Learning from the past ~ lessons for today - Holocaust Education ...

Holocaust Memorial Day 2012
governing the responsibilities of the individual toward the
community and relations between individuals. The
community ran aid services for the sick and needy and the
community’s courts tried criminal cases under government
authorisation.
Jewish settlements expanded in Western Europe
particularly in France and Germany in the 10th - 14th
centuries, and community organisation developed
commensurately. The community embraced all Jews living
within its bounds and exercised authority in every area of
public and private life – in religious matters, in protecting
the individual and his property, and in mutual aid. To
perform its services, it organized a broad range of
facilities: synagogues, ritual baths, cemeteries, charity
funds, judicial and educational institutions, and agencies
for the enforcement of enactments in the public interest.
The members of the community saw in these activities an
essential condition for preserving the distinct character of
the Jewish nation.
However, beginning in the 14th century, the situation of the
Jews in Germany and France deteriorated. The Crusades and
the Black Death, blood libels, and expulsions led to the decline
of the communities. The expulsion of the Jews from France
and Germany brought about mass migration to Austria,
Bohemia, Moravia and the Kingdom of Poland. Wherever they
went, the Jews brought with them the forms of their
communal organisation.
Poland, which included the principal communities of Great
Poland, Lesser Poland, Galicia and Volhynia as well as the
Council of the Land of Lithuania. The records of council
meetings indicate that no area of Jewish life went
untouched; if required, directives were issued. In the
economic sphere the councils dealt with taxes, residence
and work rights, trade restrictions, promissory notes,
bankruptcies, etc. For Jews, an important subject was
education, especially for needy children and the poor. The
councils obliged the larger communities to underwrite
education for the poor and to maintain yeshivas. The
Councils of the Four Lands continued to exist officially until
they were dissolved by the parliament and the king in 1764.
Unofficially, some continued to meet until the First Partition
of Poland in 1772.
The French Revolution, which reduced the role of religion
in civil society, impacted on Jewish communities as
autonomous entities, restricting their activities exclusively
to religious affairs. Jewish engagement with the wider
European community led to the Haskalah or Jewish
Enlightenment movement. In the East, political
emancipation moved at a slower pace and the community
was abolished in Poland in 1822 and in Russia in 1844, but
most of its functions remained in the hands of the existing
bodies. In addition to religion they dealt with health,
welfare, and education and in the time of Czar Nicholas I,
even with military conscription.
It was in the kingdom of
Poland-Lithuania that Jewish
autonomy reached its peak.
The Jews of Poland, who had
emigrated from Western
Europe primarily in response
to the expulsions, took with
them examples of charters of
rights and these were granted
by the Polish and Lithuanian
rulers. The Jews were able to
develop the organisation of
their communities on the
basis of these charters and
their experience in Western
Europe.
In the second half of the 16th
century the rulers of Poland-
Lithuania became convinced
that it would be more effective
if the Jews themselves
collected state taxes,
principally the Head Tax, and
authorised countrywide
representation. There emerged
from within the Council of the
Four Lands in the Kingdom of
Jewish children with their teacher in Samarkand, c. 1910
Photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944) commissioned by Tsar
Nicholas II to record the ethnic minorities of the Russian Empire.
Library of Congress
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