| The friendship of Mojzesz Pomeranz and Ksawery Pruszynski This is the story of the friendship between two men, as told nearly half a century after both of the protagonists died young. The author is the brother of one of them. Mojzesz Pomeranz and Ksawery Pruszynski met at the university in Cracow, where they were both studying law. Pomeranz was the son of a prosperous merchant from the Kazimierz district, while Pruszynski was the son of an aristocratic widow who had lost her estate and her family fortune in Eastern Poland during the Bolshevik revolution. Pomeranz grew up in a traditional Jewish home, while Pruszynski received a Jesuit education. As Mieczyslaw Pruszynski tells it, the two law students (legal studies in Poland consist of a five-year undergraduate course) shared a sense of exile and a longing to return to a lost home. For Pomeranz, that lost home was the land of Israel, and the Zionist movement provided the conceptual and the practical means for returning there after almost 2,000 years of exile. For Pruszynski, home was his family's estate in the lost world of the Polish eastern marches. Between the wars, ironically, the Jewish return seemed more practicable than a Polish return to the estates now incorporated into the Soviet Union. Imaginative and sensitive individuals have a gift for transcending mental barriers between groups and stepping not so much into the shoes, as into the dreams of people with a different identity. Ksawery Pruszynski learned about Zionism from his friend Mojzesz, and became an ardent proponent of the idea. Not only did he become a proponent, but he also traveled from Poland to Palestine in 1933, a couple of years after graduating, when he was beginning to make a career for himself as a journalist. Ksawery journeyed to Rumania by train, booked a passage in steerage on a Black Sea steamer, and sailed to Palestine by way of Istanbul. He was the only non-Jewish passenger in steerage, and spent the voyage talking to the young pioneers in the other bunks. Upon arrival, he visited Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, the Dead Sea, the hydroelectric projects, and the kibbutzim. The book that Ksawery Pruszynski published on his return sold well and made him into a local authority on Palestine. It praised the miracles of development that the settlers had achieved, as he would always point out, not on the best land in the country, but on the worst. Pruszynski continually emphasized that this important difference, and the fact that the settlers purchased every square foot of the property they developed, rendered any comparison with colonialism untenable. He traveled the country giving lectures to both Jewish and Catholic audiences. At the Catholic University in Lublin, he addressed the "Rebirth" youth movement, many of whose members, such as Jerzy Turowski and Stanislaw Stomma, played important roles in the struggle over the next 65 years for a democratic, tolerant Poland. In the inter-war political landscape, Ksawery and Mieczyslaw Pruszynski belonged to the pro-Pilsudski camp. Their greatest enemies were the nationalist, anti-Semitic right as grouped in the National Democratic (Endek) party and its Wszechpolska (All-Polish) youth branch. The Pilsudski party, which held undisputed sway in the country as long as Marshal Pilsudski remained alive (until 1935), promoted its own youth movement, the Legion Mlodych (Legion of the Young), which supported like-minded student leaders, co-opted them into posts in the government ministries, and maintained an active press under the leadership of figures who would loom large in the coming decades, like Jerzy Giedroyc and Jozef Mackiewicz. Pilsudski had Jewish associates, and some of his closest non-Jewish lieutenants had Jewish wives. Mieczyslaw Pruszynski notes how, in 1926, Pilsudski issued a blanket decree granting citizenship to 600,000 Jewish refugees from the Soviet Union; the author regards this as an unparalleled step in the period before World War II, when most other countries in Europe and America slammed the door. During Pilsudski's lifetime and afterwards, when his "Colonels" attempted to maintain their hold on power, they cooperated with Jewish groups and supported the Zionist ideal of emigration to a Jewish state in Palestine. Zionists and the Polish authorities paid lip service to each other as fighters for the national independence of their respective peoples, and some major Zionist leaders cited Pilsudski as their personal inspiration. In the final years before 1939, this cooperation became highly concrete, with the army offering special military training to Jewish self-defense activists and supplying arms for the struggle in Palestine. In their most optimistic hopes, the Polish authorities envisioned a Jewish state in Israel with a population originating predominantly in Poland; such a state would maintain close diplomatic and economic links with the country of origin and even serve as a sort of surrogate for the colonial empire that Poland never had. (Mieczyslaw Pruszynski does not discuss the way in which some of the post-Pilsudski colonels attempted, in the last desperate years before the war, to "triangulate" the Jewish question by pandering to the anti-Semitic venom of the opposition Endek electorate.) At the university in Cracow, both of the Pruszynski brothers stood up against the cane-wielding young anti-Semites in the All-Poland youth movement. At the beginning of every academic year, the university in Cracow, like others in Poland, was rocked by the "autumn maneuvers" in which the anti-Semite thugs attempted to intimidate their Jewish fellow students into sitting in "ghetto benches" in the classroom, and agitated in favor of the numerus clausus that limited