The Jews and the silver screen: Poland at the end of the 1920s

ABSTRACT

Although the second half of the 1930s (1935–1939) is known as the “Golden Age” of Yiddish cinema, these years could not have been such a high point had Jewish audiences not already obtained solid movie viewing habits throughout the 1920s. This paper presents some of the dilemmas that arose as a result of the encounter of Jewish society, including the traditional sector, with the silver screen during a time of transition the end of the 1920s, when the era of silent movies was ending and movies with sound began to dominate the art form. In these earlier years the popularity of cinema among the Jewish population in Poland was used in their struggle as a national minority. Jewish affection for the cinema integrated into their demands that the majority take their Jewish cultural needs into consideration. In addition, the discussion about the art of films in various Yiddish periodicals integrated the ongoing discussion about the relationship between high and popular culture that had begun earlier.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Ela Bauer is Associate Professor in the Film and Media Department at Kibbutzim College in Tel Aviv. Her professional interests are the intellectual and cultural life of Polish Jewry in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and the history of the Jewish press. Her book, Between Poles and Jews: The Development of Nahum Sokolow's Political Thought, was published in 2005 by Magnes Press, Jerusalem. Among her articles: “‘We Call Him Mister (Pan) Editor’: Nahum Sokolow and Modern Hebrew Literature”; “Warsaw and Beyond: the Contribution of Hayim Zelig Slonimski to Jewish Modernization” Routledge 2014, 79–93; “A Mistress, a Nanny or a Maidservant: Discourse on Yiddish in Fin de Siècle Hebrew Newspapers in Eastern Europe.”

Notes

1. Like other new states established after the First World War, Poland signed the Minority Treaties that were meant to guarantee various minorities certain collective rights. Among these rights were the right to establish and control educational and religious institutions for their groups, and to receive a proportional share of state expenditures for educational, religious and welfare services. As a result, diverse Jewish educational networks were established. Although the Minority Treaties were supposed to guarantee that the various schools would receive a share of state budgets, the Polish state did not support these schools financially. Thus the schools were dependent upon students’ tuition and donations. Hence Jewish schools required some sort of fee, while Polish elementary schools were free. The Zionist movement was involved with Tarbut, the Hebrew educational network, while Mizrahi, the Orthodox Zionist party had its own educational network, Yavne. The BUND and Po`ale Tsiyon Left established CYSHO: Di Tsentrale Yidishe Shul-Organizatsye (Central Yiddish School Organization), a network of secular Yiddish schools. In 1936, all the Jewish elementary schools had a total of 180,181 pupils. Tarbut and Yavneh, the Hebrew schools, had 33.69% of all the pupils in Jewish elementary schools. The Shul kults schools (which were bilingual Yiddish and Hebrew) had 1.30% of the pupils and TSYSHO had 9.15%. In all of these schools the study of Polish was mandatory.

2. Film Velt, 3 November 1928.

3. From autobiography number 3552 by Isaac Zindberg, written in Hebrew. This autobiography, like the other autobiographies mentioned in this article, was written as part of three autobiography competitions organized by YIVO in 1932, 1934 and 1939. YIVO, the Institute for Yiddish and the History and Culture of Eastern European Jewry Research, was founded in 1925 in Wilno, Poland (now Vilnius, Lithuania), in order to promote the development of modern, secular Jewish culture from an inter-disciplinary approach. The aim of the autobiography competitions was to allow the YIVO researchers to understand the problems and personal conflicts with which young Jews throughout Poland were faced. A total of some 600 participants took part in the three competitions. Of these, 78.8% of the autobiographies were written in Yiddish, 23.6% of the autobiographies were written in Polish and only 2.68% of the autobiographies were written in Hebrew. Men comprised 78% of those who submitted their autobiographies, while 22% were women. For more on the importance of the autobiographies, see Kijek (2010, 157–193).

4. This autobiography was written in Yiddish by a 19-year-old woman who came from a hasidic family. It was published in the English, Polish and Hebrew volumes of autobiographies.

5. Envoys on behalf of various Zionist parties and youth movements arrived from Palestine with the purpose of promoting their ideology and helping the local Zionist organizations and parties with their local activities and collecting donations, primarily for Zionist activities in Palestine.

6. In various places in Europe, Kultur Lige was considered to be the general name of a number of cultural and social organizations that took upon themselves the mission of developing modern Yiddish culture. In Poland from 1925 the Kultur Lige was subordinated to the Bund. More about the Kultur Lige can be found in Hillel Kazovsky, “Kultur-Lige” (Hundert 2008, 953–956). On the differences between Kultur Lige in Warsaw and other places, see Estraikh (2015).

7. In Haynt, 27 June 1924, only one advertisement for a film appeared, even though it was a Friday issue, which meant that it had more pages than the issues published during the week. In Haynt, 6 May 1926, most of the commercial ads in the issue were published on the newspaper’s back page; out of 25 ads of different types, only one advertisement was dedicated to a film. Only in 1928 can one notice that there was a significant rise in the number of ads dedicated to movies in nearly every issue of the Haynt.

8. The term "popular press" is used here not as an indication of the circulation numbers of the given newspapers, but at the wider, so-called lower-brow audience at which the newspapers were aimed, whether they in fact achieved that popularity or not.

9. In the 1926–1927 school year, the Tarbut network had 16 gymnasiums throughout Poland while in 1938–1930 only 9 remained. During the same years, the number of TSYSHO gymnasiums declined from nine to two. According to various official Polish sources at the end of the 1930s, many of the Jewish students who attended non-Jewish educational institutions did not receive any formal traditional Jewish education.

10. In the 1930s Naymen, the writer of this article, was involved in the creation of several Yiddish films made in Poland. Hence perhaps this engagement was what motivated him to be involved in the Jewish film industry.

11. See for example: Film Velt, 2 May 1928, item on Greta Garbo, the most famous star in the world who lived a quiet and peaceful life in Hollywood. Film Velt, 2 May 1928, “Fun der film velt,” items on Charlie Chaplin, Pola Negri and Harold Lloyd tell about their acting careers.

12. The editorial board of Film Velt answered readers’ letters in the section Mir entfern (We answer). To the reader from Łódź who asked how they could learn to became actors the answer was, “In Warsaw there are already too many extras. In addition, you cannot make a living from the payment an extra receives.”