A struggle over the body, and legacy, of the premiere revolutionary person of Yiddish letters, Morris Winchevsky. Winchevsky’s life is exemplary of the ‘Radical Jewish Tradition,’ which he helped to create and define.

‘15,000 at Funeral of First Jewish Revolutionary Writer’ from The Daily Worker. Vol. 9 No. 69. March 22, 1932.

On Friday night Morris Vinchevsky, the first Jewish socialist writer and poet died. Vinchevsky, who Was born in 1856 came to Germany from Russia in 1877 where he wrote for the Koenigsborn Free Press and the Forward. This period was the one in which Bismarck’s anti-Socialist law was put into operation and it was for fighting against this law that Vinchevsky was sent back to Russia. He then went to Denmark but was arrested and again deported, this time to London.

From London he fled to Paris and carried on the work in the revolutionary movement. A while later, this tireless revolutionist returned to London where he and a comrade organized the first Jewish workers’ organization and published the first Jewish workers’ paper in the world.

After coming to the United States in 1894 Vinchevsky began to edit the “truth” in Boston. And Vinchevsky continued the fight for a revolutionary line even during the days when a great deal of the intellectuals wavered and betrayed the working class. The World War found him fighting the imperialist war while another supposed revolutionist, Abe Cahan, was kissing the American flag and urging the Jewish workers to fight “for democracy.”

And then the Russian revolution. The socialist party which in the United States has been officially opposed to the war because of left-wing pressure attacked the Russian workers for seizing power. The socialist party became an active counter-revolutionary group. Vinchevsky broke with these. In 1924 he went to the Soviet Union, not as a sight-seer but as an active defender of the Proletarian Dictatorship. And the Russian Bolshevik Party showed its appreciation for this old battler by taking him into the Party of the victorious revolution.

This was a smashing blow against the yellow betrayers who began spreading rumors that Vinchevsky was really opposed to the dictatorship. But these were soon spiked by the poet who declared that anyone who is an enemy of the Soviet Union is his enemy. That finished him in the eyes and mouths of the Jewish socialists and nationalists. He was shoved away and forgotten by them until after his death. Then these shameless vultures reappeared and with the aid of the family of the dead fighter which worked hand in hand with the union bureaucrats seized the body and declared that no Communist would be allowed near the funeral.

The workers thought differently, however. And on Sunday morning between 15,000 and 20,000 revolutionary workers with flaming banners gathered outside the Amalgamated House in the Bronx, where the deceased lay. Around the body of the dead fighter stood an honor guard of members of the Radical Squad and gangsters summoned by the Jewish socialist union leaders. Outside the house a line of capitalist police guarded the entrance.

The order had gone out that no one be allowed in. And when the workers insisted upon paying their last respects to a dead Bolshevik, the police pounced upon them and started their clubbing. First of all was Comrade Marmur, the closest friend of Vinchevsky and his biographer. Sam Liptzin was so badly beaten that he had to be taken to a hospital.

This convinced the kidnappers of the body that the workers were ready to fight to see their comrade and all were allowed in. The black banners put out by the family was hidden beneath the flaming red banners of the workers, the banners on which Vinchevsky had written and to which he had given up his life.

Fifteen thousand workers listened to the talks of representatives of the Jewish workers press and organizations.

As the Jewish bourgeois press wrote: “The funeral was transformed into a Communist demonstration.” And In order to end the demonstration as soon as possible the body was shoved into the hearse and rushed to the cemetery without mourners.

There was one short talk by a union faker at the cemetery and the dead revolutionist was buried. The fear of the Communists haunted those responsible for this shameless deal.

On Thursday at 8 in the New Star Casino there will be a memorial meeting for the dead comrade. Arranged not by the fakers but by the Communist Party. All workers should come and pay their last respects to the fallen battler for a workers’ world.

The Daily Worker began in 1924 and was published in New York City by the Communist Party US and its predecessor organizations. Among the most long-lasting and important left publications in US history, it had a circulation of 35,000 at its peak. The Daily Worker came from The Ohio Socialist, published by the Left Wing-dominated Socialist Party of Ohio in Cleveland from 1917 to November 1919, when it became became The Toiler, paper of the Communist Labor Party. In December 1921 the above-ground Workers Party of America merged the Toiler with the paper Workers Council to found The Worker, which became The Daily Worker beginning January 13, 1924.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1932/v09-n069-NY-mar-22-1932-DW-LOC.pdf