История евреев в Польше

Польские евреи
יהודי פוליןПольские евреи
Польские евреи

Памятник героям гетто возле Музея истории польских евреев ПОЛИН в Варшаве
Общая численность населения
Восток. 1 300 000+
Регионы со значительной численностью населения
Польша	10,000–20,000
Израиль	1 250 000 (родословная, паспорт соответствует критериям ); 202 300 (родившиеся в Польше или от отца польского происхождения)
Языки
польский , иврит , идиш , немецкий
Религия
иудаизм

История евреев в Польше насчитывает не менее 1000 лет. На протяжении веков Польша была домом для самой большой и значительной еврейской общины ашкенази в мире. Польша была основным центром еврейской культуры из-за длительного периода установленной законом религиозной терпимости и социальной автономии , который закончился после раздела Польши в 18 веке. Во время Второй мировой войны произошло почти полное геноцидное уничтожение польской еврейской общины нацистской Германией и ее пособниками различных национальностей. во время немецкой оккупации Польши между 1939 и 1945 годами, названной Холокостом . После падения коммунизма в Польше возобновился интерес к еврейской культуре, что выражалось в ежегодном фестивале еврейской культуры в открытии Варшавского , новых учебных программах в польских средних школах и университетах, а также Музея истории польских евреев .

С момента основания Королевства Польского в 1025 году и до первых лет существования Речи Посполитой, созданной в 1569 году , Польша была самой толерантной страной в Европе. Историки использовали ярлык paradisus iudaeorum ( с латыни « рай »). еврейский Польша стала приютом для евреев, преследуемых и изгнанных из различных европейских стран, и домом для крупнейшей в мире еврейской общины того времени. По некоторым данным, к середине XVI века в Польше проживало около трёх четвертей евреев мира. С ослаблением Речи Посполитой и ростом религиозных распрей (из-за протестантской Реформации и католической контрреформации ) традиционная толерантность Польши начала ослабевать с 17 века. После раздела Польши в 1795 году и разрушения Польши как суверенного государства польские евреи стали подчиняться законам разделяющих держав, включая все более антисемитскую Российскую империю . а также Австро-Венгрия и Прусское королевство (позже входившее в состав Германской империи ). Когда Польша восстановила независимость после Первой мировой войны , она все еще оставалась центром европейского еврейского мира с одной из крупнейших в мире еврейских общин, насчитывающей более 3 миллионов человек. В те годы антисемитизм был растущей проблемой по всей Европе, как со стороны политического истеблишмента, так и среди населения в целом. На протяжении всего межвоенного периода Польша поддерживала еврейскую эмиграцию из Польши и создание еврейского государства в Палестине . Польское государство также поддерживало еврейские военизированные группировки, такие как « Хагана» , «Бетар» и «Иргун» , снабжая их оружием и обучая их.

В 1939 году, в начале Второй мировой войны, Польша была разделена между нацистской Германией и Советским Союзом (см. Пакт Молотова-Риббентропа ). Одна пятая населения Польши погибла во время Второй мировой войны; 3 миллиона польских евреев, убитых во время Холокоста, составлявших 90% польского еврейства, составляли половину всех поляков, убитых во время войны. Хотя Холокост произошел в основном в оккупированной немцами Польше , он был организован и осуществлен нацистами. Отношение поляков к Холокосту сильно различалось: от активного риска смерти ради спасения жизней евреев до и пассивному отказу сообщить о них, равнодушию, шантажу, а в крайних случаях — совершение преднамеренных убийств, как, например, во время погрома в Едвабне . Сотрудничество польских граждан-неевреев в Холокосте было спорадическим, но случаи враждебности против евреев хорошо задокументированы и стали предметом возобновленного научного интереса в 21 веке.

В послевоенный период многие из примерно 200 000 выживших евреев зарегистрировались в Центральном комитете польских евреев или CKŻP (из которых 136 000 прибыли из Советского Союза). покинул Польскую Народную Республику и перебрался в зарождающееся Государство Израиль или в Америку . Их уход был ускорен разрушением еврейских институтов, послевоенным антиеврейским насилием и враждебностью Коммунистической партии как к религии, так и к частному предпринимательству, а также потому, что в 1946–1947 годах Польша была единственной страной Восточного блока , допускавшей свободу Еврейская алия в Израиль, без виз и разрешений на выезд. Большинство оставшихся евреев покинули Польшу в конце 1968 года в результате «антисионистской» кампании . После падения коммунистического режима в 1989 году положение польских евреев нормализовалось, и тем, кто был польскими гражданами до Второй мировой войны, было разрешено продлить польское гражданство . По оценкам, современная польская еврейская община насчитывает от 10 000 до 20 000 членов. Число людей с любым еврейским наследием в несколько раз больше.

Ранняя история Золотого века: 966–1572 гг.

Основная статья: История европейских евреев в средние века

Дополнительная информация: История евреев в Польше до 18 века.

