History of the Jews in Poland

From the founding of the Kingdom of Poland in the eleventh century through the early years of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth created in 1569, Poland was one of the most tolerant countries in Europe.^[2] Known as paradisus Iudaeorum (Latin for Jewish paradise) it became unique shelter for persecuted and expelled European Jewish communities and a home to one of the world's largest and most vibrant Jewish communities. With the weakening of the Commonwealth and growing religious strife (due to the Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counter-Reformation), Poland?s traditional tolerance^[3] began to wane from the seventeenth century onward.^[4] After the partitions of Poland in 1795 and the destruction of Poland as a sovereign state, Polish Jews were subject to the laws of the partitioning powers, primarily the increasingly anti-Semitic Russian Empire,^[5] but also Austro-Hungary and Kingdom of Prussia (later known as the German Empire). Still, as Poland regained independence in the twentieth century, in the aftermath of World War I, it was the center of the European Jewish world with one of world's largest Jewish communities of over three million. Anti-Semitism, however, both political establishment and from the general population, common throughout contemporary Europe, was a growing problem.^[6]

Over 90% of the Polish Jewry, about three million, were killed during the Holocaust in German Nazi-occupied Poland, along with approximately three million of non-Jewish Poles (see: Holocaust victims and death toll). The World War II resulted in the death of one-fifth of the Polish population. The Nazis made no attempt to set up a collaborationist government in Poland,^[7]^[8]^[9] and they rejected overtures by Polish fascists and anti-semites.^[10] Collaboration by individual Poles with the Nazis has been described as being less than that in other European countries.^[11]^[12] The attitude of non-Jewish Poles ranged from extreme cases of participation in massacres through extortion,^[13] indifference to Jews' plight to risking one's live to save Jews.^[14]

In the postwar period, many of the approximately 200,000 Polish Jewish survivors chose to emigrate from the communist People's Republic of Poland to the nascent State of Israel, United States and South America, their departure hastened by the destruction of most Jewish institutions, post-war pogroms in Poland, and the hostility of the communist party to both religion and to private enterprise. Most of the remaining Jews left Poland in the late 1960s as the result of the Soviet state-sponsored anti-Semitic anti-Zionist campaign. After the fall of the communist regime in Poland in 1989, the situation of Polish Jews became normalized and Jews who were Polish citizens before World War II were allowed to renew Polish citizenship. Religious institutions were revived, largely through the activities of Jewish foundations from the United States. The contemporary Polish Jewish community is generally estimated to have approximately 8,000 to 12,000 members, though the actual number of Jews, including those who are not actively connected to Judaism or Jewish culture, may be several times larger.

Early history to Golden Age: 966–1572

Early history: 966–1385

The first Jews arrived in the territory of modern Poland in the tenth century. Travelling along the trade routes leading eastwards to Kiev and Bukhara, the Jewish merchants (known as Radhanites) also crossed the areas of Silesia. One of them, a diplomat and merchant from the Moorish town of Tortosa in Spanish Al-Andalus, known under his Arabic name of Ibrahim ibn Jakub, was the first chronicler to mention the Polish state under the rule of prince Mieszko I. The first actual mention of Jews in Polish chronicles occurs in the eleventh century. It appears that Jews were then living in Gniezno, at that time the capital of the Polish kingdom of the Piast dynasty. The first permanent Jewish community is mentioned in 1085 by a Jewish scholar Jehuda ha-Kohen in the city of Przemy?l (nevertheless it was Ruthenian town in this time).

The tolerant situation was gradually altered by the Roman Catholic Church on the one hand, and by the neighbouring German states on the other. There were, however, among the reigning princes some determined protectors of the Jewish inhabitants, who considered the presence of the latter most desirable insofar as the economic development of the country was concerned. Prominent among such rulers was Boleslaus the Pious of Kalisz, Prince of Great Poland. With the consent of the class representatives and higher officials, in 1264 he issued a General Charter of Jewish Liberties, the Statute of Kalisz, which granted all Jews the freedom of worship, trade and travel. During the next hundred years, the Church pushed for the persecution of the Jews while the rulers of Poland usually protected them.

In 1334, Casimir III the Great (1303–1370) amplified and expanded Boles?aw's old charter with the Wi?licki Statute. Casimir was especially friendly to the Jews, and his reign is regarded as an era of great prosperity for Polish Jewry, and was surnamed by his contemporaries "King of the serfs and Jews." Nevertheless, while for the greater part of Casimir?s reign the Jews of Poland enjoyed tranquillity, toward its close they were subjected to persecution on account of the Black Death. In 1347 the first blood libel accusation against Jews in Poland recorded, and in 1367 the first pogrom, in Pozna?.^[15] Later the massacres occurred at Kalisz, Krak�w, G?og�w, and other Polish cities along the German frontier, and it is estimated that 10,000 Jews were killed. Compared with the pitiless destruction of their co-religionists in Western Europe, however, the Polish Jews did not fare badly; and the Jewish masses of Germany fled to the more hospitable lands of Poland.

While Jews (identifiable by their distinctive hats in this 1250 French Bible illustration) were being killed by Crusaders in Germany, Boles?aw III invited them to the safety of Poland.

The early Jagiellon era: 1385–1505

As a result of the marriage of Wladislaus II to Jadwiga, daughter of Louis I of Hungary, Lithuania was united with the kingdom of Poland. Although, in 1388, rights were extended to Lithuanian Jews as well, it was under the rule of Wladislaus II and those of his successors that the first extensive persecutions of the Jews in Poland commenced, and the king did not act to stop these events. There were a number of blood libels and riots against the Jews, and official persecution gradually increased, especially as the clergy pushed for less tolerance. Hysteria caused by Black Death led to additional fourteenth-century outbreaks of violence against the Jews. Traders and artisans fearing Jewish rivalry supported the harassment.

The decline in the status of the Jews was briefly checked by Casimir IV the Jagiellonian (1447–1492), but to increase his power he soon issued the Statute of Nieszawa.^[16] Among other things it abolished the ancient privileges of the Jews "as contrary to divine right and the law of the land." The policy of the government toward the Jews of Poland was not more tolerant under Casimir's sons and successors, John I Olbracht (1492–1501) and Alexander the Jagiellonian (1501?1506), who expelled the Jews from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in 1495.

