Milly Witkop
Encyclopedia
Milly Witkop (March 3, 1877-November 23, 1955) was a Ukrainian
-born Jewish anarcho-syndicalist
and feminist
writer and activist. She was the common-law wife
of the better-known Rudolf Rocker
. The couple's son, Fermin Rocker
, was an artist.
shtetl
of Zlatopol
to a pious Jewish Ukrainian-Russian family as the oldest of four sisters. The youngest of the four, Rose
, also became a well-known anarchist. In 1894, Witkop left the Ukraine for London
. In the decades following the 1881 assassination of Czar Alexander II
, many Jews left Russia as a result of anti-Jewish pogroms throughout the Empire. Most went to the United Kingdom or the United States.
In London, she worked in a tailoring sweatshop and saved enough money to finance her parents' and sisters' passage to England. The hard conditions she worked under led her to question her faith. Her involvement in a bakers' strike led her to become involved with the group around the Jewish anarchist newspaper Arbayter Fraynd
. She became influenced by the works of the anarchist theorist Peter Kropotkin
. In 1895, she first met Rudolf Rocker in the course of her political work. In May 1898, Rocker invited her to accompany him to New York
, where he hoped to find employment. The two were, however, not admitted to the country, because they refused to get married legally and were returned to the United Kingdom with the same ship on which they had reached the United States. The matter received some newspaper coverage in the United States at the time, attacking the couple's love without marriage.
From October 1898, Rocker and Witkop co-edited the Arbeyter Fraynd. In March 1900, the two also started publishing the newspaper Germinal
, which was more focused on cultural topics. In 1907, the couple's son, Fermin, was born. Rocker and Witkop were opposed to World War I
after it broke out in 1914, unlike many other anarchists such as Kropotkin, who supported the Allied cause. To ease the poverty and deprivation caused by the joblessness that accompanied the war, Witkop and her husband opened a soup kitchen. In December 1914, however, Rocker like many Germans and Austrians in the UK, was interned as an enemy alien. Witkop continued her anti-war activities until she was also arrested in 1916. She remained imprisoned until the autumn of 1918. She then left the United Kingdom to join her husband and son in the Netherlands.
and October Revolution
s in Russia
, but after the Bolshevik coup they started criticizing the etatism and totalitarianism
of what would become the Soviet Union
. In November 1918, they moved to Berlin
; Rocker had been invited by Free Association of German Trade Unions
(FVdG) chairman Fritz Kater
to join him in building up what would become the Free Workers' Union of Germany
(FAUD), an anarcho-syndicalist trade union. Both Rocker and Witkop became members of the FAUD.
After its founding in early 1919, a discussion about the role of girls and women in the union started. The male-dominated organization had at first ignored gender issues, but soon women started founding their own unions, which were organized parallel to the regular unions, but still formed part of the FAUD. Witkop was one of the leading founders of the Women's Union in Berlin in 1920. On October 15, 1921, the women's unions held a national congress in Düsseldorf
and the Syndicalist Women's Union (SFB) was founded on a national level. Shortly thereafter, Witkop drafted Was will der Syndikalistische Frauenbund? (What Does the Syndicalist Women's Union Want?) as a platform for the SFB. From 1921, the Frauenbund was published as a supplement to the FAUD organ Der Syndikalist, Witkop was one of its primary writers.
Witkop reasoned that proletarian women were exploited not only by capitalism like male workers, but also by their male counterparts. She contended therefore that women must actively fight for their rights, much like workers must fight capitalism for theirs. She also insisted on the necessity of women taking part in class struggle. Housewives could use boycotts to support this struggle. From this, she concluded the necessity of an autonomous women's organization in the FAUD. Witkop also held that domestic work should be deemed equally valuable to wage labor.
in February 1933, Witkop and Rocker fled Germany for the United States via Switzerland, France, and the UK. In the US, the couple continued to give lectures and write about anarchist topics. During the Spanish Civil War
from 1936 to 1939, they started an awareness campaign to educate Americans about the events in Spain. In Fall 1937, the two moved to the Mohegan Commune near Lake Mohegan
in Crompond
. After World War II broke out, Witkop, like her husband and other anarchists such as Max Nettlau
and Diego Abad de Santillán
, supported the Allies because she felt Nazism could not be defeated with pacifist means.
After World War II, Witkop had some sympathy for the Zionist
movement, but was skeptical as to whether a nation state could solve the "Jewish question". She favored the idea of bi-nationality developed by Martin Buber
and Ahad Ha'am. The Mohegan commune, especially Witkop, was active in sending material support to German anarchists. They sent several hundred packages to Germany.
Witkop died on November 23, 1955. She had been suffering from difficulties of breathing for months.
