ZOLYNIA BETWEEN THE WORLD WARS

Under Austrian rule, Markus (Mordecai) Jokel served as a rare Jewish police detective on the local police force. Dismissed after Polish independence, he became a peddlar and secured other sporadic work for his family from the Potocki estate. Typically, in the weak economy he and his large family became dependent on aid from children in the United States (photo circa 1930).

In December 1918, in the glow of newly-declared Polish independence, local villagers in Zolynia carried out a pogrom against their Jewish neighbors. Probably venting longtime feelings that Jews had been allied with the Austrians in a society that subdued progress for Poles, there was a two-day riot. Twelve Jews were injured, one of them an eighty-year old man, and Jewish property was looted and pillaged. A unit of the new Polish army was based at Lancut and arrived at Zolynia to restore order, but left after half an hour without taking action. It was an inauspicious start to independence.

In 1919, perhaps inspired by the pogrom, a Jewish library and an adjacent reading room were opened in the town, and Zionist organizations became active again in Zolynia.

Jews in the new Poland had civil rights and there were no legal restrictions on their participation in society. But in other ways, the situation for Zolynia Jews had gotten harder and not easier. The Polish census of 1921 shows that the Zolynia Centre had lost forty-four percent of its population since 1900, down to 954 residents. Of these, 569 were Jews, down from the high of 1,071 in 1880 (the overall population of the town and the outlying village areas was about 4,900, down a fifth since 1880). The shrinking population shrank potential sources of livelihood. For several years after the war, Jewish emigration had continued, but by 1924 strict new immigration restrictions and quotas in the United States removed even that as an option for many Zoliners.

In 1925, Zolynia Centre was downgraded from a full township to a village, reflecting its population losses.

Like many other towns and villages in Poland, a Jewish free loan society was established in Zolynia, so that those who were doing well could help others survive. In 1929, this fund made thirty-three loans (totaling 2,470 zlotys or 277 1929 U.S. dollars, which equals 2,695 U.S. dollars in 2000). This was not enough to help many Jewish merchants and craftsmen who lost their businesses.

A 1929 directory lists 102 businesses and merchants in Zolynia. At least thirty concerns are Jewish merchants selling goods, notions, grains, cloth and fabrics and other items. Another twenty or so are Jewish craftsman such as tailors, tanners, glaziers and butchers. Some Jews had returned to the liquor and beer business. The most common businesses listed with non-Jewish proprietors are shoemakers and millers; most local non-Jews were still agricultural workers. At this time, Zolynia also had a savings and loan bank, a pharmacy, a restaurant, a brickyard and a physician, Dr. Pajak.

By this time, Count Alfred III had successfully transformed his estate from a semi-feudal situation into a modern agrarian-industrial-financial conglomerate. After independence, many of his farm properties had been voluntarily allotted to others, such as war veterans, and a national law limited his ownership of the many forests around Zolynia. Nevertheless, he continued to be the dominant economic force in the area, employing a number of Jews in his many businesses and on his estates. A surviving Jewish resident of Zolynia remembers that on Sundays the Count would often distribute small amounts of cash and provisions to the local poor, including Jews.

The rise in Zionist activity in Zolynia during the 1930s may indicate that some were giving up on the possibility of safety and acceptance in Poland. There were local chapters of the General Zionists (less militant than some other factions, favoring slow migration of Jews to Palestine) and the Religious Zionists (the Mizrachi faction, advocating a Palestine governed by orthodox Jewish law and sponsoring many new Jewish settlements there). Classes in Hebrew, intended by Zionists to be the daily language of the new homeland, were popular in Zolynia.

Young adults, teenagers and older children in the town, perhaps rejecting the perceived passivity of their elders, established their own activist organizations. Benei Akiva was allied with the Religious Zionist faction. Hanoar Hatzioni was more centrist like the General Zionists and advocated a Jewish state based on free enterprise. In 1933 chapters were formed for Young Women's International Zionist Organization, dedicated to the advancement of the status of women, and Betar, a group that advocated military training for Jewish self-defense and which had sixty members in Zolynia. Jews throughout the world who could afford and who wished to pay the appropriate dues could vote for a faction in the World Zionist Organization, and in the 1935 elections in Zolynia, 119 Jews supported the General Zionists and one supported the Religious Zionists. This reflected the generally assimilated style of Zoliners. During these years there were many classes in Hebrew and Jewish studies

There was an explosion of anti-Jewish violence in Poland starting in 1935, encouraged by events in Germany and by a new nationalist government which enacted restrictions and humiliations on Jewish citizens (such as Jewish segregation in university classrooms, and an economic boycott). In 1923, just under one in four of Poland's university students were Jewish; by 1938 less than one in ten students are Jewish. With strict quotas and limits on immigration in the United States, some Zolynia Jews left for Palestine and other countries. But for those among Zolynia's six hundred or so Jews who may have wanted to leave, time was running out.