Center of the Jewish world: 1505–72

Alexander reversed his position in 1503, just as the Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492, as well as from Austria, Bohemia and Germany, thus stimulating the Jewish emigration to much more tolerant Poland. Indeed, with the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, Poland became the recognized haven for exiles from western Europe; and the resulting accession to the ranks of Polish Jewry made it the cultural and spiritual center of the Jewish people.

The most prosperous period for Polish Jews began following this new influx of Jews with the reign of Zygmunt I (1506–1548), who protected the Jews in his realm. His son, Zygmunt II August (1548–1572), mainly followed in the tolerant policy of his father and also granted autonomy to the Jews in the matter of communal administration and laid the foundation for the power of the Kahal, or autonomous Jewish community. This period led to the creation of a proverb about Poland being a "heaven for the Jews". By the mid-16th century, eighty percent of the world's Jews lived in Poland. Jewish religious life thrived in many Polish communities. In 1503, the Polish monarchy appointed Rabbi Jacob Polak, the official Rabbi of Poland, marking the emergence of the Chief Rabbinate. By 1551, Jews were given permission to choose their own Chief Rabbi. The Chief Rabbinate held power over law and finance, appointing judges and other officials. Some power was shared with local councils. The Polish government permitted the Rabbinate to grow in power, to use it for tax collection purposes. Only thirty percent of the money raised by the Rabbinate served Jewish causes, the rest went to the Crown for protection. In this period Poland-Lithuania became the main center for Ashkenazi Jewry and its yeshivot achieved fame from the early 1500s.

One the great talmudic scholars of the 1500s was Moses ben Israel Isserles (1525-1572). He founded a religious academy in Cracow. Beyond Talmudic study, he was also familiar with many of the Greek philosophers and was one of the forerunners of the Jewish enlightenment.

Additionally, some Polish words may reveal that the exiled Jews coming from Spain brought with them onions (and possibly more then-exotic plants or foods), as onions are called "Cebula" in Polish ("Cebolla" in Spanish).

The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth: 1572–1795

The Warsaw Confederation

Following the childless death of Zygmunt II, the last king of the Jagiellon dynasty, Polish and Lithuanian nobles (szlachta) gathered at Warsaw in 1573 and signed a document of limited toleration in which representatives of all the major religions pledged each other mutual support and tolerance. The edict did not include the Polish Brethren, an anti-Trinitarian that would later become known as Socinians, who formed roots for the modern Unitarian church in the US.

Increasing isolation: The traditional view and recent scholarly challenges

The earlier narrative of Jewish life in Poland emphasized the rise of antisemitism by focusing on the rise of anti-Jewish libels (host desecration and ritual murder accusations). That narrative tended to highlight persecution, and Jewish isolation and autonomy. Yet, recent scholarly works (Fram, Hundert, Rosman, Teller, and Teter) have shown that Jews were not isolated from their Christian neighbours. For example, Jews spoke local languages (although they did retain Yiddish), shared sense of fashion (for example Christian borrowed clothes from Jews to go to church, see a responsum no. 86 by Benjamin Slonik), they shared spaces too (rabbis and the clergy were increasingly worried that Jews and Christians lived together under the same roof). Contrary to the common view of total Jewish autonomy and isolation, historical evidence shows that Jews often used gentile courts against other Jews, and frequently summoned Christians both to lay and Church courts (see works by Judith Kalik, Adam Teller, and Magda Teter). The existence of the Council of Four Lands has often been cited as a pinnacle of Jewish autonomy and self-government in Poland. Yet both the creation and the dissolution of the council are linked to the fiscal transformations of the Polish state. Similarly, while traditional scholarship has promoted an idealized view of Jewish rabbinic culture and self-government, focusing on rabbinic sources, recent works by scholars have shown that this was also a period of transformation if not outright decline of rabbinic authority (see for instance books and articles by Adam Teller). In short, scholars in recent decades have created a much more textured picture of Jewish life in premodern Poland-Lithuania that has gone far away from the view of isolation and persecution. Since late XIV century native Polish merchants became powerful enough to compete with Jewish businessmen, and in the XVI century Jews were barred from the guilds, and large Polish towns limited Jewish entrepreneurship.

The Cossack uprising and the Deluge

In 1648 the Commonwealth was devastated by several conflicts, in which the Commonwealth lost over a third of its populations (over three million people), and Jewish losses were counted in hundreds of thousands. First, the Chmielnicki Uprising when Bohdan Khmelnytsky's Cossacks massacred tens of thousands of Jews and Poles in the eastern and southern areas he controlled (today's Ukraine). It is recorded that Chmielnicki told the people that the Poles had sold them as slaves "into the hands of the accursed Jews". The precise number of dead may never be known, but the decrease of the Jewish population during that period is estimated at 100,000 to 200,000, which also includes emigration, deaths from diseases and jasyr (captivity in the Ottoman Empire). The Jewish community suffered greatly during the 1648 Cossack uprising which had been directed primarily against the Polish nobility. The Jews, perceived as allies of the nobles, were also victims of the revolt, during which about twenty per cent of them were killed. Then the incompetent politics of the elected kings of the House of Vasa brought the weakened state to its knees, as it was invaded by the Swedish Empire in what became known as The Deluge. The kingdom of Poland proper, which had hitherto suffered but little either from the Chmielnicki Uprising or from the recurring invasion of the Russians, Crimean Tatars and Ottomans, now became the scene of terrible disturbances (1655?1658). Charles X of Sweden, at the head of his victorious army, overran Poland; and soon the whole country, including the cities of Krak�w and Warsaw, was in his hands. The Jews of Great and Little Poland found themselves torn between two sides: those of them who were spared by the Swedes were attacked by the Poles, who accused them of aiding the enemy. The Polish general Stefan Czarniecki, in his flight from the Swedes, devastated the whole country through which he passed and treated the Jews without mercy. The Polish partisan detachments treated the non-Polish inhabitants with equal severity. Moreover, the horrors of the war were aggravated by pestilence, and the Jews and townsfolk of the districts of Kalisz, Krak�w, Pozna?, Piotrk�w, and Lublin perished en masse by the sword of the besieging armies and the plague.

