Aron Wahl – komunista, więzień sanacji i stalinizmu
Aron Wahl, a Communist, a Prisoner of Sanacja Government and of Stalinist rule

Summary/Abstract: During the Stalinist era Poland did not witness “anti-Zionist” trials against activists of Jewish organizations or communist party activists of Jewish descent. Neither was there an eradication of Jewish cultural institutions. The reprisals against persons associated with Jewish institutions were anything but widespread. The purpose of this text is to describe one example of such reprisals. The victim is Aron Wahl (1893-1960), journalist, essayist and political activist. The imprisonment of Aron Wahl in 1949 was attributed both an his article published in Yidishe shriftn and to his political past before WWII. Aron Wahl was born in Drohobycz in 1893. In 1926 he jointed the Communist Party of Poland (KPP). He was a member of its Central Jewish Bureau and member of the editorial team producing the Party’s Jewish-language publications. In 1932 he was detailed by the KPP to act in the General Jewish Workers’ Party, where he was responsible for publishing its Unzer weg paper. In the years 1934-1936 Wahl headed an opposition faction inside the KPP, whose most important document was the “Memorial”, which criticized the lack of control over the party apparatchiki by the members of the banned party at large. The KPP leadership termed Wahl’s group as “Trotskyites”. Wahl survived the war in Warsaw’s ghetto and subsequently on the „Aryan side” of Warsaw. From 1945 he lived in Łódź. Occasionally he wrote for Jewish periodicals. The end of his peaceful work in the Jewish literary community came with his critical review of Adam Schaff’s Introduction to Marxist theory. It was printed in Yidishe shriftn in early 1949. Wahl’s attack on a leading Marxist ideology specialist was the reason why the Yidishe shriftn editorial team was summoned to the Press Department of the Polish United Workers’ Party Central Committee, which was followed by the publishing of self-criticism and accusing Wahl of Trotskyism. Then, on 6 November 1949, Wahl got arrested. The investigation was focussed on his pre-war activities. Wahl was sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment, but the sentence was at once commuted to four years and eight months under an amnesty. Aron Wahl fell into complete oblivion and did not live to see himself being rehabilitated. Some of the persons implicated in his condemnation and his trial were Szymon Zachariasz, Bernard Mark, Michał Mirski, Dawid Sfard, Binem Heller. This is why, as per our research, a conspiracy of silence was keept by those who contributed to his misfortune, even after they were sidelined after 1968. It was only Hersz Smolar that broke that silence in his memoirs, and even then only in a small measure.

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