{{Infobox person | name = Apolinary Hartglas | image = Maksymilian Hartglas.jpg | alt = | caption = Apolinary Hartglas | birth_name = | birth_date = {{Birth date|1883|4|7|df=y}} | birth_place = Biała Podlaska, Poland | death_date = {{Death date and age|1953|3|7|1883|4|7|df=y}} | death_place = Tel Aviv, Israel | nationality = | other_names = | occupation = | years_active = | alma_mater = University of Warsaw | known_for = | notable_works = }}
'''Maksymilian Apolinary Hartglas''' (7 April 1883 – 7 March 1953) was a Zionist activist and one of the main political leaders of Polish Jews during the interwar period, a lawyer, a publicist, and a Sejm deputy from 1919 to 1930.
==Biography== Maksymilian Apolinary Hartglas was born into a lawyer family from Podlasie. Between 1892 and 1900 he attended a secondary school in Biała Podlaska. Subsequently he earned a law degree from Warsaw University in 1904.<ref name=Kunert>Andrzej Krzysztof Kunert, Małgorzata Smogorzewska, ed. "Posłowie i senatorowie Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej 1919-1939. Słownik biograficzny, tom II: E-J" (''Delegates and senators of the Second Polish Republic 1919-1939, Biographical Dictionary, Vol II: E-J''), Warszawa 2000</ref> Between 1907 and 1919 he practiced law in Siedlce with an additional office in Warsaw.<ref name=Zyndul>Jolanta Żyndul, "The Legal Practice of Apolinary Hartglas", Justice, The International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists, No. 30, Winter 2002, pg. 45 [http://www.intjewishlawyers.org/docenter/frames9dda.html?id=9277] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091019133113/http://www.intjewishlawyers.org/docenter/frames9dda.html?id=9277 |date=2009-10-19 }}</ref> While at the university he became involved with the Zionist movement and in 1906 he participated in a Zionist Helsingfors conference in Helsinki.<ref name=Kunert/>
After the Nazi invasion of Poland and German occupation he was made a member of the Warsaw Judenrat.<ref>{{cite book |first1=Yisrael |last1=Gutman |first2=Ina R. |last2=Friedman |title=The Jews of Warsaw, 1939–1943 |publisher=Indiana University Press |year=1989 |page=17 |isbn=0253205115 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4U_OcvXvhF4C&q=Apolinary+Hartglas }}</ref>
In December 1939, he managed to escape to Trieste, Italy and immigrated to Palestine. He settled in Jerusalem. After the establishment of the State of Israel he served as a high ranking administrator in the Ministry of the Interior.<ref>Yad Vashem, "Pinkas Hakehillot:“Biala Podlaska” - Encyclopedia of Jewish Communities in Poland, Volume VII", pgs. 84-89. [http://www.jewishgen.org/Yizkor/Pinkas_poland/pol7_00084.html]</ref>
==Political career== In 1919 he was elected by constituents of Biała Podlaska as a deputy to the first Sejm of the newly independent Polish state which was charged with writing a new constitution. In all he served three terms as a delegate.<ref name=Kunert/><ref name=Zyndul/> Before the elections of 1922 together with Yitzhak Gruenbaum he was a co-creator of Bloc of National Minorities, a parliamentary organization whose purpose was to represent ethnic minorities in the Polish parliament.<ref>Gershon David Hundert, ''The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe'', Yivo Institute for Jewish Research and Yale University Press, 2008. [https://books.google.com/books?id=OL9tAAAAMAAJ&q=Apolinary+Hartglas]</ref> One of his first acts as a deputy of the Sejm was to introduce a law which annulled all Russian sponsored laws which discriminated against Jews in the former Congress Poland.<ref>Robert Blobaum, "Antisemitism and its opponents in modern Poland", Cornell University Press, 2005, pg. 150 [https://books.google.com/books?id=gXisr7fgDjwC&pg=PA150]</ref>
In 1920 he took part in the Polish-Soviet War as a volunteer. Between 1938 and 1939 he was a member of the Warsaw City Council. During this time he published articles in "Głos Żydowski", "Tygodnik Żydowski" and "Życie Żydowskie" newspapers.<ref>HOLOKAUST NA TERENIE REGIONU BIALSKOPODLASKIEGO: Życie społeczno - polityczne. [http://www.holocaust.myoptimus.com/strona-glowna/1-ludnosc-zydowska-na-podlasiu/1-3-zycie-spoleczno-polityczne/] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130927171128/http://www.holocaust.myoptimus.com/strona-glowna/1-ludnosc-zydowska-na-podlasiu/1-3-zycie-spoleczno-polityczne/ |date=2013-09-27 }}</ref>
==Published works== In 1996, his memoirs were published posthumously in Poland under the title ''At the border of two worlds'' (Polish: ''Na pograniczu dwóch światów'') ({{ISBN|978-83-86678-35-8}}), in which he described the social and political realities of Poland at the turn of the century, during World War I, and the interwar period. In the book he wrote:<ref>Apolinary Hartglas, ''Na pograniczu dwóch światów'', Warszawa Oficyna Wydawn. Rytm 1996 {{OCLC|37898215}}, {{ISBN|978-83-86678-35-8}}.</ref><ref>Natalia Aleksiun, "Narratives under Siege: Polish-Jewish Relations and Jewish Historical Writings in Interwar Poland", The Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Antisemitism and Racism, Tel Aviv University, 2003 [http://www.tau.ac.il/Anti-Semitism/asw2003-4/aleksiun.htm#_ednref69]</ref>
{{quote|I called my memoirs “At the border of two worlds” not because I had in mind the world of today and the eternal ever existing world but for a much more mundane reason. I, myself as a human being found myself at a border of the Jewish world and the Polish world. To elaborate, throughout my whole life, two forces, difficult to reconcile, strove within me: a Polish childhood and upbringing, an attachment to the Polish nation, its culture and its soil together with a self formed love for the Jewish nation, its suffering and troubles and the hope of its rebirth in its own homeland. My whole life I suffered a split within myself since there is no power that could have fused these two different souls. I loved both nations as a man and I was at times critical and angry at both of them: as a Jew I could not forget the wrongs that my people sometimes suffered in Poland (personally I have not suffered these) and as one assimilated into the Polish culture I shared some of the grief that even the best of Poles occasionally had towards the Jews. <sup>(Translated from Polish)</sup>}}
==See also== *Ozjasz Thon
==References== {{reflist}}
{{Authority control}} {{Jews and Judaism in Poland}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hartglas, Apolinary}} Category:1883 births Category:1953 deaths Category:People from Biała Podlaska Category:People from Siedlce Governorate Category:Jews from the Russian Empire Category:Jewish Polish politicians Category:Polish Zionists Category:Members of the Legislative Sejm of the Second Polish Republic Category:Members of the Sejm of the Second Polish Republic (1922–1927) Category:Members of the Sejm of the Second Polish Republic (1928–1930) Category:Polish people of the Polish–Soviet War Category:Polish emigrants to Mandatory Palestine Category:Jews from Mandatory Palestine Category:Israeli people of Polish-Jewish descent