Ранняя история: 966–1385 гг.

Основная статья: История Польши во времена династии Пястов

Прием евреев в Польше , Ян Матейко , 1889 г.

Первыми евреями, посетившими территорию Польши, были торговцы, а постоянное заселение началось во время крестовых походов . Путешествуя по торговым путям, ведущим на восток в Киев и Бухару , еврейские купцы, известные как радханиты , пересекали Силезию . Один из них, дипломат и купец из мавританского города Тортоса в испанском Аль-Андалусе , известный под своим арабским именем Ибрагим ибн Якуб , был первым летописцем, упомянувшим польское государство под управлением князя Мешко I. Летом 965 или 966 года Яков совершил торговое и дипломатическое путешествие из родного Толедо в мусульманской Испании в Священную Римскую империю , а затем в славянские страны. Первое фактическое упоминание о евреях в польских хрониках встречается в 11 веке, где оказывается, что евреи тогда жили в Гнезно , в то время столице Польского королевства династии Пястов . Среди первых евреев, прибывших в Польшу в 1097 или 1098 годах, были изгнанные из Праги . Первая постоянная еврейская община упоминается в 1085 году еврейским учёным Иегудой га-Коэном в городе Пшемысль .

Как и везде в Центральной и Восточной Европе , основной деятельностью евреев в средневековой Польше была коммерция и торговля, включая экспорт и импорт таких товаров, как ткани, белье, меха, шкуры, воск, металлические предметы и рабы.

Раннесредневековые польские монеты с надписями на иврите.

Первая обширная еврейская миграция из Западной Европы в Польшу произошла во время Первого крестового похода в 1098 году. При Болеславе III (1102–1139) евреи, поощряемые толерантным режимом этого правителя, расселились по всей Польше, в том числе за границей в Польше. Территория Литвы до Киева . Болеслав III признал полезность евреев в развитии коммерческих интересов своей страны. Евреи стали основой польской экономики. Мешко III нанимал евреев на свой монетный двор в качестве граверов и технических руководителей, а монеты, отчеканенные в тот период, даже имели еврейские маркировки . Евреи работали по заказу монетных дворов других современных польских князей, в том числе Казимира Справедливого , Болеслава I Высокого и Владислава III Веретеноногого . Евреи наслаждались безмятежным миром и процветанием во многих княжествах, на которые тогда была разделена страна; они сформировали средний класс в стране, где основная часть населения состояла из помещиков (превращающихся в шляхту , уникальное польское дворянство) и крестьян, и они сыграли важную роль в продвижении коммерческих интересов земли.

Еще одним фактором, побудившим евреев эмигрировать в Польшу, были Магдебургские права (или Магдебургское право), хартия, выданная евреям, среди прочего, в которой конкретно описывались права и привилегии, которые евреи имели в Польше. Например, они могли сохранять общинную автономию и жить по своим законам. Это сделало переезд в Польшу очень привлекательным для еврейских общин.

Первое упоминание о еврейских поселенцах в Плоцке датируется 1237 годом, в Калише — в 1287 году, а на Жидовской (еврейской) улице в Кракове — в 1304 году.

Ситуация толерантности постепенно менялась Римско-католической церковью, с одной стороны, и соседними немецкими государствами, с другой. Однако среди правящих князей были некоторые решительные защитники еврейских жителей, которые считали присутствие последних наиболее желательным с точки зрения экономического развития страны. Среди таких правителей выдающимся был Болеслав Благочестивый из Калиша , князь Великопольский . С согласия представителей сословия и высших чиновников в 1264 году он издал «Общую хартию еврейских свобод» (обычно называемую Статутом Калиша ), которая предоставляла всем евреям свободу вероисповедания, торговли и путешествий. Аналогичные привилегии были предоставлены силезским евреям местными князьями Генрихом IV Пробом из Вроцлава в 1273–1290 гг., Генрихом III Глоговским в 1274 и 1299 гг., Генрихом V Толстым из Легницы в 1290–95 гг. и Болко III Щедрым из Легницы. и Вроцлав в 1295 году. Статья 31 Статута Калиша пыталась удержать Католическую церковь от распространения кровавых наветов против евреев, заявляя: «Обвинение евреев в употреблении христианской крови категорически запрещено. Если, несмотря на это, еврея следует обвинить в убийстве христианского ребенка, такое обвинение должно быть подтверждено показаниями трех христиан и трех иудеев».

В течение следующих ста лет Церковь настаивала на преследовании евреев, в то время как правители Польши обычно защищали их. Вроцлавский (1267 г.), Будинский (1279 г.) и Ленчицкий соборы (1285 г.) изолировали евреев, предписывали им носить специальную эмблему, запрещали им занимать должности, на которых им подчинялись бы христиане, и запрещали им строить более по одному молитвенному дому в каждом городе. Однако для исполнения этих церковных постановлений требовалось сотрудничество польских князей, чего, как правило, не последовало из-за прибылей, которые князьям приносила экономическая деятельность евреев.

