The diary of Bernard Mark (December 1965 – February 1966)

ABSTRACT

Ber (Bernard) Mark (1908–1966) was born in Łomża, then Congress Poland. Before the Second World War, he joined the Communist Party of Poland (KPP). He spent the war years in the USSR, where he worked for the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee and headed the Organizational Committee of Polish Jews. Upon his return to Poland, he became active in Jewish Communist organizations. From 1949 until his death, he served as director of the Jewish Historical Institute (ŻIH), notorious for his pro-Communist version of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. After 1956, he distanced himself from his earlier opinions and began to renew ties with the Soviet Jews and Israel. From the early 1960s, he was placed under surveillance by the Security Service (SB). In the last year of his life, Mark kept a diary in Yiddish in which he openly voiced his criticism of current affairs in Poland and Polish-Jewish relations.

KEYWORDS:

• Ber (Bernard) Mark
• Jewish Historical Institute
• Jews in Poland
• Communism
• Jewish Communists

Acknowledgments

I wish to express my gratitude to the Goldstein-Goren Diaspora Research Center, which granted me permission to translate and publish this document from its archival holdings. I am also grateful to Dr. Sylwia Szymańska-Smolkin (Södertörn University) and Professor Piotr Osęka (Institute of Political Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences) for allowing me to consult with them extensively in the process of editing the translation. Last but certainly not least, I am grateful to Ri J. Turner (University of Wisconsin), who was my partner in translating this diary into English and who also undertook the thankless job of proofreading the introduction and endnotes.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The diary, which, as far as I know, has never been published in the Yiddish original, was first published by me in Polish translation as Bernard Mark, “Dziennik (grudzień 1965 – luty 1966).” Among the handful of historians who have used Mark’s diary, see e.g., Auerbach, The House at Ujazdowskie 16, 136–139; and Finder, “Bernard Mark, powstanie w getcie warszawskim i process Jürgena Stroopa,” 201–202.

2 Mark’s biography has been researched by Kichelewski, “Etre un historien juif en Pologne communiste,” 527–604; and Nalewajko-Kulikov, “Three Colors.” In this essay, I am also relying on his personal papers held in the ŻIH archives [hereafter: AŻIH], file 310/1082.

3 On Jewish literary life in Soviet Białystok, see Estraikh, “The Missing Years.”

4 On Dos naje lebn, see Nalewajko-Kulikov, “Syjonistyczna z lekkim zabarwieniem PPR-owskim.“ On the postwar Association of Jewish Writers and Journalists, see Cohen, “The Renewed Association of Yiddish Writers and Journalists in Poland, 1945–1948.”

5 PZPR, short for Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza (Polish United Workers’ Party), a party founded in 1948 as the result of the unification of the Communist Polish Workers’ Party (PPR) with the Polish Socialist Party (PPS). The PZPR ruled Poland until 1989.

6 Szaynok, Poland – Israel, 1944–1968, 280.

7 Landau, “Ester un Ber Mark,” 95.

8 Ibid., 96. Landau is obviously wrong when she claims that Mark had kept his diary “for many years.”

9 See Stola, “Jewish Emigration from Communist Poland.”

10 In Śródborów, now a district of Otwock near Warsaw, there was a resort belonging to the Social and Cultural Association of Jews in Poland (TSKŻ). It still exists, and still belongs to the TSKŻ.

11 Ester (Edwarda) Mark, née Goldhar (also spelled Goldchar, 1908–1991), whom Mark married in 1937, was a historian by profession and taught at a public elementary school in Warsaw from 1929 to 1939. At the time that Mark wrote this diary, she was employed at the Institute of Party History at the Central Committee of the PZPR. In 1969, she left for Israel.

12 Adam Schaff (1913–2006), Polish Marxist philosopher. A member of the Polish Communist Party (KPP) from 1932, he spent the war in the USSR, where he received a Ph.D. in philosophy. Returning to Poland in 1948, he became a member of the Central Committee of the PZPR and was very active in organizing Marxist academic institutions. He was considered to be the official party ideologue in Poland. However, after 1956, he was associated with its reformist faction. In 1968, he was removed from the Central Committee and, in 1984, from the PZPR. His memoirs were published as Pora na spowiedź (1993).

13 Schaff, Marksizm a jednostka ludzka.

14 Jeder stirbt für sich allein (Every Man Dies Alone) – title of the 1946 novel by Hans Fallada (1893–1947).

15 Władysław Gomułka (1905–1982), a member of the Communist Party beginning in 1926, and first secretary of the Polish Workers’ Party (PPR) between 1943 and 1948. He was accused of “rightist-nationalist deviation” and expelled from the party in 1949; he was imprisoned between 1951 and 1954. In 1956, he was politically rehabilitated and became first secretary of the Polish United Workers’ Party (PZPR). At first, he enjoyed immense popularity, being the face of the Polish political thaw and advocating the “Polish way to Socialism,” but in the 1960s he became more authoritarian and wary of reforms; this culminated in the 1967–1968 antisemitic campaign and the participation of the Polish army in the invasion of Czechoslovakia. He was forced to resign from his post in December 1970, following bloody clashes in northern Poland. Mark, when referring to him, uses his party code name “Wiesław.”

16 Nowe Drogi (New Ways, 1947–1989), a monthly journal of the Communist Party dedicated to ideological and organizational issues. For a record of this discussion, see Nowe Drogi 12 (1965): 57–186.

17 Artur Starewicz (1917–2014), active in the party beginning before the war and also afterwards, served as the secretary of the Central Committee beginning in 1963 until 1971. One of Władysław Gomułka’s closest collaborators, he supported the liberalization of Polish domestic politics. From 1971 to 1978, he served as the Polish ambassador to the UK.

18 Zenon Kliszko (1908–1989), journalist by profession, member of the Communist Party beginning in 1931; beginning in 1945, he chaired the Central Commission for Party Control (CKKP). During the period in which Mark kept this diary, Kliszko belonged to the so-called “upper management,” i.e., among the closest associates of Władysław Gomułka. As secretary of the Central Committee and member of the Political Bureau, he was responsible for ideology, culture, and policy concerning the Roman Catholic Church and political organizations. After the December 1970 protests in northern Poland, during which he gave the command to fire on striking workers, he was removed from the Central Committee.

19 Kultura (Culture) (1963–1981), a Warsaw weekly magazine dedicated to social and cultural issues. For the report mentioned here, see Jot, “Raz jeszcze o alienacji.”

20 Polityka (Politics), a Warsaw political weekly journal that appeared beginning in 1957. Until 1989, it functioned as one of the official organs of the PZPR and was considered relatively liberal. For the report mentioned here, see F[ikus] (ed.), “Marksizm a jednostka ludzka (dyskusja).”

21 Trybuna Ludu (People’s Tribune) (1948–1990), the official daily newspaper of the PZPR, with a circulation of ca. 1,500,000 in the mid-1970s. For the newspaper’s reaction to the Schaff discussion, see Kras,”Wśród czasopism.”

22 Partisans (Polish: partyzanci), a nickname given to an informal PZPR faction led by Mieczysław Moczar (see n. 124), notorious for its chauvinism and antisemitism.

23 New York Times correspondent David Halberstam (1934–2007) had arrived in Poland in January 1965.

24 Sokorski, “Potrzeba ideologii.” Włodzimierz Sokorski (1908–1999), a party member beginning in 1927, co-organized the Union of Polish Patriots in the USSR during the war. At the time of Mark’s diary, he was chairman of the Committee for Radio and Television.

25 Shmaltzovniks (Polish: szmalcownicy) – a term created in Nazi-occupied Poland, which denoted extortionists who approached Jews (who were carrying false documents) in the street (often just outside of the ghetto walls), threatening them with denunciation if they refused or were unable to pay a ransom.

26 Endecja, short for Narodowa Demokracja (National Democracy) – a right-wing Polish nationalist political movement, founded in 1886. Its principal ideologue was Roman Dmowski, and antisemitism was one of its main characteristics. On its beginnings, see Krzywiec, Chauvinism, Polish Style.

27 NSZ, short for Narodowe Siły Zbrojne (National Armed Forces), an anti-Nazi and later anti-Soviet military organization, which also fought Polish Communist organizations and whose political program was to create a national and Catholic Polish state after the war. On its attitude toward the Jews, see Libionka, “The National Military Organization, the National Armed Forces and the Jews near Kraśnik.”

28 Konfederacja Narodu (Confederacy of the Nation) – an underground organization that operated between 1940 and 1943, emphasizing the “national and Christian” character of the future Poland. Bolesław Piasecki stood at the head of the organization’s political department. On Piasecki, see Kunicki, Between the Brown and the Red.

29 Machejek, “Bardzo trudna korespondencja,” 1, 4. Władysław Machejek (1920–1991), a journalist and editor, was a member of the Communist underground during the war and later a political hack writer.

30 Życie Literackie (Literary Life) (1951–1990), a Kraków literary weekly whose editor-in-chief was Władysław Machejek.

