Dzieci przyszłością partii. Skif w powojennej Polsce
The Children – the Future of the Party. Skif in Postwar Poland.

Summary/Abstract: The article looks at the activities of Skif, the children’s organization affiliated with Bund, in the years 1945-1949. The Jewish socialists, similarly as other political groups, maintained that thanks to the youngsters it would be possible to rebuild the party and that the party’s future depended on them as well. The Bund activists believed that thanks to Skif members not only will the party survive but will also revive Yiddish as the language of the masses. The article reviews the organization’s ideological and educational program and its practical implementation, indicating the changes necessitated by the war and the political situation at the time. It presents various forms of Skif activities in the post-war realities, e.g., the formation of Skif organizations, learning from scratch and the cultivation of values related to the Yiddish language and to yiddishkait (Jewishness, that which is connected with the culture and Yiddish), the provision of welfare aid and organization of summer and winter camps at which Skif history and accomplishments were discussed, and where the children were taught to be good persons and family members. There are also passages discussing the attitude of Skif members to the nascent totalitarian (Communist) political system in Poland. In the last part of the article the author, using the Lower Silesian town of Żary as an example, shows the conflict between the Jewish political organizations concerning the Jewish scout movement, in which Skif was one of the parties to the conflict that opposed the PPR faction at the Central Committee of Jews in Poland.

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