American Jewish Personalities James Becker and East ...americanjewisharchives.org/publications/journal/... · James Becker and East European Jewry after World War I Hortense Becker

American Jewish Personalities James Becker and East European Jewry

after World War I Hortense Becker

There is a small slice of history beginning in 1919 in Europe in the aftermath of World War I which has been preserved in letters and diaries and should be recalled because it represents a generous, wise, and humanitarian effort on the part of the United States and an American Jewish relief organization.

In 1919, James Becker, a twenty-four-year-old Jew from Chicago, was appointed by Herbert Hoover, then head of the American Food Administration, to the American Mission for Food Relief. His appointment came at the suggestion of Lewis L. Strauss, at that time Hoover's secretary and right-hand man. Hoover had put the entire question of the equitable treatment of minority groups in the countries to which American supplies were being distributed into Lewis Strauss's hands. The latter instructed Becker to go to Poland, whose eastern border was still being torn by a terrible war, to help in the administration of general relief.

And so here we have a young man who loved his country deeply and idealistically in the uncritical and head-over-heels fashion that was possible in 1919, who had grown up completely secure in his acceptance as an American, bursting with pride in his triumphant country, which had won the war and slain the dragon, only to learn that the cruelest of wars was still being fought back and forth across the borders of the countries of Eastern Europe.

In his diaries and letters, James Becker left a vivid first-hand account of inhuman devastation and humane efforts to repair it, that has been forgotten in the wake of other, more recent terrible devastations. Of course there were many others who served hero- ically in these causes, but few left such a full record which, speak- ing for one, also speaks for all. Moreover, because not only his letters but his diaries too seem to be addressed to his parents, with whom he had a singularly close relationship, his accounts are inti- mate, alive, and interestingly detailed. In these days of cynicism,

Janles H. Beckcr (1894-1 9701

East European Jewry after World War I 28 1

when the worst is often rightly suspected, when we are looking hard at deceit and almost seem to revel in our disillusionment and disbelief, it might be well to examine the loving, useful life of one man and to consider the family and the training which helped to bring about his goodness, even at the risk that this may seem pon- derous and disproportionate. For it so happened that the goodness of this particular man made it possible for him to cope energeti- cally, realistically, and justly with the miseries and brutalities of a war situation at least as terrible as any that has been revealed to us in modern times.

James Becker was able to look long and closely at the horrors he saw without becoming calloused, trying to understand both the sufferers and the causes of their suffering and not to despair, but to do the best job he could and get on with the work. It was a work he entered into with deep dedication and youthful enthusiasm, and when he was briefed and warned about some of the complexities he wrote in his diary: "but all of this I welcome and am very anxious to start on this wonderful work." And then he added what was probably the keynote of his own future success: "the keynote of which is probably the proper handling of people."

Becker's letters, diaries, and other papers embrace several peri- ods. The first ones cover the time from his arrival in Europe in January 1919 until September 1920. This time was spent in eastern Poland and in Romania, broken by short trips to Danzig, Latvia, and Lithuania, to investigate and report on the needs of those regions. From Romania he also took it upon himself to cross the border and look into conditions in the Ukraine, where the Jews were terrorized and despairing and crushed by repeated pogroms. Becker's visit was their first intimation that they had not been abandoned and forgotten, and his on-the-spot reports brought their tragic situation to the attention of American Jewry.

Weizmann and Warburg

His work with the American Relief Administration and later with the Joint Distribution Committee brought James Becker to the attention of two remarkable men whose close friendship and work

282 American Jewish Archives

had much to do with the remaining material-Chaim Weizmann and Felix Warburg. These two men, engaged heart and soul in the cause of their fellow Jews, came from very different backgrounds and saw matters from very different angles. Each, however, saw in Becker a singularly useful agent for furthering his ends. In 1927, at the invitation of Felix Warburg, Becker visited Palestine and the Russian colonies in the Crimea to try to assess the prospects for their development as places of refuge for Jews. From 1919, when he first met him, Weizmann had conferred with Becker in regard to raising funds and to winning the support of the wealthy German Jews from his community for the settling of Jewish refugees in Palestine. It was not strange that each of these men found in Becker the right man for his cause, a man with a background similar to the one but emotionally drawn to the other, a man who knew the situation in Eastern Europe from terrible first-hand experience, and who had shown his competence and devotion in dealing with its problems, and moreover a man who sympathized with both their viewpoints.

Of Weizmann's letters to Becker over the years, twelve remain, written between 1927 and 1948. They bear testimony to his deep friendship for Becker, but are of far more importance as sources on the hydra-headed problems which beset this man with a dream. They show his hopes and fears and his manner of going about things. They sound a protesting counterpoint to the projected Russian colonies, the settling of Jews in the Crimea and the Ukraine, and are often notes of despair at the turn things were taking. It was a heartrending moment for Weizmann when a large tract of land became available for purchase in Palestine at an incredibly low price (indeed it comprised the entire Valley of Esdraelon) and he feared the funds he so desperately needed for its purchase would be diverted to the Russian colonies.

Becker came to know Felix Warburg through the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (hereafter JDC) which worked closely with the American Relief Committee. As Becker's work in Poland and Romania progressed, he had become more and more concerned with the frightful plight of the Jews and con- cluded he would be more effective working directly with a Jewish

East European Jewry after World War I

organization. The head of the JDC, based in New York, was Felix Warburg, whom Becker did not meet personally until the end of his stint in Eastern Europe. Yet because of the many troublesome problems which arose concerning the conduct of the work in Europe, which were aggravated by distance and miserably poor wartime communications with New York, and which Becker had to take up with his superior, the two men learned through corre- spondence to know and respect one another long before the actu- al meeting. By that time Becker, though only twenty-five years of age, had become European acting director of the Joint Distribution Committee, with the entire Eastern European Jewish refugees problem (some 80 percent of world Jewry) on his young shoulders.

During this period there commenced a long and close relationship, almost like father and son, between Becker and Warburg, and in 1927 Warburg invited him on a five-month trip around the world on the luxury liner Resolute. While this turned out to be one of the most stimulating, enchanting, and romantic experiences, far- away places and the pleasure of his company were not the prima- ry objectives of the invitation. The purpose was to look into the progress of the Jewish settlements in Palestine and then to investigate the settling of Jews on vast lands in the Crimea and the Ukraine which had been offered by the Soviet government. Unfortunately the two humanitarian projects, as I have indicated, were in competition, in the eyes of the wealthy American Reform Jews whose money was needed for their implantation, and who now, for a variety of reasons which will be gone into later, favored the Russian colonies over Palestine. The diaries and letters from this trip comprise the remainder of the material to be dealt with in this article. There is a brief but interesting account of the visit to Palestine, of the thirteen days and nights on the Trans-Siberian Railway, and then a detailed diary of the visit to the Russian colonies, where high government officials, such as Maxim Litvinov, the deputy commissar for foreign affairs, anxiously and respectfully received them as ambassadors from the United States. Of the vast settlements on those rich lands, given in a largely forgotten gesture of good will by the Russians toward their Jews, nothing, alas, now remains.

KUHN. LOEB 6 CO. @/ 9/ eGCV pr 7 aov. 9, 1gaz

Chicago Jewieh Rel ie i CommiDtae, 110 South Dearborn S t ree t , Ohiosgo, Ill.

Dear Sire:

I am deZighUed t o learn tha t you a r e taking oteps t o pr in t the addrees delivered by Mr. James Beoker at the Milnaukee Cohferenoe of Jewieh Booial SOrVioe, eo ae t o make it avai lable t o a la rger audience than he was able t o reaoh when he made it.

Mr. Beoker'e remarks snquld reoeive nation wide at tent ion, f o r he has eeen more of the war re l ie f work than any other one person, and has..personally oome in to contaot with the de t a i l s of t h i e worl() the oontipuation of whioh, I am sorry t o say, i e e t i l f s o neoesemy.

