Mr. Monday and other tales of Jewish Amsterdam

MR. MONDAY 7 9

of the Bund. About those problems he talked with his neighbours in Manege Street. He argued that the Jews in Poland should be recognised as an official minority with full rights and full duties. Yes, sir, duties, too! The Bund wanted to make Poland a socialist fatherland for the Polish Jews as well as for anyone else.

Mr. Monday explained those political ideas to me many a time. I could not argue with him because once he straddled his hobbyhorse, one could scarcely get a word in edgewise. Then round about 1930 a book was published that was written by the French journalist Albert Londres, who had made a swing around Eastern Europe and described the situation of the Jews there.

I had read that book and told Mr. Monday something about it. Later, when a Dutch translation was published, I brought a copy to our cobbler.

He read it with a critical eye, although he had never set a foot on Polish soil after he was six years of age. But so close was his spiritual contact that with expert knowledge he exposed the articles to his judgement. His final opinion of the book was a profound evaluation.

"This man plainly has a heart, but he cannot creep into the brains of a Polish Jew," he told me. "He saw everything and does not suppress a single fact in telling it.Yet he understood nothing of what he has observed. You should go there yourself Meyer, and check up, then you will see that I am right."

So I have to thank our shoemaker for the idea of a journalistic journey through Eastern Europe in 1932. Mr. Monday gave me introductions to people he had never