The World They Fought For

I am very Polish and have been my entire life. My mother’s maiden name - Bartosiak - trumped me as a kid, most likely because I struggled to spell it in mind, or possibly because the initial “Bart” made my hyperactive imagination think more of Bart Simpson than my own family’s legacy. Growing up, my grandfather frequently wore a sweater that exclaimed “don’t blame me, I’m Polish”; this sweater always got a good chuckle out of me, mainly because of the fun little symbols and designs that danced out the 90s-esque grey fabric. Alongside this, many a Polish joke were made during my childhood, ranging from how many it takes to handle a lightbulb to the more niche story of how we got our asses kicked during WW2. My grandfather always jokes that we used horses and spears against the Germans lines of tanks and steel.

Polish sausage, pigs in a blanket (beef wrapped in boiled cabbage), talks of Casimir Pulaski Day, and the causal embrace of low-ABV beer filled my time with my grandparents. Some of the fondest memories I have from these visits was when we all sat in the basement and watched old movies, with George C. Scott’s Patton and Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles being among my favorites. In retrospect, they probably weren’t the most appropriate, but don’t blame us, we’re Polish.

As I grew into adulthood, I lost track of my Polish ancestry and its salience to me. Maybe this was because of all the drama going on in the world around me, or perhaps I was busy filling my free time with nerdy books and college entrance tests rather than old family stories. But overall, as I grew older, I never made much of an effort to research my own family’s lineage in Poland, nor, God forbid, did I delve into how family was impacted by the dialectical forces of history of 20th century Europe.

This all changed, however, recently upon reading an upcoming novel. Molly Crabapples’ Here We Live Is Our Country is not a book directed toward former Catholic Poles like me. Instead, the book serves as a half memoir, half detailed historical examination into the story of the Jewish socialist Bund movement and its various figures throughout the first half of the 20th century. One of these figures is Crabapple’s great-grandfather Sam Rothbort, a former leatherworker from Volkovysk (in modern day Belarus) who moved to the United States in 1904.

Sam’s presence serves as a historical comparison, highlighting, through the example of one individual, the various challenges and diverging strands of life that were occurring among Bundists both in Europe and around the globe. Sam’s world, far from an isolated bubble, found itself intertwined with that of the European Bundists, and among the Jewish sense of community in New York City. As celebrations and events from Europe rippled through the Yiddish and socialist presses, these stories helped to shape the diaspora and their passion for changing the world, even though they were separated from their homeland by thousands of miles. Crabapple describes this sense of community as being broadly connected to the Bundist view of socialism:

“On the Lower East Side, socialism meant more than Marx. It was the idiom of something broad, free, and generous— the fight for a Better and More Beautiful World. To be a socialist meant to be a human, to affirm that there was more to life than the brutish quest for coin. Back in Volkovysk, the Bundist Chaim Nemzer had helped Sam survive Bloch’s leather tannery. In New York, socialism did the same for hundreds of thousands of Jews.”

More than just a literary depiction of her family tree, Crabapple’s narrative around the Bund is one of constant change and adaptation to the forces and ideas of history; of tenacious Jewish resistance to antisemitism followed by the depressing challenges and horrors of the Holocaust.

It is a story of dialectics, with governments and individuals alike intervening and being impacted by emerging contradictions and crises. Each Bundist, from Sam to far distant activists in Siberian prison, is beautifully covered, as are their hopes, failures, loves, and tragedies. Each chapter gradually conveys the Bund’s course from the early 1900s to the end of WW2 and presents the movement as a constant counter force to the emerging seas of fascism and totalitarianism that emerged during the long 20th century. The book is a personal history of Sam’s life, but beyond this, it is also a detailed window into the Bund, its ideological vision, its quest for Jewish autonomy, and the kind world we have today which still finds itself longing for what Bundists fought for almost a century ago.

