TWENTY YEARS OF INDEPENDENCE 303empowered to raise their own finances. Jewish social bodies, from hospitals and
orphanages, to sports clubs, musical societies, and insurance and co-operative
associations, proliferated in all areas. Jewish middle-class life, in particular,
moved along in an aura of confidence and affluence. In 1919, Roza Pomerantz-
Meltzer, a Zionist, gained the distinction of being Poland's first woman deputy.
In 1938, Lazar Rundsztejn, a Jewish flyweight, won his class in the national box-
ing championship. Anyone who has seen the remarkable records which these
people left behind them, and which have been collected in YIVO's post-war
headquarters in New York, cannot fail to note the essential dynamism of Polish
Jewry at this juncture. All was not well; but neither was it unrelieved gloom.^15
(See also pp. 260-3.)
Two million Byelorussians shared the experience of their fellow Ruthenians,
the Ukrainians. Together with 'Western Ukraine', 'Western Byelorussia' formed
the heart of Poland's most backward region, the so-called 'Polska-B' (Second
Class Poland), and had no separate political or administrative status. After an ini-
tial period when far-reaching concessions were made in the realm of a free press,
democratic elections, national education, and political organizations, 1924 saw
the onset of an official reaction against incipient Byelorussian separatism. The
Byelorussian language, now wedded to the Latin alphabet, was given little sup-
port; and three hundred Byelorussian schools were turned over to Polish teachers.
The Byelorussian Hramada (Commune), a socialist peasant movement, was bro-
ken up by police action in 1928, and its leaders imprisoned. In the 1930s the
Byelorussian countryside took its share of punishment from the Sanacja's
pacification campaigns. Polish officialdom tended to favour Byelorussian
Catholics, whom they classified as Bialopolaki (White Poles), whilst suspecting
the Orthodox Byelorussian Rusini (Ruthenes) of potential irredentism. A new
wave of oppression began in 1935 when more schools, Orthodox churches, and
cultural societies were closed down. By 1939, the Byelorussians were still largely
unpoliticized. The few that were politically active showed little enthusiasm for
the Polish connection. They were due for a rude awakening.^16
Close to one million Germans were served by a plethora of political, cultural,
and social organizations, many of which were amalgamated in 1931 in the central
Rat der Deutscben in Polen (Council of Germans in Poland). The German
Socialist Workers Party in Poland (DSAP) was formed in 1925 from older German
socialist groups working separately in Upper Silesia, Lodz, and Poznari. It ran its
own trade unions and youth movement, whilst co-operating closely with the PPS.
Both these organizations were opposed by a nationalist Jungdeutsche Partei
(Young German Party) operating from Bielsko (Bielitz). In the 1930s, the entire
German community felt the shock-waves of Hitler's rise to power, and from 1935
was courted by the local Landesgruppe-Polen (Regional Group-Poland) of the
Nazi Party and its press organ, Idee and Wille (Idea and Will).^17
Other national minorities, including the Russians and Lithuanians of the
north-east, and the Czechs of the extreme south-west, had insufficient numbers
to influence anything but the local scene.