Казимир Великий и евреи , Войцех Герсон , 1874 г.

В 1332 году король Казимир III Великий (1303–1370) усилил и расширил старую хартию Болеслава Вислицким статутом . Во время его правления потоки еврейских иммигрантов направились на восток, в Польшу, а еврейские поселения впервые упоминаются как существовавшие во Львове (1356 г.), Сандомире (1367 г.) и Казимеже недалеко от Кракова (1386 г.). Казимир, у которого по легенде была любовница-еврейка по имени Эстерка из Опочно. был особенно дружелюбен к евреям, и его правление считается эпохой большого процветания польского еврейства, а современники прозвали его «королем крепостных и евреев». Под страхом смертной казни он запретил похищение еврейских детей с целью принудительного христианского крещения . Он наложил суровое наказание за осквернение еврейских кладбищ . Тем не менее, хотя большую часть правления Казимира евреи Польши наслаждались спокойствием, к его концу они подверглись преследованиям из-за Черной смерти . В 1348 году было зафиксировано первое обвинение в кровавом навете произошел первый погром против евреев в Польше, а в 1367 году в Познани . Однако по сравнению с безжалостным уничтожением своих единоверцев в Западной Европе , польские евреи жили неплохо; а еврейские беженцы из Германии бежали в более гостеприимные города Польши.

Ранняя эпоха Ягеллонов: 1385–1505 гг.

Основная статья: История Польши во времена династии Ягеллонов

В результате женитьбы Владислава II Ягелло на Ядвиге , дочери Людовика I Венгерского , Литва была объединена с Королевством Польским . В 1388–1389 годах были предоставлены широкие привилегии, литовским евреям включая свободу вероисповедания и торговли наравне с христианами. При правлении Владислава II численность польских евреев увеличилась и достигла процветания. Однако религиозные преследования постепенно усиливались, поскольку догматическое духовенство настаивало на меньшей официальной терпимости под давлением Констанцского Синода . В 1349 г. во многих городах Силезии произошли погромы. Были обвинения в кровавом навете со стороны священников и новые беспорядки против евреев в Познани в 1399 году. Обвинения в кровавом навете со стороны другого священника-фанатика привели к беспорядкам в Кракове в 1407 году, хотя королевская гвардия поспешила на помощь. Истерия, вызванная Черной смертью, привела к дополнительным вспышкам насилия против евреев в 14 веке в Калише , Кракове и Бохне . Торговцы и ремесленники, завидующие еврейскому процветанию и опасающиеся их соперничества, поддерживали притеснения. В 1423 году статут Варки запретил евреям выдавать ссуды под аккредитивы или ипотечные кредиты и ограничил их операции исключительно ссудами, выдаваемыми под залог движимого имущества.

В XIV и XV веках богатые еврейские купцы и ростовщики арендовали королевский монетный двор, соляные шахты и сбор таможенных пошлин и пошлин. Самыми известными из них были Йордан и его сын Левко из Кракова в 14 веке и Якуб Сломкович из Лука , Волчко из Дрогобыча , Натко из Львова , Самсон из Жидачева , Йоско из Грубешува и Сания из Белза в 15 веке. Например, Вольчко Дрогобычский, брокер короля Ладислава Ягайло, был владельцем нескольких деревень в Русинском воеводстве и солтысом (администратором) деревни Вербиз. Также гродненские евреи были в этот период владельцами деревень, усадеб, лугов, рыбных прудов и мельниц. Однако до конца XV ​​века сельское хозяйство как источник дохода играло лишь незначительную роль в еврейских семьях. Более важными были ремесла для нужд как своих собратьев-евреев, так и христианского населения (меховое производство, дубление, пошив одежды).

Казимир IV Ягеллон утвердил и расширил еврейские грамоты во второй половине XV века.

городах вспыхнули антиеврейские беспорядки Богемии В 1454 году в этнически немецком Вроцлаве и других силезских , вдохновленные монахом-францисканцем Иоанном Капистрано , который обвинил евреев в осквернении христианской религии. В результате евреи были изгнаны из Нижней Силезии. Затем Збигнев Олесницкий пригласил Джона провести аналогичную кампанию в Кракове и нескольких других городах, но с меньшим эффектом.