Mr. Beaker has been an orltetanding example of fear less self-eaorifioe; He has brbved epideinioe of a l l kinds, hae gone in to Rueeia, Roumania, Poland and Lithunnia and within the f ight ing lines, and 4@ has seen the mieery with h i s own eyee. When he aesumed the du t ies of act ing European Direotor of the Joint Dietr'ibut4.0n Committee, her beoame aoquainted with the d i f f iou l tv of adminieterirag the f unde just l y e

We, who a r e moet anxious t o do a l l within our power t o make every do l la r go a s f a r a e poeeible, eincere- l y hope tha t every word of Mr. Beoker'e w i l l reoeive the reepeatful hearing and reaotion tha t it 00 fu l ly deeerveo.

Joiht ~ i Q t r i b u t i o h Coemittee

A letter written by Felix Warburg of the JDC praising the work of James Becker

(2922)

East European Jewry after World War I 285

Maturation Under Fire

While James Becker's diaries and letters form an interesting eye- witness report of a forgotten and largely undocumented period of destruction, in them can also be traced the growth and unfolding of a human being from a happy, self-confident, idealistic, and untried boy to an experienced, effective, tough, but tender leader. They show a man whose work was carried on amid the dehuman- izing cruelty, senseless disaster, stupidity, and all the other con- comitant of war, yet who never seemed to weaken in his will to serve his fellow-men. In 1917, when he was twenty-three, Becker's dearest wish was-to enter the army and to do his part in making the world safe for democracy. But by February 1919 he found that all the beauty and glamour (a concept that is indeed very strange to our present way of thinking) had departed from the face of war, and wrote from Lemberg in eastern Poland:

In the morning we were taken through the military hospital. What awful sights I did see! With no running water, short of medicines, ether, operating instruments, good food and what not, conditions are horrible. There are many men who were wounded in the fight of yesterday (when the Ukrainians were repulsed on all sides) and these we saw. The glory of war does not enter the military hospitals. I saw men on the operating tables just after they had been operated, men with broken or shattered arms and legs, men with one eye or half a nose or disfigured faces, and one man the memory of whom I shall always recall, I believe, when I hear people speak of the glory of war. This man had been shot thought the liver, was paralyzed from the waist down, was absolutely yellow in color, was deathly sick to his stomach and was writhing in that deathly agony which many must pass through before the end. They said he wouldn't live long. I pray to God they are right. To see sights like these is real work, but still it must be done if we are really to get to the bottom of this work and find out what is needed most and where it is needed. I went through any number of large wards and saw dozens of men all of whom were wounded yesterday. The attack was repulsed but it took flesh and blood to do it.

In May he wrote his family about the peace treaty:

If I had time I would go off in a terrible tirade against the Peace terms and it is lucky for you that I must close soon. I think the war has unquestionably from our point of view been fought in vain, and I think the terms are such that only trouble is being stored up for the future. Wilson, I have great admiration for in many ways, but he has been beaten to a frazzle. Senator Lodge is in plain language a damn fool, as are all of those other dirty politicians who should have stood behind Wilson when he was pulling for just terms: without the support of our country how could the President carry out his program? I damn with all my heart all those low politicians

American Jewish Archives

who put the interest of self and party above the right. With most of the other men over here I agree that half of these countries are not worth fighting to save and one thing is certain, we never could raise another army "to save the world for Democracy." For this rotten peace America is partly to blame.

Becker's Antecedents and Early Life

James Becker was descended on both sides from German Jews. His paternal grandparents came from the little town of Alsei near Frankfurt, and his maternal grandparents from Bergkunstadt in Bavaria. Both his parents were born in this country. Exactly what motivated his grandparents, educated people of some substance, to leave their native cities is uncertain, probably the crippling anti- Semitic laws and the threat of compulsory military service. Whatever the reasons, they flourished in the New World and felt secure and at one in the land to which they had come, as much a part of it indeed as its threads were part of the stars and stripes of our flag. After all, nearly everyone else had come there from some- place else at one time or another, and everyone knew that it was a melting pot.

The German Jewish society of which James Becker was a product, represented, at the time of World War I, the most successful, wealthy, and influential segment of Jewry in this country. These westernized Jews, after a generation or two on American soil, felt themselves completely interwoven with the fabric of the United States. It was a time of assimilation and loosening of old ties, and though they considered themselves Jews, they regarded Judaism as a religion and were opposed to any suggestion that they might be a race or a nationality. To them the Zionist cause was generally unacceptable, perhaps because it seemed in conflict with their American patriotism and their perception of themselves as Americans. It seemed as though they had turned their backs on their history and, if they thought about it at all, knew little about their past in the Old World or of the varied shadings and religious differences within Judaism itself. They drew a few bold lines between themselves as Reform Jews and the Orthodox, between themselves, German Jews lumped with the Spanish and


Portuguese Jews who had settled in America some generations earlier, and the Jews of Eastern Europe (actually the Spanish and Portuguese Jews considered themselves socially superior to the German Jews), and this pale was generally accepted matter-of- factly and uncritically. Though Spanish, Portuguese, and German Jews constituted only the tip of the iceberg of the total Jewish population of the United States at that time, the vast submerged body of Eastern Jewry was ignored by them or, if not ignored, looked down upon with a kind of snobbish social anti-Semitism. Their feelings reflected the feelings of the German people whose culture they loved and admired so much and in which they had immersed themselves so deeply that they took it for their own. Such sentiments, so prevalent then, are hard to conceive of now, yet these were what Becker had to try to overcome when he returned from Poland and Romania, from the hunger, destitution, slaughter, and pogroms spawned by anti-Semitism. His words, in a fund-raising speech for the Jewish Institute of Chicago, seem almost prophetic, though they were spoken many years before the terrible days of Hitler:

This drive has brought out many cross-currents, some good and some bad. I have never heard so much about North Side Jews and South Side Jews and West Side Jews, about Polish and Russian Jews, but I can't help calling to your attention that the non- Jew knows no adjectives. To him we are all Jews, plain Jews-and I believe if during the course of these two thousand years which have been marked with pogroms and prejudice and hatred and bigotry, we have not learned that we were Jews, just because our fathers or grandfathers came here a little sooner, and that we must forget these externals and look for intemals-then I believe that all this Jewish blood which has been spilled throughout Europe has been spitled in vain-and I think that perhaps it is a just retribution of a just God that this external anti-semitism has been sent upon us for our own damnable internal anti-semitism.

The man who had returned from so overpowering an experience in Europe was very different from the wealthy young Jewish boy from the Middle West, feeling as American as apple pie, over- flowing with optimism and absolutely convinced that his country was the greatest land on earth, always acting from the purest motives and equipped to right the wrongs of a world in which good must triumph.


But to return to the beginnings of this history, Becker's father, A. G. Becker, was a trustee of Chicago Sinai Temple and a close friend of Dr. Emil Hirsch, its rabbi. Dr. Hirsch had a profound influence upon his congregation and was a leader, in the Reform movement of those times, away from tradition and toward the sloughing off of ritual, with emphasis upon reason and the unadorned study of ethics. Nothing must have seemed more strange to James Becker than the contrast between the Reform Judaism in which he was reared and the outlook of the East European Jews with whom he was to work. The Jews of Eastern Europe were the end product of persecution and discrimination. They knew no safety, they were forced to endure every indignity, and their death and torture were not only permitted but smiled upon. They had lost faith in the countries in which they were forced to live, in fear and without hope, and their religion or their Jewish identity was their only strength. This alienation did not endear them to their non-Jewish countrymen.

