“We wouldn’t call this a paradise”

After the death of Poland’s head of state, Józef Piłsudski, in 1935, Poland witnessed a wave of anti-Jewish violence. The most notorious incident occurred in Przytyk on March 9, 1936. In June 1936, anti-Jewish riots broke out in Mińsk Mazowiecki and in Myślenice (near Krakow). Although these anti-Jewish outbreaks were sporadic, the general situation of the Polish Jewry was rapidly worsening. ⁵⁴ The deterioration, which included not only physical violence but sustained attacks on Jewish economic and religious life, continued through to the 1939 German invasion. ⁵⁵

It was in the midst of such a threatening reality that arguably the most famous Yiddish film of all time, Yidl mitn fidl, was created. In September 1936, Joseph Green, the film’s producer, told the journal Literarishe bleter, “I tried to present the salient moments of social injustice not as loud propaganda but rather as moments of pure art.” ⁵⁶ Green knew well that the question of social injustice toward the Jewish population in Poland could not be shown openly on the Polish screen in the late 1930s. Only a few months earlier, the Polish censor had publically banned the screening of Aleksander Ford’s Yiddish film, Mir kumen on, due to its blunt, unabashed depiction of Jewish distress and its suggestion of an unacceptable solution in the eyes of the Polish authorities—class solidarity instead of national antagonism. ⁵⁷ Unlike Mir kumen on, Yidl mitn fidl aestheticized extreme poverty (in sharp contrast to the reality that the film’s star, Molly Picon, later recalled). ⁵⁸ The destitution portrayed in the film actually appeared photogenic; the forced wanderings of the protagonists did not evoke any pain, and the oppression was manageable, accompanied by copious musical scenes.

When presenting his principles of filmmaking, Green argued that there is a need for “a considerable scale of folklore and ethnography” in Yiddish films. In a press conference devoted to the film, he and others emphasized the use of “Jewish popular motifs.” ⁵⁹ Green, the producer, and the non-Jewish (Polish Catholic) director of the Yiddish film, Jan Nowina-Przybylski, made use of the motif of Kazimierz so enrooted in the Jewish-Polish folklore. ⁶⁰ It seems to me that the use of the motif of Kazimierz enabled them to present their critical point of view regarding the Jewish situation in Poland. An analysis of still and moving images from the picture reveals a subtle disappointment and despair that could not be presented directly because of severe censorship constraints.

Yidl mitn fidl begins with a panoramic view of Kazimierz. A long shot from the Hill of the Three Crosses shows the ruins of the king’s castle; it is followed by a sweeping view of the city and its well-known buildings and city market in a manner that, as Avraham Novershtern has pointed out, evokes the myth of Esterke. ⁶¹ By awakening historical memories associated with Kazimierz, the directors led viewers to expect a story about the Jewish presence in Poland—more specifically, about the success of Jewish integration into the Polish polity. Then come shots of the marketplace on market day while a melodic, longing music recalls the traditional market square and the Jews’ place in pre-modern Polish society. Then, the noise of the contemporary marketplace in full activity intermingles with the changing, less melodic, music. A cacophony of less pleasant sounds rises, reflecting contemporary Jewish existence. These early scenes offer a sharp portrayal of the market from different points of view, depicting it as a dynamic place of encounter and interchange. Like in Scholem Asch’s representation of Kazimierz in his 1904 novella, A shtetl, the images show Jews almost exclusively, while relegating non-Jews to the background in the role of peasants coming to the town on the market day. ⁶² The non-Jews function as a picturesque symbol or, in a later scene, as a hostile rude figure who expels the protagonist, Yidl (literally, the little Jew), and his fellows from the courtyard.