As soon as the disturbances had ceased, the Jews began to return and to rebuild their destroyed homes; and while it is true that the Jewish population of Poland had decreased and become impoverished, it still was more numerous than that of the Jewish colonies in Western Europe; and Poland remained as the spiritual center of Judaism, and through 1698, the Polish kings generally remained supportive of the Jews, despite a hostile clergy and nobility. It also should be noted that while Jewish losses in those events were high, estimated by some historians to be close to 500,000, the Commonwealth lost one third of its population ? approximately three million of its citizens.

Decline under the Saxon dynasty

With the accession to the throne of the Saxon dynasty the Jews completely lost the support of the government. The szlachta and the townsfolk were increasingly hostile to the Jews, as the religious tolerance that dominated the mentality of the previous generations of Commonwealth citizens was slowly forgotten. In their intolerance, the citizens of the Commonwealth now approached the "standards" that dominated most of the contemporary European countries, and many Jews felt betrayed by the country they once viewed as their haven. In the larger cities, like Pozna? and Krak�w, quarrels between the Satins and the Jewish inhabitants were of frequent occurrence. Attacks on the Jews by students, the so-called Sch�ler-Gelauf, became everyday occurrences in the large cities, the police regarding such scholastic riots with indifference. In the XVI and XVII centuries Jews were expelled from the number of Polish towns, and victimized by pogroms usually organized by local merchants and artisans.^[17]

The partitions

There were three partitions of Poland in 1772, 1793 and in 1795. Poland was divided among Russia, Prussia and Austria; Poland-Lithuania no longer existed. The majority of Poland?s one-million Jews became part of the Russian empire. Poland became a mere client state of the Russian empire. In 1772, Catherine II, empress of Russia, discriminated against the Jews by forcing them to stay in their shtetls and barring their return to the towns they occupied before the partition. Disorder and anarchy reigned supreme in Poland during the second half of the eighteenth century, from the accession to the throne of its last king, Stanislaus II Augustus Poniatowski (1764–1795). In 1772, in the aftermath of the Confederation of Bar, the outlying provinces of Poland were divided among the three neighboring nations, Russia, Austria, and Prussia. Jews were most numerous in the territories that fell to the lot of Austria and Russia.

The permanent council established at the instance of the Russian government (1773–1788) served as the highest administrative tribunal, and occupied itself with the elaboration of a plan that would make practicable the reorganization of Poland on a more rational basis. The progressive elements in Polish society recognized the urgency of popular education as the very first step toward reform. The famous Komisja Edukacji Narodowej ("Commission of National Education"), the first ministry of education in the world, was established in 1773 and founded numerous new schools and remodeled the old ones. One of the members of the commission, kanclerz Andrzej Zamoyski, along with others, demanded that the inviolability of their persons and property should be guaranteed and that religious toleration should be to a certain extent granted them; but he insisted that Jews living in the cities should be separated from the Christians, that those of them having no definite occupation should be banished from the kingdom, and that even those engaged in agriculture should not be allowed to possess land. On the other hand, some szlachta and intellectuals proposed a national system of government, of the civil and political equality of the Jews. This was the only example in modern Europe before the French Revolution of tolerance and broadmindedness in dealing with the Jewish question. But all these reforms were too late: a Russian army soon invaded Poland, and soon after a Prussian one followed.

A second partition of Poland was made on July 17, 1793. Jews, in a Jewish regiment led by Berek Joselewicz, took part in the Ko?ciuszko Uprising the following year, when the Poles tried to again achieve independence, but were brutally put down. Following the revolt, the third and final partition of Poland took place in 1795. The great bulk of the Jewish population was transferred to Russia, and thus became subjects of that empire, although in the first half of the nineteenth century some semblance of a vastly smaller Polish state was preserved, especially in the form of the Congress Poland (1815–1831).

Jews were represented in the November Insurrection (1830 - 1831), the January Insurrection (1863), as well as in the revolutionary movement of 1905. Many Polish Jews were enlisted in the Legions, commanded by , which fought for the Polish independence finally achieved in 1918.

The development of Judaism in Poland and the Commonwealth

Jewish learning

Yeshivot were established, under the direction of the rabbis, in the more prominent communities. Such schools were officially known as gymnasiums, and their rabbi principals as rectors. Important yeshivot existed in Krak�w, Pozna?, and other cities. Jewish printing establishments came into existence in the first quarter of the sixteenth century. In 1530 a Hebrew Pentateuch (Torah) was printed in Krak�w; and at the end of the century the Jewish printing houses of that city and Lublin issued a large number of Jewish books, mainly of a religious character. The growth of Talmudic scholarship in Poland was coincident with the greater prosperity of the Polish Jews; and because of their communal autonomy educational development was wholly one-sided and along Talmudic lines. Exceptions are recorded, however, where Jewish youth sought secular instruction in the European universities. The learned rabbis became not merely expounders of the Law, but also spiritual advisers, teachers, judges, and legislators; and their authority compelled the communal leaders to make themselves familiar with the abstruse questions of Jewish law. Polish Jewry found its views of life shaped by the spirit of Talmudic and rabbinical literature, whose influence was felt in the home, in school, and in the synagogue.

In the first half of the sixteenth century the seeds of Talmudic learning had been transplanted to Poland from Bohemia, particularly from the school of Jacob Pollak, the creator of Pilpul ("sharp reasoning"). Shalom Shachna (ca. 1500–1558), a pupil of Pollak, is counted among the pioneers of Talmudic learning in Poland. He lived and died in Lublin, where he was the head of the yeshivah which produced the rabbinical celebrities of the following century. Shachna's son Israel became rabbi of Lublin on the death of his father, and Shachna's pupil Moses Isserles (known as the ReMA) (1520–1572) achieved an international reputation among the Jews as the co-author of the Shulkhan Arukh, (the "Code of Jewish Law"). His contemporary and correspondent Solomon Luria (1510–1573) of Lublin also enjoyed a wide reputation among his co-religionists; and the authority of both was recognized by the Jews throughout Europe. Heated religious disputations were common, and Jewish scholars participated in them. At the same time, the Kabbalah had become entrenched under the protection of Rabbinism; and such scholars as Mordecai Jaffe and Yoel Sirkis devoted themselves to its study. This period of great Rabbinical scholarship was interrupted by the Chmielnicki Uprising and The Deluge.