Although Becker's religious training was of such a Reform nature, he attended school regularly as well as temple, and he felt a great interest, even when very young, in the Jewish relief work carried on by his father. His feeling of Jewish identity was very deep, and a few years later, as his work in Poland and Romania progressed and the warmth of his feelings toward the Jews of Eastern Europe intensified, he felt a strong emotional response, for he loved and understood and valued the strength of their religious commitment. Of his religious education he wrote home in a letter of May 30,1920:

Zuckerman [a JDC official with whom he had considerable administrative difficulties] has a very fine head on him and feels his Jewishness more than any man I ever met. He quite disproves of Dr. Hirsch's theory, for he is an atheist and still no one could ever doubt that he is a Jew. I am quite convinced that we have more racial than religious characteristics. I feel very sorry that I didn't have a more thorough training in Jewish history and religion-I miss this very much. When I get back to America I hope to make a late start. Dr. Hirsch's course is too reformed and one does not get enough of the old Jewish traditions and customs.

However, Becker had little else to complain of in his childhood, for he was born into an extraordinarily happy family of four chil-


dren. It was a harmonious life filled with love and mutual respect, many joyous family festivities, friends and parties and much freedom for those days, but strict ethical accountability. A high code of behavior was expected and taught by word and example, and aroused in him a profound love and admiration for his parents, and he longed to be worthy of them and, if it were possible, as good a man as his father. For his father was known for his character and for liis leadeship in the non-Jewish as well as the Jewish community.

It seemed, however, that Becker's strong Jewish roots were twined with his love for his father, even though an Orthodox Jewish synagogue in the Ukraine was very far afield from the type of religion A. G. Becker practiced in Dr. Hirsch's congregation, and indeed he seemed to have little liking for Orthodoxy. When his father died, the loss seemed immeasurable to James Becker, and while traveling around the world with Felix Warburg on that enchanted trip full of new sights and the romance of distant places, courted by charming girls whom he in turn courted, he wrote of his underlying sadness for this man who was so dear to him. On the anniversary of his father's death it was to an Orthodox synagogue that he went to find comfort. Consider, for example, the entry for May 14, 1927 on page 19 of his Russian diary, written in the Ukraine:

Colony of Lvovo-We visited both synagogues (one a chassidic), but there were only old men there. Apparently young people are not temple goers as of old. In one synagogue I saw an incongruous sight-Jewish workmen repairing one room while people were praying in another. To me that is symbolic of Russia today-a great mixture of the old and the new, the former fighting the latter, the latter fighting the former, and neither knowing just for what it is striving. I asked them purposely to stop at the synagogue today. After all there is a feeling of peace and quiet and a synagogue in Lvovo is infinitely closer to one in Chicago, than just Lvovo to Chicago. What a bless- ing to have had such a father.

The pattern of James Becker's life as he was growing up in that good old U.S.A. was of a happy young man who worked hard and played hard, with a susceptible romantic heart enjoying girls and parties and sports, but underneath it all hurrying toward some distant and lofty goal. He delighted in all beauty but particularly that


of nature, in birds, flowers, and trees, which was perhaps the influence of his adored mother. Amid his many papers there is a little notebook kept when he was eight in which, in a wavering hand with considerable misspelling, he noted the advent of the robin, yea, and the unpopular grackle and starling, the budding of the horse chestnut tree-the coming of spring. Throughout his letters there are expressions of this delight. For example, from Trieste, dated May 25,1919:

I left Vienna on the Vienna-Warsaw Express-Switzerland was lovely for all the fruit trees and wild flowers were in full bloom and it made the hills and mountainsides very beautiful. After my trips through the devastated regions, after all the suffering I have seen in Poland and elsewhere, the contrast was most impressive and I wanted to jump out of the train and roll around forever in that green, green grass and under those blossoming trees.

It was a love which did not in later years endear him to his fellow golfers, when he stopped between shots to watch a covey of quail or the flight of the Western bluebird.

James Becker did not enjoy his high school years, and when he first started college at Cornell in 1914, he gloomily predicted, "I am fast becoming a greasy grind-"; but soon it became what a college should be, a place of flowering and development. His diaries show an interest in a wide variety of subjects, but political history and economics held first place. He made many friends and was invited into a fraternity, but decided not to join, because while he did not generalize he felt that he personally did not want to became a part of the fraternity system. His life seemed to open up in many directions and he entered zestfully into the varied activities offered him. He taught an underprivileged group, adopted a poor family for the winter, for whom he had to find housing and employment, made track team, played baseball, and to strike an even lighter note took lessons in dancing and magic. Meanwhile, his interest in Judaism and Jewish affairs seemed to grow. He continued to attend religious services and successfully chaired a stormy meeting at which Rabbi Nathan of Philadelphia was the speaker. With some pride he wrote his parents:

East European Jewry affer World War I 291 Sunday afternoon I met Rabbi Nathan-later we went to a Temple meeting where I was asked to act as chairman. There were about two hundred present. I didn't mem- orize my speech and introduced the speaker and then I thought I was finished. But after the speech a fellow got up and attacked our plan for a temple and a general discussion followed. As a result I had to conduct the meeting and do quite a good deal of talking. Much to my pleasure the boys and a number of the townspeople said that I had done very well and had handled a difficult situation very well. I wasn't at all nervous while I was talking. But of course there is always excitement connected with such a thing.

The most important influence on Becker while he was at college was that of Allyn Young, professor of economics and later one of the architects of the Versailles Treaty. It was he who set Becker's feet on the path with which this paper deals, but before Young took a hand in his career there was an emotional and less pleasant inter- lude.

After Becker's graduation from Cornell his family decided that it would be a fine experience for him to work in a factory and learn a business from the ground up. A furniture factory in Chicopee Falls was selected, where he and his friend Robert Byfield started on the lowest rung of the ladder. It was at this time that the United States declared war on Germany and the two young men longed passionately to get into it. Becker's family were, however, far from sharing his enthusiasm; perhaps this reflected the conservatism of the Middle West. In April 1917 his mother wrote him:

For the first time in my life I don't know how to write you. I almost want to weigh my words lest anything I say have great consequences. I hope you won't enlist and I haven't the right to say "no", for some future day I don't want you to blame me for not doing your duty as you see it. I don't want you to do anything for us, but this war seems so wrong to me that I can't bear to think of your sacrificing your life for it. If your country, not England needed you, I should be the first to urge you to go. I know we are in it and I ought not to feel this way, but judging by the small proportion who enlisted, I cannot be alone in my sentiments.

And again a few days later:

I saw Dr. Hirsch the other day-he was really pleased that you were on the Relief Committee. He also said he would not like to see you enlist. If this were a war to defend our country he thought you ought to go, but not under such circumstances, -I am all at sea and can't see anything clearly. Whatever you do, write homefirst. Surely I won't stand in your way to do your duty. I promise you that.

292 American Jezuish Archives

Jalrres Beckcr at zuork at his desk (Romania, 1920)

East European Jew y after World War I 293

This is another example how in those far-off days parents did not doubt that they could, if they wished, make decisions for their children. Fortune, as it happened, smiled on his parents' wishes and Becker was rejected by the army because he was too slight, and all his efforts at muscle-building were in vain. Later diaries make it evident that his lack of weight did not indicate a lack of physical stamina, for he was able to carry on the grueling pace of his life in Eastern Europe, where he was soon to live, and cheer- fully endure hunger, cold, and sleeplessness without too much damage to his health, all of which, of course, was as nothing com- pared to the frightful misery around him.

And so for the time being he was doomed to Chicopee Falls, which proved to be more of a training ground than Becker had anticipated. His letters had their unintentionally funny side, but showed also how in the midst of his complaints he remembered to f y to be philosophical and not to give way to his natural fastidi- ousness. He described how he had to rise at five o'clock in the morning in order to start work at seven and then work until five in the afternoon with forty-five minutes for lunch.

