Bernard Goldstein - The Stars Bear Witness [Illustrated Edition]

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Text originally published in 1949 under the same title.

Pickle Partners Publishing 2015, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publishers Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Authors original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern readers benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

THE STARS BEAR WITNESS

by

BERNARD GOLDSTEIN

TRANSLATED AND EDITED BY LEONARD SHATZKIN

Contents

To my beloved and unforgettable, Comrade, Friend, and Teacher, Shloime Mendelsohn

We swear we wi ll battle for freedom and right

Against all the servants of tyrannous might.

We swear we will conquer the darkness of night,

Or with courage, we will fall in the fight,

On this oath we pledge our lives.

Heaven and earth will hear us;

The stars will bear witness for us.

A pledge of blood, a pledge of tears,

We swear, we swear, we swear.

From the Anthem of the

General Jewish Labor Union of Poland (the Bund)

MUCH OF THE INFORMATION IN THIS PREFACE is taken from the short biographical sketch by J. S. Herz in the Yiddish edition of this work, Finf Yor in Warshaver Ghetto.

Ever since I was a boy I have heard about Comrade Bernard. To me he was always an almost legendary hero, a sort of Robin Hood or Jesse James. To the hundreds of thousands of Jews of Poland he has for many years been a real champion, fighting against very near and very unromantic enemies.

My father left Poland at the end of the First World War to avoid military service against the young revolutionary regime in Russia. He brought with him to America the spirit of the Jewish Socialist movement which had been his life in the old country. In the evenings he and his fellow immigrants would gather to sing the old revolutionary songs, to talk about the old days, the illegal political activity, the narrow escapes from the Czarist police. The name of Comrade Bernard always figured in their conversations.

The interest of the Jewish Socialist immigrants was not entirely nostalgic. They kept very well informed of events in their former homeland, and especially of the activities of the General Jewish Socialist Labor Union the Bund. From time to time the Bund would send a delegate to the United States, usually to raise money for a new printing plant, for equipping a theater, for expanding the Medem Sanatorium for children, or for some other of the organizations many projects. These visits were always holidays for me. I was allowed to stay up late and to sit at the feet of our guest as he told about the Jews of Poland.

Again and again the talk would turn to Comrade Bernard, and I would listen in wide-eyed wonder to the stories of the wonderful things he did. For me they were glimpses into an exciting world; the most lurid tales of cowboys and Indians paled before them. And they were also glimpses into a real world, where real people struggled for their lives.

Bernard Goldstein was born in Shedltze, just three hours from Warsaw, in 1889. His was a generation destined to contribute its best sons to the mounting revolutionary tide in Eastern Europe, and he joined the stream early. At the age of thirteen his imagination was already fired by stories of anti-Czarist agitation in Warsaw brought home by his two older brothers. He began to read forbidden revolutionary literature and attend the meetings of underground youth groups. At sixteen he had his baptism of fire. In May 1905, during Russias war against Japan, four hundred people gathered secretly in the Yugan Forest near Bernards home. The meeting was organized by the Bund, at that time a young Jewish political party.

Suddenly the group was surrounded by a large contingent of cavalry and foot-soldiers.

Who is the speaker? the commander, Officer Kosakov, demanded angrily.

No one answered.

Give him up! he shouted. The crowd maintained its stubborn silence.

Swords out! Kosakov ordered.

The people moved closer together, locked arms, and defiantly began to sing revolutionary songs. The horses plowed into the crowd. Swords and bayonets were wielded without mercy. When Kosakov finally called a halt, eighty people lay wounded.

The entire assemblage was then arrested. At the Shedltze jail they were made to run between two rows of soldiers who beat them as they passed. For the rest of his life Bernard was to wear the scar of a saber cut on his chin. He, a sixteen-year-old boy, ran the gauntlet and was sent to the hospital with the badly wounded. Almost immediately he escaped. Under his bloody clothing, wrapped tightly around his body, was the red flag of the Bund, which must never fall into the hands of the enemy.

Late in 1905, Bernard quit the village for Warsaw, the great boiling center of East European Jewry and the focus of anti-Czarist agitation. There, as a member of the Bund, he plunged into the crest of the revolutionary wave.

In 1906, Bernard was sent from Warsaw to help the striking fur workers of near-by Kalushin. As he and the strike leader sat at the negotiating table with the employers, the police entered. The two men were arrested, bound, and paraded in an open cart through the city while the whole town watched.

In prison they were deliberately thrown among the criminals who hated the revolutionaries more fiercely than they did the corrupt police, for the radical workers were much more energetic in fighting crime. In the prisons the criminals found their opportunity for revenge against the politicals. A group of thugs backed Bernard into a corner, pummeling and kicking him. Then one of them, Piesak, a thief, took a good look at the victims face.

Let the boy alone! he ordered sharply. The men backed away. Piesaks skill with the knife had made him a law among the lawless.

Piesak recalled that, a year before, this boy had been his cell-mate in the Shedltze jail. A sentimental attachment led him to protect Bernard.

Bernards arrest led to a boycott of the Kalushin furriers. No wagons from Kalushin could enter Warsaw with their furs as long as Bernard and his comrade were in jail. The Kalushin furriers felt compelled to intervene, and they did it in a direct and simple way: they bribed the authorities to release the prisoners.

In 1907 and 1908 the revolutionary wave receded. After the abortive uprising of 1905 thousands were sent to prison, and many more were frightened by the Czarist reign of terror. The workers were discouraged and apathetic. On May Day of 1908 Bernard was sent to address a factory meeting of shoe workers at 14 Leshno Street. As he mounted the platform he was greeted with a volley of wet rags and shouts of Enough strikes! Enough revolution! Bernard wept. He had not wept in the Yugan Forest or during the beatings in the Kalushin prison, but this desertion by the workers moved him to tears.