Voice of the Proletariat: Interethnic Relations in the Oil Industry of Boryslav in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries

The protocol of the district mining administration to the Krakow starostwo, dating from 1887, investigates a complaint by minerJan Zaręba against entrepreneur Hersch Mielech Fuchs regarding unpaid wages. The mining administration conducted a detailed inquiry at the enterprise to determine whether this case reflected systematic violations of workers’ rights. The administration sided with the miner and even provided the entrepreneur with a separate protocol in which Zaręba outlined these violations. This allowed the administration to conduct a survey among other mine workers, who were often too afraid to speak out due to the threat of dismissal. In this case, the entrepreneur was Jewish and the worker Polish. Another figure indirectly mentioned is the “cashier”—that is, the mine supervisor—a position also commonly held by Jews. Testimonies from inspectors and other observers of Boryslav at the end of the 19th century frequently criticize entrepreneurs and cashiers for failing to comply with labour laws, neglecting mutual aid funds, and exploiting workers. Such criticism often employed anti-Semitic language, since cashiers and entrepreneurs were predominantly Jewish. This protocol demonstrates that workers were aware of and made use of mechanisms to protect their rights, and that the administration provided them with opportunities to challenge the owners.

District Mining Office to the Cracow Mining Department, 1887 (National Archives in Krakow, collection 207, file 197)
(translation from Polish by Vladyslava Moskalets)

This protocol concerns the complaint filed by mining worker Jan Zaręba regarding the withholding of his wages for work at the Hersch Mielech Fuchs mine in Boryslav. Alongside this is the response submitted by the mine’s manager, Jakob Kolinka. The protocol puts forward a request for the severe punishment of the mining entrepreneur Hersch M. Fuchs, in accordance with Paragraphs 206 and 248 of the General Mining Law, and with reference to Paragraph 32 of the National Petroleum Law, as well as for violations of Paragraph 3 of the Workers’ Amendment of June 21, 1884.

This conclusion is sufficiently supported by the records themselves, as:

1. the seizure of Zaręba’s earnings along with the imposition of a penalty has been admitted,
2. it has also been admitted that Zaręba was forced to work two consecutive shifts,
3. the claim that there was no money in the cashier’s office does not in any way justify the withholding of payment,
4. and finally, the circumstances cited do not justify forcing Zaręba to complete two shychtas (shifts) directly one after the other.

It is noted here that the final paragraph of the protocol—where Zaręba testified that in Fuchs’ mine, it often happens that workers are made to work continuously for 24 hours—was omitted from the copy provided to Fuchs. This omission was deliberate, as the intention was to question the workers listed in the protocol during an upcoming visit to Boryslav, without giving Fuchs or Meller, who had already been warned about this matter, the opportunity to influence the workers and pressure them into giving false testimony.

It is further noted that the complainant, Jan Zaręba, according to reports from other Boryslav workers, is regarded as a relatively intelligent man, conscious of his human dignity and determined to free himself, by any means, from the exploitation by the mine’s cashier and his overseers…

The following source is an excerpt from a German-language report by Viennese journalist Saul Raphael Landau, first published in the Viennese Zionist newspaper Die Welt and later issued as a separate book in 1898. Landau travelled through the industrial centres of Congress Poland and Galicia, researching issues concerning Jewish workers while also giving lectures on Zionism—particularly on the First Zionist Congress in Basel, held in 1897. He visited Boryslav several times in 1896–1897 and observed the reform of the Krakow Mining Authority in 1897. The starostwo imposed strict restrictions on the distance between oil and ozokerite mines, which led to the closure of most small Jewish establishments and left many workers without employment. Landau focuses primarily on Jewish workers, who, in his words, suffer twice—both as workers and as Jews. In the excerpt, he converses with the workers, allowing us to hear their hopes indirectly. The Jewish workers describe their situation using biblical metaphors, calling Galicia “Mizraim,” or Egypt, and expressing a desire to leave it and go to Palestine. In this text, several narratives intertwine: the biblical idea of repeating the fate of their ancestors who left Egyptian slavery, the modern Zionist vision of establishing colonies in Palestine, and the socialist struggle for the rights of the proletariat. Landau, as an educated intellectual, becomes the voice of these workers, showing solidarity through his own background and merging biblical aspirations with the modern idea of colonisation.

Saul Raphael Landau, Unter jüdischen Proletariern: Reiseschilderungen aus Ostgalizien und Rußland (Vienna: Rosner, 1898), 33-35
(translation from German by Vladyslava Moskalets)

They feel it themselves. They see their lives squeezed into the role of living machines, with no prospect of change; they see the same fate awaiting their children, for they have nothing—nothing they could spare to help lift them into a higher class. Not even their tomorrows are secure, as they can be dismissed at any moment, without notice.

That is why, when you express pity for them, you hear the same stereotypical reply: “We work harder than our fathers did under Pharaoh in Mitzrajim; it’s high time God sent us a new Moses to lead us out of this Galician Mitzrajim.”