Here Where We Live Is Our Country begins its story of the Bund in the 1890s with the Vilna Group, an underground organization of Jewish social democrats who spread socialist and Marxist teachings to Jewish (and non-Jewish) workers in plain language. They translated texts into Yiddish, snuck pamphlets into factories and mills, delivered impassioned speeches, organized strikes, and managed to get real and tangible benefits for workers. Most vitally, they argued against both assimilation and Zionism. Their place was in their homeland, and among the working class of all creeds and races. Autonomy was needed, as were protections against discrimination and segregation, but by and large, the movement was focused on building class-based politics. And soon, this message of class consciousness and resistance caught fire all through the Pale of Settlement, the area of the Russian Empire where Jews were permitted to live, although not peacefully.

From the Vilna Group came the Bund, and from the Bund came figures like the famous Russian ideologue Vladimir Medem and others running into the forces of history which were emerging upon the founding of the 20th century. It was in an exiled revolutionary milieu where the Bund’s leaders like Medem found itself trying to adapt to various new strands of thought and ideological competition. Ethnonationalism was becoming all the craze, as were emerging strands of communism which were slowly molding into their Marxist-Leninist bent. Figures like Giuseppe Mazzini, Theodore Herzl, Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, and various others historical titans all knew and corresponded with the Bund.

For the most part, the Bund wanted nothing to do with the emerging Zionist movement, even going so far as to ban Zionists from joining their organization. As for Lenin, Medem, alongside other influential Bundists, viewed the man as a dictator in waiting. Lenin’s faction was pugnacious, uncompromising, and more than willing to label ideological partners as somehow alien to socialism. Uneven splits between Bundists and Lenin in the RSDLP eventually led to Lenin referring to his faction as the “majorityites” and the Bundists as “minorityites”. In their native Russian, the factions’ nicknames are far more recognizable as the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks.

In Russia, revolution eventually came due to the Tsar’s disastrous handling of World War One. Millions of Russians were dead, and conscripts found themselves serving on front lines which were severely under equipped and demoralized. One Russian naval ship eventually mutinied after a conscript was killed for complaining about his maggot-infested food to his superior officers. This kind of sentiment caused conflagration to spread across the country, ultimately forcing the Tsar to resign and for a new provisional government to emerge. Bundists, alongside other leftist groups, used this opportunity to revolt and organize, and soon they had a part to play in this new system by serving in worker councils and in provisional leadership. Finally legal and in the open, the Bundists now had an opportunity to shape their country and their home. Here where they lived was their home, and they began to imagine finally building the Russian state of their dreams. Autonomy, freedom, and democracy was seemingly on the horizon.

Marxists to their core, however, the Bundists during this momentary blip did not advocate for radical change or distribution, instead choosing to follow Marx’s view that Russia was not ready for socialism. Moderation and a focus on gaining better footing in the ongoing war in Europe emerged as vital goals even as the average Russian further soured on the idea of revolutionary gradualism. As the war grew more costly, hundreds of thousands more soldiers died concurrently with severe shortages across the nation.

Soon, the Bundists found themselves being outflanked from their left by Lenin. The Russian people demanded an end to the war, plentiful bread, and distributed land, and this is exactly what Lenin and his cronies promised in their speeches. By October of 1917, the Bolsheviks launched a coup and took control over the provisional government. Within months, Bundists again faced an environment of insecurity, with secret police and governmental repression emerging around every corner. Antisemitism also persisted, with the revolution bringing very little in terms of democratic autonomy. Some Bundists chose to integrate into Lenin’s communist party in order to gain momentary peace. For those who dissented, they faced either imprisonment or exile. Many fled, again becoming refugees in the Pale.

It is here within Crabapple’s book begins to truly exile in its riveting description of the interwar world. Back in the US, Sam and other former Bundists weathered a world which was growing far more chaotic and acrimonious. Sam, finally emerging out of various odd jobs and constraints, was pursuing his passion as an artist. He married, painted for clients, showed off his art in various scenes, moved to a farm, moved back to New York City due to his wife Rose’s financial savvy, and all the while managed to construct a decent life for himself and his family. As for his sense of community, Sam loved his home, venturing around Coney Island, and the milieu of solidarity which permeated throughout the city’s various residents.