The rise of Hasidism

The decade from the Cossacks' uprising until after the Swedish war (1648–1658) left a deep and lasting impression not only on the social life of the Polish-Lithuanian Jews, but on their spiritual life as well. The intellectual output of the Jews of Poland was reduced. The Talmudic learning which up to that period had been the common possession of the majority of the people became accessible to a limited number of students only. What religious study there was became overly formalized, some rabbis busied themselves with quibbles concerning religious laws; others wrote commentaries on different parts of the Talmud in which hair-splitting arguments were raised and discussed; and at times these arguments dealt with matters which were of no practical importance. At the same time, many miracle workers made their appearance among the Jews of Poland, culminating in a series of false "Messianic" movements, most famously as Sabbatianism was succeeded by Frankism.

Jews of Poland within the Russian Empire (1795–1918)

Initially, Russian policy towards the Jews of Poland was confused, alternating between harsh rules and somewhat more enlightened policies. In 1802, the Tsar established the Committee on the Improvement of the Jews in an attempt to develop a coherent approach to the Empire's new Jewish population. The Committee in 1804 suggested a number of steps that were designed to encourage Jews to assimilate, though it did not force them to do so. It proposed that Jews be allowed to attend school and even to own land, but it restricted them from entering Russia, banned them from the brewing industry, and included a number of other prohibitions. The more enlightened parts of this policy were never fully implemented, and the conditions of the Jews in the Pale gradually worsened. In the 1820s, the Cantonist Laws passed by Tsar Nicolas kept the traditional double taxation on Jews in lieu of army service, while actually requiring all Jewish communities to produce boys to serve in the military, where they were often forced to convert. Though the Jews were accorded slightly more rights with the emancipation reform of 1861, they were still restricted to the Pale of Settlement and subject to restrictions on ownership and profession. The status quo was however shattered with the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881, an act falsely blamed upon the Jews.

Pogroms

The assassination prompted a large-scale wave of anti-Jewish riots, called pogroms, throughout 1881–1884. In the 1881 outbreak, pogroms were primarily limited to Russia, although in a riot in Warsaw twelve Jews were killed, many others were wounded, women were raped and over two million wubles worth of property was destroyed. The new czar, Alexander III, blamed the Jews for the riots and issued a series of harsh restrictions on Jewish movements. Pogroms continued in large numbers until 1884, with at least tacit government approval. They proved a turning point in the history of the Jews in Poland and throughout the world. The pogroms prompted a great flood of Jewish immigration to the United States, with almost two million Jews leaving the Pale by the late 1920s, and the pogroms set the stage for Zionism.

An even bloodier wave of pogroms broke out from 1903 to 1906, and at least some of the pogroms are believed to have been organized or supported by the Tsarist Russiay secret police, the Okhrana. Some of the worst of these occurred on Polish territory, where the majority of Russiay Jews lived then, and included the Bia?ystok pogrom of 1906, in which up to a hundred Jews were killed and many more wounded.

Haskalah and Halakha

The Jewish Enlightenment, Haskalah, began to take hold in Poland during the 1800s, stressing secular ideas and values. Champions of Haskalah, the Maskilim, pushed for assimilation and integration into Russiay culture. At the same time, there was another school of Jewish thought that emphasized traditional study and a Jewish response to the ethical problems of anti-Semitism and persecution, one form of which was the Mussar movement. Polish Jews generally were less influenced by Haskalah, rather focusing on a strong continuation of their religious lives based on Halakha ("rabbis's law") following primarily Orthodox Judaism, Hasidic Judaism, and also adapting to the new Religious Zionism of the Mizrachi movement later in the 1800s.

Politics in Polish territory

By the late 1800s, Haskalah and the debates it caused created a growing number of political movements within the Jewish community itself, covering a wide range of views and vying for votes in local and regional elections. Zionism became very popular with the advent of the Poale Zion socialist party as well as the religious Polish Mizrahi, and the increasingly popular General Zionists. Jews also took up socialism, forming the Bund labor union which supported assimilation and the rights of labor. The Folkspartei (People's Party) advocated for its part cultural autonomy and resistance to assimilation. In 1912, Agudat Israel, a religious party, came into existence.

Since Jews were treated badly by the Russians, many decided to become in involved in the Polish insurrections. Jews participated in a number of Polish insurrections against the Russians, including the Ko?ciuszko Insurrection (above), and the January Insurrection (1863) as well as the Revolutionary Movement of 1905.

In 1897, fourteen percent of Polish citizens were Jewish. Jews were represented in government with seats in the Sejm, municipals councils and in Jewish religious communities. Jews developed many political parties and associations, ranging in ideologies from Zionist to socialist to Anti-Zionist. The Bund, a socialist party, spread throughout Poland in the early 20th century. Many Jewish workers in Warsaw and Lodz joined the Bund.

Zionism also became popular among Polish Jews, who formed the Poale Zion. Another group, the Folksists (People's Party) supported assimilation and trade unions. The Polish Mizrahi, a Zionist orthodox political party, had a large following. General Zionists became popular in the inter-war period. In the 1919 election of the Sejm, the General Zionists received 50 percent of the votes for Jewish parties.

Interwar period 1918–39

Independence and Polish Jews

Representatives of D?blin's Polish Jews welcome Marshal J�zef Pi?sudski with bread and salt after Polish forces have entered D?blin during the Polish-Soviet War, 1920.

