Professor Dubnow is attempting to engage in a public discussion with the Bund on a number of basic problems in Jewish life. In the name of the "Bundist friend" to whom his letter is addressed, I am glad to accommodate him and to respond to his argument in as positive a way as possible.

The Bund is today not only the strongest Jewish socialist party, it is the strongest party in general within the Jewish arena in Poland. This has been demonstrated in all the elections of the past two years to the city councils and kehillas. No one in Poland doubts it today, neither our opponents nor our friends. Our opponents may hope it is a passing phenomenon; that's their concern. Everyone consoles himself as best he can. But it does not alter the fact.

Before we turn to the subject, let us dispense with authorities, because, to begin with, against the names of Léon Blum, Emile Vandervelde, and Eduard Bernstein, I can put forward others, no less dignified members of the Socialist International, such as Karl Kautsky, Otto Bauer, Victor Adler, and Fyodor Dan, who adhere to the Bund position on the question of Zionism. And secondly, it is not argument at all. My attitude toward Comrade Vandervelde is one of greatest respect—perhaps greater today than ever. But what can he know about ZIonism and about our internal Jewish problems in general? Let us preferably conduct the disputation with our own forces, minus the help of authorities.

And now—to the subject:

Mr. Dubnow expresses the wish that the Bund "should renounce its old negative attitude toward klal yisroel* and become an organic part of the Jewish people to the same degree that British or French Social Democracy is organically linked with its people, forming a common front with all progressive elements."

I do not know the source of Professor Dubnow's view that the Bund does not feel itself organically tied to the Jewish people, or, as he formulates it elsewhere in his letter, that the Bund doesn't consider itself a part of the Jewish people but a part of the "Jewish proletariat." Professor Dubnow declares that he heard the latter formulation "in the name of several party leaders of the Bund." If so, I can assure him that his informants are—as informants—not worth a penny. Mr. Dubnow could not have heard from any leader of the Bund—neither today nor yesterday—what he was told in the name of Bund leaders. In what Professor Dubnow writes here about the Bund, one can hear an echo of the caricature of the Bund which its most bitter enemies circulated during the first years of our party's existence. And it is truly regrettable that Professor Dubnow, who in his historical writing would not make the slightest assertion without having support in the form of documents, considers it possible to base himself upon word-of-mouth in his attitude toward such a large movement in Jewish life as the Bund.

No, Professor Dubnow was poorly informed. It has never occurred to the Bund to think that the destiny of the Jewish working class can be severed from the destiny of the Jewish people. The Bund has therefore always and constantly thought of itself as an organic part of the Jewish people. Its true ambition, just like the ambition of every vital socialist party, is to be the standard bearer and champion of the broadest masses of the Jewish people, i.e., of the large majority of the Jewish people, whom we identify with the Jewish people as a whole. From the small minority of Jews who live by exploitation and are prepared to identify Jewish interests with the interests of their pocketbooks, we part company with a light heart.

It is the interests of the Jewish people, thus understood, that the Bund has had in mind during the course of its history. When the Bund, as part of the revolutionary movement of Lithuania, Poland, and Russia, carried on its struggle for freedom, for complete national equality, and for socialism; when its armed workers' detachments fought the tsarist pogromshchiki; when, in connection with the Beilis trial, it called on the broad Jewish masses to mount an active protest, the Bund did not do so only in the interest of the Jewish proletarians, in the narrow sense of that term.

And today, when the Bund organizes the Jewish workers, employees, artisans, domestic producers, and laboring intellectuals in the struggle for their economic, political, and national rights; when the Bund, working stubbornly and in the face of the severest obstacles, builds a far-reaching network of Yiddish secular schools; when, at the present grievous time, it conducts—systematically, unceasingly, and all along in Jewish society—gigantic cultural activity among the Jewish masses; when it mobilizes those masses for militant actions on behalf of their fights (e.g., March 17, 1936; October 10, 1937); when it sees to it that the Jewish masses are not left defenseless against the fascist elements threatening their very physical existence—when the Bund does all of this, it does not do it solely for the Jewish worker in the factory and workshop, but for the vast, suffering Jewish mass, for all those whom we call by the name of—the Jewish people.

