Malke Schorr's Childhood and Youth in Lwow: A Revolutionary Jewish Woman's Autobiography

The article analyses the memoirs of Malke Schorr (1885-1961), a leading activist of the socialist-Zionist Poale Zion, and later of the Communist Party of Austria. The article centres on her childhood and youth in East Galicia before World War I. Born as the eleventh child of a Hassidic family, she worked as a seamstress from the age of eleven. In her unfinished memoirs, written just before her death, she recalled how the conflict between the traditional, religious environment of her family increasingly came into conflict with her aspiration for self-fulfilment and self-liberation, leading her to radical politics. The article shows how it was this context that brought her to the revolutionary Jewish labour movement and eventually to a leading position in the socialist-Zionist Poale Zion movement. It explores the dayto-day political activities, her involvement in the protests around the revolution of 1905 in the Russian Empire, and particularly her labour union work. Schorr left for Vienna just before WWI, where under the influence of the revolutionary processes from 1917/18 she eventually joined the Communist Party. Attached to the article is a translated and annotated version of Malke Schorr's memoirs relating to her childhood and youth.