Danzig, Free City of Danzig

DANZIG (Polish Gdansk). Jewish merchants were active in the city from the mid-l5th century despite the ban imposed by the Teutonic Order. They continued to trade without permanent residence rights under Polish rule, exporting grain and lumber through the big port. Few lived in the city itself in the first years of Prussian rule. Their numbers increased in the early 19th century and Jews from the Russian Empire arrived after the middle of the century, forming their own community of about 300. The five separate congregations in the environs of Danzig - Schottland, Langfuhr, Weinberg, Mattenbunden, and Breitegasse - united in 1883. The community was served from 1837 by R. Yisrael Lipschütz, known for his Tifret Yisrael commentary on the Mishna. From the mid-19th century, the Jews of Danzig were active in the struggle for emancipation and participated in public and cultural life. Their protests modified the expulsion order from Danzig issued against Russian Jews in 1885, limiting it to include only the poor, whom the community helped emigrate to the U.S. Despite differences, Orthodox and Liberals were able to build a common synagogue in 1887. Greater resistance was shown to the Zionists, with the community subscribing to the 1897 declaration by the rabbis of Germany that Zionism was a danger to the Jews. By 1910, the community numbered 2,717. Most Jews belonged to the middle class, thriving in a city known for its liberalism. After WWI, Danzig became a free city under League of Nations auspices, thus opening the door to East European immigration, which swelled the Jewish population to 9,239 in 1924 and 12,000 in 1937. The newcomers were fully integrated in public and economic life. In 1925, Jews constituted a third of the city’s lawyers and even a higher percentage of its doctors and dentists. From the 1930s, with the Nazi Party gaining a majority in the local senate, antisemitism increased dramatically, disillusioning many of the liberals and assimilationists among the Jews and driving them into the camp of the Zionists, whose activities expanded greatly after WWI. Jewish complaints to the League of Nations and the local courts about official discrimination were of little avail. On 20-23 October 1937, after a virulent Nazi propaganda campaign, a pogrom was staged with heavy damage to Jewish homes and businesses. In September 1938 the licenses of Jewish doctors were revoked and on 13 December local Nazis staged their own Kristallnacht. While the synagogue was damaged, its contents were saved and sent for safekeeping to the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. With all Jewish children in a separate Jewish school after being forced out of the public schools by Hitler Youth harassment, preparations were made there for emigration to Palestine through Youth Aliya by including classes in agriculture. Vocational training was also organized among adults. By September 1939, 1,666 Jews remained in the city (total population 449,990). Additional efforts were made to emigrate, the last group sailing for Palestine on the Patria, which was subsequently sunk in Haifa port. Of the 600 Jews in the city in early 1941, many were expelled to General Gouvernement territory in February and the residents of the Jewish old age home were deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto. A community was reestablished after the war.