Sara Szweber

Who was Sara Szweber?

Sara Szweber was one of the leaders of the Bund and a trade unionist in Tsarist Russia, the Second Polish Republic and later in the United States. She was one of the few women that held leadership positions in the Jewish socialist and trade union movements of the late 19th and early 20th century.

Sara came from a family that was initially prosperous but became impoverished while she was young. Her parents died during her childhood and she was raised by her aunt. She worked as a dressmaker in a tailor shop which she helped to organize into a union shop. The workshop she organized, where all workers were paid the same wage and worked the same hours, was used as an example of a democratic workplace by the Russian writer Nikolay Chernyshevsky in his novel What Is to Be Done?.

In 1900 Szweber joined the Jewish Labour Bund and became active in its educational activities and meetings. As a result, she was arrested by the Tsarist authorities in 1903. After her release, during the Revolution of 1905 she headed a joint Polish and Jewish workers' demonstration in Kalisz and for the first time spoke before a large crowd. Afterward she moved to Lublin and then Łódź.