After earning two złoty and buying a herring and a roll for her father, the film’s main protagonist, a poor girl, runs through Kazimierz’s narrow streets to her home, only to discover that she and her father have been dislodged. The difficulties she experiences in making a living offer a glimpse into the misery and constraints of Jewish existence in Poland. Symbolically, being dislodged from Kazimierz, a place that evokes the Jewish myth of inclusion, is like the exclusion of Jews from contemporary Polish life that appeared to be the aim of the Polish government. Trying to console her father, the protagonist notes that “Adam and Eve were also thrown out of Paradise, and we wouldn’t call this a paradise”—a statement that invites a contrast with the myth of Polonia paradisus Judaeorum. Hence, as if with a smile, the filmmakers did not present “social injustice” as “loud propaganda.” Their work deflects the wrath of the censors. By awakening myths of a positive Polish Jewish past, the film manages to highlight the failure to accommodate a Jewish presence in the Polish state.

With the abandonment of the traditional shtetl, a metamorphosis of traditional Jewish society begins. Yidl, the little Jew, embarks on an enterprise of transformation and modernization (not only social and geographical, but including gender roles as well). The change is radical. Yidl is transformed and modernized in Warsaw, the Polish capital, the epitome Polish statehood. Yidl’s success is shown on the first pages of the main Warsaw Jewish dailies, Yiddish as well as Polish, illustrating in this way his relevance for those ensconced in the multilingual culture of the interwar Polish Jewry. ⁶³ However, his successful transformation does not ensure Yidl a place in Poland. In the final analysis, the film suggests that there is no room in the country not only for the traditional Jew who has been expelled from the “paradise” of Kazimierz but also for the modernized urban Jew. As Avraham Nowersztern has observed, the film, whose scenes pass through Polish roads, forest, rivers, and its capital, Warsaw, ends in Gdynia, Poland’s new gate to the sea, on a ship to the United States. Yet like the abundant singing and the forced “happy end,” this outcome is completely unreal. By 1936, the doors of United States had been closed to mass immigration for more than a decade. ⁶⁴

54. Emanuel Melzer, No Way Out: The Politics of Polish Jewry 1935–1939 (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press, 1997), 53–63.↩
55. Ibid., 39–52, 63–70, 81–94.↩
56. “Der nayer yidisher film ‘Yidl mit’n fiddl’ (a geshprekh mitn director un mitn regisseur Yosef Green),” Literarishe bleter 39 (1936): 625.↩
57. Antoni Słonimski, Romans z X Muzą: Teksty filmowe z lat 1917–1976 (Warsaw: Biblioteka Więzi 2007), 232–33; Gertrud Pickhan, Gegen den Strom: der Allgemeine Jüdische Arbeiterbund “Bund” in Polen 1918–1939 (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2001), 251; Hoberman, Bridge of Light, 230–31; Stanisław Janicki, Aleksander Ford (Warsaw: Wydawn. Artystyczne i Filmowe, 1967), 31–34.↩
58. “...Kazimierz, a shabby, broken down village, where King Kazmierz (Casimir III) had once reigned with his Jewish queen. I had never seen such a poverty—outdoor plumbing, rickety wooden houses bent into fantastic shapes, and the people unbelievably threadbare. The skeletal children, with their long payes (sideburns) and little yarmulkes (skullcaps), wore trousers that were shreds and shoes tied on their feet with rope. My heart went out to every one of them.” Molly Picon and Jean Bergantini Grillo, Molly: An Autobiography (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1980), 67.↩
59. “A nayer yiddisher klang film: ‘Yidl mitn fidl’ mit Molly Picon in der hoyptrole,” Literarishe bleter no. 29 (1936). ↩
60. On Jan Nowina-Przybylski as director of the film and Green as producer, see Silber, “Narrowing the Borderland’s ‘Third Space,’” 239–41. ↩
61. Avraham Novershtern presented this idea at the conference, “Yiddish: Culture, Ideology and Politics,” held at in University of Haifa, November 26–28, 2000.↩
62. Adamczyk-Garbowska, “Jewish Writers on Painters in Kazimierz.”↩
63. The film shows the first pages of the Jewish dailies in the following order: Haynt (Yiddish), 5ta Rano (Polish), Moment (Yiddish), Nasz Przegląd (Polish), then the following Yiddish dailies: Varshaver Radio, Hayntike Nayes, Unzer Ekspress, Folkstsaytung.↩
64. See above, n. 61.↩