Professor Dubnow is therefore in error when he believes that we "isolate ourselves" from the Jewish mass. On the contrary, we seek ever closer and more intimate ties with it, and as the facts demonstrate, moreover, not without success.

But Mr. Dubnow is indeed correct when he asserts that we isolate ourselves from the Jewish bourgeois parties. In this respect, we are stubborn Jews.

Let us, at the outset, identify the subject of the disputation. Mr. Dubnow, in the sentence previously quoted, speaks of both klal yisroel and a "common front with all progressive elements." These are two different things, however. Klal yisroel does not exclude anyone from the community at large. Klal yisroel bases itself upon the unsophisticated principle of vos mir zaynen zaynen mir, ober yidn zaynen mir.** But Mr. Dubnow is, in fact, and along with us, ready to omit the Agudah. With respect to the Agudah, he says, the Bund is completely correct. Yet if Mr. Dubnow is prepared to eschew cooperation with a tendency in Jewish society as significant as the Agudah, he himself is renouncing, after all, the principle of klal yisroel.

But the term klal yisroel is used only once in the letter of Professor Dubnow. Generally he speaks about a "common front with all progressive elements"; about "a unification of all democratic and progressive elements." He thus touches upon a question that already has a lengthy history in the international labor movement, a question that is being passionately debated there to the present day.

But let us leave this question aside. It was certainly not the intention of Mr. Dubnow to enter into a debate with his Bundist friend about the intimate, internal problems of the international proletarian movement. What interests Mr. Dubnow is the Jewish side of the question. Granted that "a common front of all progressive elements" is a good thing. Why do we Bundists refuse to collaborate with Zionism? Why don't we wish to see in it... "a liberating democratic movement"? Why do we continue to oppose this movement as we have in the past?

This is the basic question with which Professor Dubnow turns to his "Bundist friend," and I shall try to provide an answer.

It is Professor Dubnow's belief that the Bund's actions vis-à-vis Zionism forty years ago could not be the same today. I have the impression that this is somewhat too subjective, since Mr. Dubnow's own attitude toward Zionism, not only forty years ago but also considerably later, was different than it is today. To be sure, he has reservations even today, and quite serious ones. "It is necessary," he says, "to fight against the negation of goles [galut, diaspora—Trans.] and the God's-chosen-people attitude of the Zionists, which is a dangerous negation of the whole world." This reservation was once sufficient to determine Dubnow’s negative attitude toward Zionism. But he has presumably experienced the same change as have so many others in Jewish society, that is to say, the Hitlerite flood has washed away the idea of goles; and his long-standing reservations about Zionism as a danger to the Jews of the world have necessarily lost a large part of their former force. Now, just like other new pro-Zionists, he is in general no more ecstatic or uncritical about it than the Zionists are among themselves (and not only among themselves).

Professor Dubnow was never an active political figure. Indeed, for a long time he has found himself completely outside political life for a number of objective reasons, while within the ivory tower of his solitude he lives in the company of the spirits of Jewish history and of abstract ideas about Jewish social movements stripped of their authentic garb. Mr. Dubnow speaks of the Bund in categories that have very little relation to reality. And that is how he thinks and speaks about Zionism. We, however, are not involved with a "platonic idea" of Zionism, but with living Zionist reality.

None of us can deny that the Zionists have achievements to record in Palestine. We submit only two "very minor" reservations:

(1) What has been built there has been built on sand, both economically and politically. We see from here the economic catastrophe, in the literal sense of the word, that Palestine is experiencing today. We see from here the blind, hopeless alley into which Zionism has politically maneuvered itself.

(2) What has been built there has cost world Jewry a treasure-house of money (approximately 100,000,000 pounds), and is worth—approximately—not less than it cost. The Zionists have demonstrated the trick of how to virtually monopolize the aid of Jewry throughout the world. They have even succeeded in extracting many millions from Polish Jewry, which is in such tremendous need of help.

But these are the least of our charges against Zionism, and they do not explain our determined struggle against it, nor our reluctance to engage in political collaboration with the Zionist party.

What have been our main arguments against Zionism in the decades of the Bund's existence? We stated that Zionism was not and could not be a solution to the Jewish question, and that by sowing the illusion among the Jewish masses that it is, Zionism diverts their attention and energy from the actual aims of their struggle. Moreover, because of its attitude of contempt toward goles and toward the Yiddish language, it is an obstacle on the road of development of Jewish culture.