Падение статуса евреев было ненадолго приостановлено Казимиром IV Ягеллоном (1447–1492), но вскоре дворянство вынудило его издать Нешавский статут , который, среди прочего, отменил древние привилегии евреев, «как противоречащие божественному праву и закону страны». Тем не менее, король продолжал предлагать свою защиту евреям. Два года спустя Казимир издал еще один документ, в котором объявил, что он не может лишить евреев своей благосклонности на основании «принципа терпимости, который в соответствии с законами Бога обязывал его защищать их». Политика правительства в отношении евреев Польши колебалась при сыновьях и преемниках Казимира, Иоанне I Альберте (1492–1501) и Александре Ягеллоне (1501–1506). В 1495 году евреям приказали покинуть центр Кракова и разрешили поселиться в «еврейском городе» Казимеже. В том же году Александр, будучи великим князем Литовским , последовал примеру испанских правителей 1492 года и изгнал евреев из Литвы. В течение нескольких лет они укрывались в Польше, пока он не отменил свое решение восемь лет спустя, в 1503 году, став королем Польши, и не позволил им вернуться в Литву. В следующем году он издал прокламацию, в которой заявил, что политика терпимости подобает «королям и правителям».

Центр еврейского мира: 1505–1572 гг.

Сигизмунд II Август следовал терпимой политике своего отца и также предоставил евреям автономию.

Польша стала более терпимой, как только евреи были изгнаны из Испании в 1492 году, а также из Австрии , Венгрии и Германии , что стимулировало еврейскую иммиграцию в гораздо более доступную Польшу. Действительно, с изгнанием евреев из Испании Польша стала признанным убежищем для изгнанников из Западной Европы; и последующее вступление в ряды польского еврейства сделало его культурным и духовным центром еврейского народа.

Самый процветающий период для польских евреев начался после этого нового притока евреев во время правления Сигизмунда I Старого (1506–1548), который защищал евреев в своем королевстве. Его сын, Сигизмунд II Август (1548–1572), в основном следовал толерантной политике своего отца, а также предоставил евреям общинно-управленческую автономию и заложил основу власти Кахала , или автономной еврейской общины. Этот период привел к созданию пословицы о Польше как «рае для евреев». По некоторым данным, к середине XVI века в Польше проживало около трёх четвертей всех евреев. В 16 и 17 веках Польша приветствовала еврейских иммигрантов из Италии , а также евреев-сефардов и евреев-романиотов, мигрировавших туда из Османской империи . Арабоязычные евреи-мизрахи и персидские евреи также мигрировали в Польшу в это время. Еврейская религиозная жизнь процветала во многих польских общинах. В 1503 году польская монархия назначила раввина Якоба Поллака первым официальным раввином Польши. К 1551 году евреям было разрешено выбирать своего главного раввина. Главный раввинат имел власть над законом и финансами, назначая судей и других должностных лиц. Некоторая власть была разделена с местными советами. Польское правительство позволило раввинату расширить свою власть и использовать ее для сбора налогов. Только 30% денег, собранных раввинатом, пошли на нужды евреев, остальная часть пошла на защиту Короны. В этот период Польша-Литва стала главным центром ашкеназского еврейства , а ее ешивы приобрели известность с начала 16 века.

Моисей Иссерлес (1520–1572), выдающийся талмудист 16 века, основал свою ешиву в Кракове . Помимо того, что Иссерлес был известным знатоком Талмуда и права , он также изучал каббалу , историю, астрономию и философию. Синагога Рему была построена для него в 1557 году. Рема (רמ״א) — еврейская аббревиатура его имени.

Речь Посполитая: 1572–1795 гг.

Смотрите также: История Польши в период раннего Нового времени (1569–1795) , История евреев в Польше 18 века и Варшавская Конфедерация.

Число евреев в Речи Посполитой на воеводство в 1764 г.

После бездетной смерти Сигизмунда II Августа , последнего короля династии Ягеллонов , дворяне ( шляхта ) собрались в Варшаве в 1573 году и подписали документ, в котором представители всех основных религий обещали взаимную поддержку и терпимость. Следующие восемь или девять десятилетий материального процветания и относительной безопасности, которые переживали польские евреи, - писал профессор Гершон Хундерт , - стали свидетелями появления «виртуальной галактики блестящих интеллектуальных деятелей». Еврейские академии были созданы в Люблине, Кракове, Бжеще (Бриске), Львове, Остроге и других городах. Польша-Литва была единственной страной в Европе, где евреи обрабатывали собственные фермерские поля. Центральный автономный орган, регулировавший еврейскую жизнь в Польше с середины XVI до середины XVIII века, был известен как Совет четырёх земель .

Отклонить

Несмотря на соглашение Варшавской Конфедерации , оно продлилось недолго из-за начала Контрреформации в Речи Посполитой и растущего влияния иезуитов. К 1590-м годам антисемитские вспышки произошли в Познани , Люблине , Кракове , Вильнюсе и Киеве . Только во Львове массовые нападения евреев начались в 1572 году, затем повторялись в 1592, 1613, 1618 годах, а с 1638 года каждый год, причем ответственность за многие из них несли студенты-иезуиты. В то же время Privilegium de Non tolerandis Judaeis и Privilegium de Non Tolerandis Christianis были введены для ограничения проживания евреев в христианских городах, что усилило их миграцию в восточные части страны, где магнаты приглашали их в свои частные города . К концу XVIII века две трети королевских городов и поселков Содружества потребовали от короля предоставить им эту привилегию.