Just after the end of World War I, the West became alarmed by reports about alleged massive pogroms in Poland against Jews. Pressure for government action reached the point where U.S. President Woodrow Wilson sent an official commission to investigate the matter. The commission, led by Henry Morgenthau, Sr., announced in its report that the reports of pogroms were exaggerated, and in some cases may even have been fabricated (Morgenthau Report). It identified eight major incidents in the years 1918–1919, and estimated the number of victims at 200–300 Jews. Four of these were attributed to the actions of deserters and undisciplined individual soldiers; none were blamed on official government policy. Among the incidents, in Pi?sk a Polish officer accused a group of Jewish civilians of plotting against the Poles and shot thirty-five of them (Pinsk massacre). In Lviv (then Lw�w) in 1918, after the Polish Army captured the city, hundreds of people were killed in the chaos, including some seventy-two Jews. In Warsaw, soldiers of Blue Army assaulted Jews in the streets, but were punished by military authorities. Many other events in Poland were later found to have been exaggerated, especially by contemporary newspapers such as The New York Times, although serious abuses against the Jews, including pogroms, continued elsewhere, especially in Ukraine.^[21] The result of the concern over the fate of Poland's Jews was a series of explicit clauses in the Versailles Treaty protecting the rights of minorities in Poland. In 1921, Poland's March Constitution gave the Jews the same legal rights as other citizens and guaranteed them religious tolerance.

Jewish and Polish culture

The newly independent Second Polish Republic had a large Jewish minority by the time World War II began, Poland had the largest concentration of Jews in Europe but most Polish Jews had a cultural and ethnic identity totally different from that of Polish Catholics. It has been estimated that more than 80 percent of Polish Jews were easily recognizable.

According to the 1931 National Census there were 3,130,581 Polish Jews measured by the declaration of their religion. Estimating the population increase and the emigration from Poland between 1931 and 1939, there were probably 3,474,000 Jews in Poland as of September 1, 1939 (approximately 10% of the total population). Jews were primarily centered in large and smaller cities: 77% lived in cities and 23% in the villages. In 1939 there were 375,000 Jews in Warsaw or one third of the city's population. Only New York City had more Jewish residents than Warsaw.

The overwhelming majority of Polish Jews at that time worked in commerce industry. In some areas the Jews constituted a majority of shopkeeppers and merchants. Tailoring and shoemaking were also typical Jewish occupations. At the same time 56 per cent of all doctors, 43 per cent of teachers, 33 per cent of lawyers, and 22 per cent of journalists were Jewish.

Jewish youth and religious groups, diverse political parties and Zionist organizations, newspapers and theatre flourished. In addition to small businesses, Jews owned real estate and export and manufacturing enterprises. Religious practices ranged from Hasidism to modern "Progressive" Judaism. Most Warsaw Jews spoke Yiddish, but Polish was increasingly used by the young who have not had a problem in identifying themselves fully as Jews, Warsavians and Poles. Polish Jews were entering the mainstream of Polish society, though many thought of themselves as a separate nationality within Poland. More than half the Jewish children attended special Jewish schools. Enrollment in religious school, in turn, discouraged mastery of the Polish language. Thus, in answer to a 1931 census inquiry, the overwhelming majority of Jews mentioned Yiddish as their native tongue (79 per cent) and only 12 percent gave Polish as their first language. The rest chose Hebrew. During the school year of 1937–1938 there were 226 elementary schools

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and twelve high schools as well as fourteen vocational schools with either Yiddish or Hebrew as the instructional language. The YIVO (Jidiszer Wissenszaftlecher Institute) Scientific Institute was based in Wilno before transferring to New York during the war. Jewish political parties, both the Socialist General Jewish Labor Union (The Bund)

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, as well as parties of the Zionist right and left wing and religious conservative movements, were represented in the Sejm (the Polish Parliament) as well as in the regional councils.

Growing anti-Semitism

Polish attitudes regarding Jews and Jewish regarding Poles have been shaped by a complex and long history. Antisemitism in Poland had reached high proportions in the immediate years before the Second World War, although Jews enjoyed unprecedented liberties during the Middle Ages, at a time when their brethren suffered persecution in the rest of Europe. Jews were often not identified as true Poles; a problem caused by both Polish nationalism, supported by the Endecja government, and the fact that a substantial proportion of Jews lived separate lives from the Polish majority: 85% of Polish Jews listed Yiddish or Hebrew as their native language, for example. The matters improved for a time under the rule of J�zef Pi?sudski (1926–1935), who opposed anti-Semitism. Pi?sudski replaced Endecja's 'ethnic assimilation' with the 'state assimilation' policy: citizens were judged by their loyalty to the state, not by their nationality.^[22] The years 1926?1935 were favourably viewed by many Polish Jews, whose situation improved especially under the cabinet of Pilsudski?s appointee Kazimierz Bartel.^[23] However a combination of various reasons, including the Great Depression,^[22] meant that the situation of Jewish Poles was never too satisfactory, and it deteriorated again after Pi?sudski's death in May 1935, which many Jews regarded as a tragedy.^[24]

With Endecja party influence growing antisemitism gathered new momentum in Poland and was most felt in smaller towns and spheres in which Jews came into direct contact with Poles, such as in Polish schools or on the sports field. Further academic harassment, such as the introduction of like ghetto benches, which forced Jewish students to sit in section of the lecture halls reserved exclusively for them, anti-Jewish riots, and semi-official or unofficial quotas (Numerus clausus) introduced in 1937 in some universities halved the number of Jews in Polish universities between independence and the late 1930s. The restrictions were so inclusive that while in 1921 Jews made up 24.6% of the student population by 1938 their share was down to only 8%.

