Lesson 7: "First World War and its Aftermath"
Summary: The First World War ended a century that, in retrospect, can be seen as something of a golden age in Jewish history. Prolonged internal peace permitted the population in Eastern Europe to increase many times over, and liberal immigration laws allowed millions of Jews to find new homes overseas. (Galicia will live on!) War utterly disrupted Jewish life, leading to the death and destitution of hundreds of thousands of Jews. But the war also ended with the great hopes: Zionism achieved the Balfour Declaration, socialists hoped for salvation in the new Soviet state, and other Jewish nationalists celebrated written guarantees of Jewish national rights throughout Eastern Europe. In the next two classes, we’ll compare to examples of these interwar hopes: Jewish life in the interwar Soviet Union and Jewish life in the new Polish State.
Recommended Reading:
S. Ansky, The Enemy at his Pleasure, pages 3-59, 63-110