После Брестской унии 1595–1596 годов православная церковь была объявлена ​​вне закона в Речи Посполитой, что вызвало массовую религиозную, социальную и политическую напряженность в Малороссии . Частично это было вызвано также массовой миграцией евреев в Малороссию и их ролью, воспринимаемой местным населением. и, в свою очередь, привело к многочисленным казачьим восстаниям. Самый крупный из них начался в 1648 году и сопровождался несколькими конфликтами, в которых страна потеряла более трети своего населения (более трёх миллионов человек). Потери евреев исчислялись сотнями тысяч. Первым из этих крупномасштабных злодеяний было Хмельницкое восстание , в ходе которого казаки Запорожского войска под командованием Богдана Хмельницкого уничтожили десятки тысяч евреев, а также католическое и униатское население в восточных и южных районах оккупированной Польшей Украины. Точное число погибших неизвестно, но убыль еврейского населения за этот период оценивается от 100 000 до 200 000, включая эмиграцию, смертность от болезней и ясыра (плена в Османской империи ). Еврейская община сильно пострадала во время украинского казачьего восстания 1648 года, направленного прежде всего против богатого дворянства и помещиков. Жертвами восстания, в ходе которого было убито около 20% из них, стали и евреи, которых считали союзниками поляков.

Польский еврей на гравюре 1703 года.

Под управлением избранных королей Дома Васа с 1587 года, находившаяся в боевой готовности Речь Посполитая была захвачена Шведской империей в 1655 году во время так называемого Потопа . Речь Посполитая, которая уже пострадала от Хмельницкого восстания и от повторяющихся вторжений русских, крымских татар и османов , стала ареной еще больших злодеяний. Карл X Шведский во главе своей победоносной армии захватил города Краков и Варшаву. Объемы разрушений, грабежей и методичных грабежей во время осады Кракова (1657 г.) были настолько огромными, что некоторые части города больше никогда не восстанавливались. За этим позже последовала резня коронного гетмана Стефана Чарнецкого из Русинского и еврейское население. Он разгромил шведов в 1660 году и столь же успешен в боях с русскими. Тем временем ужасы войны усугублялись эпидемиями . Многие евреи вместе с горожанами Калиша , Кракова, Познани , Петркува и Люблина стали жертвами повторяющихся эпидемий.

Как только волнения прекратились, евреи начали возвращаться и восстанавливать свои разрушенные дома; и хотя еврейское население Польши действительно уменьшилось, оно все же было более многочисленным, чем еврейское население в западноевропейских колониях. Польша продолжала оставаться духовным центром иудаизма. В течение 1698 года польские короли в целом продолжали поддерживать евреев. Хотя потери евреев в тех событиях были высокими, Содружество потеряло треть своего населения – примерно три миллиона своих граждан.

Окружающая среда Речи Посполитой, по мнению Хундерта, глубоко повлияла на евреев из-за действительно позитивного знакомства с христианской культурой во многих городах и поселках, принадлежащих польской аристократии. Никакой изоляции не было. Еврейская одежда напоминала одежду их польского соседа. «Сообщения о романах, о совместных выпивках в кабаках и об интеллектуальных беседах довольно многочисленны». За столом богатых евреев сидели польские дворяне, а еду подавали на серебряных тарелках. проживало около 750 000 евреев К 1764 году в Речи Посполитой . Еврейское население мира в то время оценивалось в 1,2 миллиона человек.

В 1768 году Колиивщина , восстание на Правобережной Украине к западу от Днепра на Волыни , привело к жестоким убийствам польских дворян, католических священников и тысяч евреев гайдамаками . военный раздел Польши между Россией, Пруссией и Австрией. Четыре года спустя, в 1772 году, начался

Развитие иудаизма в Польше и Содружестве

Культура и интеллектуальная деятельность еврейской общины в Польше оказали глубокое влияние на иудаизм в целом. Некоторые еврейские историки рассказывают, что слово Польша произносится как Полания или Полин на иврите , а в транслитерации на иврит эти названия Польши интерпретируются как «добрые предзнаменования», поскольку Поланию можно разделить на три еврейских слова: по («здесь»). «), lan («обитает»), ya (« Бог ») и Polin на два слова: po («здесь») lin («[ты должен] обитать»). «Послание» заключалось в том, что Польша должна была стать хорошим местом для евреев. Во время правления Сигизмунда I Старого и до Холокоста Польша находилась в центре еврейской религиозной жизни. Многие согласились с раввином Давидом Ха-Леви Сигалом в том, что Польша была местом, где «большую часть времени язычники не причиняют вреда; напротив, они поступают правильно по отношению к Израилю» ( Divre David; 1689).

еврейское обучение

позднего Возрождения Замосская синагога , Замосць , Польша, 1610–1620 гг.