31 Józef Światło (1915–1975), deputy director of the 10th Department of the MBP (Ministry of Public Security), fled to the West in 1953 during an official trip to Berlin. Paweł Monat (b. 1921), former military attaché in Beijing, Pyongyang, and Washington, gave himself up to the American authorities in 1959; his memoir appeared as Paweł Monat with John Dille, Spy in the U.S. (1962). Władysław Tykociński (1924–1967) defected to the American side in 1965 while serving as chief of the Polish Military Mission in West Berlin. See also Pióro, “Ucieczki oficerów Ludowego Wojska Polskiego w latach 1948–1990.”

32 Franciszek Szlachcic (1920–1990), a member of the Communist underground during the war, was deputy minister of the interior beginning in 1962, when he replaced Antoni Alster (see n. 66), who had previously held the position. This change was interpreted as proof of the growing strength of the partisans’ faction. Later, Szlachcic was a close collaborator of Edward Gierek (see n. 293).

33 Józef Chałasiński (1904–1979), sociologist and disciple of Florian Znaniecki, affiliated with the University of Łódź from 1945. Dismissed from teaching in 1961 for having criticized “Stalinism in academia,” he was later rehabilitated and was granted a chair at the University of Warsaw in 1966. He also resumed various roles in the Polish Academy of Sciences (PAN). To a certain degree, his rehabilitation can be linked to his academic interest in the topic of “the nation” (which was dear to the hearts of the “partisans”) and to his conflict with the Revisionists.

34 Mark’s mistake. The journal was actually titled Tygodnik Kulturalny (cf. n. 134).

35 Zjednoczone Stronnictwo Ludowe (ZSL, United Peasants’ Party), an agrarian Polish political party that was a satellite party of the PZPR, founded in 1949.

36 Antoni Korzycki (1904–1990), deputy to the Sejm on behalf of the ZSL. Stefan Ignar (1908–1992) was vice-president of the Council of Ministers. It is not clear to whom “Wicek” refers.

37 The book was published in Warsaw in 1962.

38 Endek – follower of the Endecja (Narodowa Demokracja) and its ideology (see n. 26).

39 ONR, short for Obóz Narodowo-Radykalny (National Radical Camp), an extreme right-wing, nationalist Polish political party founded in 1934 (influenced by Italian Fascism), which supported a boycott of Jewish stores and pogroms against the Jews. After three months of existence it was officially dissolved, but it continued its activities illegally, split into two factions. During the Nazi occupation, many of its prewar members belonged to the NSZ (see n. 27).

40 Hersh Smolar (1905–1993), journalist and prewar Communist. During the war, he was active in the Minsk Ghetto and in Soviet partisan groups. After the war, he served on the board of the Central Committee of Polish Jews (CKŻP), which he chaired from 1949 to 1950. Later he served as a member of the board of the TSKŻ and as its chairman from 1950 to 1962. He was also chief editor of the Folks-shtime (see n. 42). In 1970, he left for Israel. His memoirs were published in Tel Aviv as Oyf der letster pozitsye, mit der letster hofnung (1982).

41 Leyb Domb (Leopold Trepper, 1904–1982), organizer of the Soviet intelligence network known as “Red Orchestra” in Nazi-occupied Europe. After the war, he was arrested upon his return to the USSR and was imprisoned until 1955. He was able to return to Poland (since he was a former Polish citizen), where he directed the Idisz Buch publishing house. In 1962, he replaced Smolar as the chairman of the board of the TSKŻ, a post he gave up in 1968. In 1974, he settled in Jerusalem. His memoir, The Great Game: Memoirs of the Spy Hitler Couldn’t Silence, was published in New York in 1977.

42 Folks-shtime (1945–1991), the main Yiddish newspaper of Polish Jews after the war and the only extant Yiddish newspaper in Poland after 1950. It was the official Yiddish organ of the PZPR until 1956 and thereafter the organ of the TSKŻ. In the period described by Mark, its editor-in-chief was Hersh Smolar. See Shklar, “The Newspaper Folks-shtime (People’s Voice), 1948–1968.”

43 Kazimierz Witaszewski (1906–1992), Communist activist who, during the war, served as a political officer in the Polish Army in the USSR. During the years 1949–1951, he served as the leader of the PZPR in Wrocław. Beginning in 1960, he directed the Administrative Department of the Central Committee of the PZPR. A diehard opponent of any liberalization, he was nicknamed gazrurka (“the Cudgel”) after he said that Revisionists should be beaten with clubs.

44 The Joint, short for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), a Jewish relief organization founded in 1914 in New York City.

45 ORT, short for Obshchestvo Remeslennago i Zemledelecheskago Truda Sredi Evreev v Rossii (The Society for Handicraft and Agricultural Work among the Jews of Russia), an organization founded in 1880 in Russia to promote craft and artisanship among the Jews. It was active in Poland in the interwar period and during the first postwar years. It was closed down by the Polish authorities in 1950, but resumed its activities from 1957 to 1967.

46 Probably the Social Aid Commission of the TSKŻ.

47 Shloyme (Salomon) Strauss-Marko (1912–1992), a Yiddish writer who survived the war under a false Ukrainian identity. His wartime memoirs were published as Der rasiker arier (1959) and in Polish as Czysta krew (1966). Bernard Mark wrote an introduction to the latter. In 1971, Strauss-Marko emigrated to Israel.

48 Gustaw Butlow (1899–1963), teacher, journalist, and translator. From 1925 to 1939, he served as chairman of the board of the Professional Association of Elementary School Teachers. He spent the war in the USSR, serving, among other things, as the press officer of the Polish Embassy in Moscow and representative of the PPS (see n. 49) at the Union of Polish Patriots (ZPP). After his return to Poland, he worked in the Polish press.

49 PPS, short for Polska Partia Socjalistyczna (Polish Socialist Party), a progressive party founded in 1892 and dissolved in 1948. It fought for equal rights for all Polish citizens regardless of nationality and religion, as well as for social justice and public education.

50 Ciechocinek – a popular spa town in Poland.

51 Natolin faction (natolińczycy) – an informal faction in the PZPR, which emerged in 1956. It opposed post-Stalinist liberalization and reforms of the system. The name came from the Warsaw district Natolin, where the faction members used to meet. Most of them were of Polish and peasant origin. In contrast, their main opponents, a reformist faction called the “Puławian faction” (puławianie, from Puławska St. in Warsaw), were mostly of Jewish origin.

52 At the 1961 TSKŻ congress, Smolar was reelected as chairman of the board. However, due to pressure from the Ministry of the Interior, he ceded his post as chairman to Leopold Domb in 1962.

53 Michał Mirski (born Moyshe Hersh Tabacznik, 1902–1994), a member of the Polish Communist Party from 1927, journalist and editor for the Yiddish Communist press. He spent the war in the USSR. In the 1950s and 1960s, he served as a member of the editorial board of Nowe Drogi and also worked for the Polish Press Agency. He served on the board of the TSKŻ, belonging to its diehard Communist faction. In 1968, he emigrated to Denmark.

54 This may refer to the PZPR cell of the TSKŻ.

55 Again, this may refer to the PZPR cell within the TSKŻ. The term “faction” is probably a legacy of the era when Jewish Communists operated within the framework of the “Jewish faction” of the PPR (later the PZPR).

56 In this article, Mirski wrote, among other things: “In the Soviet Union, a terrorist band of doctors-cum-poisoners was discovered operating in service to the imperialist intelligence services. The majority of these criminals were associated with the international Jewish bourgeois-nationalist organization ‘the Joint,’ which acts as an American espionage agency.” See Mirski, “Syjonizm.”

57 Revisionism – a term given to any deviation from the party line as it was defined at the moment; after 1956, the term referred to those party members who were in favor of further liberalization.

58 In 1956, the Department of Propaganda and the Press of the Central Committee was split into the Bureau of the Press (directed from 1956 to 1963 by Artur Starewicz and from 1963 to 1968 by Stefan Olszowski) and the Department of Propaganda and Agitation (directed from 1956 to 1960 by Andrzej Werblan and in the years 1960–1968 by Leon Stasiak). Thus, it is not clear to whom Mark is referring.

59 Shmuel (Samuel, Seweryn) Hurwicz (1909–?), a lawyer by profession, was active in the Bund beginning in 1928. He spent the war in the USSR and returned to Poland in 1945. Beginning in 1948, he was a member of the PZPR; he contributed to the Folks-shtime and Yidishe shriftn, and he was also a member of the board of the TSKŻ. In 1968, he emigrated from Poland.

60 Szymon (Shimen) Zachariasz (1900–1970), éminence grise on the Jewish Communist scene, one of the few members of the Central Committee of the KPP (Communist Party of Poland) who survived both the Stalinist purges and the Second World War. He was a member of the Central Commission of Party Control of the Central Committee of the PZPR during the years 1948–1964 and a member of the TSKŻ board. He died in Warsaw.

61 Julian (Yoel) Łazebnik (1904–1981), a prewar Communist. He survived the war as a prisoner in Soviet camps and was later active in the Union of Polish Patriots in Uzbekistan, as well as being a member of the TSKŻ board. Beginning in 1951, he served as the vice-chairman of the Central Office for the Control of the Press, Publications, and Performances until May 1966, when he retired. He died in Warsaw.

62 Jakub (Yankev, Itzhak) Wasersztrum (1905–1993), a member of the Communist Party beginning in 1927. He spent the war in the USSR. After the war, he was a member of the TSKŻ board; in the 1950s, he was responsible for agitation- and propaganda-related activities. In 1969, he left for Israel, later moving to Sweden.

