Bundist Henryk Ehrlich on Ze'ev Jabotinsky

 Poland's Bundist leader Henryk Ehrlich:

"An eventual Jewish state cannot offer itself as a spiritual center to the Jewish masses of the 'goles' lands, and as a center for immigration (the natural growth alone of the Jewish population of Poland significantly exceeds the absorption capacity of Palestine)... The anti-Semitic Czas [newspaper] opened its columns wide for any topic of the "Duce"; the anti-Semitic Kurier Warszawski transformed Jabotinsky’s book, Di Yidishe Melukhe ["The Jewish State"], into almost the greatest literary event of our time."

Di Tsukunft, October 1938

and

In 1933, the Bundist leader Henryk Ehrlich offered a prophetic censure: “If Jewish nationalism, as a general rule, is not bloodthirsty, this is only out of necessity, not virtue; if an appropriate opportunity arose, Jewish nationalism would show its sharp teeth and nails no less than the nationalisms of other nations.”

Ehrlich added: “[Ze’ev] Jabotinsky’s brown-shirt soldiers [the Irgun militia in Palestine and Betar in Europe] are nothing more than a tragicomic caricature of Hitler’s [Sturmabteilung paramilitary organization]. But the only thing missing in order for them to become the same beasts is some muscle strength, some territory, and a political opportunity … No, we are not a chosen people. Our nationalism is just as ugly, just as harmful, and has the same inclination to fascist debauchery as a nationalism of other nations.”

Quoted in The Guardian from Molly Crabapple who sources Ehrlich's "We are Not the Chosen People”, Ehrlich's 1933 essay:

Factoid: "[Simon] Dubnow’s daughter and Erlich’s wife, Sophia Dubnow Erlich, was once courted by Ze’ev Jabotinsky."

And how did Ehrlich end his life?

Here:-

Following the outbreak of World War II, Erlich left Warsaw, as did many other Jewish public figures. Jewish Communists denounced him to the Soviet authorities in October 1939; Alter was arrested as well. Erlich was imprisoned and interrogated for two years, and was forced to write a long and comprehensive essay on the activities of the Polish Bund in which he provided a host of information on the operations of the party’s institutions. In August 1941 he was sentenced to death for participating in anti-Soviet activities, but a few weeks later the sentence was commuted to a 10-year jail term, and immediately after that he was released from prison...

For about three months in 1941, Erlich was involved in setting up what eventually became the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee. The Soviet leadership viewed this committee as an important propaganda vehicle for gaining support among Western Jews, especially Jewish workers’ organizations, for Soviet war efforts against the Germans. Erlich, however, wanted the organization to have a wider scope, and wished to unite Jewish socialist groups from around the world, including the Polish Jewish Underground, to form a political bloc against Nazism. This goal worried the Soviet authorities, who were especially suspicious of the independent channels that Erlich and Alter established with British diplomats stationed in the Soviet Union. In October 1941, Erlich and Alter were rearrested. For a second time, Erlich endured harsh interrogations, which severely affected his health. Bund activists in New York and London made untiring but futile efforts to discover their fate. On 15 May 1942, a drained, tired, and ailing Henryk Erlich ended his life by hanging himself from the bars in his Kuibyshev (mod. Samara) jail cell. An official notice of his death was not published by the Soviet leadership until February 1943.

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