Иешивы были созданы под руководством раввинов в наиболее известных общинах. Такие школы официально назывались гимназиями , а их директора-раввины - ректорами . Важные иешивы существовали в Кракове, Познани и других городах. Еврейские типографии возникли в первой четверти 16 века. В 1530 году Тора в Кракове была напечатана ; а в конце века еврейские типографии этого города и Люблина выпустили большое количество еврейских книг, преимущественно религиозного характера. Рост талмудической науки в Польше совпал с ростом благосостояния польских евреев; и из-за их общинной автономии развитие образования было совершенно односторонним и соответствовало талмудическим принципам. Однако зафиксированы исключения, когда еврейская молодежь стремилась получить светское образование в европейских университетах. Ученые раввины стали не просто толкователями Закона, но и духовными наставниками, учителями, судьями и законодателями; и их авторитет вынуждал общинных лидеров знакомиться с трудными вопросами Еврейский закон . Взгляды польского еврейства на жизнь были сформированы духом Талмуда и раввинской литературы, влияние которых ощущалось дома, в школе и синагоге.

В первой половине 16 века семена талмудического учения были пересажены в Польшу из Богемии , в частности из школы Якоба Поллака , создателя Пильпула («острого рассуждения»). Шалом Шахна (ок. 1500–1558), ученик Поллака, считается одним из пионеров изучения Талмуда в Польше. Он жил и умер в Люблине , где был главой ешивы , которая произвела на свет знаменитых раввинов следующего столетия. Сын Шахны Израиль стал раввином Люблина после смерти своего отца, а ученик Шахны Моисей Иссерлес (известный как РеМА ) (1520–1572) добился международной репутации среди евреев как соавтор « Шулхан Аруха » («Шулхан Арух»). Кодекс еврейского права»). его современник и корреспондент Соломон Лурия Широкой репутацией среди единоверцев пользовался и (1510–1573) из Люблина; и власть обоих была признана евреями по всей Европе. Острые религиозные споры были обычным явлением, и в них участвовали еврейские ученые. В то же время, Каббала укрепилась под защитой раввинизма ; и такие ученые, как Мордехай Яффе и Йоэль Сиркис, посвятили себя его изучению. Этот период великой раввинской науки был прерван [Восстанием Хмельницкого и Потопом.

Возникновение хасидизма

Джейкоб Франк , изображение 1895 года.

Основная статья: Хасидский иудаизм в Польше

Десятилетие от Хмельницкого восстания до Потопа (1648–1658) оставило глубокое и неизгладимое впечатление не только на общественной жизни польско-литовских евреев, но и на их духовной жизни. Интеллектуальная продуктивность евреев Польши снизилась. Талмудические знания, которые до этого периода были общим достоянием большинства людей, стали доступны лишь ограниченному числу студентов. Религиозное изучение там стало чрезмерно формализованным, некоторые раввины занимались придирками относительно религиозных законов; другие писали комментарии к различным частям Талмуда, в которых приводились и обсуждались ошеломляющие аргументы; и иногда эти аргументы касались вопросов, не имевших практического значения. В то же время среди евреев Польши появилось множество чудотворцев, что привело к серии ложных «мессианских» движений, наиболее известным из которых стало то, что на смену саббатианству пришел франкизм .

В это время мистицизма и чрезмерно формального раввинизма появилось учение Израиля бен Элиэзера, известного как Баал Шем Тов , или БеШТ , (1698–1760), которое оказало глубокое влияние на евреев Восточной Европы и Польши, в частности. Его ученики обучали и поощряли новую ярую разновидность иудаизма, основанную на каббале, известную как хасидизм . Возникновение хасидского иудаизма в пределах Польши и за ее пределами оказало большое влияние на подъем харедимского иудаизма во всем мире, оказывая постоянное влияние через его многочисленные хасидские династии, включая Хабад , Александра , Бобова , Гера , Надворну и других.

Разделы Польши

Еврейская одежда 17 (вверху) и 18 веков.

В 1742 году большая часть Силезии была отдана Пруссии . Дальнейшие беспорядки и анархия царили в Польше во второй половине XVIII века, с момента восшествия на престол ее последнего короля Станислава II Августа Понятовского в 1764 году. Его избрание было куплено Екатериной Великой за 2,5 миллиона рублей с Российская армия дислоцируется всего в 5 километрах (3 милях) от Варшавы. Восемь лет спустя, спровоцированная Барской конфедерацией против российского влияния и пророссийского короля, отдаленные провинции Польши были захвачены со всех сторон различными военными силами и впервые разделены тремя соседними империями: Россией, Австрией и и Пруссия . Речь Посполитая потеряла 30% своих земель во время аннексий 1772 года и ещё больше своих народов. Евреи были наиболее многочисленны на территориях, попавших под военный контроль Австрии и России.