World War I Service

Fate had other and better plans for James Becker, however, and he was soon rescued from the ashes by a good fairy in the guise of Professor Allyn Young, his teacher and inspiration at Cornell. Professor Young, with John Foster Dulles as assistant chairman, had become director of the Bureau of Research of the War Trade Board, which was charged with the study of problems connected with the export and import trade of the United States and with the collection of data on conditions in foreign countries. It was to the Bureau of Research that Young now requested the appointment of Becker and his friend Robert Byfield, as assistants. Becker was jubilant and wrote his parents:

This work will last a year or two, the pay is sixty dollars a month but later we can take a civil service exam and get much better pay. Young says we are needed because of our training. Write me at once if you are perfectly willing that I come down here.


Permission granted, he left the factory. Soon after arriving in Washington he wrote:

I think that life will be wonderful here. We are to determine how much food and supplies are to be got to the neutral countries and the Allies, and the Embargo will be regulated according to the findings of our bureau. Doesn't that sound like interesting work?

On August 1, 1917, he wrote:

Our work continues to be very nice. I shall try give you some idea of what is done in this office. We are taking all the neutral counties, such as Holland, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland etc. and determining how much food, oils, chemicals and other com- modities they ordinarily need. It is a big job but when it is completed we can see whether they are using too much starch, bread-stuffs etc., and so can shut down on them. We also handle all the licenses (practically no goods can be shipped to any country without a license) and thus know absolutely how much each country is using-or at least trying to use, because many licenses are not granted. We have shut off the Japs' supply of steel-a move which delights me because I have never trusted the Japs and feel they are holding back their strength in order to show up:to the best advantage when all the other nations are used up.

In June 1918 Becker finally received his commission into the army as a first lieutenant. This made him very happy, and the news was accepted by his family with warmth and encourage- ment. He had been transferred to the Purchase, Storage and Traffic Division of the War Department and obviously enjoyed his work, throwing himself into it with his whole heart and becoming so useful that he was even thought indispensable, and there was some anxious wriggling before he could escape from a job too well done when the next opportunity offered itself, an opportunity to go to Europe, where the action was, and where he was sure he could be of service.

Two close friends shared this dream of going abroad with him, Bob Byfield, who had followed a parallel path from Cornell, Chicopee Falls, and the War Trade Board, and the third musketeer, Lewis Strauss, later head of the Atomic Energy Commission. And they had made some sort of a pledge that should one of them suc- ceed, he would leave no stone unturned to bring the other two over also.


With the American Relief Mission

Lewis Strauss had risen brilliantly and was now Herbert Hoover's assisfanf, aml. Hoover had been appo,inted food administrator by President Woodrow Wilson. Through Strauss's influence, Becker and Byfield were appointed by Hoover to the American Relief Mission in January 1919. The work which Hoover headed was of enormous importance to most of Europe. At least thirty countries were dependent for food, for their very lives, on the flow of supplies he controlled. Becker's work in supply and demand had given him some idea of the extent of the disaster in Europe, and was superb training for this new job. He was overjoyed at the news of his appointment and hastened to write home:

Yesterday morning while over at Bob's office we got word that Mr. Hoover had put in a request for our services. You can well imagine we were tickled to death. Mr. Hoover sent a radiogram to Mr. Rickard, Acting Food Administrator. Mr. Rickard then wrote to Secretary [of State] Baker, who then turned the matter over to Mr. Cromwell, First Assistant Secretary of War. The latter requested General Burr of the P. S. & T. Division to let us go, but General Burr, after consultation with Major Keith, refused to do so unless someone be obtained to do my work (there is an order saying that no one on work contract cancellation can get away). This of course is absurd because the work of one lieutenant can't make any difference in this enormous division. However we are both sure that they will send us, because Herbert Hoover is king and he always gets what he wants.

Becker's words reflected the country's admiration for the man who was engineering one of history's most extraordinary and successful humanitarian efforts. Unfortunately Hoover is largely remembered today for the last days of his presidency, when the Great Depression overwhelmed the country. Yet it was Hoover who headed the American Relief Administration, that magnifi- cently functioning organization which was formed in 1918 to meet the needs of devastated Europe. Some two hundred million souls in Central and Eastern Europe were on the brink of starvation due to the disruption of war and the relentless blockade by the Allies, who stubbornly refused to lift it until every article of the peace treaty was signed. The work of the American Relief Commission meant survival to Europe and it was therefore able to make its own terms. As Becker wrote in his diary:

296 American Jewish Archives In the morning I sat in on conferences and did some work for Mr. [Vernon] Kellogg. It was a gay day around the Commission because word was received that the $ioo,ooo,ooo bill for relief had passed the Senate [it had already passed the House]. In the afternoon I read Mr. ~ e l l o ~ g ' s reports on Poland-wonderfd~ interesting documents and a piece of real contemporary history. It was apparent that the two big figures in Poland Uozefl Pilsudski and [Ignacy] Paderewski consulted him as head of the Relief Commission before taking any important steps. The power of the Relief Commission is startling, makers and breakers of governments, because none of the governments of Central or Southeastern Europe can stand without being fed by the Commission.

The condition of Europe after the war, the Europe where Becker's work now lay, is described by Hoover in his book An American Epic:

Reduced production of food, medicines and clothing is the inevitable consequence of total war. Men are drafted from the farms; manufacture of agricultural implements is tumed to munitions making; and fertilizers are tumed into explosives; farms, homes and processing and industrial plants are destroyed. Blockade and coun- terblockade are imposed to reduce enemy nations by starvation, thousands of ships carrying supplies are sunk at sea . . .

The end of the fighting of these wars was not peace. Old empires were fragment- ed. Revolutions for independence from oppression arose and new ideologies of society emerged. The men who led revolutions were seldom experienced in the art of government. Weak, new-born governments seeking freedom were in desperate need of critical supplies if their freedom was to survive.

The Relief and reconstruction that follow total wars and their aftermath, of famine and pestilence do not consist of the delivery of gifts for the poor in the form of Christmas boxes tied with colored ribbons. Relief and reconstruction require the creation of huge organizations administered by men and women who are totally inexperienced in such work and must be trained while in action.

Hoover's way of accomplishing this huge task was to decen- tralize everything he could and leave the execution of details to local autonomy. Had there been a plaque in memory of the work of the American Relief Administration it might have carried Hoover's description of the spirit which guided it:

The A.R.A. has been an organization of discipline, disapline not based upon orders, but on the single-minded devotion of men to a great purpose. It has been the inspiration of human service and not the discipline of the army. Its success has been based upon the evolution of responsibility, not upon the petty plans of organization and the red tape of regulated functions.'

The ARA men became the economic directors of Europe during that stagnant, disorganized, black-hopeless period which followed

East European Jew y after World War I 297

the Armistice. Their common sense, their American know-how, their resourcefulness and their unbeatable Yankee spirit prevented the deaths from starvation of more than ten million women and children-that is beyond question-some estimated twenty million. In addition their fine spirit and methods revived the hopes and purpose of many times that number of men and women.

It seemed as though this leadership, this work, and this machine for implementing it fit Becker as the carriage fits the horse. In read- ing his diary it is evident that he too, by force of ingenuity and willpower, was able to overcome obstacles, wherever possible through government channels, when not, by simply taking matters in his own hand.

A letter he wrote to Felix Warburg (then head of the Joint Distribution Committee, which worked closely with the American Relief Administration) illustrates, nine months after his landing in Brest, the effect of this training:

For a long time I have had my eye on the Ukraine waiting for a chance to send help up there. When [Admiral Alexander] Koltchak [leader of one of the anti-Bolshevik fac- tions in the Russian Civil War] recently announced his policy of establishing a Great Russia and putting up to the League of Nations the status of Bessarabia, I figured out that this would not please the Roumanians who now occupy that territory, and that they would (foolishly) begin to back [Semyon] Petlura [Ukrainian nationalist leader]. I therefore decided to put up a very bold front and upon my return from Galatz two days ago I made the following requests from the Prime Minister, General Veitianeau: 1. that I be given a pass for the Ukraine, 2. that I be permitted to ship, without export tax, some roo tons of food, clothing etc., into the Ukraine, 3. that the Roumanian Government furnish me free of charge: a. laborers and ox-carts to carry these supplies from the warehouse at Galatz to the docks; b. to furnish a boat to cany these supplies from Galatz to Reni; c. to furnish men to unload there and ox-carts to carry the supplies to the railway cars; d. the necessary railway cars to transport these supplies from Reni to Atachi; e. a military guard for same; f. transport from the railway station at Atachi to the Dniester. I asked for all of these things free of charge, as well as to bring in duty free and convey to our warehouse the cargo coming in on the S.S. Kittegaun, and tonight I have in my hands the written approval of the Prime Minister.