“Every year, he walked by the shore. The ocean stretched before him. If he followed the water to its endpoint, he would have reached Europe, the bloody continent whose union bosses the Jewish Labor Committee now fought to save. How many Europeans would soon throw themselves into the waves? Around him jostled the denizens of New York’s megapolis. They were the lower class of everywhere, born in a thousand warring places, but here, they fought over nothing more consequential than a spot of sand. In this democratic gathering spot, this place of bare bodies and easy solidarity, the storm gathering in Germany must have seemed terribly far away.”

On the shores of NYC, Sam was able to find equanimity. Within the broader world, tensions and violence were growing considerably. In Sam’s new home, the first Red Scare was taking place, with much effort being hurled at left wing movements and their connections overseas. Antisemitism and anti-Slavic immigration legislation eventually passed, alongside a growing unease about accepting refugees from Europe. As the contradictions of post-war Europe emerged, the US remained aloof, opting to chase the imaginary ghost of communist subversion while actively doing nothing to prepare for what lay ahead.

As for the Bund, it was during this period where the movement was able to obtain successful gains in Poland. Electorally, the party performed well in local elections, and in spite of ongoing pogroms and right-wing campaigns. Democratic Poland, gradually going the way of the dodo, faced increasing internal pressures as blood-and-soil nationalism increasingly gained control over the institutional organs of power. Paramilitary groups committed wanton violence; far-right student organizations attacked Jewish and leftist students trying to attend class; political parties shifted further and further right in idiotic attempts to placate the country’s emerging fascistic elements.

Beyond engaging in electoralism, the Bund also utilized their long roots in self-defense operations. Armed Bundists defended against pogroms, intimidation, unfair labor practices, neighborhood disputes, and a plethora of other pressures. Through the organizational and communication skills of Bernard Goldstein, a militant union organizer, the Bund was able to defend poll places, communities, and vital figures from state-backed violence and nationalistic fervor. Poland was Bernard’s home, it was the Bundists home, and no amount of violence or ethnonationalist discrimination would change that reality. Here where they lived was their home, damn everything else.

Through mutual aid operations, the Bund operated food pantries, schools, old-age homes, credit unions, and various co-ops which helped to provide a robust social safety and a plethora of economic opportunities for local residents. Amidst rising fascism, the Bund unequivocally declared their opposition to leaving their homeland. And to make this announcement heard, they also refused to submit or allow discrimination to destroy their community. Labor power, democratic, and autonomy reigned supreme, and through cooperation with the Polish Socialist Party and other left groups, the Bund was able to build a capable counterforce to the far-right.

This aversion to ethnonationalism included opposing the burgeoning Zionist movement as well. Across Poland, Bundists refused to cooperate or allow Zionists into their ranks. Increasingly, they saw in Palestine the same blood-and-soil nationalism that was imperiling their lives back home. Zionist labor unions, cooperatives, and neighborhoods in Palestine forbid Arab Palestinians from joining. Many Bundists also viewed Zionist cooperation with the far-right, especially in regard to immigration to Palestine, as buying into the logic that Jews did not belong in Europe, thus lending legitimacy to the idea that ethnostates were both natural and necessary for a stable world.

In response to the Bund’s opposition, Zionist organizations and groups lambasted the Bund as being weak and enemies of Zion [Israel]. The Bund was supposedly littered with self-hating Jews who wished for their own destruction, and because of this, they had to be cut off from their regional and international connections. Brawls between Bundists and Zionists were common, as were intellectual screeds and combat through means of journalism. The disagreements between the two sides were not amicable, and as conditions in Poland deteriorated, tensions only grew worse and more contorted. Crabapple describes this tension from Bundist perspective quite comprehensively, and with little room for equivocation:

While the Bund fought for Jews’ place in Poland, the Zionists sided with a government trying to force Jews from their homes. While the Bund called protest strikes against pogroms, Ben-Gurion and Jabotinsky pranced on Polish stages, giving speeches that supported the pogromists’ demand for Jews to leave. After Polish foreign minister Józef Beck said that three million Jews must be deported, Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann smiled and shook his hand.