Although many Jews were educated, they were excluded from most of the relevant occupations, including the government bureaucracy. A good number therefore turned to the liberal professions, particularly medicine and law. In 1937 the Catholic trade unions of Polish doctors and lawyers restricted their new members to Christian Poles. A series of professional and trade unions, including those for lawyers and physicians, enacted "Aryan clauses" expelling Polish Jews from their ranks.^[25] The bulk of Jewish workers were organized in Jewish trade unions under the influence of the Jewish Labor Bund, which recognized the special cultural needs of the Jewish population, as well as special conditions arising from official descrimination against Jews in certain professions.^[26] Jews were virtually excluded from Polish government jobs during this period.^[27]

This discrimination was accompanied by physical violence: in the years between 1935 and 1937 seventy-nine Jews were killed and 500 injured in anti-Jewish incidents, there were also victims among anti-semites.^[28] National policy was such that jobless Jews, who larhely worked at home or in small shops due to discrimination in employment, were excluded from welfare benefits.^[29]

The Endecja party promoted a national boycott of Jewish merchants. The term "Christian shop" was introduced, and, in the late 1930s, even some carriage drivers bore the inscription "Christian carriages" on their caps. Under the guise of animal rights there was a national movement to forbid the Jewish ritual slaughter or koshering of animals.^[30] Violence was also frequently aimed at Jewish stores and many of them were looted. At the same time, persistent economic boycotts and harassment including property-destroying riots, combined with the effects of the Great Depression that had been very severe on agricultural countries like Poland, reduced the standard of living of Polish Jews to the extent that by the end of the 1930s, a substantial portion of Polish Jews lived in grinding poverty.^[31] The result was that at the eve of the Second World War, the Jewish community in Poland was large and vibrant internally, yet (with the exception of a few professionals) also substantially poorer and less integrated than the Jews in most of Western Europe.

Poland was also a strict Catholic country and the Poles were passionately devoted to the Catholic religion which at that time taught them that the Jews were responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus^[32] On the eve of World War II, many typical Polish Christians believed that there were far too many Jews in the country and the Polish government became increasingly concerned with the "Jewish Question." The favored solution was mass Jewish emigration. By the time of the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany in 1939, antisemitism in Poland was escalating, and hostility towards Jews was a mainstay of the Catholic church, right-wing political forces, and the post-Pi?sudski regime. Discrimination and violence against Jews had rendered the Polish Jewish population increasingly destitute, as was the case throughout much of Central and Eastern Europe. Despite the impending threat to the Polish Republic from Nazi Germany, there was little effort seen in the way of reconciliation with Poland's Jewish population. In July of 1939 the Gazeta Polska, the organ of the Polish government^[33] wrote "The fact that our relations with the Reich are worsening does not in the least deactivate our program in the Jewish question-there is not and cannot be any common ground between our internal Jewish problem and Poland's relations with the Hitlerite Reich."^[34]^[35] Escalating hostility towards Polish Jews and an official Polish government desire of removing Jews from Poland continued right up until the Nazi invasion of Poland.^[36]

NOTICE
Concerning:
the Sheltering of Escaping Jews.
....There is a need for a reminder, that in accordance with paragraph 3 of the decree of October 15, 1941, on the Limitation of Residence in General Government (page 595 of the GG Register) Jews leaving the Jewish Quarter without permission will incur the death penalty.

....According to this decree, those knowingly helping these Jews by providing shelter, supplying food, or selling them foodstuffs are also subject to the death penalty

....This is a categorical warning to the non-Jewish population against:
.........1) Providing shelter to Jews,
.........2) Supplying them with Food,
.........3) Selling them Foodstuffs.
Dr. Franke - Town Commander - Cz?stochowa 9/24/42

World War II and the destruction of Polish Jewry (1939–45)

The Polish September campaign

The number of Jews in Poland on September 1st 1939 amounted to about 3,474,000 people.http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/gcpol5.htm One hundred thirty thousand soldiers of Jewish descent served in Polish Army at the outbreak of the Second World War, thus being among the first to launch armed resistance against the Nazi Germany.http://www.zchor.org/meirtchak/meirtchak.htm It is estimated that during the entirety of World War II as many as 32,216 Jewish soldiers and officers died and 61,000 were taken prisoner by the Germans; the majority did not survive. http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%206566.pdf The soldiers and non-commissioned officers who were released ultimately found themselves in the ghettos and labor camps and suffered the same fate as other Jewish civilians.

For the duration of the war, many Jews were in the Polish Armed Forces in the West, in the Polish People's Army formed in the Soviet Union, as well as in civilian resistance movements and guerilla detachments. Many lost their lives or were wounded; very many received the highest combat distinctions.

Territories annexed by the USSR

On August 23, 1939, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany entered into a Nonaggression Pact, so-called Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact with a secret protocol providing the partition of Poland. Germany attacked Poland on September 1, 1939 and the Soviet Union on September 17, 1939. In newly partitioned Poland, according to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, (according to 1931 census) 61.2% of Polish Jews found themselves under German occupation while 38.8% were in the Polish areas annexed by the Soviet Union. Based on population migration from West to East during and after the Invasion of Poland the percentage of Jews in the Soviet-occupied areas was probably higher than that of the 1931 census.

The Soviet annexation was accompanied by the widespread arrests of government officials, police and military personnel, teachers, priests, judges, border guards, etc., followed by executions and massive deportation to Soviet interior and forced labour camps were many perished as a result of harsh conditions. 1.450 million people inhabiting the region were deported by the Soviet regime. The largest group of all those deported (63.1%) were ethnic Poles but Jews accounted for 7.4% of all the prisoners.

Jewish refugees from Western Poland who registered for repatriation back to the German zone (people in the Soviet occupation zone had little knowledge of what was going on in the German occupation zone since the Soviet media did not report on their Nazi ally's misdeeds), wealthy Jewish capitalists, prewar political and social activists were labelled "class enemies" and deported for that reason. Jews caught for illegal border crossings or engaged in illicit trade and other "illegal" activities were also arrested and deported. Several thousand, mostly captured Polish soldiers were executed on the spot, some of them were Jewish.