I have a very hard job ahead of me but the conditions are so horrible that one must take a chance. If I had someone to help me it would not be so bad, but as it is the transportation problem alone is enough to scare one out. Everyone says there are so many difficulties in the way that it will be almost impossible to do, but it is one of those things which must be tried and I am willing to assume full responsibility.

The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee


It might be well at this point to describe the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, to whose chairman the aforementioned letter was addressed, since it worked in conjunction with the American Relief Adminisfration, and later, when the ARA with- drew, took over its work in Eastern Europe, and was the organization through which Becker would eventually continue his service in that region.

The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee was an out- growth of the American Jewish Committee, which had been established in 1906 "to alleviate the consequences of persecution and afford relief from the calamities affecting Jews wherever they may occur." Organized by Felix Warburg, Louis Marshall, and Cyrus Sulzberger, the Joint, at the time that Becker was sent to Europe, was trying to meet one of the most widespread and terrible emergencies that had ever faced world Jewry. Ten million of the fifteen million Jews in the world lived in Russia, Austria-Hungary, Germany, Romania, and Poland. And as the armies of these countries and later of the Bolsheviks and the new groups of guerrillas and nationalists attempting to establish themselves swept back and forth across those territories, the means of livelihood, their homes, and even the lives of a great part of the Jewish population were destroyed.

In Eastern Europe, at the end of World War I, there were in Poland alone a million or more starving Jews, and perhaps 200,000 were killed in pogroms or died in epidemics. In eastern Poland and Galicia, where Becker was sent, there were said to be 75,000 orphans, and 60 percent of the surviving children had tuberculo- sis. Even more terrible events were taking place in the Ukraine, as related, among other sources, in a fat volume entitled Slaughter of the Jews in the Ukraine, which presents material gathered under the nonpolitical, nonpartisan auspices of the Red Cross.' Here is a fac- tual account, though fragmentary, for the civil war was still in progress when it was compiled, of torture, deaths in pogroms, the razing of villages, and the devastation of the whole countryside. And so the same ghastly story unfolded cross the battered, war- tom landscape of Eastem Europe.

The JDC developed out of the needs of the Jews in Eastern Europe, triggered first by the efforts of American Orthodox Jews,


when the war began to lay a heavy hand on their coreligionists in the Old Country. They could not bear this burden alone, and with the powerful backing of largely assimilated wealthy German Jews, the JDC was created, combining the two groups as well as the People's Relief, a labor organization composed of socialists of Eastern European descent, and the Zionists. Only a great emergency, the disaster that engulfed nearly all East European Jewry, could have brought these disparate groups within shooting distance of one another. The man who managed to weld them together through an undreamed-of protracted period (for they thought they were joined for only a short emergency), whose wit, charm, elegance, and sophistication cloaked and abetted his lifelong devotion to saving a people in desperate straits whom all but Jewry had ignored, was Felix W. Warburg, the Joint's first chairman.

Because the need for relief in Eastern Europe was so great, and because the major portion of those in need were Jews, Hoover, as head of the American Relief Administration, arranged to have the JDC undertake an aid mission to the Jews of Eastern Europe, its members acting as officials of the ARA. In return the JDC gave $3,3oo,ooo to the $~oo,ooo,ooo ARA budget for relief in Europe.

Agents of the Joint were permitted to wear American uniforms, which gave them enormous prestige wherever they were working. It was the JDC, as mentioned earlier, to which Becker had himself transferred, as he became more and more familiar with the terrible plight of East Europe's Jews.

Becker in Europe

On January 14, 1919, James Becker left the United States and also left a way of thinking which did not endure long after, a kind of innocence which now has vanished forever. He sailed in a con- verted troopship alerted to the dangers of unexploded floating mines, and in writing home could not avoid making comparisons with previous luxury crossings:

The food is poor and the ship is dirty, doesn't smell particularly clean and is crawly. The linens and blankets are dirty and of course with so many troops having been on the boat, there are bugs.

300 American Jewish Archives On January 22 we sighted land-and dropped anchor in the beautiful harbor of

Brest. The harbor is about 25 miles in area, surrounded by a chain of rocky barren hills. It is one of the most beautiful I have ever seen and prior to the war was never open to foreigners or commercial shipping or warships, it being the French Naval Base and shrouded in mystery.

It was a beautiful sight to steam into that picturesque harbor, passing as we did scores of vari-colored ships, submarine chasers, patrol boats, transports, commercial ships, tubs, colliers, Admirals' barges, motor boats etc., for these ships were still cam- ouflaged.

Becker and Byfield took the train to Paris, where they met Lewis Strauss (at that time Hoover's secretary and right-hand man) and were ushered into luxurious quarters. Nothing could have been more uneven, it developed, than the degrees of comfort to which Becker would be subjected during his European stint. There always seemed to be those who lived exceedingly well even in the midst of war and unspeakable misery. There were wonderful Polish pastries and other delicacies served at parties and rich cream and fine flour in Warsaw coffee houses, while those outside might be starving. He himself, in his official capacity, lived at times like a prince with a personal aide to look after his slightest wish. At other times, cold and hungry, he slept upon tables or desks without bedding to avoid the bedbugs and fleas, which, however, could only be theoretically avoided in exhausted sleep.

Luxury, particularly at the inflated prices in Paris at that time, fitted neither Becker nor Byfield's pocketbook or taste, and they quickly transferred from the elegant hotel to which they had been assigned to a much less expensive one. The following day:

We ate lunch at the Hotel de Crillon, the home of the American Mission to Negotiate Peace. Here we met various men connected with this work, including Dr. Alonzo Taylor, Dr. Vernon Kellogg (Director Generals of Relief in Austria and Poland respec- tively), Robert Taft, son of the ex-President and assistant to Mr. Hoover, Mr. E. Peden, Food Administrator for the State of Texas and another of Mr. Hoover's assistants. During the day I saw many people I had known in Washington and Cornell.

Becker was caught up in the excitement of the times, of being in the midst of history-making decisions, of brushing shoulders with such a variety of admirals, generals, statesmen, soldiers, and offi- cers from the different Allied countries, and in anticipation of what his own role was to be. This was outlined to him a few hours later:

East European Jewy after World War I

In the evening Bob, Lewis and I had supper in Mr. Hoover's room at the Crillon, during a fine meal with a good old bottle of red wine, we talked over the plans for our work. Mr. Hoover's room is a large beautiful one, furnished perfectly, it was a truly European party. In outlining our work and telling us for what purpose the Food Administration had sent for us, Lewis told us that I was to go to Poland with Dr. Kellogg and Bob was to go to Austria and Roumania-in addition to helping the Administration of Relief, we were told that we were sent for a secret and specific purpose too-namely to send back confidential reports by secret courier telling about conditions and treatment of Jews in these places and whether there was any truth in the reported persecutions and unfair treatment which they were receiving. We were to keep in close touch with the representatives of the Jews in Warsaw and Vienna and let them understand that we were willing to hear their entire story and do whatever we could to try to obtain for these people what was their due.