63 Hillel Zeitlin (1872–1942), writer, literary critic, and journalist, who emphasized mystical and religious threads in his work. An authoritative figure among the Jewish intelligentsia in the interwar years, he perished in the Warsaw Ghetto. The comparison of Mark to Zeitlin was probably intended to suggest that Mark showed tolerance or sympathy for religion that was excessive (for a Communist)

64 Klal-yisroel – literally: the whole people of Israel. A klal-yisroelnik is a Jew who is active on behalf of the Jewish community. In the language of the Stalinist era, the term was used to mean “Jewish nationalist.”

65 Maja Zelman, the daughter of Klara and Michał Mirski, died in November 1964 at the age of 37. Klara Mirska wrote in her memoirs: “So many people gathered at her funeral. Our old friend Prof. Bernard Mark, director of the Jewish Historical Institute, approached Michał. He embraced him tightly. He kissed him and said, ‘Vey iz mir.’” See Mirska, W cieniu wiecznego strachu, 577.

66 Possibly Antoni Alster (1903–1968), deputy minister of the interior until 1962, considered a “Puławian” (see n. 51) activist. During the period under discussion, he was serving as deputy minister in the Ministry of Infrastructure. Mark’s negative assessment of him here does not seem entirely justified.

67 Mayufesnik – a pejorative term for a bootlicker (specifically a Jew attempting to win the favor of non-Jewish authority figures).

68 April 19th is the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

69 Ignacy Felhendler (1907–?), an educator by profession; in the TSKŻ, he was responsible for Yiddish-language education and the state-sponsored Jewish school system; after 1968 he left for Israel.

70 Chaim (Henryk) Cieszyński (1907–2002), a member of the Communist Party beginning in 1929. He spent the war years in the USSR. He joined the board of the TSKŻ in 1953; before then he served as a vice-chairman of the Provincial Jewish Committee in Katowice and as a party functionary at the PZPR Provincial Committee in Katowice. After 1968, he emigrated to the United States.

71 Helena Grudowa (born Gitl Rapaport, 1903–1989), before the war, a functionary at the Central Jewish Bureau of the KPP. After the war, she worked in the Ministry of Public Security.

72 Halina (also known as Nina or Chaja/Khaye) Sławny-Kac (1915 – ?), born in Białystok, seamstress by profession and prewar Communist, survived the war in the USSR. After repatriation to Poland in 1946, she worked in the Warsaw Office of Public Security and in the Citizens’ Militia (Milicja Obywatelska) before retiring in 1961.

73 Moris (Maurycy) Krempel (1910–?), fighter in the Dąbrowski Battalion in the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), active in the Résistance during the Nazi occupation of France. After the war, he worked in the Provincial Jewish Committee in Wrocław.

74 Ignacy Loga-Sowiński (1914–1992), at the time a member of the Political Bureau, chairman of the Central Council of Trade Unions, and Deputy Chairman of the Council of State.

75 Mateusz (Motie) Oks (1905–1996), deputy director of the Organizational Department of the Central Committee until May 1965.

76 Roman Zambrowski (1909–1977), a member of the Communist Party beginning in 1928, spent the war in the USSR, where he served as head of the Educational Department at the Kościuszko Infantry Division. After the war, he held high posts in the party apparatus. His departure from the Political Bureau and the Secretariat of the Central Committee after the Thirteenth Plenum of the Central Committee in July 1963 was interpreted as the final defeat of the reformist “Puławian faction” in the PZPR. In 1968, he was stripped of party membership.

77 Leonid Brezhnev (1906–1982), general secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1964 to 1982.

78 Walter Ulbricht (1893–1973), first secretary of the Central Committee of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (1950–1971) and chairman of the State Council of the GDR (1960–1973).

79 Shmuel Mikunis (1903–1982), Israeli Communist politician, member of the Knesset in the years 1949–1973.

80 Meir Vilner (1918–2003), Israeli politician, leader of the Israeli Communist Party and one of the signatories of the Israeli Declaration of Independence. In 1965, in response to the controversy over Soviet policies toward Israel, he left the party and founded a new association called Rakaḥ (Reshimah komunistit ḥadashah), which was recognized by the USSR as the “true” Communist Party in Israel.

81 Mapam (Heb. acronym: United Workers’ Party), a socialist Zionist party established in 1948, initially with pro-Soviet leanings.

82 The reference here is to publications associated with the “partisan” group connected to Moczar and Witaszewski.

83 Julian Tuwim (1894–1953), Polish poet of Jewish origin, one of the most talented and popular poets in interwar Poland.

84 A novel by Witold Zalewski, published in 1964.

85 Actual title: Na zachód od Jordanu (West of the Jordan), published in Warsaw in 1965.

86 Neturei Karta (Guardians of the City), an ultra-Orthodox Jewish organization, founded in 1935, that condemns Zionism and the existence of the State of Israel as being against the will of God.

87 Dovid Sfard (1903–1981), poet, journalist and social-cultural activist. A member of the KPP from 1933 and a friend of Bernard Mark, he spent the war in the USSR, where he co-organized the Organizational Committee of Polish Jews at the Union of Polish Patriots and supervised the repatriation of Polish Jews to Poland. He served as general secretary of the TSKŻ board from 1951 to 1962 and as a member of the board beginning in 1962; he also founded the Idisz Buch publishing house and edited Yidishe shriftn. In 1969, he left for Israel. His memoir, Mit zikh un mit andere: oytobiografye un literarishe eseyen, was published in Jerusalem in 1984. For his biography, see Nalewajko-Kulikov, A Citizen of Yiddishland.

88 Mark is probably referring here to the Fifth World Festival of Youth and Students, which was held in Warsaw in 1955, with 30,000 participants from 114 countries.

89 On the attitude of the Polish press toward Israel and the reaction of the Israeli Embassy to Żeromski’s brochure, see Szaynok, Poland-Israel 1944–1968, 392.

90 Mark Rakovsky (Rakowski, 1890–1982), writer and translator, one of the founders of the prewar Association of Jewish Writers and Journalists, and a nephew of the Zionist and feminist Puah Rakovsky. In 1956, he returned to Poland from the USSR. He translated many works of world literature into Yiddish. He died in Warsaw.

91 Jan Dobraczyński (1910–1994), Catholic writer and journalist, recognized in 1993 as a Righteous among the Nations for saving Jewish children in Nazi-occupied Warsaw. After the war, he was active in the Catholic PAX association, which collaborated with the Communists.

92 Magdalena Samozwaniec, pen name of Magdalena Starzewska (1894–1972), daughter of popular painter Wojciech Kossak. She enjoyed great popularity both before the war and afterward as an author of satirical works. In 1965, she was awarded the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta for forty years of literary activity. I was unable to find outside confirmation of the claim that she produced antisemitic writings during the Nazi occupation.

93 Lili Berger (1916–1996), a writer and journalist, born in Poland, who spent the war in France and returned to Poland in 1949. She also wrote for the Polish press under the name Liliana Gronowska. After the antisemitic campaign of March 1968, she left Poland for Paris.

94 Yidishe shriftn – Yiddish literary monthly journal published in the years 1946–1968 (the first two issues appeared as once-yearly almanacs). The journal contained prose, poetry, and literary and theater criticism, as well as journalistic articles dealing with contemporary social and political issues. The editor-in-chief was Dovid Sfard. For more on the journal, see Nalewajko-Kulikov and Ruta, “Yiddish Culture in Poland after the Holocaust.”

95 Salo Fiszgrund (1893–1971), Bund activist, member of the Jewish National Committee on the so-called “Aryan side” of Warsaw; fighter in the ŻOB (Jewish Combat Organization) during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the Warsaw Uprising. After the dissolution of the Bund, he joined the PZPR and was active in the TSKŻ. He died in Israel.

96 Zygmunt Warman (1905–1965), lawyer, secretary of the Judenrat in the Warsaw Ghetto. During the Warsaw Uprising, he was a soldier in the ŻOB division of the People’s Army (Armia Ludowa, AL). After the war, he served as a lawyer and a judge on the Supreme Court.

97 Marysia (Bronisława) Feinmesser-Warman (1919–2004), a ŻOB liaison on the Aryan side who aided Jews who were hiding. After the war, she worked for the Polish Scientific Publishers (PWN). She was fired during the antisemitic campaign of 1968. From 1970, she lived in the United States.

98 Wolf (Welwl) Rozowski (1916–1943), commander of one of the groups of Bundist fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising; escaped from the ghetto via sewage canals and hid on the Aryan side together with Marek Edelman. He was killed after being denounced by a Polish railroad worker.

99 Blue Police (Polish: Granatowa Policja), the name given to the wartime Polish police, which was officially constituted as a communal police force in December 1939. The Blue Police served as an auxiliary police force to maintain law and order within the borders of the General Government. It was subjected to German leadership, with Polish command on the level of a commandant in cities and counties. The tasks of the Blue Police included dealing with criminal matters, combating smuggling, and guarding the ghetto borders. They oversaw the ghetto police forces and dealt with criminal matters in ghettos.