Over the years, Zionism has evolved into an open ally of our deadly enemy—anti-Semitism. Zionism has, in fact, always derived its spiritual nourishment from the persecutions suffered by the Jewish population, and from political reaction above all. In the course of the forty-year existence of Zionism, the rule that has actually applied all the way through is: the darker things are in the world, the brighter things are in the tents of Zionism; the worse things are for Jews, the better for Zionism.

What can a Jewish Palestine be, under the best of circumstances? The small state of a tiny Hebrew tribe within the Jewish people. When the Zionists speak to the non-Jewish world, they are tremendous democrats and depict conditions in the Palestine of today and the future as models of freedom and progress. But if a Jewish state should arise in Palestine, its spiritual climate will be: eternal fear of the external enemy (Arabs); eternal struggle for every foot of ground and for every bit of work with the internal enemy (Arabs); and an untiring struggle for the extermination of the language and culture of the non-Hebraized Jews in Palestine. 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? Even kosher Zionist publicists who visit the Holy Land affirm the tremendous influence of clericalism, despite the fact that manual workers play such a prominent part in the Zionist organization. An eventual Jewish state cannot offer itself as a spiritual center to the Jewish masses of the goles lands, and as a center for immigration (the natural growth alone of the Jewish population of Poland significantly exceeds the absorption capacity of Palestine). The Zionists themselves have already significantly reduced their ambitions today: in a memorandum submitted by the representatives of the Jewish Agency to the Council of the League of Nations during its September session in 1937, they speak of Palestine as only a partial solution to the Jewish question. But even this, in light of the aforementioned facts, is nothing more than delusion, than bluff.

We have—in fact, together with Professor Dubnow—always regarded as a crime the Zionist attitude of contempt toward the goles, their readiness to sacrifice the interests of millions of Jewish people throughout the world for the sake of the "elect," represented by the Jews of Palestine.

I would not be exaggerating in the least if I were to say that, observing Zionist politics of recent years, one frequently gets the impression that those people have simply gone out of their minds, that in a state of profound desperation and wishing to salvage a modicum of the Zionist illusion, they commit crimes, each one greater than the last, with regard to the Jewish masses!

The leaders of the Zionist movement have, in fact, openly begun to play the anti-Semitic card. The incredible thought is stumbling around in their heads today of helping to form a bloc of countries with anti-Semitic regimes as allies of Zionism, as a force that should help Zionism "exert pressure" on the British government.1 If Professor Dubnow reads Supplement No. I to the memorandum (aide-memoire) which the Jewish Agency submitted in September 1937 to the members of the League of Nations Council, he will be convinced of what has just been stated. And in order not to arouse the ire of said countries, the Zionists are trying to keep quiet—consciously to keep quiet—about all the persecutions of the Jewish masses there.

September 1937 was a time when the specter of "deprivation" of citizenship and civil rights hung over the Jewish population of Rumania. In September 1937 the Jewish population of Warsaw experienced painful days. And in September 1937 the representative of Poland at Geneva (incidentally, not for the first time) issued a declaration that the Jews must leave Poland.

In the corridors of the League of Nations, the most prominent representatives of the Jewish Agency and of the World Jewish Congress "officiated" at that time. But not a single word was uttered by those gentlemen in defense of the Jewish masses of Europe. And the Polish Foreign Minister, Joseph Beck, after a conference with Dr. Chaim Weizmann, was able to issue a declaration to the press that a complete and sincere agreement had been reached between him and the leader of the Zionist movement in regard to the Jewish emigration problems.

There was a Zionist journalist in Geneva who mustered up his courage to go to the Zionist leaders and voice a lament: "You can see what's going on [these were his approximate words—Erlich], so, at the very least, issue a statement to the press with the reminder that the Balfour Declaration consists of two parts; that if there is reference in the first part to a national home for Jews in Palestine, there is an assertion in the second part that the national home in Palestine must in no case bring about a worsening of the political condition of the Jews in their old homes."

