Leon Feiner (nom-de-guerre "Mikołaj" (Michael), "Berezowski") (1885 in Krakow – February 22, 1945, in

Lublin Lublin is the ninth-largest city in Poland and the second-largest city of historical Lesser Poland. It is the capital and the center of Lublin Voivodeship with a population of 336,339 (December 2021). Lublin is the largest Polish city east of t ...

) was a Polish lawyer, an activist of the

General Jewish Labour Bund in Poland The General Jewish Labour Bund in Poland ( yi, אַלגעמײַנער ײדישער אַרבעטער בּונד אין פוילן, translit=Algemeyner Yidisher Arbeter-bund in Poyln, pl, Ogólno-Żydowski Związek Robotniczy "Bund" w Polsce) was ...

and between November 1944 and January 1945 the director (''prezes'') and vice-chairman of the Council to Aid Jews "

Żegota Żegota (, full codename: the "Konrad Żegota Committee"Yad Vashem Shoa Resource CenterZegota/ref>) was the Polish Council to Aid Jews with the Government Delegation for Poland ( pl, Rada Pomocy Żydom przy Delegaturze Rządu RP na Kraj), an un ...

Biography

After the outbreak of World War II with the

German invasion of Poland The invasion of Poland (1 September – 6 October 1939) was a joint attack on the Republic of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union which marked the beginning of World War II. The German invasion began on 1 September 1939, one week afte ...

, the Soviet Union also invaded on September 17, as part of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

and

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

. Feiner was caught in the Soviet part of occupied Poland, was arrested by the

NKVD The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (russian: Наро́дный комиссариа́т вну́тренних дел, Naródnyy komissariát vnútrennikh del, ), abbreviated NKVD ( ), was the interior ministry of the Soviet Union. ...

and spent several months in a Soviet prison in

Lida Lida ( be, Лі́да ; russian: Ли́да ; lt, Lyda; lv, Ļida; pl, Lida ; yi, לידע, Lyde) is a city 168 km (104 mi) west of Minsk in western Belarus in Grodno Region. Etymology The name ''Lida'' arises from its Lithuani ...

, near

Wilno Vilnius ( , ; see also #Etymology and other names, other names) is the capital and List of cities in Lithuania#Cities, largest city of Lithuania, with a population of 592,389 (according to the state register) or 625,107 (according to the munic ...

.Bernard Goldstein, "Five years in the Warsaw Ghetto: (The stars bear witness)", AK Press, 2005, pg. 84

/ref> Despite the fact that before the war on several occasions he had defended

Polish Communists Communism in Poland can trace its origins to the late 19th century: the Marxist First Proletariat party was founded in 1882. Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919) of the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania (''Socjaldemokracja Królest ...

in court as an attorney, and that he had belonged to a

socialist Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the e ...

organization (the

), the Soviets authorities charged him with being a "fascist" and a "counter revolutionary" After the

Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union Operation Barbarossa (german: link=no, Unternehmen Barbarossa; ) was the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and many of its Axis allies, starting on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during World War II, the Second World War. The operation, code ...

Feiner managed to escape after the Soviets fled Lida in 1941, and made his way to Nazi-occupied

Warsaw Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is officia ...

. During the

Nazi occupation of Poland Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Naz ...

Feiner, even though he lived in the "Aryan" side of Warsaw under the assumed name "Berezowski", was one of the central personalities of the Jewish underground in the city. He was the author of most of the communiques of the Bund from Poland to the Western allies, in which he described Nazi terror and brutality.Emmanuel Ringelblum, Joseph Kermish, Shmuel Krakowski, "Polish-Jewish Relations During the Second World War", Northwestern University Press, 1992, pg. 115

/ref> Feiner also served as a guide for the Polish courier

Jan Karski Jan Karski (24 June 1914 – 13 July 2000) was a Polish soldier, resistance-fighter, and diplomat during World War II. He is known for having acted as a courier in 1940–1943 to the Polish government-in-exile and to Poland's Western Allies abo ...

inside the

Warsaw Ghetto The Warsaw Ghetto (german: Warschauer Ghetto, officially , "Jewish Residential District in Warsaw"; pl, getto warszawskie) was the largest of the Nazi ghettos during World War II and the Holocaust. It was established in November 1940 by the G ...