100 Abraham (Abrasha) Blum (1905–1943), Bundist activist and participant in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. After his escape from the ghetto via sewage canals on May 10, 1943, he took shelter with Vladka Meed at 2 Barokowa Street. When the flat was searched several days later, probably based on a tip from an informer, Blum tried to flee from the fourth floor by means of a string of sheets tied together. He was injured during the attempt and was arrested in the street. He was murdered shortly thereafter by the Gestapo.

101 Vladka Meed (born Feigele Peltel, 1921–2012), a member of the Bund and of the ŻOB who lived under a false identity on the “Aryan side” of Warsaw, where she helped other Jews in hiding. In 1946, she arrived in the United States, where she later co-founded the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors. Her memoirs were published in Israel in 1977 as On Both Sides of the Wall: Memoirs of the Warsaw Ghetto.

102 Yakov N. Marash (1917–1990), Soviet Belorussian historian and teacher, professor at the Grodno Pedagogical Institute. His field of research was the history of Catholic Church in Belorussia.

103 Liza Chapnik (1923–2016), married to Ilya (Joel) Mashevitzky, and Anna Rud (1918?–2017?) were members of an underground Communist group in the Białystok Ghetto that produced and distributed hand-transcribed leaflets (based on a Soviet radio broadcast) and helped Jews leave the ghetto by means of providing them with false identity papers, maps, etc. See Pivovarchik, “Grodno.” In the 1990s, both Chapnik and Rud immigrated to Israel.

104 The reference is to Mark, Ruch oporu w getcie białostockim. Samoobrona – zagłada – powstanie, published in Warsaw in 1952.

105 Mark is probably referring to the unveiling of a monument dedicated to the victims of Nazism, located on the territory of the former camp of Kalbasino (Kiełbasin) on the outskirts of Grodno. The monument was erected in 1965.

106 Home Army (Armia Krajowa, AK): the Polish underground military force of the Polish Secret State in Nazi-occupied Poland. It was called by this name beginning in 1942. It was under the command of the Polish government-in-exile.

107 Borys (Berel) Szacman (1906–?), survivor of the Białystok ghetto, officer at the Ministry of Public Security from 1947–1949. He worked as an administrator at ŻIH from 1962 to 1967. After 1968, he probably emigrated to Denmark.

108 Alfred Degal, a theater and literary critic.

109 Kazimierz Krukowski (1901–1984), Polish Jewish cabaret performer and actor. After the outbreak of the war, he fled to Soviet-occupied Białystok, where he served first as the artistic director of the Białystok Miniature Theater (founded December 1939), and thereafter as director and narrator of the Theatrical Jazz Troupe. After the war, he lived in the UK, the United States, and Argentina before returning to Poland in 1956.

110 Gavrila Semyonov (1900–?), secretary of propaganda in the Białystok District Committee of the Communist Party of Belorussia from 1939 to 1940.

111 Obkom, short for oblastnyi komitet (regional committee). The word is written in Cyrillic.

112 Janina Broniewska (1904–1981), author of books for children and teenagers, member of the board of the Białystok branch of the Belorussian Soviet Writers’ Union (of which Smolar served as secretary). She was later an activist in the Union of Polish Patriots.

113 Helena Selm (?–?), author of children’s literature.

114 Konstanty Anzelm (?–1944?), prose writer.

115 Teofil Głowacki (1906–1971), teacher and poet, and member of the KPP beginning in 1930. In September 1939, he fought against the Nazi invasion. Later he fled to Soviet-occupied Białystok, where he was active in local literary circles. He was arrested in 1941 (see n. 118), but managed to return to Warsaw illegally that same year, where he joined the underground Socialist movement. After the war, he worked as a journalist.

116 Jerzy Rawicz (1914–1980), poet and prose writer. After the war, he worked for Trybuna Ludu and Polska Zbrojna.

117 Sanacja: a Polish political movement that governed interwar Poland, beginning with Józef Piłsudski’s coup d'état in 1926 until his death in 1935, and that consisted of his closest collaborators. See Polonsky, Politics in Independent Poland, 1921–1939.

118 Głowacki and Anzelm were arrested in April 1941 and removed from the editorial board of the Polish-language journal Sztandar Wolności. They were accused of having organized an underground faction among the staff, primarily made up of former members of the KPP, and also of having slandered the Soviet model of statehood in the pages of the newspaper.

119 Władysław Broniewski (1897–1962), enfant terrible of Polish poetry, close to leftist circles before 1939. After the outbreak of the war, he fled to Soviet-occupied Lwów, where he was arrested in 1940 by the NKVD; he was released in 1941. He left the USSR with the Polish army of General Władysław Anders and went back to Poland in 1945. As a poet, he was favorable toward the postwar regime and therefore much appreciated by the Communist authorities.

120 Zelik Axelrod (1904–1941), poet, editor of the Minsk periodicals Shtern and Oktyabr, secretary of the Jewish section of the Belorussian Union of Soviet Writers. He was arrested in 1941 and detained in a prison in Minsk; on June 26, 1941, two days before the Germans marched on Minsk, he was executed.

121 “Vinokur” might be Hershl Vaynraukh (Weinrauch), editor of the cultural division of the Bialistoker shtern and author of the memoir Blut oyf der zun: Yidn in Sovet-Rusland, published in New York in 1950. He arrived in Białystok from Minsk. At that time, Vaynraukh indeed used the surname Vinokur.

122 Throughout the diary, “the institute” always refers to the Jewish Historical Institute (ŻIH).

123 That is, Władysław Gomułka (see n. 15)

124 Surname added in the copy of the manuscript. Mieczysław Moczar (born Mikołaj Demko, 1913–1986), was active in the Communist movement before 1939. He later worked for Soviet intelligence and organized Communist guerillas in Nazi-occupied Poland. From 1964 to 1968, he served as minister of the interior. He was notorious for his xenophobic and ultranationalist views, and he and his supporters in the party were nicknamed “the partisans” (see n. 22). Before 1968, he challenged the authority of Władysław Gomułka. After 1968, he kept his post in the party apparatus but no longer enjoyed his previous level of influence.

125 Surname added in the copy of the manuscript. Grzegorz Korczyński (born Stefan Kilanowicz, 1915–1971) was a participant in the Spanish Civil War and leader of a guerilla unit in Poland during the Nazi occupation; he was imprisoned by the Communist Polish government from 1950 to 1956. From 1956 to 1965, he headed the military intelligence agency, and he served as deputy defense minister from 1965–1971. In 1970, he was one of those responsible for the massacres of striking workers in northern Poland, for which he was fired from his post.

126 Surname added erroneously in the copy of the manuscript is Starewicz, but here the reference is to Ryszard Strzelecki (1907–1988), a member of the State Council and of the Political Bureau, who was considered an ally of the “partisans.”

127 Surname added in the copy of the manuscript.

128 Helena Ekerling, née Apelzaft (1915–1989), the wife of Ignacy Ekerling. A seamstress by profession, she survived the war in the USSR.

129 Author’s mistake; should be Ignacy. Ignacy Ekerling (1909–1977) spent the war in the USSR, where he served in the Polish Army. He worked as a chauffeur for the Central Committee of Polish Jews (1945–1951) and at ŻIH (1949–1969).

130 This refers to the case, unsolved to the present day, of the kidnapping and murder of Bohdan Piasecki, the son of Bolesław Piasecki (see n. 28). whose body was found in December 1958. The taxi in which the kidnappers traveled with the boy belonged to Ignacy Ekerling. In the mid-1960s, interest in the case was revived in the Ministry of the Interior; it was thought that the murder was an act of retaliation on the part of “Jewish nationalist circles” for Piasecki’s actions during the Nazi occupation.

131 CKŻP, short for Centralny Komitet Żydów w Polsce (Central Committee of Polish Jews), an organization representing Polish Jews, established in 1944, which included members of all the Jewish political movements. In 1949, its leadership was taken over by the Jewish Communists, and in 1950, together with the Society of Jewish Culture, it was transformed into the Social and Cultural Association of Jews in Poland (Towarzystwo Społeczno-Kulturalne Żydów w Polsce; TSKŻ).

132 Marian Rybicki (1915–1987), lawyer. Beginning in 1948, he was a member of the Central Committee; he served as justice minister from 1957 to 1965.

133 Józef Cyrankiewicz (1911–1989), member of the PPS, later of the PZPR. During the war, he organized a Socialist underground organization in Auschwitz, where he was imprisoned for his previous underground activity. He served as prime minister in the years 1947–1952 and 1954–1970.

134 In the manuscript, this title appears in Polish, followed by a Yiddish translation, but the author is mistaken about both the title of the journal and the title of the article; see Chałasiński, “Bezdomność ‘człowieka uniwersalnego.’”

135 Daniel Bell (1919–2011), sociologist, professor at Harvard University, best known for his contributions to the study of post-industrialism.

136 Henryk Korotyński (1913–1986), journalist, editor-in-chief of Życie Warszawy in the years 1951–1972.

137 Życie Warszawy (Warsaw Life, 1944–2011), the main postwar Warsaw daily newspaper.

138 Jan Żabiński (1897–1974), zoologist, director of the Warsaw Zoo, where he and his wife, Antonina, hid Jews during the Nazi occupation. In 1965, they were both recognized as Righteous among the Nations by Yad Vashem. Diane Ackerman’s book The Zookeeper’s Wife (2007) tells their story.

