Another battle in the war which has raged for years between the Jewish Socialists of the Bund and the Jewish Communists in the Jewish trades union movement in Poland was fought to-day when a band of Jewish Communists, armed with revolvers and knives attacked the Bundist Club in the Przejazd Street, seriously wounding five Bundists, among them Hersh Himmelfarb, one of the leaders of the Bund, who was stabbed. The other four who were shot are Jacob Steinmann, 19 years of age, Abraham Jablonka, 26, Jacob Goldschall 20, and Mayer Akowicz 20.
The Communists were angry because the Bundists refused to join a strike which they and proclaimed in the tailoring industry, and the Jewish tailors belonging to the Bundist trade union continued to work, thus rendering the strike ineffective.
The Bundist Central Committee has issued a proclamation to all Jewish workers denouncing the Communists as “bandits and murderers who have put themselves outside the pale of the Proletarian world”
Severe fighting between Bundists and Communists in the tailoring trade in Warsaw took place in 1929, when the Bundists also refused to join a strike which had been proclaimed by the Communists. Knives, scissors and hammers were used, and many people sustained severe injuries.
The trouble started in the same way as the fight between the Administration and the Left wing in the New York Garment Workers’ Union in 1927, also largely Jewish in composition, which culminated in the Communist split. The Communists in Warsaw succeeded in getting the workers in the men’s tailoring trade-to break away and go out on strike for an increase in wages. The Bundists condemned the strike, contending that it was doomed to failure because a successful strike was impossible under the existing economic conditions in Poland. The reds thereugon started a campaign of terrorism against the non-strikers to compel them to join the strike. The Left Poale Zion Organisation, after the first few days of the fighting, offered its services as a ##diator to both parties, suggesting a joint conference to put a stop to the fratricide between the Jewish workers. The Bund accepted the offer, but the Communists ignored the offer.
Similar fighting between the Bundist and Communist Jewish workers has also occurred in the textile, the baking and other industries, Communists armed with revolvers and knives going about attacking Bundist workers who remained at work while the Communists were on strike.
Only a few months ago, in November, a Jewish bake-house worker na### Abraham Neuerwan, who belonged to the Bundist Section of the Jewish Bakers’ Trade Union, was shot dead in Warsaw by a Jewish Communist.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
