The Generation: The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Communists of Poland (review)

Book Reviews 143 The Generation: The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Communists of Poland, by Jaff Schatz. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991. 408 pp. $39.95. The basic idea of this book is to present a collective biography of the generation ofJewish Communists who entered their political life in Poland at the end of the twenties and beginning of the thirties. Mr. Schatz collected 43 interviews (with people who emigrated from Poland) and supports these documents with a vast bibliography, including several memoirs and interviews published in Poland. This is quite sufficient to describe the complicated ways of life of the analyzed group. The reader will ask, however, if this representation is sufficient for conclusions. The first and foremost fact is that the Jewish Communists in Poland could hardly be estimated as numerous. Mr. Schatz quotes interesting statistics which-even though they are only approximate-lead one to the conclusion that the maximum number ofJews in the Communist Party in Poland did not exceed 10,000. Even including a certain number of sympathizers, these people did not constitute any significant part ofJewish society in Poland, which numbered more than 3 million people. Taking into consideration that many Communists began their political activity earlier than the analyzed generation, the representation on which the book was based can be considered relatively significant and sufficient. The author, however, cannot decide himselfif the Jewish Communists were numerous or not. He underlines-and justly-that the radicals (and not only Communists) were an insignificant minority amongJews (e.g., p. 11) at the same time that he writes about "a large and intense following" of the radical trends (e.g., p. 51). Happily these contradictions do not influence the main topic of analysis. The reader should, however, remember that this is a portrait of a generation which was only a small minority among the Jews in Poland. Many more Jews were far from the Communist movement or even fought its influence. Another important reservation is that the respondents of Mr. Schatz were the people who remained more or less strongly connected with the Communist tradition at least until 1968. This means that a relatively significant part of the Generation, people who left the Communist movement, for example after the Moscow trials or after tragic experiences of Soviet life during the second World War, were excluded from the analysis. The book, even with all these reservations, presents a very interesting picture of people who were seduced by the utopian image of future happiness in a Communist society and who later-step by step-were deprived of their illusions up until the dramatic end in 1968 (for some of 144 SHOFAR Summer 1993 Vol. 11, No.4 them it was rather 1956). At that time the Communist movement in Central Europe entered the decisive crisis, losing its original ideological content while retaining its political institutions and power. Probably it was not a coincidence that in the same year when some activists of the ruling party in Poland exploited nationalist (not only antisemitic!) slogans in their internal fight for power, the Soviet army and their more or less willing allies crushed the Czechoslovak spring-an endeavor to revive humanistic elements of the original Communist tradition. Being born much later, I have met since the Second World War several Jewish Communists who belong to the generation analyzed by Mr. Schatz who engaged themselves with full self-sacrifice in the cause of building a better society that would be free of social oppression and national discrimination. Their zeal and idealism were an example for many young people who did not see the dark sides of the post-war situation and internal Communist policy in Poland. The tragic reality was to be discovered later. The author describes the fates of the generation with compassion and often with sympathy for their idealism. On the other hand he underlines their fanatical faith in the Party (always written or spoken by them with big "P") and the contrast between ideals and reality. These people were responsible (or at least co-responsible) for the Polish achievements after 1944 but as well (maybe even to a greater extent) for the tragic fates of many other...