But the representatives of the Jewish Agency and the World Jewish Congress, in which Professor Dubnow would also have liked to see the Bund, refused even to do that because it would evoke dissatisfaction among the representatives of the countries with anti-Semitic policies. And these leaders of Zionism—Mr. Weizmann as well as Mr. Moshe Shertok, Mr. Nahum Goldmann as well as Mr. Yarblum—replied with the greatest cynicism: "It's too bad. If a collision occurs between the interests of the Jewish state and the Jews in goles, the latter must be sacrificed."

The attitude of the Zionist delegations at Geneva (for the delegation of the World Jewish Congress is likewise a Zionist delegation) elicited surprise even in Zionist circles. The Zionist Israelitische Wochenblatt, which appears in Zurich, bitterly declared that during the September session of the League of Nations, while cries of woe could be heard from various quarters, the anguish of the Jewish masses found no expression there in any form whatsoever. Because—wrote the Geneva correspondent of that same paper—

"Palestine ties everyone's hands. . . . One marvels at how the representative of the Jewish Agency, Nahum Goldmann, conducts his diplomatic conversations with a serious mien. Just a few days ago, the Revisionists engaged in negotiations with the Polish delegation. Now Weizmann also has had a conversation with the Polish foreign minister, Beck, who is an ally, as is known, in the question of an expanded opportunity for immigration into Palestine."

But the Zionists do the same things within the countries of mass Jewish life as they do in the international arena. I could refer to examples in various countries; I shall limit myself to facts about Poland.

Who can forget Yitzhak Grünbaum’s notorious comment in the year 1927 about the "million superfluous Jews" that must be removed from Poland? Who can forget his no less notorious comment in the year 1928 that "the Jews are polluting the air of Poland"? The Polish anti-Semites excellently recall those words, and have periodically revived them—indeed, up to the very present—in the memory of their readers and listeners.

But 1927, 1928—those were heavenly years in comparison with the present. Of course the slogan "Zydzi do Palestyni" ["Jews to Palestine"] was popular not only among the Zionists but also among the anti-Semites. Yet who in Polish society seriously questioned our rights as citizens of the country?

However, eight fateful years went by. The year 1936 arrived—the year of Przytyk, of Minsk-Mazowiecki,*** of a number of other similar events. The openly fascist camp in Poland not only preached but actively implemented an economic extermination campaign. It demanded forced mass-emigration and ghetto and Nuremberg laws for the "temporary" remnants. And it preached, by word and deed, physical force as a means of hastening the exodus from Poland. Even the head of government let fall during that year the expression that was destined to become famous: "Economic boycott—by all means." The Jewish masses felt their elementary civil and human rights threatened. And they mobilized for a struggle in defense of those rights, as in the strike of March 17 and the mass campaign for a congress dedicated to the struggle against anti-Semitism.

It was at that very time that three Zionist celebrities descended upon Poland, individuals representing the most varied tendencies in the Zionist camp: David Ben-Gurion, Yitzhak Grünbaum, and Vladimir Jabotinsky. Each of them—in the manner of a states-man—called a press conference open to the whole Polish press; and each, for his part, affirmed in his own way that the Polish anti-Semites were 100% correct!

The only solution to the Jewish question in Poland, declared the Poale Zionist Ben-Gurion, is in fact emigration; the Jews are indeed an obstacle in the path of the Polish peasant and the wife of the Polish sergeant, declared the General Zionist, Mr. Grünbaum; the Jews should indeed be evacuated from Poland, and as fast as possible, declared the Jewish "Duce," Jabotinsky.

Each of these statements fell upon the heads of the Jewish people of Poland like a clap of thunder. But all three were received by the whole anti-Semitic press as the highest expression of political wisdom. The Zionist writers on current public affairs in Poland (except for the most foolish and shabby ones) gagged over the declarations of their prominent leaders—literally unable to swallow or to spit them out. But the anti-Semitic press declared Ben-Gurion, Grünbaum, and Jabotinsky to be the greatest, indeed the sole national politicians of the Jewish people. The anti-Semitic Czas opened its columns wide for any topic of the "Duce"; the anti-Semitic Kurier Warszawski transformed Jabotinsky’s book, Di Yidishe Melukhe ["The Jewish State"], into almost the greatest literary event of our time. What more can you want?: Julius Streicher, no less, reprinted Grünbaum's statement and added his own comment: "This Grünbaum is a decent Jew."