139 In the manuscript, this quotation appears in Polish, but imprecisely. The precise quotation is: “Język kłamie głosowi, a głos myślom kłamie” (Language lies to the voice, and the voice lies to thoughts; from A. Mickiewicz, Dziady, part III, scene II, l. 5).

140 Józef Cywiak (1913–1975) was active in the Communist movement before 1939 and survived the war as a prisoner in a German military camp. From 1948 to 1951, he worked as a journalist for the Polish press, and he was later employed by the Polish Embassies in London and Brussels. From 1957 to 1965, he served as a deputy director of the Press and Information Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In 1965, he was transferred to the Polish Press Agency (PAP). In 1969, he emigrated to Israel.

141 Juliusz Katz-Suchy (born Juda Katz, 1912–1971), the brother of writer Ben-Zion Katz and a diplomat who served for many years as Polish ambassador to the United Nations.

142 Adam Bromberg (1912–1993), editor and publisher. He spent the war in the USSR, where he served in the Tadeusz Kościuszko Infantry Division. After returning to Poland, he worked in the publishing industry and became the head of the PWN in 1953. He was dismissed in 1965 from his position, supposedly because of financial irregularities. The real reason behind his dismissal was the “incorrect” representation of the history of Poland (from the point of view of the “partisans”) in the encyclopedia that was the PWN’s flagship publication; more specifically, the authors of the encyclopedia were accused of focusing on Jewish instead of Polish suffering during the Nazi occupation. In 1968, Bromberg was stripped of his party membership. In 1970, he left for Sweden, where he established the Brombergs Bokförlag publishing house. See Rutkowski, Adam Bromberg i “encyklopedyści”: kartka z dziejów inteligencji w PRL.

143 Acronym appears in Polish in the manuscript.

144 Jerzy Pański (1900–1979) spent the war in the USSR, where he served in the Union of Polish Patriots. After returning to Poland, he served as the head of Polish Radio (1946–1948) and as the program director of Polish TV from 1956 to 1962.

145 Efroim (Edward) Wuzek (1904–1998) fought in the Spanish Civil War in the Dąbrowski Battalion from 1937 to 1939. After the war, he returned to Poland and worked for the Ministry of Public Security (1949–1956), and later served as an official in the Ministry of the Interior (1957–1961). In 1968, he emigrated to Israel. His memoirs from the Spanish Civil War were published in 1964 by the publishing house Idisz Buch under the title Zikhroynes fun a botwinist (Memoirs of a Botwinist) and later in a French translation as Combattants juifs de la guerre d'Espagne, translated by Jacques Kott (Paris: 2012).

146 Perhaps a reference to Abraham (Adam) Wein (1917–?), who served a soldier in the Red Army (1940–1942). From 1946 to 1955, he worked in the Ministry of Public Security; in 1957, he became director of the library at ŻIH. In 1968, he left for Israel, where he worked for the next thirty-two years at Yad Vashem.

147 Nahum Goldmann (1895–1982), Zionist activist, president of the World Jewish Congress from 1948 to 1977.

148 Andrei A. Gromyko (1909–1989), foreign minister of the USSR from 1957 to 1985, and chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet (1985–1988).

149 The Great Synagogue on Tłomackie Street, founded in 1878, served as the main Reform synagogue for Warsaw Jewry before 1939. Its destruction at the hands of the SS on 16 May 1943 marked the symbolic end of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

150 The building, currently known as the Blue Skyscraper (Błękitny Wieżowiec), was not finished until 1991.

151 The remnants of the building, which originally housed military barracks in the eighteenth century and served as the last headquarters of the Judenrat (1942–1943), were torn down in 1965. The POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews was erected on this site in 2013.

152 Antonio Corazzi (1792–1877), Italian architect working in the Kingdom of Poland from 1819 to 1847.

153 Jewish Social Self-Aid (Żydowska Samopomoc Społeczna; ŻSS) was a Jewish welfare organization founded in September 1939. Supported by the Joint, it was active in the Warsaw Ghetto until 1942. Emanuel Ringelblum was one of its employees, and the organizational archives were preserved in the underground ghetto archive. See Bańkowska and Piotrowska (eds.), Żydowska Samopomoc Społeczna w Warszawie (1939–1942).

154 The same building now houses the Jewish Historical Institute (ŻIH).

155 Koło, a neighborhood in the Warsaw district of Wola.

156 Janusz Zarzycki (1914–1995) was at that time chairman of the National Council of the City of Warsaw (Stołeczna Rada Narodowa). His second wife, journalist Krystyna Zielińska-Zarzycka (1924–2007), was of Jewish descent.

157 The political “thaw” in the USSR made it possible to renew ties between Soviet Jews and Jews in Poland. For Soviet Jewry, Poland represented a particular oasis of freedom for the development of Yiddish culture in the Eastern bloc in the 1950s. In turn, for the activists of the TSKŻ, the revived contact with readers and correspondents from the USSR led to a much-needed injection of creative energy following the wave of emigration of Polish Jews in the years 1957–1959. The TSKŻ leadership also hoped to play the role of intermediary between Soviet and Western Jewries. See Estraikh, “The Warsaw Outlets for Soviet Yiddish Writers.”

158 Maurycy Horn (1917–2000), historian, specialist on the economic history of Poland in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries; returned to Poland from Lwów in 1957. From 1966 to 1968, he served as rector of the Higher Pedagogical School in Opole; in the years 1973–1990, he was the director of ŻIH.

159 Meir Bałaban (1877–1942), founder of Polish Jewish historiography and doyen of Jewish historians in interwar Poland. His research focused mostly on the early and modern period in Polish Jewish history and on the history of Jews in Galicia. See Gotzen-Dold, Mojżesz Schorr und Majer Bałaban; Aleksiun, Conscious History.

160 Ignacy (Yitshok) Schiper (1884–1943), Jewish historian, member of the World Zionist Organization and deputy to the Polish Sejm in the years 1919–1927. In his research, he focused mostly on the economic history of Polish – Jewish relations.

161 The archive of Zakład Historii Partii KC PZPR (Institute of Party History, Central Committee of the PZPR), where Ester Mark worked.

162 From 1939 to 1946, Bernard Mark lived in the USSR, first in Soviet-occupied Białystok, then in Novouzensk (Saratov oblast) and Kuybyshev (currently Samara), and finally in Moscow.

163 Officially, the Organizing Committee for Polish Jews (KOŻP) at the Union of Polish Patriots – an organization founded in Moscow in 1944 for the relief of Polish Jews whose wartime fate led them to the USSR. Bernard Mark headed the KOŻP. After he returned to Poland in the winter of 1946, his duties were taken over by Dovid Sfard. For more information about the KOŻP, see Nalewajko-Kulikov, A Citizen of Yiddishland, 141–157.

164 Edward Kalecki (born Szymon Tenenbaum, 1895–1979) was meant to be employed as the main bookkeeper at ŻIH beginning in December 1965. It is unclear whether or not he was ultimately hired. Previously, he had served in the Financial Department at the Ministry of Public Security (1944–1953) and in the headquarters of the Citizens’ Militia (1954–1956).

165 Jaromir Ochęduszko (1912–1987), a journalist, worked for Polish Radio during the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 and served as Polish ambassador to Romania from 1968 to 1973.

166 Itzhak Schneerson (1879–1969), a member of the Lubavitcher Hasidic dynasty, arrived in France from the USSR in 1920. In 1943, he founded the underground Centre de la documentation juive contemporaine in Grenoble for the purpose of collecting materials about the extermination of Jews in France.

167 Adam Rutkowski (born Abram Rozenberg, 1912–1987), graduated from the Department of French Philology at the University of Montpellier and spent the war in the USSR, where he worked for the Union of Polish Patriots (ZPP). Afterwards, he worked for the Central Jewish Historical Commission (CŻKH) and ŻIH (1946–1969), where he served as deputy director beginning in 1967. In 1969, he left for France, where he worked for the archives of the Centre de la documentation juive contemporaine.

168 Joseph Kermish (1907–2005), Nachman Blumental (1905–1983), and Joseph Wulf (1912–1974) worked for CŻKH in Poland from 1944 to 1947 and later for ŻIH, of which Blumental was the first director. After their emigration to Israel, Kermish and Blumental were among the founders of Yad Vashem. Wulf emigrated to Germany.

169 Stolica (Capital City), a weekly journal (now a monthly journal) devoted to Warsaw, founded in 1946.

170 The reference is clearly to Soviet historian Valentin Alexeev (1924–1994), but his book on Nazi-occupied Warsaw was published only in 1997; the delay was due to censorship obstacles. In the early 1960s, Mark tried to publish a Russian translation of his 1958 book on the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, but it was prevented by the Soviet censor. See Charnyi, “Sovetsky gosudarstvenny antisemitizm v tsenzure nachala 60-kh godov”; Estraikh, “The Soviet Narrative of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.”

171 Albert (Aron) Nirenstein (1916–2007) was a teacher by profession who lived in Palestine beginning in 1936 and served as a volunteer in the British Army in North Africa and Italy. From 1948 to 1950, he was employed at the Polish Embassy in Rome. He worked at ŻIH beginning in 1951.

