Borderline Germans: The Jews of Upper Silesia, 1914-1923

The thesis investigates the history of the Jewish communities in the industrial towns of the former German province of Upper Silesia in the years during and immediately after the First World War. It examines their responses to questions of national identity thrown up by the war, the plebiscite of March 1921 to decide whether Upper Silesia should belong to Germany or Poland, the partition of the province, the rise of Zionism and outbreaks of violent antisemitism among both German and Polish nationalists. Using sources only recently made available in digital format, such as personal memoirs and local newspapers, it paints a picture of the communities before 1914, outlining their main political, economic, religious and social characteristics. It then shows how their worldview was challenged by the turbulent events of the following decade. The study argues that the position of the Upper Silesian Jews on the border with Poland fostered an extreme version of the situation facing the majority of Jews in the rest of Germany in the Weimar years. They shared with non-Jewish Germans a strong belief in the superiority of German civilisation in comparison with “the east”, which was intensified by their conscious rejection of the values and practices of Jews living in very different circumstances on the eastern side of the border. The eruption of violent antisemitism in the early 1920s, given a sharper edge in Upper Silesia as a result of armed conflict during the plebiscite campaign, threw their assumptions about the essential nature of German culture into question. The study shows that at the height of the crisis in 1923, the political challenge to the mainstream community leaders posed by the emerging force of Zionism developed into a bitter struggle within the Upper Silesian community, primarily over attitudes towards the eastern Jews