The Folkspartei (Yiddish: Yidishe folkspartay ; Democratic party of the people or party folkist) was founded in 1905-1906 (after the pogroms of 1905) by Simon Dubnow and Israel Efrojkin. It took part in various elections in Poland and in Lithuania during the inter-war period and did not survive the Shoah.

Its ideological inspirer was the historian Simon Dubnow (1860-1941), for whom the Juifs form a nation on the spiritual and intellectual level and must fight for their national and cultural autonomy. " How then Jewish autonomy should be affirmed? That must, of course, being in full agreement with the character of the Jewish national idea. The Jews, as a spiritual and cultural nation, cannot seek in the diaspora territorial or political separatism, but only one social autonomy or main road-culturelle." Near to the Bund by the stress laid on the Yiddish and its culture, it was different from it by its social base, made up of small middle-class men, craftsmen, intellectuals, but also on the ideological level, Dubnow considering for example, contrary to the bundists, that the assimilation was not a natural phenomenon and that the Jewish political combat was to be centered on a Jewish autonomy based on the community, the language and education, and not on the class struggles as the theorists bundists preached it.

Folkspartei in Poland

A local section and a daily newspaper, Warszawer Togblat (the daily newspaper of Warsaw, renamed later on DER Moment ), were set up in 1916 at Warsaw before the municipal elections which proceeded there under German occupation. Folkspartei obtained there 4 elected officials, of which Nojech (Noah) Pryłucki.

Within Sejm (Polish Parliament) of 1922-27, there was 1 deputy folkist out of the 35 Jewish elected officials (including 25 Zionists and no bundist).

The party was divided in 1927 in two groups, that of Warsaw directed by Pryłucki and that of Vilnius (Polish city at the time) by Dr. Zemach (Tsemach) Shabad (Szabad) (1864-1935), one moment elected appointed in Sejm, less hostile with the Zionism but more centered on the language Yiddish.

After this scission, the party seems to have declined, in spite of an attempt to make it reappear in Warsaw in 1935. With the Jewish Community elections in Warsaw in 1936, Folkspartei obtained only one seat out of 50, whereas Bund collected 15 of them.

Folkspartei in Lithuania

A Jewish joint list between the Zionists, Agoudat Israel and Folkspartei obtained 6 seats out of 112 with the Lithuanian constituent Assembly (Seimas) elected in 1920. The party was represented there, after the death of NR. Friedman, lawyer elected without label, by the lawyer and banking Shmuel Landoi (Pram). Pram was thereafter city council man in Ponevezh (Lithuanian: Panevėžys) until in the years 1930.

The following elections, in 1922, were the subject of handling against the minorities Polish and Jewish, Seimas was dissolves and another folkist, E. Finkelstein, were elected in 1923 on a list gathering the national minorities. The Lithuanian Parliament was dissolves one year after the coup d'etat of Augustinas Voldemaras.

The newspaper of Folkspartei in Lithuania was the " Folkblatt" , published in Kaunas.

sources

• C. Bezalel Sherman, Bund, Galuth nationalism, Yiddishism, Herzl Institute Lampoon no.6, New York, 1958

• Mitchell Cohen, Ber Borochov and Socialist Zionism (From the introduction to Class Struggle and the Jewish Nation: Selected Essays in Marxist Zionism by Ber Borochov; Mitchell Cohen, ED. Books transaction: 1984)
• Joseph Marcus, Social and Political History off the Jews in Poland, 1919-1939, Publishers Sheep, Berlin - New York - Amsterdam
• Koppel S. Pinson, Simon Dubnow, Nationalism and History, The Jewish Publication Society off America, Philadelphia, 1958
• Joseph Rosin, Panevezys (Ponevezh)
• Joseph Rosin, Mariampol (Marijampole)
• The Holocaust revealed, Lithuania
• Annette Wieviorka, " Jews of Warsaw the day before the Second War mondiale" , in the books of Shoah n° 1,1994