172 Perhaps a reference to Israel Gutman (1923–2013), participant in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, chief historian at Yad Vashem (1996–2000), and one of the leading historians of the Holocaust.

173 Perhaps a reference to the Union des engagés volontaires anciens combattants juifs, an organization of Jewish veterans of the Second World War.

174 Marceau Vilner (1909–1967), an underground fighter during the Nazi occupation of France, who was deported to Auschwitz in 1941. After the war, he served as an editor of the Communist Yiddish daily newspaper Naye prese in Paris and was active in associations of former Jewish veterans.

175 Cercle Bernard Lazare in Paris – a Socialist Zionist organization with ties to Hashomer hatza'ir and the Israeli political party Meretz.

176 Arbeter Heym (Foyer ourvrier juif), a Left Poale Zion organization of Jewish workers in Paris, founded in 1944.

177 In fact, Schneerson survived Mark by three years.

178 Perhaps the Mémorial du martyr juif inconnu in Paris. ŻIH was involved in preparing the Polish portion of the exhibit at the Mémorial.

179 Tadeusz Daniszewski (born Dawid Kirszbraun, 1904–1969), a member of the KPP beginning in 1921. He spent the war in the USSR and served as the head of the Institute of Party History from 1957 to 1968. His research focused on Communist and labor movements.

180 In the manuscript, the acronym is written first in Yiddish, then in Cyrillic; the reference is probably to the Institute of Marxism-Leninism, now the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI) in Moscow.

181 Dmitry Manuilsky (1883–1959), secretary of the Presidium of the Comintern Executive Committee from 1928 to 1943.

182 Georgi Dimitrov (1882–1949), general secretary of the Executive Committee of the Comintern from 1935 to 1943; leader of the Bulgarian Communist Party.

183 Palmiro Togliatti (1893–1964), leader of the Italian Communist Party.

184 Hermann Remmele (1880–1939), an activist in the Communist Party of Germany, member of the Comintern Executive Committee beginning in 1926. In 1939, he was sentenced to death during the Stalinist purges.

185 Bronisław Bortnowski (also Bronkowski, 1894–1937), member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the KPP; victim of the Stalinist purges.

186 Solomon Lozovsky (1878–1952), secretary general of the Red International of Trade Unions (Profintern) from 1921 to 1937. During the war, he was a member of the Jewish Antifascist Committee (JAC) and vice-chairman of Sovinformburo. He was arrested in 1949 and sentenced to death at the JAC trial. Mark was mistaken to identify him as a Pole.

187 Osip Piatnitsky (born Tarshis, 1882–1938), treasurer of the Executive Committee of the Comintern and head of the Comintern’s International Liaison Department from 1921 to 1935. Victim of the Stalinist purges in 1938.

188 Heinrich Brandler (1881–1967), a German Communist trade unionist, head of the Communist Party of Germany in the years 1921–1923; ousted from its leadership in 1924. In 1928, he co-founded the Communist Party of Germany Opposition (KPDO).

189 Ruth Fischer (born Elfriede Eisler, 1895–1961) and Arkadi Maslow (born Isaak Chemerinsky, 1891–1941) were expelled from the Communist Party of Germany in 1926 in the wake of a conflict with Stalin.

190 Henryk Stein (code names Kamieński, Domski, 1883–1937), member of the Central Committee of the KPP. Beginning in 1926 he lived in the USSR, where he fell victim to the Stalinist purges.

191 Karl Radek (born Sobelson, 1885–1939), a revolutionary active in the Polish and German social democratic movements before 1914, was one of the leading activists of the Comintern in the years 1920–1924.

192 Jan Hempel (1877–1937), journalist, editor, and activist in the cooperative movement, was one of the founders of the Warsaw Housing Cooperative (Warszawska Spółdzielnia Mieszkaniowa, WSM). In 1932 he moved to Moscow, where he was arrested and murdered during the Great Purge.

193 Helena Markowicz (born Rachela Gincberg, 1902–1985), employee at the Ministry of Public Security from 1945 to 1955.

194 Louis Gronowski-Brunot and his wife, Lili Berger (see n. 93). Beginning in the 1930s, Gronowski (born Grojnowski, 1904–1987) lived in France, where he edited the daily newspaper Naye prese and worked in the Jewish Section of the French Communist party. During the occupation, he was active in the Resistance movement. After the war, he returned to Poland, where he worked as an editor and reporter. After the antisemitic campaign of March 1968, he left Poland for Paris. His memoirs were published as Le dernier grand soir: Un juif de Pologne (Paris: 1980).

195 Surname added in the copy of the manuscript.

196 Perhaps one of these priests was Rev. Grzegorz Pawłowski. Pawłowski was born Jakub Hersz Griner in 1931. He survived the Holocaust and became a priest in 1958. In 1970, he left for Israel, where he continues to serve as a priest.

197 Volksdeutsch, pl. Volksdeutsche – people of German origin who did not have German citizenship. In occupied Poland they were treated favorably by the Nazis; after the war, they were considered to be traitors to the Polish nation.

198 In fact, during the Nazi occupation, Kielce belonged to the Radom District (Distrikt Radom) of the General Government.

199 These are the first words of medieval Jewish poet Yehuda Halevi’s “Ode to Zion”: “Zion, do you wonder how your captives fare/the remnants of your flock, who wish you well?”

200 Mark probably meant the Ministry of the Interior.

201 Probably Jerzy Szarak.

202 Edward Ochab (1906–1989), first secretary of the Communist Party in 1956, then agriculture minister (1957–1959) and chairman of the State Council from 1964 to 1968. Ochab himself was not Jewish, but his wife Rozalia was.

203 Question mark in the original. In the copy of the manuscript, “Oshurovitsh” was added. Possibly a reference to the writer Hirsh Osherovitsh (see n. 298).

204 Ger Tzedek (Heb., righteous convert) – appellation of the legendary Count Walentyn Potocki, who was supposedly burned at the stake in Vilna in 1746 or 1749 for converting to Judaism. His grave – nearby was a tree growing in a shape reminiscent of the human form – was a pilgrimage site for religious Jews.

205 Elijah ben Shlomo Zalman (1720–1797), the Vilna Gaon; a legendary Talmudist and a kabbalist who was a fierce opponent of Hasidism.

206 Chayei Adam (Life of Man) – title of a book by Rabbi Abraham Danzig, an abbreviated guide to the Shulḥan Arukh, an authoritative codification of Jewish law.

207 Arkadii Kremer (1865–1935), one of the founders of the Bund (1897) and the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) (1898) and a member of the Central Committees of both parties. He withdrew from political life in 1908, but ventured back in 1928 as an activist in the local Vilna branch of the Bund. In the interwar years, he was the unquestioned authority in Bund circles.

208 Aron Mark (1904–1938), Ber Mark’s older brother, worked as a teacher in Białystok and Vilna, wrote articles, stories, and poetry, and translated works of world literature into Yiddish. He also authored a Polish – Yiddish dictionary titled Pełny słownik polsko-żydowski, published in Warsaw in 1929 and reprinted in Kraków in 2007 under the title Słownik polsko-jidysz.

209 Mikhoel Natish (born Shutan, 1906–1937), worked as a teacher in Jewish provincial schools and contributed to the Yiddish press; in 1935, he was a graduate student at YIVO in Vilna.

210 Szymon Lichtensztajn (Likhtenshtayn), employee at the Idisz Buch publishing house.

211 On the Magen Avraham beit midrash, see Sobotko (ed.), Lomzhe, 109.

212 Ps. 97:11: “Or zaru'a latzadik uleyishrei lev simḥah” (Light is sowed for the righteous one, and joy for the upright of heart), said at the beginning of Kol nidre, the evening Yom Kippur service.

213 “'Al da'at haMakom ve'al da'at hakahal” (With the agreement of God and with the agreement of those assembled) – words preceding the recitation of the Kol Nidre prayer. The transliteration here follows modern Israeli Hebrew pronunciation, whereas the quote in the diary is transliterated according to the common Ashkenazi pronunciation.

214 A prestigious yeshiva founded in Lomzhe in 1883. Its mashgiḥim (spiritual leaders) were Israel Leyb Agulsky and later Moyshe Rozenshteyn. Mark is probably referring to the latter. See Sobotko (ed.), Lomzhe, 63.

215 Musarnik (from the word musar: morality, ethics) – adherent of a pietistic religious movement that attained particular popularity in the prominent yeshivas in Lithuania during the nineteenth century.

216 According to the yizkor bukh (memorial book) of Wołomin, Rabbi Bergazin’s first name was Volf. See Rubinshteyn, “Der Volominer rov Volf Bergazin.”

217 In the original: tsibeles-yidn. Mark probably means simple, impoverished Jews, who were stereotyped as smelling of onions and garlic.

218 Ida Kamińska (1899–1980), theater and movie actress and director, organizer and director of the Jewish State Theater in postwar Warsaw. In 1967, she was nominated for the Academy Award for best actress for her role in The Shop on Main Street. In 1968, she left Poland for Israel and later moved to the United States. Her memoirs were published as My Life, My Theater (1973).

219 Moshe Kleinbaum-Sneh (1909–1972), Israeli politician, member of the Communist Party of Israel beginning in 1954. At the time of the schism in 1965, he sided with the faction independent of the Kremlin and critical of USSR policy toward Israel.

