(Editor’s note: The following impressions of his hometown were written by Pejsach Kaplan, a prominent Bialystoker writer and social activist).
Bjalystok! My feelings toward it are not motivated by patriotism alone, which warms the heart of every proud person when he thinks and talks about his birthplace. Bialystok was unique, its specialness lying in the boundless, untiring energies of its populace. Surely the appearance of the town reflected this immense vitality.
For example, all of the newer three-story buildings on the main streets, erected within a fifteen-year period at the end of the 19th century, were not built in response to a sudden increase in population but resulted from a compulsive drive for expansion. Often construction took place without sufficient finances or the necessary assessment of how these new units would be utilized. People simply assumed the banks would supply the cash and tenants would automatically move in. These fresh ‘skyscrapers" reflected the indefatigable energy of Bialystoker Jews.
In and around the town stood tall, round factory chimneys, belching forth industrial smoke. Whether these plants multiplied because the earlier German authorities would not permit Jews to live in Bialystok without jobs or whether the later Russian occupation wanted Bialystok’s industry to outproduce the mills in Polish Lodz, Jewish initiative developed the commercial network in Bialystok to an enormous degree, paving the way for similar industrialization deep inside Russia and even as far as China.
Also Bialystoker Jews’ approach to life was more inspired than in other places. The pursuit of life and happiness, of achievement and humanitarian causes was much more extensive than elsewhere. Truly the Bialystoker Jew’s creative drive, which percolated in his blood, did not let him rest. He was impelled toward action, oftentimes above and beyond his stamina.
Almost all of Bialystok’s social institutions emerged from this limitless urge to create. Organizations multiplied, housed in large buildings, many of which were decorated, fitted with all kinds of equipment, and well maintained. Their continued existence frequently depended on the expenditure of blood, sweat and tears, each corner of those scores of buildings paying tribute to the massive energy of their architects and administrators.
Even amidst poverty Bialystok was a princess among other towns. In its decline Bialystok still shone through the beauty and the love of life of its youth.
A number of individuals, profoundly energized by the ambitious environment in which they lived, have attained great heights of achievement, and are now serving in various countries as beacons of light reflecting Bialystoker ingenuity. To be sure, every town has produced its great people, but which can claim such a singular native son as Dr. Josef Chazanowicz, for example, who despite his poverty laid the cornerstone of a Jewish national library in Israel, rousing and electrifying world Jewry with his almost superhuman verve?
Another illustrious scion of Bialystok was Dr. Ludwig Zamenhof. This man, who with his prophetic vision observed nations and states, was concerned about the future of mankind, and invented for all people one language, Esperanto. Its revolutionary force broke through all barriers, recruiting converts from the courts of kings as well as the shacks of menial laborers.
And what of the Zionist movement? Its breeding ground in Eastern Europe was for a long time located in Bialystok, in the home of Rabbi Szmuel Mohilewer. With his characteristic boldness, he made contact with the Jewish magnate, Baron Edmond de Rothschild, winning him over to the great Zionist ideal, and creating a place for thousands of pioneers to work in the land of Jewish hope and aspiration.
When the first clandestine stirrings of the Russian Revolution convulsed the world, it was on the anvil of Bialystok that the formidable power was forged to smash the massive Czarist empire into dust. Bialystok paid for this privilege with 130 Jewish lives lost during two pogroms. In the annals of the freedom movement the name of Bialystok will be forever engraved in golden letters.
I do not wish to deliver a requiem to Bialystok’s greatness. It is altogether possible that also in a negative sense — in terms of crime or crooked business dealings — Bialystok distinguished itself, thanks to its capacity for surpassing the average. But there can be no doubt that it possessed a certain exceptional quality visa-vis other cities in Poland. Every Bialystoker Jew has felt this uniqueness as has anyone else who has ever had any contact with our town.
I would dare say that even foreign lands were aware of Bialystok’s singularity. In New York, for example, there are several hundred organized Jewish Iandsmanschaften, but not one of them is as sophisticated and as versatile as the Bialystoker Center. The same is true of our Iandsmanschaft in Chicago. All over the world, in fact, wherever a few Bialystoker Jews gather, regardless of their number, they immediately organize themselves into a colony, in touch with other Bialystoker communities and with their birthplace.
Bialystok’s strength rests not only in its extraordinary features but in its normal characteristics as well. The fifty thousand living there are doing reasonably well financially and also spiritually, like other Jews in Poland.
Still, Bialystok was the first, at the end of the German occupation after World War I, to abolish its autocratic community leadership, replacing it with an exemplary democratic system that will go down in history.
The Hebraist movement in Bialystok was only a part of the diffuse cultural advance in all of Poland. But when Bialystok established its Hebrew Gymnasium (high school), it was the rank and file Jews, not the radical Hebraists, who erected it. The tall, sturdy building evoked the admiration of the local community as well as of visitors from near and far, especially since it could accommodate seven hundred students.
The Yiddish influence in Bialystok was also only a part of the Yiddish movement in all of Poland and in the entire world. But with the exception of Wilno, no other Jewish town besides Bialystok was able to fashion such an intricate Yiddish school network, let alone a high school, despite difficult circumstances.
The orphan problem became one of the most critical social issues in Bialystok after World War I. Surely no other city had someone like Mrs. Rabinowicz, who. when the situation became next to hopeless, was the only leader in all of Poland who went to America to obtain the necessary assistance for these unfortunate children.
It is possible to mention hundreds of other examples of community and private initiatives in Bialystok, which clearly depict its special atmosphere of effervescing creativity — a contagion transmitted from one to another — compelling everyone to outdo his neighbor. Such is the breeding ground for important accomplishments.