(they both crossed into the ghetto through the Warsaw sewers). Karski asked Feiner what prominent American and British Jews should do. "Tell the Jewish leaders," Feiner said, "that ... they must find the strength and courage to make sacrifices no other statesmen have ever had to make, sacrifices as painful as the fate of my dying people, and as unique."Jan Karski,
Story of a Secret State
'' pp. 42-50. Karski also took Feiner's report to the Polish-Jewish political leaders

Szmul Zygielbojm Szmul Mordko Zygielbojm (; yi, שמואל זיגלבוים; – ) was a Polish socialist politician, Bund trade-union activist, and member of the National Council of the Polish government-in-exile. Zygielbojm was born in 1895 into a w ...

and

Ignacy Schwarzbart Ignacy Izaak Schwarzbart (13 November 1888 in Chrzanów – 26 April 1961 in New York City) was a prominent Polish Zionist, and one of Jewish representatives on the Polish National Council of the Polish Government-in-Exile during the Second World ...

, who were serving on the Polish National Council of the

Polish Government-in-Exile The Polish government-in-exile, officially known as the Government of the Republic of Poland in exile ( pl, Rząd Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej na uchodźstwie), was the government in exile of Poland formed in the aftermath of the Invasion of Pola ...

in London. The report described the deportation and murder of Jews in Poland, including a detailed report on

Chełmno extermination camp , known for = , location = Near Chełmno nad Nerem, ''Reichsgau Wartheland'' (German-occupied Poland) , built by = , operated by = , commandant = Herbert Lange, Christian Wirth , original use = , construction = , in operation ...

, and gave the estimated number dead, as of May 1942, at 700,000 (the actual number was already much higher). Feiner's instructions to Zygielbojm were to cease mere protests and organize retaliatory bombing, leafleting and execution of Germans captured by the Allies, in response to the Nazi

Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...

.Samantha Power, "A problem from hell: America and the age of genocide", HarperCollins, 2003, pg. 33

/ref> The description of the condition of Jews in German-occupied Poland and Feiner's instructions threw Zygielbojm into depression since he knew that the Allies would be unwilling to help (Zygielbojm eventually committed suicide as a protest against the indifference of the Allied governments in the face of the Holocaust).Melvyn Conroy
Szmul Mordekhai "Artur" Zygielbojm
''The Terrible Choice: Some Contemporary Jewish Responses to the Holocaust.'' After the

Warsaw Ghetto Uprising The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising; pl, powstanie w getcie warszawskim; german: link=no, Aufstand im Warschauer Ghetto was the 1943 act of Jewish resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto in German-occupied Poland during World War II to oppose Nazi Germany's ...

and the liquidation of the Ghetto by the Germans, Feiner tried desperately to help those who were sent to slave labor camps. Leon Feiner survived the Nazi occupation, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the

Warsaw Uprising The Warsaw Uprising ( pl, powstanie warszawskie; german: Warschauer Aufstand) was a major World War II operation by the Polish resistance movement in World War II, Polish underground resistance to liberate Warsaw from German occupation. It occ ...

, and was rescued in Lublin in January 1945. However, due to terminal illness (throat cancer)"Survivors and Others Mentioned in This Documentary: Where Are They now?", Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies

/ref> he died soon afterward, on February 22. Even while in the hospital he maintained relationships with his friends and fellow political activists and participated in discussions of the future of the Bund in Poland. He is buried in the main row of the

Okopowa Street Jewish Cemetery The Warsaw Jewish Cemetery is one of the largest Jewish cemetery, Jewish cemeteries in Europe and in the world. Located on Warsaw, Warsaw's Okopowa Street and abutting the Christians, Christian Powązki Cemetery, the Jewish necropolis was establis ...

(quarter 12).

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Feiner Bundists Jewish Polish politicians Jewish socialists Polish socialists 20th-century Polish lawyers Deaths from throat cancer 1885 births 1945 deaths Żegota members Deaths from cancer in Poland