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The chapter shows how different political and social circumstances shaped Zionist opportunities for influence in local communities. Relief work constituted the main battleground between the various parties and determined how Zionists worked to gain respect and credibility through their engagement. Welfare and relief were not only essential to reduce the suffering of the Jewish population but also became the primary field of activism for all Jewish political movements. Using local examples from German-occupied Poland and Ober Ost, from Galicia, Vienna, and Prague, the chapter investigates struggles for control over relief funds and the building of welfare institutions, as well as their connection with Zionist political ideas. It analyses welfare work for refugees in Vienna, soup kitchens in Białystok, and attempts to find work for unemployed Jews in Warsaw. Within months after the outbreak of the war, relief work became the only area in which activists were engaged. The ramifications of these efforts were often contradictory. Whereas in the Ober Ost region, for example, Zionists were integrated into the German administration and applied top-down, authoritarian policies towards local communities, in the Generalgouvernement Warschau, they remained outside the administration and had to rely on grassroots activities and on the energetic efforts of their members. The chapter also analyses relief efforts for refugees in Vienna and Prague, and shows how Zionist activists in Galicia acquired positions as leading figures in communities, taking over communal responsibilities after the Austrian order had disintegrated.
This article analyses responses to the typhus epidemic in German-occupied Poland during the First World War. The German conquest of the Kingdom of Poland in 1915 not only instated a new political regime, but also brought about social misery on an unprecedented scale. Especially in larger cities, the poor segments of the population were made homeless or cramped into tiny apartments and suffered from hunger and disease. From 1915 outbreaks of typhus occurred in major cities, often found amongst the Jewish population. The German occupiers forcefully responded by fumigating houses, quarantining suspected cases, and forcing thousands of families into delousing facilities. These measures particularly targeted Jews as German medical officials identified them as the carriers and spreaders of the disease – some of them characterized typhus itself as a ‘Jewish disease’. In an effort to prevent the spread of the disease to Germany and to protect the German Volkskörper, Polish Jews – for the fact that they were Jews – were from 1918 onwards barred from crossing the border and thousands of Jewish migrant workers in German industry were arrested and deported. The article examines both the political and the medical context in which these policies were employed and analyses Jewish responses to both the spreading of the disease and the German anti-Jewish policies. It shows the close connection between health policy and antisemitic and nationalist ideological narratives and projects, and identifies this racialization of disease as a key moment in the development of German antisemitism.
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