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
-born Jewish anarcho-syndicalist
Anarcho-syndicalism
Anarcho-syndicalism is a branch of anarchism which focuses on the labour movement. The word syndicalism comes from the French word syndicat which means trade union , from the Latin word syndicus which in turn comes from the Greek word σύνδικος which means caretaker of an issue...
and feminist
Feminism
Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...
writer and activist. She was the common-law wife
Common-law marriage
Common-law marriage, sometimes called sui juris marriage, informal marriage or marriage by habit and repute, is a form of interpersonal status that is legally recognized in limited jurisdictions as a marriage even though no legally recognized marriage ceremony is performed or civil marriage...
of the better-known Rudolf Rocker
Rudolf Rocker
Johann Rudolf Rocker was an anarcho-syndicalist writer and activist. A self-professed anarchist without adjectives, Rocker believed that anarchist schools of thought represented "only different methods of economy" and that the first objective for anarchists was "to secure the personal and social...
. The couple's son, Fermin Rocker
Fermin Rocker
Fermin Rocker was a painter and book illustrator. He was the son of the anarcho-syndicalist theorists and activists Rudolf Rocker, a German, who had moved to London 1895, and Milly Witkop, a Ukrainian Jew, who had fled to the city in 1894.Rocker was born in Stepney, London in 1907...
, was an artist.
Early life and period in London
Witkop was born Vitkopski in the UkrainianUkraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
shtetl
Shtetl
A shtetl was typically a small town with a large Jewish population in Central and Eastern Europe until The Holocaust. Shtetls were mainly found in the areas which constituted the 19th century Pale of Settlement in the Russian Empire, the Congress Kingdom of Poland, Galicia and Romania...
of Zlatopol
Zlatopol
Zlatopol is a small city in Ukraine, located about 80 km northwest to Kirovohrad, near Kiev.- History :Before the Holocaust, Zlatopol was a prosperous very rich Jewish Shtetl. There was also a gymnasium for rich people in Zlatopol...
to a pious Jewish Ukrainian-Russian family as the oldest of four sisters. The youngest of the four, Rose
Rose Witcop
Rose Lilian Witcop Aldred was an anarchist, journalist and pioneer of birth control and sex education. She was born Rachel Vitkopski in Kiev, Ukraine to Jewish parents - Simon and Freda - who brought her to London, England when she was five years old.Witcop was a member of the anarchist Jubilee...
, also became a well-known anarchist. In 1894, Witkop left the Ukraine for London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
. In the decades following the 1881 assassination of Czar Alexander II
Alexander II of Russia
Alexander II , also known as Alexander the Liberator was the Emperor of the Russian Empire from 3 March 1855 until his assassination in 1881...
, many Jews left Russia as a result of anti-Jewish pogroms throughout the Empire. Most went to the United Kingdom or the United States.
Arbayter Fraynd
Arbeter Fraynd , was a London-based weekly Yiddish radical paper founded in 1885 by socialist Morris Winchevsky...
. She became influenced by the works of the anarchist theorist Peter Kropotkin
Peter Kropotkin
Prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin was a Russian zoologist, evolutionary theorist, philosopher, economist, geographer, author and one of the world's foremost anarcho-communists. Kropotkin advocated a communist society free from central government and based on voluntary associations between...
. In 1895, she first met Rudolf Rocker in the course of her political work. In May 1898, Rocker invited her to accompany him to New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, where he hoped to find employment. The two were, however, not admitted to the country, because they refused to get married legally and were returned to the United Kingdom with the same ship on which they had reached the United States. The matter received some newspaper coverage in the United States at the time, attacking the couple's love without marriage.
From October 1898, Rocker and Witkop co-edited the Arbeyter Fraynd. In March 1900, the two also started publishing the newspaper Germinal
Germinal (journal)
Germinal was a Yiddish-language anarchist journal in London edited by the German-born Rudolf Rocker. It appeared from 1900 to 1903, and then again from 1905 to 1908....
, which was more focused on cultural topics. In 1907, the couple's son, Fermin, was born. Rocker and Witkop were opposed to World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
after it broke out in 1914, unlike many other anarchists such as Kropotkin, who supported the Allied cause. To ease the poverty and deprivation caused by the joblessness that accompanied the war, Witkop and her husband opened a soup kitchen. In December 1914, however, Rocker like many Germans and Austrians in the UK, was interned as an enemy alien. Witkop continued her anti-war activities until she was also arrested in 1916. She remained imprisoned until the autumn of 1918. She then left the United Kingdom to join her husband and son in the Netherlands.
Germany
At first, the couple welcomed the FebruaryFebruary Revolution
The February Revolution of 1917 was the first of two revolutions in Russia in 1917. Centered around the then capital Petrograd in March . Its immediate result was the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II, the end of the Romanov dynasty, and the end of the Russian Empire...
and October Revolution
October Revolution
The October Revolution , also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution , Red October, the October Uprising or the Bolshevik Revolution, was a political revolution and a part of the Russian Revolution of 1917...
s in Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
, but after the Bolshevik coup they started criticizing the etatism and totalitarianism
Totalitarianism
Totalitarianism is a political system where the state recognizes no limits to its authority and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible...
of what would become the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
. In November 1918, they moved to Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
; Rocker had been invited by Free Association of German Trade Unions
Free Association of German Trade Unions
The Free Association of German Trade Unions was a trade union federation in Imperial and early Weimar Germany. It was founded in 1897 in Halle under the name Representatives' Centralization of Germany as the national umbrella organization of the localist current of the German labor movement...