And that is the hope they cling to—the only hope that comforts, uplifts, and sustains them. For the Jewish workers of Boryslav suffer not only as proletarians, but also as Jews. Alongside the modern industrial system, which condemns the unemployed reserve army to starvation, there is anti-Semitism, which here condemns even those Jewish workers who are willing and able to work, casting them out onto the streets.

“We are all ready to go to Palestine—what business do we still have here? I’ve been working here since 1874, and others even longer. When we do have work, we barely earn enough to live; and when there’s no work, we have nothing to eat tomorrow.” The speaker, an overseer—a tall, broad-shouldered man with intelligent features—said this in the tone of a solemn confession of faith, while his fellow workers standing beside him, along with the unemployed who had gathered around, all nodded in agreement. “They are all ready to go to Palestine, every one of them.” Some of them had already approached the chairman of the “Zion” society before the High Holidays to ask whether they still needed to rent a flat for the winter.

In the third excerpt, Boryslav is visited by Joel Mastboym, a journalist from Warsaw who wrote reports for the Yiddish newspaper Der Moment in 1927. In the interwar period, the ozokerite industry, where many Jews worked, was in decline. Deposits were depleted, and the business was no longer as profitable as before, yet Drohobych and Boryslav remained popular destinations for reporters, including Jewish ones. When Mastboym observes Jewish workers in the ozokerite industry, he is, on one hand, impressed that Jews are engaging in physical labour, but he also notes the harsh working conditions, particularly the fear of supervisors. This excerpt challenges the assumption that industry is the key to modernisation and development, as industrial labour appears low-paying and arduous. The workers’ fear of speaking to the reporter about their situation reflects their humiliating position. Mastbaum’s socialist views led him to include the voices of workers, peasants, and the homeless in his texts. Unlike Saul Raphael Landau, however, he does not propose a programme for the salvation of Jewish workers, but simply records their circumstances.

Yoel Mastboym, Galitsiye. (Varshe: Farlag T. Yakobson M. Goldberg, 1929), 159-160
(translation from Yiddish by Vladyslava Moskalets)

In a word, if there are still people who doubt the strength of the Jewish backbone, who question the ability of Jews to endure hard, proletarian labor, let them look at the Jews working in the wax mines. Let me paint you a picture.

On one of the hottest days of this summer, I crossed the wooden sidewalk in Boryslav, heading toward the wax mines (it’s just a stone’s throw from the oil fields to the wax pits). An old Jewish guard pointed me to a corner, and there I came upon six or eight cauldrons, round like soldiers’ field kitchens, and around them stood people in torn shirts, dripping with sweat. They stirred the vats while the cauldrons boiled, as if in the very pits of hell. Who are they? Jews? Gentiles? This time, you don’t even want to ask. All you see are old men, ragged and scorched by the blazing sun and the heat. Hell itself—a destructive fire that melts not only wax and bricks but people too.

I approached one of them, a redhead with slightly lopsided eyes. He was afraid to talk to me for long, lest the akordniks (piece-rate foremen) report him. I asked him how much he earned. He glanced at me and mumbled: “I’m afraid to say anything, lest the fire consume the master, me, and the whole furnace. We are exhausted here, we already see death before our eyes. The main thing is to come back—I’m afraid ‘they’ will soon find out.”

His face radiated fear, and his movements—as he stirred the spoon in the cauldron—seemed as though he were mixing in the very curses with which the world has been cursed.

Quickly, I came upon another man, silent. He bowed his head before me, dazed, and when I asked him something, he simply shrugged and lifted his hands to the Lord.

And then there was a third—a man gnawing helplessly at a stale slice of bread with the only two teeth he had left. He spoke not in his own voice, but in someone else’s thin, squeaky tone. He cried before me, telling of the hungry days that burned in his gut and how he collapsed from exhaustion every day—yet he was too afraid to speak out.

I looked at the long, distant line of old, bearded slaves of fire, misery, hunger, and pain—and I wondered: can such a thing still be imagined in our time?

All three texts about workers portray the relationship between them and business owners as antagonistic, a portrayal that contrasts with the memories and testimonies of entrepreneurial families. For instance, in the family album of Claudia Erdheim, the great-granddaughter of Drohobych oil entrepreneur Sigmund Erdheim, we see photos of smiling workers at an oil refinery or ozokerite mines in the early 20th century. They pose for the camera, and in one photo, elegantly dressed men—possibly the owners—stand beside them.

The fact that entrepreneurs included photos of workers in their albums suggests that they viewed them as an integral part of their environment, perhaps reflecting a family-patriarchal conception of the factory as a place where owners cared for their employees with paternal concern. Unlike other photos of Galician Jews, these images do not always reveal ethnic origin, somewhat echoing Mastboym’s observation that he saw only exhausted people. Nevertheless, the texts indicate that ethnic differences in Boryslav were noticeable, and the participants in the industry themselves were well aware of who belonged to which group.