BUND!
2012, BUND! for the Billboard Gallery run by Joshua Schwartz

Billboard Gallery

The project BUND! is about my dream of a socialist, diverse and culturally rich Poland that never happened. The death camp in Auchwitz is a sign, and the culmination of, the historical processes that stopped this dream from becoming true.
אַלגעמיינער ייִדישער אַרבעטערסבונד אין ליטע, פּוילן און רוסלאַנד (Algemejner Jidiszer Arbetersbund in Lite, Pojln un Rusland  – General Jewish Labour Bund of Lithuania, Poland and Russia set up a political direction for the Polish Jewry that seems to be exactly what Poland now needs most. The anti-Zionist, socialist program, free education, anti-religious approach and emphasis on cultural development were the political ideals that not only constituted a substantial counterpoint to the toxic traditions of Polish right-wing politics, but also challenged the religious, Zionist movements like, for example, Agudas Israel. The Holocaust destroyed it all. With the BUND! project I would like to call for a re-examination of the legacy of Bund and for it to be seen as a vivid and important political vision.
Quoting Marek Edelman, one of the most important Bundists:

Bund was a  party of  the poor Jewish proletariat, petty artisans, hard-working labourers in the factories. But despite everything, Bundists used to say before the war: “Three million Jews live in Poland, and they should live here, because the state of freedom will be here. And there, in Palestine, there can only be a war inside and outside.” And is it not like that? 

Close