Yiddish newspaper published in Poland from April 1945 until December 1991. Folks-shtime (Voice of the People) was the main newspaper of Polish Jews after World War II. It began in Łódź and from October 1949 it came out in Warsaw. Until 8 December 1956 it was published under the auspices of the Polish United Workers Party. Thereafter it became the organ of the Social and Cultural Association of Jews in Poland. In its last period, from 1989 to 1991, the Ministry of Culture and Art financed its publication. Beginning in 1969, the newspaper added a section in Polish. From 1950 to 1968 Folks-shtime appeared four times a week; from 1968 to 1991 it was issued weekly. In Yiddish, it used standard rather than Soviet orthography.
The semiofficial character of Folks-shtime changed somewhat in 1956, and news of Jewish life, both in Poland and in the rest of the world, moved to the forefront even while the paper’s progovernment orientation continued. It was Folks-shtime that gave the world many details (on 4 April 1956) about Stalin’s destruction of Yiddish culture in the USSR. The periodical had correspondents in the United States, Israel, the USSR, and other countries. It devoted much attention to Yiddish literature; particularly from 1956 to 1961, it was almost the only platform available to Soviet Yiddish writers.
Folks-shtime was edited by an editorial board. Among its leading editors and contributors were Mikhl Mirski, Ber Mark, Dovid Roitenberg, Shmuel Veb, and, for many years, Hersh Smolar (who was dismissed during the anti-Zionist campaign following the Arab-Israeli War of 1967). From 1986 to 1991, the editor in chief was Adam Kwaterko, and during the paper’s last two months, Adam Rok functioned in this role.
Folks-shtime had various supplements over the years: Iliustrirte folks-shtime (Illustrated Folks-shtime), Folks-shtime far undzere kinder (Folks-shtime for Our Children), and Der fraynd fun yidishn historishn institut (The Friend of the Institute of Jewish History) in Yiddish; and Nasz Głos (Our Voice) and Głos Ludu (Voice of the People) in Polish.
The Polish Yiddish biweekly Dos yidishe vort-Słowo Żydowskie (The Yiddish Word) declared itself in January 1992 the successor to Folks-shtime. However, the importance of the Yiddish section (under the editorship of Kwaterko) was gradually reduced.
Mordechai Altshuler, ed., Yahadut Berit ha-Mo‘atsot ba-aspaklaryah shel ‘itonut Yidish be-Polin (Jerusalem, 1975), in Hebrew and Yiddish, pp. 18–22, 33–38; Hersh Smolar, Oyf der letster pozitsye mit der letster hofenung (Tel Aviv, 1982), pp. 188–189, 215–219, 256–261, 399–400, and passim.
Translated from Russian by I. Michael Aronson