The Bund fought for working class solidarity and were fierce opponents of Zionism
Here Where We Live is Our Country, by Molly Crabapple, outlines a forgotten history of the Bund—a fiercely socialist, secular and anti-Zionist movement of radical Jews in the Russian empire.
It chronicles the early Bundist leadership. They fought for working class unity and “self defence groups” against Pogroms and they organised mass strikes during the 1905 Russian Revolution.
Detailing the role the Bund played in the 1917 Russian Revolution, to the Jewish Fighting Organisation (ZOB) in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, Crabapple explores a radical history of Jewish culture and resistance.
The book is rich with details of the lives of individual Bundists who navigated the revolutionary currents of the period.
One of the clearest lessons that we can take from Crabpapple’s account is how the resistance of the Bund challenges the rhetoric that Zionism advocates today.
The Bund fought for internationalism and for working class solidarity. Crucially, they were fierce opponents of the Zionists. The term Do’ikayt in Yiddish was the foundation for Bundism—fight for “hereness”, as opposed to the “there” of Palestine.
Israel is increasingly able to assert its own interests in the Middle East—think of the genocide in Gaza, the bombing of Lebanon and the illegal settlements in the West Bank. With this in mind, it is important to continue to restate the radical alternative to Zionism.
The conflation of Jewish history and identity with Israel by Zionists and mainstream historians means that Here Where We Live has been published at a significant time.
Crabapple narrates this history, bringing to it her own emotions, thoughts and views. She paints a picture of the lives of individual Bundists, while telling the story of the organisation as a whole.
The book brings together the rich life that Jewish revolutionaries, socialists and trade unionists had both inside the Bund, alongside their interactions with other Marxist, revolutionary and socialist organisations.
The Bund’s political perspective was defined by the material experience of antisemitism, but also of the political questions facing the left during the period.
Crabapple’s description of the organisation is interspersed with her commentary on political questions from the Bundist political viewpoint.
The Bund’s first conference after the February 1917 outbreak of the Russian Revolution, committed to supporting the First World War and upholding the Provisional Government.
This was in contrast to the Bolsheviks who argued for revolutionary defeatism and declared “all power to the Soviets”. Bundists rejected Lenin’s politics. After the Bolshevik‑led October Revolution, Workers Voice, the Bundist newspaper, ran the headline “The coup”.
There is an implication by Crabapple that the Bundists were correct in their criticism of the Bolsheviks and that the descent to Stalinism was inevitable following the October Revolution.
The Bund identified as Marxists. And while they would have identified as a class‑based internationalist organisation, they also “created a secular, socialist but specifically Jewish world”.
Crabapple outlines in detail the radical movement they created in Poland. There they formed the National Council of Jewish Trade Unions. They challenged religious conservatism in the Jewish community.
Bundist women founded Jewish Working Women, an organisation that provided day care centres, disseminated birth control information and campaigned for free childcare and equal pay.
In January 1926, the Medem Sanatorium opened in Warsaw—a respite for poor children at risk of tuberculosis. The director, Victor Gilinsky, believed that adults and children were equal. The children governed themselves—they made their own newspaper and elected their own parliament. This is a radical view of education even today.
The solidarity between the Bund and the Polish Socialist Party in the 1930s shows the importance of working class unity in the face of oppression today.
In 1931 the Bund and the Polish Socialist Party marched together for the first time on May Day. The Polish socialists proposed to send a delegation to protect Jewish workers, and in return Jewish groups would protect Polish workers.
Although the Bund declined, believing it important that Jewish groups protected themselves, the solidarity between the Polish Socialist Party and the Bund continued throughout the 1930s and into the Second World War.
When hundreds of ghettos were set up to hold Jewish people across Poland under Nazi occupation, resistance groups sprung up. The Polish Socialist Party—now underground—said “The burden of all wars and subjugation forever falls on the working man, regardless of nationality.
“How degradingly cynical is the fact that the walls of the ghetto being raised by Polish and Jewish labourers are meant to become a barrier between them, as if different fates awaited them”
A key lesson from the Bund was the need for united resistance against fascism.
In July 1942, the start of the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto began, and thousands of Jewish residents were sent to the Treblinka death camp.
By October, the young Bundists still left in the Warsaw Ghetto agreed to join the Jewish Combat Organisation ZOB, a coalition of Bundists, Communists and the left wing Zionist youth movement. Marek Edelman, author of The Ghetto Fights, was the Bundist commander.
With support from the Polish Socialist Party, they smuggled a small amount of weapons into the Ghetto. The first act of ZOB was to shoot the second in command of the Jewish Police.
Acts of resistance turned into a full uprising on 19 April 1943. The ZOB, as outlined by Crabapple. While the Nazis expected the fight to last for only a few days, the ZOB fought on for a month in the biggest act of Jewish resistance in the Second World War. Their action inspired other uprisings by Jews.
In the end, the Nazis used overwhelming military force to smash the resistance.
Only a few fighters escaped—including Edelman, who went on to fight in the general Warsaw uprising of 1944. He later became active in the Solidarity movement in Poland in the 1980s. He also supported the cause of Palestinian liberation.
Where We Live is Our Country provides insight into the politics, life and experience of the Bund—and the fierce bravery of Jewish anti-Zionist resistance to fascism and racism. Throughout the book, Crabapple compares these experiences with the current period—from Black Lives Matter, to the experience of Syrian refugees and to the genocide in Gaza.
In a world where the view of the Israeli government dominates the historical narrative, it’s fitting that Crabapple’s final acknowledgement is to the people of Palestine.
- Here Where We Live Is Our Country by Molly Crabapple is available from Bookmarks for £25
