a poem of his which ends with the exclamation: “Bundist, Trotskyite, Poale Zionist, out!” (Jude weg).107 Every day the paper threw buckets of filth [27] on Białystok labour activists who thought differently, like Waks, Goldman,108 and Flamenbojm,109 who were arrested by them. Those people were arrested, but the leader of the Endecja and chairman of the Homeowners Association, who became a housing inspector in Białystok, didn’t lose a hair of his head. It wasn’t him they wrote about (just gave him a top job) but the Bundist Zelwiański, whom they vilified for days as a degenerate wretch. Zelwiańskiwas sacked, since the paper’s main task was precisely that – to get enemies of the people thrown out of work.
The newspaper itself was chaotic, mostly reports of conferences and fac-tory and union meetings, and the main theme was a hymn of praise to thegreater leader of mankind. Consider, for example, the report by the former Trotskyite Grossman,110 headed “I longed for Stalin”, in which he describedhow everywhere – in bed, in the cinema, seeing him on the screen, or hear-ing him on the radio – he longed for the father of the peoples, the great andmighty Stalin! Or the poem sent in by the provincial “Mr Emyot”,111 on theoccasion of Stalin’s birthday, full of slavish adoration and excessive praise. Everyone was shocked. If it had been the work of a communist baker like Leyzer Volf, everyone would have understood. But the Trotskyist Grossman,who only yesterday poured fire and brimstone on all Stalinists, and the reli-gious whippersnapper Emyot, were heaping praise on Stalin? Not only did it