the number of Jewish students in certain faculties, or even a numerus nullus that would ban them altogether. While he was still a student, Ksawery addressed a counter-demonstration on the steps of Collegium Novum, and finished his speech with blood flowing down his face after a rock thrown by a nationalist struck him in the forehead. Later, when Ksawery had gone out into the world in his budding journalistic career, Mieczyslaw took up the struggle and cooperated with Mojzesz Pomeranz in organizing a successful campaign to block the anti-Semites from seizing control of the important law students' association at the university. By that time, Mieczyslaw was spending a lot of time with his older brother's friend, Mojzesz. Mieczyslaw sampled Sabbath suppers at the traditional Pomeranz home in Kazimierz and later took Mojzesz along for a country-house weekend. Mojzesz Pomeranz emigrated to Palestine in the late 1930s and embarked on a career as a lawyer in Tel Aviv. When the winds of war carried Mieczyslaw Pruszynski to Palestine as an officer in the Polish army-in-exile, he looked Mojzesz up. Together, they visited some of the places Ksawery had written about in 1933. Soon Ksawery was also in Palestine. He had fought on the western front and in Norway and then traveled to Russia as a diplomatic representative of the Polish government-in-exile in London. After the war, Ksawery continued his diplomatic career as part of the Polish delegation to the United Nations. When the issues connected with the expiration of the British mandate in Palestine and the future of the Jewish settlements came up, Ksawery threw himself into the work. At Flushing Meadows in 1947, he served as chairman of the ad-hoc subcommission that prepared the case for a Jewish state, and presented its proposals to the General Assembly (a second "Arab" sub-committee prepared an alternative proposal for a unitary Palestinian entity that did not envision a Jewish state). After Ksawery Pruszynski's impassioned speech, which contained references to both his early experience of Palestine and the suffering that the Germans had inflicted on Jews and Poles during the war, the General Assembly narrowly passed the resolution that served as the basis for the independence of Israel. Mojzesz Pomeranz succumbed to heart disease in Tel Aviv in 1949. A year later, Ksawery Pruszynski died in a car accident in Germany, while traveling home to his young bride. The official diplomatic histories of communist Poland omitted his role in bringing Israel into being, since Soviet policy took a pro-Arab turn soon afterwards. This book by Mieczyslaw Pruszynski is a tribute to a youthful friendship and a reminder of Ksawery's remarkable career. The narrative is laconic, but Mieczyslaw Pruszynski includes extracts from the UN records and, more importantly, generous samplings of his older brother's audaciously brilliant pre-war journalism. This is the story of the friendship between two men, as told nearly half a century after both of the protagonists died young. The author is the brother of one of them. Mojzesz Pomeranz and Ksawery Pruszynski met at the university in Cracow, where they were both studying law. Pomeranz was the son of a prosperous merchant from the Kazimierz district, while Pruszynski was the son of an aristocratic widow who had lost her estate and her family fortune in Eastern Poland during the Bolshevik revolution. Pomeranz grew up in a traditional Jewish home, while Pruszynski received a Jesuit education. As Mieczyslaw Pruszynski tells it, the two law students (legal studies in Poland consist of a five-year undergraduate course) shared a sense of exile and a longing to return to a lost home. For Pomeranz, that lost home was the land of Israel, and the Zionist movement provided the conceptual and the practical means for returning there after almost 2,000 years of exile. For Pruszynski, home was his family's estate in the lost world of the Polish eastern marches. Between the wars, ironically, the Jewish return seemed more practicable than a Polish return to the estates now incorporated into the Soviet Union. Imaginative and sensitive individuals have a gift for transcending mental barriers between groups and stepping not so much into the shoes, as into the dreams of people with a different identity. Ksawery Pruszynski learned about Zionism from his friend Mojzesz, and became an ardent proponent of the idea. Not only did he become a proponent, but he also traveled from Poland to Palestine in 1933, a couple of years after graduating, when he was beginning to make a career for himself as a journalist. Ksawery journeyed to Rumania by train, booked a passage in steerage on a Black Sea steamer, and sailed to Palestine by way of Istanbul. He was the only non-Jewish passenger in steerage, and spent the voyage talking to the young pioneers in the other bunks. Upon arrival, he visited Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, the Dead Sea, the hydroelectric projects, and the kibbutzim. The book that Ksawery Pruszynski published on his return sold well and made him into a local authority on Palestine. It praised the miracles of development that the settlers had achieved, as he would always point out, not on the best land in the country, but on the worst. Pruszynski continually emphasized that this important difference, and the fact that the settlers purchased every square foot of the property they developed, rendered any comparison with colonialism untenable. He traveled the country giving lectures to both Jewish and Catholic audiences. At the Catholic University in Lublin, he addressed the "Rebirth" youth movement, many of whose members, such as Jerzy Turowski and Stanislaw Stomma, played important roles in the struggle over