Private property, land, banks, factories, businesses, shops, and large workshops were nationalized. Political activity ceased and political prisoners filled the jails, many of whom were later executed. Zionism was designated as counter-revolutionary and forbidden. All Jewish and Polish newspapers were shut down within a day of the entry of the Soviet forces and anti-religious propaganda was conducted mainly through the new Soviet press which attacked religion in general and the Jewish faith in particular. Although the synagogues and churches were not shut down, they were heavily taxed. Sovietization of the economy affected the entire population. However, the Jewish communities were more vulnerable because of their distinctive social and economic structure. Red Army also brought with them new and different economic norms expressed in low wages, shortages in materials, rising prices, and a declining living standard. The Soviets also implemented a new employment policy that enabled many Jews to find jobs as civil servants while Poles were denied access to them and former Polish senior officials and leading personalities were arrested and exiled to remote regions of Russia together with their families.http://www.polandsholocaust.org/memoir2.html

While most Poles of all ethnicities had anti-Soviet and anti-communist sentiments, a portion of the Jewish population, along with ethnic Belorussiays, Ukrainians and communist Poles had initially welcomed Soviet forces.^[37]^[38]^[39] The general feeling amongst Polish Jews was a sense of relief in having escaped the dangers of falling under Nazi rule, as well as from the overt policies of discrimination against Jews which existed in the Polish state, including discrimination in education, employment and commerce, as well as antisemitic violence that in some cases reached pogrom levels.^[40]^[41] The Polish poet and former communist Aleksander Wat has stated that Jews were more inclined to cooperate with the Soviets ^[42]http://books.google.ca/books?id=A4FlatJCro4C&pg=PA49&lpg=PA49&dq=Jewish+collaboration+with+the+Soviet+invaders&source=web&ots=0JfNJ6SH-V&sig=5h-DyCYRCoEOnbZ2YFgeHkaq4oA&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=5&ct=result Norman Davies claimed that among the informers and collaborators, the percentage of Jews was striking, and they prepared lists of Polish "class enemies" ^[42], while other historians have indicated that the level of Jewish collaboration could well have been less than that of ethnic Poles.^[43] Holocaust scholar Martin Dean has written that "few local Jews obtained positions of power under Soviet rule."^[44]

The issue of Jewish collaboration with the Soviet occupation remains controversial. A large group of scholars note that while not pro-communist, many Jews saw the Soviets as the lesser threat compared to the Nazis. They stress that stories of Jews welcoming the Soviets on the streets are largely impressionistic and not reliable indicators of the level of Jewish support for the Soviets. Additionally, it has been noted that ethnic Poles were as prominent as Jews were in filling civil and police positions in the occupation administration, and that Jews, both civilians and in the Polish military, suffered equally at the hands of the Soviet occupiers.^[45] Whatever initial enthusiasm for the Soviet occupation Jews might have felt was soon dissipated upon feeling the impact of the suppression of Jewish societal modes of life by the occupiers.^[46] The tensions between ethnic Poles and Jews as a result of this period has, according to some historians, taken a toll on relations between Poles and Jews throughout the war, creating until this day, an impasse to Polish-Jewish rapprochement.^[39]

Only a small percentage of the Jewish community had been members of the Communist Party of Poland during the inter-war era, though they had occupied an influential and conspicuous place in the party's leadership and in the rank and file in major centres, such as Warsaw, Lodz and Lwow. A larger number of younger Jews, often through the pro-Marxist Bund (General Jewish Workers' Union) or some Zionist groups, were sympathetic to Communism and Soviet Russia, both of which had been enemies of the Polish Second Republic. As a result of these factors they found it easy after 1939 to participate in the Soviet occupation administration in Eastern Poland, and briefly occupied prominent positions in industry, schools, local government, police and other Soviet-installed institutions. The anitisemitic Polish concept of "Judeo-communism" was reinforced during the period of the Soviet occupation (see ?ydokomuna).^[47]^[48]

There were also many Jews, who regardless of some negative Jewish experiences in the prewar years, considered themselves both good Poles and good Jews and demonstrated loyalty toward Poland, assisting Poles during brutal Soviet occupation. Among Polish officers killed by the NKVD in 1940 in the Katy? massacre there were 500–600 Jews. From 1939 to 1941 between 100,000 and 300,000 Polish Jews were deported from Soviet-occupied Polish territory into the Soviet Union. Some of them, especially Polish Communists (e.g. Jakub Berman), moved voluntarily; however, most of them were forcibly deported or imprisoned in Gulag. Small numbers of Polish Jews (about 6,000) were able to leave the Soviet Union in 1942 with the W?adys?aw Anders army, among them the future Prime Minister of Israel Menachem Begin. During the Polish army's II Corps' stay in the British Mandate of Palestine, 67% (2,972) of the Jewish soldiers deserted, many to join the Irgun. General Anders decided not to prosecute the deserters. The others fought in Italy, so the cemetery of Polish soldiers who died during the Battle of Monte Cassino contains also headstones bearing a Star of David.

The Holocaust: German-occupied Poland

The Polish Jewish community suffered the most in the Holocaust. About six million Polish citizens perished during the war

http://www1.yadvashem.org/Odot/prog/image_into.asp?id=3428&lang=EN&type_id=&addr=/IMAGE_TYPE/3428.GIF

, half of them (three million) Polish Jews - all but about 300,000 of the Jewish population - who were killed at the Nazi extermination camps of Auschwitz, Treblinka, Majdanek, Belzec, Sobib�r, Che?mno or died of starvation in ghettos.^[49] Poland became the largest site of the German Nazi extermination program, since this was where most of the intended victims lived. In 1939 several hundred synagogues were blown up or burnt by the Germans who sometimes forced the Jews to do it themselves. In many cases Germans turned the synagogues into factories, places of entertainment, swimming-pools or prisons. Jewish rabbis were ordered to dance and sing in public with their beards cut or torn. Some rabbis were set on fire or hung.

Within a few days, Germans ordered all Jews to register with them and the word "Jude" was stamped on their identity cards. Jews were placed outside the law and their lives were regulated by German orders or edicts. Series of restrictions and prohibitions were introduced and brutally enforced. Jews were forbidden to walk on the sidewalks, use public transport, enter places of leisure, sports arenas, theaters, museums and libraries. On the street, Jews had to lift their hat to passing Germans. By the end of 1941 all Jews in German occupied Poland, except the children, had to wear an identifying badge with a blue Star of David.

http://www1.yadvashem.org/Odot/prog/image_into.asp?id=4414&lang=EN&type_id=&addr=/IMAGE_TYPE/4414.JPG

The German-controlled Polish language press ran anti-Jewish articles that urged people to adopt an attitude of indifference towards the Jews.

