9. Protests against pogroms

“The persecutions and pogroms are not causing Jews to despair, but rather cementing and uniting all classes and groups; they are not humiliating the Jews, but rather strengthening their courage and stoking their desire to fight.” Nearly all Polish Jews participated in the latest protest strike, proving that their spirit has not been broken. Poland’s Jews had just focused their attention for three weeks on the Pshitik pogrom trial, learning of the mass violence visited on that town’s Jewish population and the way in which organized armed Jews had for the first time attacked their assailants. They heard antisemitic lawyers call openly for pogroms and Jewish and Christian lawyers make “morally elevated and politically clever speeches” in defence of the Jews. They anticipated that justice would be served, but when they heard the outcome of the trial their despair swelled. They believed that the killing of Jews had now been endorsed by the courts. However, their despair was mixed with fury. On the initiative of the right wing of the Po’ale Tsiyon party, a general strike was called for 30 June 1936 between noon and 2 pm. “A quarter of a million shops and market stalls and 200,000 Jewish workshops closed in union across all Poland.” Jewish workers initiated, promoted, and led the strike but the Jewish bourgeoisie supported it. Only Agudes Yisroel urged Jews to fast rather than strike. In several locales, including Warsaw, Polish workers joined the strike, managing “to weave the struggle against antisemitism into the general struggle for freedom and a new order.” Jews were invigorated, as they had been by their earlier strike on 17 March. 22 July 1936 and 15 October 1937.