(FVdG) chairman Fritz Kater
Fritz Kater
Fritz Kater was a German trade unionist active in the Free Association of German Trade Unions and its successor organization, the Free Workers' Union of Germany...
to join him in building up what would become the Free Workers' Union of Germany
Free Workers' Union of Germany
The Free Workers' Union of Germany was an anarcho-syndicalist trade union, which existed from the renaming of the Free Association of German Trade Unions on September 15, 1919 to its official disbandment in January 1933 after the Nazis came into power, although many of its members continued to be...
(FAUD), an anarcho-syndicalist trade union. Both Rocker and Witkop became members of the FAUD.
After its founding in early 1919, a discussion about the role of girls and women in the union started. The male-dominated organization had at first ignored gender issues, but soon women started founding their own unions, which were organized parallel to the regular unions, but still formed part of the FAUD. Witkop was one of the leading founders of the Women's Union in Berlin in 1920. On October 15, 1921, the women's unions held a national congress in Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf is the capital city of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and centre of the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region.Düsseldorf is an important international business and financial centre and renowned for its fashion and trade fairs. Located centrally within the European Megalopolis, the...
and the Syndicalist Women's Union (SFB) was founded on a national level. Shortly thereafter, Witkop drafted Was will der Syndikalistische Frauenbund? (What Does the Syndicalist Women's Union Want?) as a platform for the SFB. From 1921, the Frauenbund was published as a supplement to the FAUD organ Der Syndikalist, Witkop was one of its primary writers.
Witkop reasoned that proletarian women were exploited not only by capitalism like male workers, but also by their male counterparts. She contended therefore that women must actively fight for their rights, much like workers must fight capitalism for theirs. She also insisted on the necessity of women taking part in class struggle. Housewives could use boycotts to support this struggle. From this, she concluded the necessity of an autonomous women's organization in the FAUD. Witkop also held that domestic work should be deemed equally valuable to wage labor.
United States
She was not only active in the syndicalist and feminist movement, but also worked to fight racism and anti-Semitism. She was often frustrated by what she considered an unwillingness to fight anti-Semitism in the labor movement. The rise of the Nazi Party in Germany in the late 1920s greatly troubled Witkop. After the Reichstag fireReichstag fire
The Reichstag fire was an arson attack on the Reichstag building in Berlin on 27 February 1933. The event is seen as pivotal in the establishment of Nazi Germany....
in February 1933, Witkop and Rocker fled Germany for the United States via Switzerland, France, and the UK. In the US, the couple continued to give lectures and write about anarchist topics. During the Spanish Civil War
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
from 1936 to 1939, they started an awareness campaign to educate Americans about the events in Spain. In Fall 1937, the two moved to the Mohegan Commune near Lake Mohegan
Lake Mohegan, New York
Lake Mohegan is a census-designated place located in the town of Yorktown in Westchester County, New York, United States. The population was 6,010 at the 2010 census. Locally, the area is known as Mohegan Lake, and the term "Lake Mohegan" is rarely used. However, this change dates back only to the...
in Crompond
Crompond, New York
Crompond is a community and census-designated place located in the town of Yorktown in Westchester County, New York. The population was 2,292 at the 2010 census.-Geography:Crompond is located at ....
. After World War II broke out, Witkop, like her husband and other anarchists such as Max Nettlau
Max Nettlau
Max Heinrich Hermann Reinhardt Nettlau was a German anarchist and historian. Although born in Neuwaldegg and raised in Vienna he retained his Prussian nationality throughout his life. A student of the Welsh language he spent time in London where he joined the Socialist League where he met...
and Diego Abad de Santillán
Diego Abad de Santillán
Diego Abad de Santillán , born Sinesio Vaudilio García Fernández, was an author, economist and leading figure in the Spanish and Argentine anarchist movements.-Early years:...
, supported the Allies because she felt Nazism could not be defeated with pacifist means.
After World War II, Witkop had some sympathy for the Zionist
Zionism
Zionism is a Jewish political movement that, in its broadest sense, has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement continues primarily to advocate on behalf of the Jewish state...
movement, but was skeptical as to whether a nation state could solve the "Jewish question". She favored the idea of bi-nationality developed by Martin Buber
Martin Buber
Martin Buber was an Austrian-born Jewish philosopher best known for his philosophy of dialogue, a form of religious existentialism centered on the distinction between the I-Thou relationship and the I-It relationship....
and Ahad Ha'am. The Mohegan commune, especially Witkop, was active in sending material support to German anarchists. They sent several hundred packages to Germany.
Witkop died on November 23, 1955. She had been suffering from difficulties of breathing for months.