Emanuel Scherer papers

Emanuel Scherer (1901-1977) was born in Krakow, Austria-Hungary (now Poland), to Jewish parents. He also had multiple younger siblings. During this time, Jews comprised almost a quarter of the Krakow population and Emanuel became familiar with Yiddish culture as a child. He attended the gymnasium of St. Jacka in Krakow, a classical school founded in 1857. He went on to earn a law degree from Jagiellonian University in Krakow.

As a student, Emanuel had joined the Jewish Labor Bund, a social-democratic organization devoted to strengthening Yiddish culture and socialist values through their network of schools and cultural and fraternal institutions. The Bund was founded in 1897, to organize opposition to repression of Jewish workers in Russia, and was generally hostile to Zionism and Communism. Emanuel joined the Central Committee of Krakow’s Bundist youth movement. In 1930, he moved to Warsaw and joined the Warsaw Committee, and was the youngest man elected to the Central Committee in 1935. In 1938, he was elected to the Warsaw City Council, and worked as Secretary of the Trade Union of Office Workers. Emanuel worked as co-editor for multiple Bundist publications, also contributing numerous articles and essays.

On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded western Poland, prompting Britain and France to declare war on Germany. Around the same time, the Soviet Union invaded eastern Poland, under a nonaggression pact (the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact) with Germany. During the Blitzkrieg (lightning war), German forces defeated the Polish, and by the end of the month, Warsaw had surrendered. The Germans terrorized the Polish people, shooting thousands of civilians and requiring men to participate in forced labor. They also aimed to destroy Polish political, religious, and intellectual leadership. Beginning in May 1940, the Germans enacted a plan, called AB-Aktion, to swiftly kill Polish leaders and intellectuals in Warsaw, including those in Jewish roles.

Shortly after the war began, Emanuel and his wife, Bronka (1902-?), escaped to Vilno (in modern-day Lithuania), and immigrated to Sweden with their son, Victor (1940-2012). They eventually made their way east, ending up in Japan. In April 1941, they sailed from Japan to San Francisco, California, under the false identities of Zygmunt, Ewa, and Ryszard Lieberfreund, eventually settling in New York. In 1943, Emanuel became the Bund representative to the Polish National Council in London, England, where the Polish government operated in exile. He stayed there until the end of the war in 1945, and a year later, he returned to his family in New York. He became secretary of the coordinating committee for the Jewish Labor Bund and editor of the Bund monthly, Unzer Zeit. He also served as a representative in the Socialist International, an organization of social democratic, socialist, and labor parties formally established in 1951, and as vice-president of the Jewish Labor Committee, which was founded in 1934. He continued to attend meetings and debates related to his activism until his death.