That was in the year 1936 and today is 1938. No matter what we may think about the internal state of international fascism today, externally its influence has significantly increased during this period because of the criminal and suicidal policies of the Western European democracies. Everyone feels it, and we too feel it in Poland. The main council of an organization (commonly known as Ozon [right-wing Polish "Camp of National Unity" political party—adri]), which actually took the place of the former government party in Poland that was dissolved in 1935, has just held its session. A program on the Jewish question that was adopted at the session coincides completely with the program of the remorseless anti-Semites of the so-called National Camp.

The Jewish population of Poland was declared a "group outside the state" which, by its very existence, "weakens the normal development of the Polish national and state forces and stands in the way of the evolution now taking place in Poland." Hence Jewish participation in the economic life of the country must be reduced; the number of Jews in the schools must be reduced; Polish culture must be protected from Jewish influences. All this is only a partial "solution" to the Jewish question. Its "basic solution" is—emigration: to Palestine and elsewhere, because Palestine itself is too small.

This, in short, is the program. The press commentaries on the program are consistent with the well-known anti-Semitic incitement style. And only one idea in Jewish life met with "respectful recognition" on the part of the authors of the program and the commentators on it: that is—Zionism.

Such "compliments" will not add any luster to the Zionists. But every objective person must concede, in view of what was stated above, that the compliments they received were richly deserved!

Does Professor Dubnow believe that all these are only "small defects" on the charming face of Zionism? Minor inaccuracies in the operation of the Zionist mechanism? Does Professor Dubnow really think that what he himself characterizes in Zionism as a "danger to the world Jewry," as well as all the facts cited above, are nothing more than—accidental? A tactical mistake that can be eliminated by a piece of good advice and by good intentions?

If such is Professor Dubnow’s belief, it proves that he is operating with fictions and that the living and functioning Zionism is unknown to him. Zionism, in point of fact, has always been a Siamese twin of anti-Semitism and of every kind of national chauvinism. Zionism has always regarded the law of force, of nationalistic reaction, as the normal law of history, and on this law has based its perspectives of Jewish life. In the forty years of its existence it has always appeared lost and helpless in the presence of any victorious freedom movement.

To be sure, if the future of humanity really belongs to fascism, then the historical perspective depicted by Zionism will turn out to be correct; what then truly awaits us in goles is death and destruction. But death and destruction will then be the destiny of all human civilization and culture. Would Zionism be capable of saving us alone from the fascist deluge? It is ridiculous even to think about it! But then there will remain its "theoretical" justification of anti-Semitism as its sole "historical merit."

I have intentionally avoided speaking about the frequently ugly and openly reactionary role that Zionism plays in the internal life of Poland or Rumania. I leave aside such little gems as the "solemn assurance" given a short time ago to Mussolini by the Zionist representatives of the World Jewish Congress to the effect that "the Jews never fought against fascism." I have endeavored to describe exclusively the political role of Zionism in Jewish life. (Their cultural role is a chapter in itself.) And I think that after all this, Professor Dubnow cannot expect us to look upon Zionism as a "liberating democratic movement" and as "a large popular movement that has embraced all other (?) progressive, democratic, and socialist parties" (?); or expect us to wax enthusiastic over the expression about the "revival of the Palestinian center as the greatest marvel in Jewish history," an expression with a pathetic ring, lifted out of the Zionist lexicon.

Professor Dubnow is correct in his assertion that it is necessary to exert all our power in the struggle "against the reactionary, hostile world that has lately become a danger to all peoples." But for this struggle we must seek partners other than the Zionists. This is not only the opinion of the Bund today but rather the opinion of the broadest strata of the Jewish masses in Poland and of the disappointed, embittered Jewish masses in Palestine.

* The concept of the Jewish people as an undifferentiated ethnic entity subsuming such significant differences as class, religion, political philosophy, and others.—Trans.
** "Although we are what we are, we remain Jews first of all."—Trans.
*** Towns in central Poland where anti-Jewish pogroms took place.—Trans.

Text taken from Samuel Portnoy's book Henryk Erlich and Victor Alter: Two Heroes and Martyrs for Jewish Socialism, pp. 253-264.

• 1Britain took control of Palestine from the Ottomans following the latter's defeat in the First World War, after which it was known at Mandatory Palestine up until the founding of Israel in 1948 .—adri