Of course, Crabapple’s narrative is not apathetic. She wholeheartedly understands the organic appeal that Zionism had amongst Europe’s Jews, especially those in Poland.

The darker things got for Jews in Poland, the more seductive Palestine seemed. While some potential immigrants were drawn by visions of national rebirth in their biblical homeland, for many others, it was merely a way out of Dodge. “Zionism drew its vital juices from defeats and catastrophes,” wrote the Bundist leader Emanuel Nowogrodski. With immigration to America cut off and Poland averaging an outbreak of violence a week, even apolitical Jews turned up at the Warsaw offices of the Jewish Agency, the Zionist organization that chose amongst prospective immigrants to Palestine, to apply for a coveted entry permit.

Crabapple’s interwar period does not bullshit or present happy little endings to the atrocities that were slowly brewing, nor does she paint the Bund as infallible. The Bund’s Marxist orthodoxy and common refusal toward pragmatism caused problems, and likely delayed certain acts of resistance in the ghettos. Moreover, Crabapple’s depiction of the Bund shows an organization which relentlessly tried to get Poles and fellow non-Jewish socialists over to their side despite ever-present antisemitism. Despite pogroms, betrayals, discrimination, legal segregation, and far-right violence, the Bund never relented on their multiracial working-class vision of democratic socialism. Their faith in their fellow Poles, and in the ability of material contradictions to puncture through the disease of racialized hate, is indeed enduring. Many times, this faith was tested as Poles, again and again, defaulted to a racist bent. But in some cases, humanity was able to show, cutting through the milieu of fascism and violence that was almost ubiquitous.

When World War Two finally came, Bundists alongside Zionists, communists, and smaller groups of resistance all launched attacks on their Nazi occupiers. In Warsaw, the Jewish ghetto experienced a massive uprising that ended up killing hundreds of Nazis. Sadly, despite organized action, these underground movements were not able to sustain their operations against the total onslaught brought by the Nazis. By the end of the uprising, most of the ghetto was demolished through the hellish combination of artillery barrages, air munitions, and flamethrower battalions. Over 50,000 were killed as a result, with most of the remaining survivors sent away to concentration camps.

The end of WW2 saw mass destruction and chaos. 90% of Poland’s Jews had been killed as a result of the Holocaust, and as survivors returned to their communities, they found their apartments, businesses, and neighborhoods being occupied by Poles who were granted ownership by the Nazi regime. Most Poles refused to give back the confiscated properties, and as tensions grew, pogroms and targeted attacks returned. The Bund, decimated by the war, tried their best to counteract these challenges, but in the end, they were simply overwhelmed.

Since the end of WW2 and the establishment of Israel, many have looked back upon the Bund with contempt and criticism. Comments label the movement as naive, uncompromising, weak, and most critically as failures. But while the Bund definitely lost, they were not failures. As Crabapple writes:

“Failure is what happens to those overcome by their own faults and errors. To lose is to succumb to greater force.”

The Bund had faults and internal problems, just as any organization does. But fundamentally, they did not collapse because of brewing contradictions or internal discombobulation. They lost because they simply could not counteract the gargantuan force that was European fascism. Fascism, like fire on a dry brush, spread quickly and with great intensity through Europe. It killed everything in its way and launched a conflagrated conflict predicated on territorial annexation and ethnonationalist supremacy. Six million Jews died from this fire, as did tens of millions non-Jewish Poles. I lost family in Poland to the fire, and likely hundreds of years of family history and culture that I will now never know. The Bund movement didn’t fail; they lost to a force of history that decimated multiple continents and entire swaths of people. It was ultimately a herculean task that proved difficult to combat, but this doesn’t render the Bund lost to the dustbin of history.

As Crabapple exhibited with Sam, he lived on and painted. Sam’s family lives on today, as do his plethora of paintings and sculptures which described a previous world and continent. Sam’s words, works, and philosophy still permeate, as does Bundism. Crabapple’s work as a journalist and writer has found her covering and fighting against the worst atrocities of our time. Alongside fellow journalists, she has covered Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, the war in Syria, and broader conflicts in the Middle East which have resulted in millions of refugees.