220 Stanisław Wygodzki (1907–1992), poet and translator, survivor of the ghetto in Będzin and of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. After the war, he worked for Polish Radio (1948–1953) and contributed to the Polish press. In 1968, he left Poland for Israel.

221 First words of a famous poem by Chaim Nachman Bialik: “Take me under your wing/and be for me mother and sister,/and let your bosom be a shelter for my head,/a nest for my banished prayers.”

222 Here Mark is referring to the trial of historian Ludwik Hass (whose name is consistently and erroneously spelled by Mark as “Haas”), economist Kazimierz Badowski, and historian Romuald Śmiech, sentenced to three years of prison on charges of bringing the program of the Trotskyist Fourth International to Poland and distributing it.

223 Communist League of Polish Youth (KZMP), youth section of the KPP in the years 1922–1938.

224 Clearly a reference to the trial of Karol Modzelewski and Jacek Kuroń, which took place in July 1965. A year earlier, Modzelewski and Kuroń, two young students active in Revisionist circles and later leaders of the anti-Communist opposition, had written and illegally distributed an “Open Letter to the Party,” directed against the party bureaucracy. As a result, they were expelled from the party and imprisoned. See Modzelewski’s memoirs, Zajeździmy kobyłę historii. Wyznania poobijanego jeźdźca (2013).

225 In the manuscript, the Russian words are written out phonetically in Yiddish.

226 Melchior Wańkowicz (1892–1974), popular writer and journalist. As the author of a popular anti-Nazi book, he had no choice but to flee from Poland in 1939. He lived in exile until his return in 1958. He was known as an opponent of the Communist regime. In 1964, he was arrested for having signed a protest letter by Polish intellectuals against censorship and for having criticized the regime in a private letter to his daughter in the United States; he was mainly accused of collaboration with Radio Free Europe. He was sentenced to three years of imprisonment, but thanks to his age and popularity in Polish society, the sentence was never carried out.

227 Stanisław Cat-Mackiewicz (1896–1966), conservative writer and journalist. From 1954 to 1955, he served as prime minister of the Polish anti-Communist government-in-exile. In 1956, he returned to Poland, but he contributed to the Paris-based anti-Communist monthly Kultura and signed the protest letter of Polish intellectuals in 1964. He was put on trial but died before his trial ended.

228 Jan Nepomucen Miller (1890–1977), poet, literary and theater critic, member of the Polish Socialist Party. In 1964 he was accused of criticizing Polish authorities in articles appearing in journals published by Polish emigres in the West. In 1965 he was sentenced to three years of imprisonment, but the sentence was never carried out.

229 In November 1965, Polish Catholic bishops sent a letter of reconciliation to their German counterparts. It referred to the crimes of the Second World War and included the famous sentence “We forgive and ask for [your] forgiveness” (przebaczamy i prosimy o przebaczenie), which aroused anti-German and anti-Church hysteria on the part of Polish Communist authorities.

230 Front of National Unity (Front Jedności Narodu), a social-political organization founded in 1952 to support the politics of the party; it existed until 1983.

231 T. Bednarczyk, “Pomoc ekonomiczna dla getta warszawskiego,” Stolica 46 (14 February 1965), 6. Tadeusz Bednarczyk (1913–2002) was an employee at a tax office in Warsaw during the Nazi occupation and was active in the underground. After the war, he worked briefly for the Ministry of Public Security, and he later claimed to have organized military and economic aid for the Warsaw Ghetto and to have collaborated with the Jewish Military Union (Żydowski Związek Wojskowy). He was in touch with Bernard Mark and denounced him to the Security Service (Służba Bezpieczeństwa). See Libionka, “Apocrypha from the History of the Jewish Military Union and its Authors.”

232 “Odpowiedzi nie było … ,” Stolica 48 (28 November 1965), 6.

233 Title appears in Polish in the manuscript.

234 Government Delegation for Poland (Delegatura Rządu na Kraj), the highest authority of the Polish Underground State (also known as the Polish Secret State) in Nazi-occupied Poland, the in-country representative of the Polish government-in-exile in London.

235 Leszek Wysznacki (1919–1991), journalist, editor-in-chief of Stolica from 1958 to 1989.

236 Zarya [Dawn], a Russian Marxist theoretical and political journal published in Germany from 1901 to 1902.

237 Initials appear in the Roman alphabet in the manuscript.

238 Georgi Plekhanov (1856–1918), Russian Marxist revolutionary, founder of the Social-Democratic movement in Russia.

239 Julius Martov (born Tsederbaum, 1873–1923), Menshevik leader, forced to emigrate from Russia in 1920.

240 Acronym written in Cyrillic in the manuscript; a reference to the Institute of Marxism-Leninism.

241 RSDLP, short for Russian Social Democratic Labor Party – a revolutionary party established in 1898 to unite various revolutionary organizations active throughout the Russian Empire. It eventually split into Bolsheviks and Mensheviks.

242 David Zaslavsky (1880–1965), reporter, member of the Central Committee of the Bund. In 1917, he accused Lenin of being a German agent. He served on the editorial board of Pravda beginning in 1928; joined the Communist Party in 1934.

243 Mark Liber (1880–1937), Bund activist who became its main spokesman at the Second Congress of the RSDLP in 1903 and one of the Bund’s most popular leaders. After the October Revolution, he actively opposed the Bolsheviks, for which he was imprisoned in 1923. He was murdered in the Great Purge.

244 Pravda (Truth), the official newspaper of the Communist Party in Russia and later in the USSR, published since 1912. Today it is published by the Communist Party of the Russian Federation.

245 Idisz Buch, a publishing house founded in 1947 in Łódź, which later moved to Warsaw. This was the only state-sponsored Yiddish publishing house in Poland, in existence until 1968. Dovid Sfard was its first director; he was later succeeded by Leopold Domb. It published more than 300 titles (an average of ten books per year in the 1960s). See Nalewajko-Kulikov, “The Last Yiddish Books Printed in Poland.”

246 Surname added in the copy of the manuscript.

247 Aleksander Wulfowicz (?–?) was responsible in the 1950s for TSKŻ activities in Lower Silesia. After 1968, he left for Israel.

248 Ruta Gutkowska (1916–1992), secretary at the TSKŻ headquarters, later head of its Organizational Department.

249 The headquarters of the TSKŻ were housed at 5 Nowogrodzka Street in Warsaw.

250 Perhaps Adam Rutkowski; see n. 167.

251 Perhaps Abraham Wein; see n. 146.

252 Perhaps Borys Szacman; see n. 107.

253 Surname added in the copy of the manuscript. The reference is to Genia Dogim (1918–2008), the wife of actor Izaak Dogim, who moved to Poland from Vilnius in 1958. She worked at ŻIH from 1960 to 1969 as an archivist. In 1969, she left for Israel; she later lived in the United States.

254 Probably Edward Kalecki (see n. 164) or Wiktor Szenman (Szejnman, 1910–1973), who worked as a bookkeeper at the Ministry of Public Security (1950–1951) and as a teacher and translator from Russian in Communist military high schools in the years 1953–1963. He served as bookkeeper at ŻIH from 1963 to 1966. He was fired from ŻIH in 1966.

255 Probably Zofia Żmijewska; see n. 295.

256 Surname added in the copy of the manuscript.

257 This address was delivered by Gomułka at the plenary session of the Poland-Wide Committee of the Front of National Unity on 14 January 1966 (and not on the 13th, as the journal entry seems to imply). See Gomułka, Przemówienia, 397–407.

258 Jerzy Turowicz (1912–1999), Catholic activist and journalist, editor-in-chief of Tygodnik Powszechny. He engaged in ecumenical dialogue with Jews and non-Catholics.

259 Tygodnik Powszechny (Catholic Weekly) – a Kraków-based Catholic weekly founded in 1945, focusing on social and cultural issues.

260 Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński (1901–1981), archbishop of Warsaw and primate of Poland, considered by many Polish Catholics to be the real leader of the Polish nation, rather than the Communist authorities.

261 Oskar Halecki (1891–1973), Polish historian who lived abroad beginning in 1938. He served as the president of the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences in America from 1952 to 1964 and taught East European history at various universities in the United States, including Columbia University, as well in Western Europe.

262 The reference is to Halecki’s book A History of Poland, published in London in 1955.

263 A reference to the infamous 1913 trial in Kiev of Mendel Beilis, who was accused of ritual murder.

264 Adolf Eichmann, an SS officer who was pivotal in the Nazis’ genocide of European Jewry, was captured by Israeli Mossad agents next to his home in Argentina in May 1960 and brought to Israel to stand trial. At his 1961 trial in Jerusalem, he was found guilty of crimes against the Jewish people and sentenced to death; he was hanged in 1962. The Israeli operation to capture Eichmann provoked a wave of antisemitism in Argentina, which accused Israel of violating its sovereignty.

265 Walentyna Najdus-Smolarowa (1909–2004), historian and professor at the Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences; she was the wife of Hersh Smolar. The author of works on the history of the socialist movement, she died in Warsaw.

266 Zinovy Tolkachev (1903–1977), painter, official artist of the Red Army during the war, who was known primarily for his works created immediately after the liberation of the camps at Majdanek and Auschwitz-Birkenau (the series Majdanek and Flowers of Auschwitz). In 1965, he published an album of drawings titled Auschwitz.