the next 65 years for a democratic, tolerant Poland. In the inter-war political landscape, Ksawery and Mieczyslaw Pruszynski belonged to the pro-Pilsudski camp. Their greatest enemies were the nationalist, anti-Semitic right as grouped in the National Democratic (Endek) party and its Wszechpolska (All-Polish) youth branch. The Pilsudski party, which held undisputed sway in the country as long as Marshal Pilsudski remained alive (until 1935), promoted its own youth movement, the Legion Mlodych (Legion of the Young), which supported like-minded student leaders, co-opted them into posts in the government ministries, and maintained an active press under the leadership of figures who would loom large in the coming decades, like Jerzy Giedroyc and Jozef Mackiewicz. Pilsudski had Jewish associates, and some of his closest non-Jewish lieutenants had Jewish wives. Mieczyslaw Pruszynski notes how, in 1926, Pilsudski issued a blanket decree granting citizenship to 600,000 Jewish refugees from the Soviet Union; the author regards this as an unparalleled step in the period before World War II, when most other countries in Europe and America slammed the door. During Pilsudski's lifetime and afterwards, when his "Colonels" attempted to maintain their hold on power, they cooperated with Jewish groups and supported the Zionist ideal of emigration to a Jewish state in Palestine. Zionists and the Polish authorities paid lip service to each other as fighters for the national independence of their respective peoples, and some major Zionist leaders cited Pilsudski as their personal inspiration. In the final years before 1939, this cooperation became highly concrete, with the army offering special military training to Jewish self-defense activists and supplying arms for the struggle in Palestine. In their most optimistic hopes, the Polish authorities envisioned a Jewish state in Israel with a population originating predominantly in Poland; such a state would maintain close diplomatic and economic links with the country of origin and even serve as a sort of surrogate for the colonial empire that Poland never had. (Mieczyslaw Pruszynski does not discuss the way in which some of the post-Pilsudski colonels attempted, in the last desperate years before the war, to "triangulate" the Jewish question by pandering to the anti-Semitic venom of the opposition Endek electorate.) At the university in Cracow, both of the Pruszynski brothers stood up against the cane-wielding young anti-Semites in the All-Poland youth movement. At the beginning of every academic year, the university in Cracow, like others in Poland, was rocked by the "autumn maneuvers" in which the anti-Semite thugs attempted to intimidate their Jewish fellow students into sitting in "ghetto benches" in the classroom, and agitated in favor of the numerus clausus that limited the number of Jewish students in certain faculties, or even a numerus nullus that would ban them altogether. While he was still a student, Ksawery addressed a counter-demonstration on the steps of Collegium Novum, and finished his speech with blood flowing down his face after a rock thrown by a nationalist struck him in the forehead. Later, when Ksawery had gone out into the world in his budding journalistic career, Mieczyslaw took up the struggle and cooperated with Mojzesz Pomeranz in organizing a successful campaign to block the anti-Semites from seizing control of the important law students' association at the university. By that time, Mieczyslaw was spending a lot of time with his older brother's friend, Mojzesz. Mieczyslaw sampled Sabbath suppers at the traditional Pomeranz home in Kazimierz and later took Mojzesz along for a country-house weekend. Mojzesz Pomeranz emigrated to Palestine in the late 1930s and embarked on a career as a lawyer in Tel Aviv. When the winds of war carried Mieczyslaw Pruszynski to Palestine as an officer in the Polish army-in-exile, he looked Mojzesz up. Together, they visited some of the places Ksawery had written about in 1933. Soon Ksawery was also in Palestine. He had fought on the western front and in Norway and then traveled to Russia as a diplomatic representative of the Polish government-in-exile in London. After the war, Ksawery continued his diplomatic career as part of the Polish delegation to the United Nations. When the issues connected with the expiration of the British mandate in Palestine and the future of the Jewish settlements came up, Ksawery threw himself into the work. At Flushing Meadows in 1947, he served as chairman of the ad-hoc subcommission that prepared the case for a Jewish state, and presented its proposals to the General Assembly (a second "Arab" sub-committee prepared an alternative proposal for a unitary Palestinian entity that did not envision a Jewish state). After Ksawery Pruszynski's impassioned speech, which contained references to both his early experience of Palestine and the suffering that the Germans had inflicted on Jews and Poles during the war, the General Assembly narrowly passed the resolution that served as the basis for the independence of Israel. Mojzesz Pomeranz succumbed to heart disease in Tel Aviv in 1949. A year later, Ksawery Pruszynski died in a car accident in Germany, while traveling home to his young bride. The official diplomatic histories of communist Poland omitted his role in bringing Israel into being, since Soviet policy took a pro-Arab turn soon afterwards. This book by Mieczyslaw Pruszynski is a tribute to a youthful friendship and a reminder of Ksawery's remarkable career. The narrative is laconic, but Mieczyslaw Pruszynski includes extracts from the UN records and, more importantly, generous samplings of his older brother's audaciously brilliant pre-war journalism. |