Consider that at this point Strauss was twenty-three years old and Becker twenty-four. Then he continued, with the supreme confidence of his youthful security as a representative of the most just and powerful country in the world:

I made myself very clear on the point that I did not believe that the people of any country should be given a single ounce of food so long as they persisted in perse- cuting innocent people; and it seemed to me a very clear American policy that there should be no relief rendered until there was established in any place demanding relief a stable government which would ensure absolute justice to all citizens.

Fortunately, when Becker reached his destination he went to work with all his heart and strength to distribute food to the starving and did not wait for this millennium. And four months later and considerably wiser, he was indeed able to implement these sentiments with wisdom and tact. In a letter of May 9, 1919, he wrote:

I have been to many meetings etc. I have seen Mr. Oscar Straus, Mr. Louis Marshall, Dr. [Cyrus] Adler and Judge Mack several times each. This morning I attended a long meeting of the J.D.C. to which Mr. Marshall invited us. Mr. Straus brought up the point that it would be advisable to get a statement from the Polish authorities that there would be no discrimination against the Jews in regard to the use of foreign cap- ital which the Poles might get. Mr. Marshall and Judge Mack thought this impracti- cal as of course did I. However, I did not feel that it was good taste for me to argue with Mr. Straus and so I pointed out that they were going about the matter from the wrong point of view. I suggested that the J.D.C. should see Mr. Norman Davis and Mr. Lamont (the Treasury officials here in Paris) and bring pressure to bear that no U.S. loans be granted to Poland without the proviso that this money be used in Poland without regard to the religious beliefs of those in Poland asking for the use of the money.


Becker commenced his entry on Friday, January 31 with: "Today was rather uneventful." This was hardly the case, for it was the day that l.te mkt DY. Chairn Weizmann, a man wi.th whom he was to form a close friendship and do considerable work.

It is beginning to be apparent that the French Government has wild ideas and that what they expect and what they ought to get for the good of future generations are two entirely different things. Furthermore, it is becoming clearer every day that we and the English are working together better and better. The Peace of the world depends on the coordination of the aims of the two Anglo-Saxon countries.

-at 5 o'clock Bob and I called at the Hotel Maurice to see Dr. [Nahum] Sokolov, Zionist representative in Paris and Dr. Weizmann, head of the Zionist Organization in Great Britain and head of the Commission sent by that country to Palestine.

We had a very interesting talk. All told we were there for over an hour. Mr. Jacob de Haas, Executive Secretary of the American Zionist Organization was also there. All of them had the same story to tell and their view was probably very one-sided, but still essentially correct. They warned us about the actions of the Poles and told us that they were very "oily" and would outwardly treat us beautifully, but that they would hate us in reality. They told us of the terrible conditions of the Jews in Poland and of the responsibility which rested upon us for seeing that they obtained fair treatment. I told them that I was merely representing the Food Administration and not the Jewish Interests, but was anxious to see that everyone was fairly treated (I did not want them to know my real mission, but just wanted to let them talk without showing my hand, which I did).

. . . I am going to Poland and shall try not to be tricked by being received cordial- ly and being shown merely the good side of the situation; neither am I going there with the viewpoint that every Pole hates every Jew and that I am being deceived on all questions. In other words, I am going there with an open mind to learn about existing conditions and then draw my own conclusions from an unprejudiced standpoint. My talk this afternoon convinced me of one thing if nothing else, and that is that I have a responsible piece of work to perform. If food is given to a political party representing the government of Poland, and the government is hostile to the Jews, it will mean untold suffering and hardship for them. A rather hard and responsible job for my tender years!

Conditions in Poland and Ukraine

Becker was to have plenty of opportunity to draw his own conclusions, but the briefing from Weizmann and his group alerted him to the complexities with which he, the product of an affluent American society who had lived easily within its social structure, would have to deal. Not only the Jews with their wide and often bitter religious, social, and political differences, but the Ruthenian Greek Catholics of Eastern Europe and the Roman Catholic gov-

East European Jewy after World War I 303

erning classes, were remote in space, time, and culture from the Middle Western childhood which did not lie very far behind him. "Still," as he put it, "all this I welcome and am most anxious to start on this wonderful work-the keynote of which is probably the proper handling of people." He was young to come to this wise conclusion, and young, amidst the heady excitement of this enormous adventure, to be so slow and watchful in his judgments.

It was a time of great political activity and ferment, of anxiety and hopes and rapidly changing boundaries. It is therefore not sur- prising that there was much passionate political talk. To Becker, however, this was something new and astonishing.

The interest which the Jews of Eastern Europe take in politics is remarkable to witness. Each and every person belongs to and passionately and rapidly supports one party or the other-be it the extreme left of the General Zionists or the orthodoxy of the extreme left of the Bund. Instead of two or three parties such as we have there are always from five or six to as many as eleven of distinct and separate Jewish parties in Poland. Every shade of opinion finds expression in some political party and I often wonder if with all the thought and energy these people are putting into politics after all something of great value to the world in general won't come out of this present- day, seemingly awful mess in Russia. The people in general and the Jews in particular think sleep and eat politics and I believe that if I were to state the one thing which makes the greatest impression on me, I would have to say that it is this general interest which is shown in politics and which manifests itself in a hundred different ways in the daily lives of these people. . . . the average educated Russian and particularly Russian Jew thinks more about politics in a day than we in America do in a year.

This is easy to understand when one considers that the political structure of Poland and Russia lay closely like a skin over the body of Jewry and the condition of that skin meant health or sickness, life er death to the body within. Politics was for the Jew a means of struggling with his oppressor.

On February 9,1919, en route to Poland, Becker wrote home:

I am slated to go to Lemberg, where conditions are worse than any other place in Poland, it being a mining center and the place where children have been dying of starvation.. . chiefly because of lack of milk. . . . I am glad to get a chance to go where relief is so badly needed and I only hope that I can do enough good work to justify my selection. . . for I shall have supervision of the [food distribution].

And in a later letter:

304 American Jewish Archives One often reads about what I have seen today but few ever see it. Surely today Lemberg is one of the worst pest-holes on the face of the map.

Poland had at this time been drained of food and other supplies by the Germans who had occupied it during the war, and its borders were being fought over by many armies. World War I was supposedly over, but Wilson's doctrine of self-determination of nations had raised many hopes and there were now battles being fought in eleven different places east of the Rhine.

"Poland is a peculiar country," Becker wrote in his diary, and continued:

I have named it the land of hate. Poland hates Germany, Russia and Austria and they in turn hate her. She is at war with Czechoslovakia and the Czechs hate her. She is fighting with the Ukrainians and the Bolsheviki and the latter hate her, as do the Ruthenians. Half of Lithuania and half the people of Finland, the Letts are also against her. It is a lovely position to be in, absolutely surrounded by enemies.

And then he adds what has been thought so many times in so many places since: "Why does she not try for her future salvation to make friends with some of these countries?"

Captain Wright, a member of Sir Stuart Samuel's mission to Poland in 1919, which was sent to investigate the massacres and ill-treatment of the Jews there, submitted a separate report, feeling the need for more historical information about the Poles as well as the Jews of Poland. It is a lengthy and careful piece of research from which more will presently be quoted, and he described the miserable situation thus: "Poland as yet has no frontiers, no single system of currency or law, hardly any system of taxation, and though ruined by five years of warfare on its territory has to carry on an onerous war."

Thus a great tragedy was being enacted on the stage upon which Becker was about to step. Though not directed by the government or as extensive as in Russia, there were pogroms in Poland at the time that Becker was there, mostly triggered by soldiers of the various armies passing back and forth over Polish territory. The Ukraine, however, was devastated by pogroms directed by the Russian government. These were so brutal, and the slaugh-

East European Jewy after World War I 305

ter so great, that news of them sent waves of terror through the Jews of Poland. As Becker noted in his diary:

-the one big thing that depresses is that in the heart of every Jew in Galicia [where Lemberg was situated] there is fear-fear because they don't know what the morrow will bring-whether they will be robbed or shot on the way home or what. What a horrible state of mind to live in! As Mr. Judd said in Krakow, "Every Jew in Galicia would like to go to America." I don't blame them. When conditions such as these exist in the world who has the right to say "Stop all immigration." What a narrow selfish policy.