267 Mark is referring here to the Commissariat for Jewish National Affairs, established in 1918 for the purpose of winning Jewish support for the Bolshevik regime.

268 Surname added in the copy of the manuscript.

269 See n. 271.

270 Semen (Shimon) Dimanshtein (1886–1938), head of the Commissariat for Jewish National Affairs from 1918 and chairman of the Central Bureau of the Evsektsiia (1918–1920). In the 1920s, he oversaw Jewish matters in the Central Committee and published articles and brochures on Jews in the USSR. In 1938, he was arrested and executed for his nationalist activities.

271 In the copy of the manuscript, added in parentheses: “Vergelis.” Aron Vergelis (1918–1999), poet and journalist, was a leading activist in Yiddish literary circles in the USSR following the “thaw.” He complained repeatedly to the Folks-shtime and Yidishe shriftn about their failure to consult with him when printing texts submitted by authors from the USSR. See Estraikh, “Aron Vergelis.” Vergelis’ published account of his journey to Poland smacks of political correctness; see Vergelis, “Rayzes.”

272 Idel Korman (also known as Barszczewski, 1905–1977) was born in Poland. He was the leader of the Jewish Section of the Communist Party of France, and he was active during the war in the French Resistance movement. He returned to Poland after the war and worked as a reporter for the Folks-shtime. In 1968, he left Poland to return to France.

273 Shloyme (Salomon) Belis-Legis (1907–1995), essayist, journalist, and literary critic; returned to Poland from Vilna in 1959. He headed the literature and art section of the Folks-shtime. He died in Warsaw.

274 Surname added in the copy of the manuscript.

275 Added in the copy of the manuscript: Cieszyński.

276 Added in parentheses in the copy of the manuscript: Zachariasz.

277 Gershon Dua Bogen (1892–1948), was involved in the Socialist movement from the time of his youth. He was cofounder of the Communist Party in Palestine. In 1947, he returned to Poland from Cuba and quickly established himself as one of the key figures in Jewish Communist circles. He was killed in a car accident. Mark is probably referring to rumors that the car accident was a set-up (a possibility suggested by, among others, Hersh Smolar in his memoirs, in which he accused Szymon Zachariasz of being the mastermind; however, he did not present convincing evidence to support this hypothesis).

278 Probably Abraham Wein (see n. 146).

279 Filip Pestrak (1903–1978), political prisoner of the Second Polish Republic. In Soviet-occupied Białystok, he served as chairman of the Białystok branch of the Soviet Writers’ Union and deputy to the People’s Assembly of Western Belorussia; after the war, he headed the Board for Culture at the Belorussian Council of People’s Commissars.

280 Pantaleimon Ponomarenko (1902–1984), general lieutenant of the Red Army; from 1938 to 1947, he headed the Communist Party of Belorussia, and from 1952 to 1953, he was a member of the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. From 1955 to 1957, he served as Soviet ambassador to Poland.

281 Zapadnik, in the USSR: supporter of Western ways.

282 Mikhas Lynkov (1899–1975), teacher, editor-in-chief and editorial secretary of numerous newspapers and periodicals; from 1938 to 1948, he was chairman of the Belorussian Union of Soviet Writers.

283 Kandrat Krapiva (1896–1991), Belorussian dramaturg, poet, prose writer, linguist and social activist. In 1956, he became the vice-president of the Belorussian Academy of Sciences.

284 Perhaps Vasily Borysenko (Barysenka) (1904–1984), literary scholar and critic.

285 Piatrus Brouka (1905–1980), Belorussian poet and social activist, who was awarded the prestigious Lenin Prize in 1962.

286 Piatro Hlebka (1905–1969), poet and linguist, member of the Belorussian Academy of Sciences. Beginning in 1956, he served as director of the Institute for Linguistics, Ethnology and Folklore.

287 Yanka Kupala (born Ivan Lutsevich, 1882–1942), classic author of Belorussian literature, figure in the Belorussian Renaissance at the beginning of the twentieth century, and one of the literary innovators of the Belorussian language. He met a tragic death when he fell down the stairs at the Hotel Moscow. It is not clear whether this was an accident or murder.

288 Anastas Mikoyan (1895–1978), high-ranking Soviet politician, politically active beginning in 1926 until his retirement in December 1965. His last position was as chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet.

289 Diachok (sacristan) – assistant clergyman in the Orthodox Church.

290 Biuletyn Żydowskiego Instytutu Historycznego (Bulletin of the Jewish Historical Institute), an academic quarterly in Polish published by ŻIH beginning in 1950. Mark was its editor-in-chief until his death in 1966. In 2001, its title was changed to Kwartalnik Historii Żydów / Jewish History Quarterly.

291 Roman Werfel (1906–2003), member of the KPP beginning in 1923, who spent the war in the USSR. In postwar Poland, he served as the editor-in-chief of Nowe Drogi (see n. 16) in the years 1952–1959. Later he was responsible for propaganda activities in the PZPR Provincial Committee in Wrocław. In 1968, he was expelled from the party. He died in the UK.

292 Probably Szymon Zachariasz.

293 Edward Gierek (1913–2001), a coal miner who spent his youth in France and Belgium and was active in local Communist parties, as well as in the Belgian anti-Nazi resistance. In 1948, he went back to Poland to become a member of the Central Committee of the PZPR. He served as the first secretary of the PZPR Provincial Committee in Katowice from 1957 to 1970. In 1970, he replaced Gomułka as the leader of the PZPR and remained in this position until 1980.

294 Leon Kasman (1905–1984), member of the Communist movement from the interwar period. He lectured at the Comintern, teaching courses for Polish activists from 1934 to 1936. In 1944, he was sent by the Comintern to the Lublin area as a liaison between the local Communist guerillas and Moscow. He served there under Mieczysław Moczar (see n. 124). In postwar Poland, he held various positions, including editor-in-chief of Trybuna Ludu from 1948 to 1953 and again from 1957 to 1967. He was considered a member of the Puławian faction. In 1967 he was transferred to the National Bank of Poland. He died in Warsaw.

295 Surname added in the copy of the manuscript. Zofia Żmijewska (née Nadler, 1914 – ?) spent the war in the USSR and lived until 1957 in Lwów. Later she moved to Poland and worked at ŻIH from 1958 to 1967 as a typist and librarian.

296 Andrzej Garlicki (1935–2013), Polish historian and professor at Warsaw University until 2000. From 1963 to 1981, he was a member of the editorial board of Kultura (see n. 19). His research focused on Polish interwar history.

297 Edward Rajber (1910–1984) spent the war in the USSR. After returning to Poland, he lived in Lower Silesia and worked in the party apparatus there. In 1962, he became the secretary general of the TSKŻ and, in 1968, its chairman, a post he held until his death.

298 Hirsh Osherovitsh (1908–1994), Yiddish poet, imprisoned from 1949 to 1956 for “anti-Soviet nationalist activity.” In 1971, he emigrated to Israel.

299 Sovetish Heymland, Yiddish literary journal, published in Moscow beginning in 1961; Aron Vergelis was its editor-in-chief. See Estraikh, “The Era of Sovetish Heymland.”

300 Moyshe Belenki (1910–1995), critic and educator, director of the Moscow Yiddish Theater School, and an editor at the Yiddish publishing house Der Emes. He was imprisoned from 1949 to 1954. Later he wrote popular critical books on Judaism in Russian and literary criticism in Yiddish and worked as the Yiddish editor at the major Soviet publisher Sovetskii pisatel'. He was the primary rival of Aron Vergelis. He emigrated to Israel in the late 1980s. See Estraikh, “Literature versus Territory.”

301 Mark is probably referring to Mała Encyklopedia Powszechna (Little General Encyclopedia) published by the Polish Scientific Publishers (PWN) for the first time in 1959; it had many later editions.

302 Surname added in the copy of the manuscript.

303 The case of Hass was at first closely linked to the case of Kuroń and Modzelewski (see n. 224), but Hass was later taken from prison to serve as a witness for the prosecution at their trial. See Eisler, Polski rok 1968, 73.

304 Perhaps Yankev (Jakub) Dua (1898–1942), a writer and journalist who contributed to the interwar Yiddish press.

305 Józef (Jacek) Różański (born Josef Goldberg, 1907–1981), a lawyer by profession, active in the Communist movement, who spent the war in the USSR. In the years 1944–1954, he served in the Ministry of Public Security and became notorious for the brutal treatment of people he interrogated, including party members. He was arrested in 1954 and imprisoned until 1964. He died in Warsaw.

306 Tadeusz Kotarbiński (1886–1981), Polish philosopher and logician, lecturer at the Universities of Warsaw and Łódź and the rector of the latter from 1945 to 1949.

307 Kotarbiński, “Typowcy i dysydenci,” 1. Title written in Polish in the manuscript.

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Notes on contributors

Joanna Nalewajko-Kulikov

Joanna Nalewajko-Kulikov is Associate Professor at the Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History, Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. Her research focus is nineteenth- and twentieth-century East European Jewish history and Yiddish studies. Author of A Citizen of Yiddishland: Dovid Sfard and the Jewish Communist Milieu in Poland (2020), she is currently working on a book-length project on the Yiddish press in interwar Poland.