She has not swept away her family history and embraced nihilism. Instead, Crabapple, like her grandfather before her, has painted and molded something new. She has taken old ideas and rejuvenated them for a world which is in desperate need of change and resistance. The Bund’s predictions on Zionism and ethnonationalism have indeed come true, and with disastrous consequences. Rather than decades of peace and reconciliation, Zionism within Israel has moved further and further right in response to insecurity and regional hostility. As Crabapple notes:

In 1938, Henryk Erlich wrote, “If a Jewish state should arise in Palestine, its spiritual climate will be: eternal fear of the external enemy (Arabs); and eternal struggle for every bit of ground with the internal enemy (Arabs) . . . Is this a climate in which freedom, democracy, and progress can grow? Indeed, is it not the climate in which reaction and chauvinism ordinarily flourish?”

This reaction has resulted in millions of Palestinians being locked behind the walls of apartheid. In Gaza, most of the strip has been demolished through the hellish combination of artillery barrages, air munitions, and IDF battalions. Over 70,000 Palestinians have been killed as a result, with most of the remaining survivors being sent away to refugee camps and tent cities. The strip is systematically depleted, with hospitals, schools, vital pieces of infrastructure, and energy sources now decimated. In the West Bank, Palestinians have been placed into local ghettos, with their freedom of movement and speech being comprehensively restricted.

Roving paramilitary gangs of settlers can attack and intimidate Palestinians and face virtually no consequences. Illegal settlements are continuously allowed and retroactively legalized, with Palestinian autonomy being chipped away brick by brick and farm by farm. Little stands in the way of further annexation, and as this has occurred, the possibility of a Palestinian state has gradually become impossible. Israeli society will not permit an autonomous Palestinian state, nor will any subsequent Israeli government allow for settlements to be deconstructed. The project is fixed, the Palestinian issue is almost settled, and the only standing in the way of finalization is Palestinian resistance.

The Bundists criticized ethnonationalism and liberal accommodationism because of their ability to so quickly otherize entire populations and destroy class consciousness. The Bundists saw it in Russia, in Poland, in Ukraine, and in practically all of Europe. Within Israel, they saw the same project unfolding that had unfolded itself thousands of times during their tumultuous lives. Hate was not only reserved for those in Europe, it could burgeon out of any culture. Oppressed could become oppressor, populations could be subjugated, and the same horrors of the past could again be repeated without any lesson being learned. Bundist didn’t oppose Israel because they viewed it as being initially monstrous, they instead saw within its DNA the same underpinnings which had just destroyed Europe and much of Jewish culture. It was, if anything, an effort to spare future populations the same kind of bloodshed which they had experienced for thousands of years.

Crabapple didn’t write this book to just tell a little story about her family, nor did she write longingly for a past world which can never be recreated. The purpose of this book was to convey a continental space and time which was undone through the waves of history. Entire lineages, families, and traditions were massacred within Europe. Fascism destroyed the old world, ripping apart at the seams some of the longest and historically robust strands of European existence. The conditions which had brought about Bundism collapsed as our new world came into being, but its salience was not lost forever.

Just like with Sam, its paintings, molds, and carvings still linger, providing us with hope and inspiration where needed. And similar to art, it can always be reborn and reshaped to fit new periods. The world which begot Bundism will never return, but a world which chooses to remember its principles and then utilize them to form a new guiding light for politics is indeed possible. New concepts of freedom can emerge. Class-based calls for solidarity, universalism, and democracy are still possible. But this kind of future will require all of us to stay committed, and it will force us to rethink conditions of power and wealth as our world becomes more tumultuous.

The Bundists watched their world emerge and burn, and at every turn, they tirelessly attempted to bring forth their vision of left-wing humanism to the fold. They were ultimately not successful, but as Crabapple notes, they were not failures. Rather, they simply lost. And as inheritors of their principles, it is important for us to remember what made them endlessly strive. “Here where we live is our country” was their motto, their creed for building a better world, and it is about time we take this beautiful piece of art and, like Sam, mold it to fit our time and place in order to build our own little slice of democratic peace.