Before enlarging on the character of Eastern Jewry as it emerged from all these pressures, perhaps it would be well here to give some idea of the nature and extent of the pogroms.

According to materials gathered by delegates of the All- Ukrainian Relief Committee for the Victims of Pogroms, under the auspices of the Red Cross, 120,ooo Ukrainian Jews were killed in pogroms, although the figure is only approximate because under existing conditions an exact census was impossible.3 This volumi- nous report, with its manifold details of the course of the pogroms which "swept the Ukraine like a hurricane," is almost too painful to read.

The pogroms of 1914,1915, and i917/1918 mostly appeared to be in the form of plun- dering and beating and only in exceptional cases violating of women and killing unique [sic] men. The pogroms of 19x9 on the contrary distinguished themselves almost without exception not only by the great quantity of those killed but also by the wildheartedness of the murder, by the tormenting of the victims to their last breath, by the dull coolness of the murderers' "work", by the devilish inventions found out by the murderer to violate, abase, and offend the dearest and most sacred things in the most outrageous manner, and at last by the bestial blood thirst with which the murderer falls upon his victim, torments him while he is living and cannot separate from him even when he is dead, beats, bites, mutilates the dead body, till it loses its former aspect, and becomes a formless mass covered by blood and mar- row.

In 1920 Becker took it upon himself to cross the Romanian border into the Ukraine, deeply concerned because as yet no relief workers from the West had investigated there. He was the first representative of any of the Allied governments to penetrate the Ukraine. Doing so was not entirely simple, as he makes evident in


a letter home from Chotin:

By the time I got my pass it was too late to cross the border. The Roumanians told me they would not let anyone cross into the Ukraine because of the "pest" across the border. You can believe that it was no comfortable feeling to learn that I might not be able to get back-and to this day I don't know whether or not I shall get across. However, I took a chance because I have learned that if I want to arrange something badly enough, I generally manage to do it-be it through luck, ignorance or what. And so here I am in Kamenetz. -It was managed in this way: The next morning I crossed the Dneister in a strong current (it is a big fine river) and heavy ice flowing rapidly downstream. Landing in Ukraine at Zwanec I reported to the Polish authorities (Poland has temporarily occupied this part of the Ukraine) and got them to order a cart for me-a miserable lumber cart-and after a terribly cold ride of two hours during which time I nearly froze, I arrived here in Kamenetz. -I am now in the heart of the worst pogrom territory-the pogroms committed in the Ukraine by General Petlura and his bands of fiendish Cossacks.

Becker went to a small town called Kitaigorod, and upon his return to the United States to raise funds for JDC he described a typical pogrom which took place there.

Have you ever tried to picture what happens in one of these massacres? I have been obliged to, unfortunately. Take the case of Kitaigorod a little town of some four hundred people. One night a band of eleven Ukrainian soldiers came into that town. They called the four hundred Jews together in the market place and as the Jews had been disarmed there was nothing to do but obey them, and these soldiers told them that they would have to give a certain amount of money. And the Jews gave this to them, and the soldiers told them that they would go away. They didn't go away but broke into two or three houses and robbed a bit and plundered a bit, but did not do much damage. The next day they called the Jews together and told them they would have to give them gold, silver, jewelry+verything of value they could carry away easily, and again the Jews had to comply.

And after they had given them these things they did go away about 4 o'clock in the morning, but not before they had broken into every house, driven the people into the market square and hit some over the head with the butts of their guns, had stabbed others with bayonets and sabres, and taken little children by their feet and dashed their brains out against the walls of the houses, and when the massacre was over, eighty four people out of four hundred had been killed and those who escaped did so by running into the woods and hiding like wild beasts-.

In Russia there are upward of one million refugees who are homeless and shelter- less. You ask how this is and how such a thing is possible and the answer is a simple and horrible one. It is merely because of pogroms. In practically every community in southern Russia there have been anywhere from six to as many as twenty-six massacres.


The Growth of Anti-Semitism

By the time of Becker's arrival in Lemberg, the history of the Jews in Poland had taken a new and more sinister turn. They were a highly visible thorn in the side of Poland, dangerously so in a period of increased anti-Semitism.

Added to the long-standing causes of anti-Semitism there were now several new ones. A great economic change had taken place, and the Poles, who up to then had spurned the world of business and contemptuously left it to the Jewish or German mercantile class, were now entering it in great numbers, encroaching on territory the Jews counted historically as their own.

With Lemberg bombed daily, the Ruthenians at the gates (at the time Becker was there the railroad between Sadowa Wisznia and Grodak was taken, so that the city was cut off from the outside world), with even little children bravely helping in the defense, the indifference of so many of the Jewish populace aroused a terrible fury. Becker, with his feelings of patriotism for his own country, had little sympathy for the attitude of his fellow Jews. Illustrating the ambivalence of the Jewish community toward Poland's foes he wrote in his Lemberg diary (p. 41):

At noon I ate dinner with Dr. and Mrs. Lilien at their home. These people are "Amalgamati~~~t~"-i.e., they believe in being Jews but in being Polish Jews. -Later in the afternoon I took tea at Mrs. Meisel's house. At times our discussion was quite heated. The people at the gathering are very strong Zionists and believe that the Jews ought to be able to live in Poland not as Poles but as Jews. For example in the war with Ukrainia, they don't care who wins and want to be neutral, saying that they are Jews not Poles nor Ukrainians. In this I believe they are wrong and that the Polish govenunent is right when they say that such a stand cannot exist and that therefore you are either for us or against us-either a friend or an enemy. To bring out her point Mrs. Meisel said that Poles who live in America are Poles-to which I strenuously objected and said that if that were the case there would be no American nation, that America did not want anyone who in her hour of need would forsake America for the land of his birth.

Later in his diary (p. 58) he enlarged upon this:

Every day I become more and more convinced that the Jews have made a terrible mistake. Of course the pogroms were horrible and inexcusable, but one can understand how they happened. At a time when national aspirations are running so terribly high, in a country which has just obtained a long desired independence, a large

American Jewish Archives

group of people (Jews) declare that in Poland's hour of need they are Jews and not Poles, and that therefore in the Polish-Ruthenian war they are neutral. Of course this was highly resented and the Poles said: "You are either our friends or our enemies, but you cannot be neutral." One can understand this viewpoint. In America if people of Geman descent for example had taken this stand we too would have adopted the same course. Of course not all the Jews feel the same way the Zionists do, the Nationalists (assimilated Polish Jews) do not. Personally I have no sympathy for the political reasoning of the former in this country. If Poland was good enough to live in, it was good enough to fight for.

However, Becker was well aware of the other side of the coin, for in the same diary (p. 40) one reads:

I like Dr. Meisels very well and we had a most interesting talk. Nearly every, if not every, Jew that I have talked to feels that his position in Poland is hopeless, and they see no light ahead. He was a captain in the Austrian army and was decorated seven times-a wonderful collection of medals. He resigned from the Polish army after November 21-23, when the Polish government did not punish those responsible for the pogrom outrages.

Theodor Herzl, summarizing the plight of the Jews, wrote: "They are the historic product of cruelty. The Jew after all is per- petually living in enemy territory." In Eastern Europe the Jews were driven into a twofold way of life, the one devoted to religion, the other to survival and outwitting their enemies, and this had a profound and disastrous effect, developing in them characteristics that were disagreeable to their countrymen and further inflamed the ever-present anti-Semitism.

