at Bundists, these were perpetrated by fringe radicals. There was not, according...

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