Henryk Erlich

Henryk Ehrlich (sometimes spelled Henryk Erlich; 1882 – 15 May 1942) was an activist of the Bund, member of the Petrograd Soviet, Warsaw City Council and member of the executive committee of the Second International. His father-in-law was noted Jewish historian Simon Dubnow.

Ehrlich became an activist in the social-democratic movement in 1904. During the 1917 Russian Revolution he was a member of the Petrograd Soviet executive committee, and a member of Soviet's delegation to England, France and Italy.

In 1921 Ehrlich was named a co-editor of the Warsaw Yiddish daily Folkstsaytung. In 1924 he was elected to the Warsaw kehilla council as one of 5 Bundists out of 50 members. He was then candidate for the chairmanship of the council, as unique countercandidate to the Agudist Eliahu Kirshbraun, who was elected as well as Jacob Trokenheim, another Agudist, as vice-president. The Bund did not take part to the 1931 kehillot elections, but won 15 seats out of 50 at the 1936 elections. After the elections, Ehrlich created an incident by accusing Zionist leaders Grünbaum and Ze'ev Jabotinsky for recent antisemitic agitation in Poland by their campaign urging Jewish emigration from Poland. This time again Ehrlich was candidate to the presidency, he got 16 votes, the Zionist candidate Yitshak Schipper 10, and the Agudist Jacob Trokenheim won by a plurality of 19 votes.

After the outbreak of World War II, Ehrlich made his way to the part of Poland that had come under Soviet control. He was arrested by the NKVD in Brest on 4 October 1939. On 2 August 1940, in Saratov, he was sentenced to death, but the sentence was later commuted to ten years in the Gulag. After the June 1941 German invasion of the Soviet Union, he was released in 1942 as part of the Sikorski–Mayski Agreement of 30 July 1941 between the Polish Government in Exile and the Soviet Union. He was asked to join the newly formed Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, headed by Solomon Mikhoels.

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