These were the people with whom Becker would have to deal, and it obviously would not be easy. Despite his empathy there was also to be exasperation. In a letter dated February 23,1920 to Boris Bogen, a Russian-born American Jew who was one of the top officials of the JDC1s relief operations, there is an echo of Brandeis: "And you of course realize that no two East European Jews ever agree as to a cultural matter." And elsewhere: "It is hard to work with them because first they talk all around the point and then get down to business, and that of course means a waste of time." Loss of time could be a very serious matter and even mean starvation for those with whose cases the committees were dealing. A letter home dated January 18, 1920 demonstrates what Becker was up

East European Jmry after World War I 309

against, and if the tone is a little too triumphant, it must be remembered that he was pouring out his heart to the intimacy of his family. That Becker did triumph was partly due to his considerable tal- ents, but also to the power he wielded in the name of the JDC and the United States.

Here I have found the same story in the same old way-two committees each wanti- ng to handle the relief work. Everyone has said that I could not bring the two committees together and that other delegates from Bessarabia etc., have been here, have tried to do this and failed. I have not been beaten once at this game, and I think I started out on the right track. I told them that until they got together by themselves and formed a new committee out of the two old ones, that I won't even talk relief work, much less give them any money. What is more I have stuck to my principle and today they are holding a meeting to try and combine the two committees and form a new one. Whether I will win out or not remains to be seen, but I believe they will do what I want because they know I mean business. This whole political game makes me sick and as far as relief work goes it makes no difference to me nor to the people who contributed the great bulk of the money in the United States, whether relief is administered by a Zionist or an anti-Zionist or a Socialist. What I have always been after was a relief committee which will administer relief and forget all about these damn politics.

Nevertheless, as Becker's work proceeded in Poland and Romania, his feelings toward these brothers of his deepened and grew. He understood very well the historical reasons for their behavior. He had seen some of the cruel struggle for survival in which they had to engage, conforming to a world of unreason and weaving their way through barriers and laws contrived only as obstacles. Amidst the devastation and destruction, Becker saw them survive through the strength of their religion and their ancient roots. And so he reported, in an address delivered at a National Conference of Jewish Social Service on June 20,1921:

. . . I realize as well as anyone else that all peoples have their bad as well as good points, but I strongly feel that we have good reason to feel proud of the Jews of Eastern Europe for their marvelous idealism and for the great emphasis which they place on the spiritual side of life, even during these times when the world in general is prone to over-emphasize merely the material and leave unheeded those subtler and finer things which, after all, go to determine what of value there really is in any given group of people.

A letter written in 1924 reiterated the depth of his feelings:

310 American Jewish Archives I went to the opening of "The Dybbuk" and you are quite right. It is not at all light and gay, but it is surely beautifully given and I got a tremendous emotional reaction from the play-the greater perhaps because I know something of the Chassidic movement and of the people. It was beautiful and right to show to non-Jews, and to the German Jews too, as far as that goes, despite their conception of the physical filth of the Ghetto, there was great spiritual cleanliness and beauty. That it was obscured by superstition to me means nothing. But then people who need to find out these things won't pay any attention to them.

Jews were only part of the East European population that Becker had to understand. It was also necessary to deal with the Ruthenians, a despised minority for whom he had to try to obtain equable food distribution from the Poles, the two groups having only their strong anti-Semitism in common. But the condition of the Jews and the hatred directed at them did not blind him to an appre- ciation of the Ruthenians and Poles and their respective religions. He was able to feel warmth and friendship for many Poles and admiration for their indomitable courage under attack, their social grace and charm, and to be enchanted with the Polish women for their education, sophistication, and soft melodious voices, in contrast, or so it seemed to him, to the girls he had left behind him.

Coming as he did, however, from a totally different culture, with the inexperience of youth and untarnished idealism, Becker was shocked to find that devotion to independence did not seem to demand of the Poles the behavior he had learned to associate with it at home. The attitude of the Poles toward the Jews appeared to be only an intensification of their feelings toward any of the groups they considered their inferiors.

In a letter dated March 28,1919 he wrote:

-This is the land of hate and prejudice, and the very air is tainted. With all the talk of freedom of govemment etc., it is my personal belief that the upper classes of Poland-and the success of all governments must depend upon the educated classes-are not democratized and are unfit for a republican govemment as we in America conceive of the term. Their conception of freedom and republicanism is to be given leeway to kick and enslave those people whom they do not like.

And in his diary (p. 26):

The Poles have a great deal of the imperial Prussian spirit in them. Here, just as in Warsaw, the soldiers driving our machine, go wild, swear and holler at anyone

East European Jewry after World W a r I 311

unfortunate enough to be in our way, run through the muddy streets at a high rate of speed regardless of whom they splash and cover with mud. To me it is very revolt- ing and in Warsaw, Pate and I complained to Mr. Znamiocki. For people who were just freed from a tyrannical rule they act most queer. If the military is to suppress the civil, if the latter are to stand for every and all insults from the military, if this is the much vaunted democracy and Polish Freedom, why the Hell with it.

Polish anti-Semitism was general and all-pervasive, and in Becker's diaries, instances repeatedly erupt, like smallpox pus- tules, giving evidence of the disease.

On a trip to Warsaw at two stations before reaching that place, I saw a Jew who was very quietly dressed, just like an American, and who was badly buffeted by a Pole. The Jew paid absolutely no attention to this, but immediately a big Polish officer took him by the back of his collar and threw him with great force all along the platform. Nobody among the many spectators as much as looked around at this.

On a Saturday afternoon Dr. Bogen at the suggestion of Mr. Billikopf, called a meeting of Yiddish newspapers for the purpose of preparing plans for an agitation of the press, whereby rich Jews of Warsaw, millionaires of whom it is said there are 60 to loo, start a fund for the relief of the local poor in order to stimulate gifts from America. While the meeting was in progress a Polish policeman came in and asked what the meeting was for and what language was beihg used. I desire to call to your attention the fact that this was a gathering in the nature of a tea-party in Dr. Bogen's own home, which he makes with a very fine and cultured Jewish family.

While I was at Dr. Bogen's home, he led me to a balcony outside his sitting room, which is on the fifth floor of a house in the Polish quarter, right on the edge of the Jewish quarter. Dr. Bogen told me that from the window he witnessed some weeks ago a scene in the streets in which Jews were shot at and very badly treated by the Poles. He said there was nothing he could do in the matter.. .

I was glad to get away from Warsaw. As I said to Dr. Bogen and Col. Grove, I felt the air was poisoned with hate and I was happy to leave.

In a letter home (April 4) Becker wrote of Paderewski, the Polish premier, whom he had previously met and with whom he had an opportunity to confer:

in private life, Paderewski was very anti-semitic and as an individual I imagine he still is. However, Paderewski is a capable statesman and as such he knows that to win the confidence of the outside world-and of America and England in particular, he must adopt a liberal policy of theoretical (at least) equality for all, regardless of religion or creed. Pressure has also been brought by the Jewish Relief Committee and from the Jews of Poland. And he recently issued a public statement saying that he deplored the fact that pogroms had taken place and requested order and no more violence. He also issued a statement saying that the Jews in Poland could expect the same treatment as the Jews receive in America. Personally I believe he would stop all pogroms if possible (sometimes the government of Poland isn't strong enough to put down all distur-

312 American Jewish Archives bances) from a political, if not from a personal standpoint.

Such, at a very cursory glance, was the story of the Jews of Eastern Europe, and some of the forces which shaped their personalities and differentiated them from their brothers in the West. This then was the land, these the people and some of the problems which James Becker faced during his memorable days in a time of great turmoil and suffering.

Hortense Becker is the widow of James H. Becker. She wrote this portrait of her husband, of blessed memory, based upon letters and diaries in her possession.

Notes I. American Relief Administration Journal, 1925. 2. Elias Heifetz, Slaughter of the Jews in the Ukraine in 19x9 (Thomas Seltzer, 1921). 3. See ibid.

Documents

American Jewish Personalities James Becker and East ...americanjewisharchives.org/publications/journal/... · James Becker and East European Jewry after World War I Hortense Becker