Постоянный совет, созданный по требованию российского правительства (1773–1788), выполнял функцию высшего административного трибунала и занимался разработкой плана, который сделал бы возможным реорганизацию Польши на более рациональной основе. Прогрессивные элементы польского общества признали необходимость народного образования как первого шага к реформе. Знаменитая Komisja Edukacji Narodowej («Комиссия национального образования»), первое министерство образования в мире, была основана в 1773 году и основала множество новых школ и реконструировала старые. Один из членов комиссии, канцлер Анджей Замойский , вместе с другими требовал, чтобы была гарантирована неприкосновенность их личности и имущества и чтобы им была в известной мере предоставлена ​​религиозная терпимость; но он настаивал на том, чтобы евреи, живущие в городах, были отделены от христиан, что те из них, которые не имеют определенного занятия, должны быть изгнаны из королевства и что даже тем, кто занимается сельским хозяйством, не должно быть разрешено владеть землей. С другой стороны, некоторые шляхта и интеллектуалы предложили национальную систему правления, гражданское и политическое равенство евреев. Это был единственный в современной Европе до Французской революции пример терпимости и широты взглядов в решении еврейского вопроса. Но все эти реформы запоздали: вскоре в Польшу вторглась русская армия, а вскоре за ней последовала и прусская.

Берек Йоселевич (1764–1809)

Второй раздел Польши был произведен 17 июля 1793 года. Евреи в еврейском полку под командованием Берека Йоселевича приняли участие в восстании Костюшко в следующем году, когда поляки попытались снова добиться независимости, но были жестоко подавлены. После восстания в 1795 году произошел третий и окончательный раздел Польши. Территории, на которых проживала основная масса еврейского населения, были переданы России и, таким образом, стали подданными этой империи, хотя в первой половине XIX века некоторое подобие значительно меньшего польского государства сохранилось, особенно в форме Конгресса Польши (1815–1831).

Под иностранным правлением многие евреи, населявшие бывшие польские земли, были безразличны к стремлению поляков к независимости. Однако большинство полонизированных евреев поддерживали революционную деятельность польских патриотов и участвовали в национальных восстаниях. Польские евреи принимали участие в Ноябрьском восстании 1830–1831 гг., Январском восстании 1863 г., а также в революционном движении 1905 г. Многие польские евреи были зачислены в Польские легионы , боровшиеся за независимость Польши, достигнутую в 1918 г., когда оккупационные силы распались после Первой мировой войны.

Евреи Польши в составе Российской империи (1795–1918)

Основная статья: История Польши (1795–1918).

Смотрите также: История евреев в Польше XIX века , История евреев в России и Советском Союзе и Антисемитизм в Российской империи.

XIX века. Еврейские купцы в Варшаве

Официальная российская политика в конечном итоге оказалась значительно более жесткой по отношению к евреям, чем при независимом польском правлении. Земли, которые когда-то были Польшей, должны были остаться домом для многих евреев, поскольку в 1772 году Екатерина II , царица российская , учредила черту оседлости , ограничивая евреев западными частями империи, которые в конечном итоге включали многие Польши, хотя из него исключены некоторые районы, в которых ранее жили евреи. К концу 19 века в черте оседлости проживало более четырех миллионов евреев.

Царская политика по отношению к евреям Польши чередовалась между жесткими правилами и стимулами, призванными сломить сопротивление широкомасштабному обращению. В 1804 году Александр I издал «Положение о евреях». призван ускорить процесс ассимиляции нового еврейского населения Империи. Польским евреям было разрешено открывать школы с русской, немецкой или польской программой обучения. Они могли владеть землей на территориях, аннексированных у Польши. Однако им также запретили сдавать в аренду недвижимость, преподавать на идише и въезжать в Россию. Им запретили заниматься пивоваренной промышленностью . Самые суровые меры, направленные на то, чтобы заставить евреев слиться с обществом в целом, предусматривали их изгнание из небольших деревень и принуждение их к переезду в города. Когда началось переселение, тысячи евреев потеряли свой единственный источник дохода и обратились к Кахалу за поддержкой . Условия их жизни в черте оседлости стали резко ухудшаться.

Во время правления царя Николая I , известного евреям как « Аман Второй», были приняты сотни новых антиеврейских мер. Указ Николаса 1827 года, отменивший традиционное двойное налогообложение евреев вместо армейской службы, сделал евреев подпадающими под действие общих законов о призыве в армию, которые требовали, чтобы еврейские общины предоставляли 7 новобранцев на каждую 1000 «душ» каждые 4 года. В отличие от основного населения, которое должно было предоставлять рекрутов в возрасте от 18 до 35 лет, евреи должны были предоставлять рекрутов в возрасте от 12 до 25 лет, по усмотрению кагала . Таким образом, между 1827 и 1857 годами более 30 000 детей были помещены в так называемые кантонистские школы, где их заставляли обращаться в другую веру. «Многие дети были переправлены контрабандой в Польшу, где призыв евреев вступил в силу только в 1844 году».