By the spring of 1942, the German Nazis had established six killing centers (death camps) in Poland: Chelmno (Kulmhof), Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Maidanek and Auschwitz located near railway lines so that Jews could be easily transported daily. A vast system supported the death camps. The purpose of these other camps varied: some were slave labor camps, some transit camps, others concentration camps and their sub�camps, and still others the death camps. Some camps combined all of these functions or only a few of them. All the camps were intolerably brutal. Many healthy, young strong Jews were not killed immediately. The Germans war effort and the "Final Solution" required a great deal of manpower, so the Germans reserved large pools of Jews for slave labor in German munitions and other factories wherever the Nazis needed laborers. They were worked from dawn until dark without adequate food and shelter and thousands perished worked to death. The German concentration camps depended on the cooperation of trustee inmates who supervised the prisoners. Known as Kapos, these trustees carried out the will of the Nazi camp commandants and guards, and were often as brutal as their SS counterparts. Some of these Kapos were Jewish, and even they inflicted harsh treatment on their fellow prisoners. After the war, the prosecution of Kapos as war criminals, particularly those who were Jewish, created an ethical dilemma which continues to this day.

The Germans also established a number of ghettos in which Jews were confined, slowly starved and cruelly offered hopes of survival but eventually ended up being killed. The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest, with 380,000 people and the ?�d? Ghetto, the second largest, holding about 160,000. Other Polish cities with large Jewish ghettos included Bia?ystok, Cz?stochowa, Kielce, Krak�w, Lublin, Lw�w, and Radom. Ghettos were also established in smaller settlements.

Living conditions in the Ghettos, most hermetically sealed and without ability to leave, were terrible. Overcrowding, dirt and lice resulted in lethal epidemics such as typhoid. Hunger was also a permanent fixture and resulted in countless deaths. Jews who tried to escape were shot to death with their bodies to be left in public view until dusk as a warning. Many of those who fled to the Aryan side without connections with Christian Poles willing to risk their lives in order to help, returned to the ghettos when they were unable to find a place to hide. Since Nazi terror reigned throughout the Aryan districts, the chances of remaining successfully hidden undoubtedly depended on a fluent knowledge of the language and on having close ties with the community. Generally Poles were not willing to hide Jews who might have escaped ghettoes or who might have been in hiding due to fear for ones own life. The murder of Polish inhabitants by the Nazis was common even for lesser infractions, let alone for rendering assistance to Jews. The criminal ruthlessness of the Germans towards the Jews, regardless of sex or age, was accompanied by the very same ruthlessness towards the Poles who helped them, no matter for what reasons. In any apartment block or area where Jews were found to be harboured, everybody in the house was immediately shot by the Germans. Hundreds of Polish families died as a result of helping Jews.http://zyciezazycie.pl/index.php?lang=en

For Jews to hide in Christian society was a daunting task. A new identity required being familiar with Christian religious customs of which Jews had no knowledge. Jews with the physical characteristics of curly black hair, dark eyes, dark complexion, a long nose were in special jeopardy and most Jews spoke Polish with an accent or used expressions derived from Yiddish which gave them away. Money or items of value were needed to pay those rescuers who required payment, to purchase food on the black market (hidden Jews did not have ration books), to purchase counterfeit documents or to pay bribes to blackmailers. Some individuals took advantage of a hiding persons desperation by collecting money, then reneging on their promise of aid?or worse, turning them over to the Germans for an additional reward. The Gestapo routinely offered a bounty for those who turned in Jews who were hiding. This bounty consisted of a quart of liquor, four pounds of sugar, a carton of cigarettes, or, at times, small cash payments. Many Jews were robbed and handed over to the Germans by "szmalcownik"s many of whom practiced blackmail as an "occupation". Those criminals were condemned by the Polish Underground State and fight against these informers was organized by Armia Krajowa (Underground State's military arm), with the death sentence being meted out on a scale unknown in the occupied countries of Western Europe ^[58]

Hidden Jewish children were kept in cellars and attics, where they had to keep quiet, even motionless, for hours on end.

http://www1.yadvashem.org/Odot/prog/image_into.asp?id=4334&lang=EN&type_id=2&addr=/IMAGE_TYPE/4334.JPG

In rural areas, hidden children lived in barns, chicken coops, and forest huts. Any noise?conversation, footsteps?could arouse neighbors suspicion and perhaps even prompt a Gestapo raid. During bombings, Jewish children had to remain hidden, unable to flee to the safety of shelters. Under these conditions, the children often suffered from a lack of human interaction and endured boredom and fear.

Some religious Jews believed that their suffering was preordained and would bring about the Messiah. There were also many religious Jews involved in heroic acts. One famous leader was Janusz Korczak, the director of the Jewish orphanage, who chose to accompany the children he cared for when they were deported.

Poland was the only occupied country during World War II where the Nazis formally imposed the death penalty

http://www1.yadvashem.org/Odot/prog/image_into.asp?id=2743&lang=EN&type_id=&addr=/IMAGE_TYPE/2743.JPG

for anybody found sheltering and helping Jews.^[59]^[60] This penalty was widely announced by the occupying authorities and was quite often imposed not only on the rescuer, but also on his/her family, neighbors, and on whole towns or villages.^[61] Failure to inform on a neighbor hiding Jews was punished by deportation to a concentration camp. The Germans believed in collective responsibility making Poles the most terrorized populations after the Jews and the Gypsies. Food rations for Poles were very small (669 kcal per day in 1941) and black market prices of food were high, factors which made it difficult to hide people and almost impossible to hide entire families, especially in the cities. Despite these draconian measures imposed by the Nazis, Poland has the highest number of Righteous Among The Nations awards at the Yad Vashem Museum (6,066).^[62]

The Polish Government in Exile was the first (in November 1942) to reveal the existence of Nazi-run concentration camps and the systematic extermination of the Jews by the Nazis, through its courier Jan Karski http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%206425.pdf and through the activities of Witold Pilecki, member of Armia Krajowa who was the only person to volunteer for imprisonment in Auschwitz and who organized a resistance movement inside the camp itself.^[63] One of the Jewish members of the National Council of the Polish government in exile, Szmul Zygielbojm, committed suicide to protest the indifference of the Allied governments in the face of the Holocaust in Poland. The Polish government in exile was also the only government to set up an organization (?egota) specifically aimed at helping the Jews in Poland.