Дополнительная информация о гарнизонных школах для детей мужского пола: Cantonist.

Черта расселения

Карта черты оседлости , показывающая плотность еврейского населения.

Черта расселения - России ) , , ùm — проживание постоянное ha котором mosháv в Императорской регион обозначавший термин ​ ​ ​ ​ Евреям было разрешено, за пределами которого постоянное проживание евреев было вообще запрещено. Она простиралась от восточной черты , или демаркационной линии, до западной границы России с Прусским королевством (позже Германской империей ) и с Австро-Венгрией .Архаичный английский термин «бледный» происходит от латинского слова palus , «кол», которое означает территорию, огороженную забором или границей.

Черта оседлости с ее большим католическим и еврейским населением была приобретена Российской империей (большинство населения которой составляли русские православные ) в результате серии военных завоеваний и дипломатических маневров между 1791 и 1835 годами и продолжалась до падения Российской империи в 1917 году. Оно занимало около 20% территории Европейской России и большей частью соответствовало историческим границам бывшей Речи Посполитой ; оно охватывало большую часть современной Литвы , Белоруссии , Польши , Молдовы , Украины и некоторых частей западной России .

С 1791 по 1835 год и до 1917 года происходили различные изменения конфигурации границ черты оседлости, например, определенные территории были по-разному открыты или закрыты для проживания евреев, например, Кавказ . Иногда евреям запрещалось жить в сельскохозяйственных общинах или в определенных городах, как в Киеве , Севастополе и Ялте , исключалось право на жительство в ряде городов черты оседлости. Поселенцы из-за пределов черты были вынуждены переселиться в небольшие города, что способствовало возникновению штетлов .

Хотя евреям было предоставлено немного больше прав в результате реформы эмансипации 1861 года, проведенной Александром II , они по-прежнему были ограничены чертой оседлости и подвергались ограничениям на собственность и профессию. Существующий статус-кво был разрушен убийством Александра в 1881 году – в этом деянии ложно обвиняли евреев.

Погромы в Российской Империи

Карикатура на участника Белостокского погрома 1906 года.

Убийство вызвало крупномасштабную волну антиеврейских беспорядков, названных погромами (русский язык: погром ;) в течение 1881–1884 годов. Во время вспышки 1881 года погромы в основном ограничивались Россией, хотя в ходе беспорядков в Варшаве два еврея были убиты, еще 24 были ранены, женщины были изнасилованы и более двух миллионов рублей . было уничтожено имущество на сумму Новый царь Александр III обвинил евреев в беспорядках и ввел ряд жестких ограничений на еврейские движения. Погромы продолжались до 1884 года, по крайней мере, при молчаливом одобрении правительства. Они стали поворотным моментом в истории евреев в разделенной Польше и во всем мире. В 1884 году 36 еврейских сионистских делегатов встретились в Катовице , образовав движение Ховевей Цион . Погромы вызвали огромную волну еврейской эмиграции в США.

Еще более кровавая волна погромов разразилась с 1903 по 1906 год, по крайней мере некоторые из них, как полагают, были организованы царской российской тайной полицией, Охраной . В их число входит Белостокский погром 1906 года в Гродненской губернии российской Польши, в ходе которого по меньшей мере 75 евреев были убиты мародерствующими солдатами и многие другие евреи были ранены. По словам выживших евреев, этнические поляки не участвовали в погроме, а вместо этого укрывали еврейские семьи.

Хаскала и Галаха

Основная статья: Хаскала

Еврейское Просвещение, Хаскала , начало распространяться в Польше в XIX веке, делая упор на светские идеи и ценности. Защитники Хаскалы , Маскилимы , настаивали на ассимиляции и интеграции в русскую культуру. В то же время существовала еще одна школа еврейской мысли, которая делала упор на традиционное изучение и еврейский ответ на этические проблемы антисемитизма и преследований, одной из форм которых было движение Мусар . Польские евреи, как правило, находились под меньшим влиянием Хаскалы , а скорее сосредотачивались на решительном продолжении своей религиозной жизни на основе Галахи («закона раввинов»), следуя преимущественно ортодоксальному иудаизму , хасидскому иудаизму , а также адаптируясь к новому религиозному сионизму движения Мизрахи позже в 19 век.

Политика на территории Польши

Бундовская . демонстрация, 1917 год

К концу 19 века Хаскала и вызванные ею дебаты привели к появлению растущего числа политических движений внутри самой еврейской общины, охватывающих широкий спектр взглядов и борющихся за голоса на местных и региональных выборах. Сионизм стал очень популярен с появлением социалистической партии « Поалей-Цион» , а также религиозного польского движения «Мизрахи» и все более популярных «Общих сионистов» . Евреи также приняли социализм , сформировав Бунда профсоюз , который поддерживал ассимиляцию и права труда . Folkspartei (Народная партия) , со своей стороны, выступала за культурную автономию и сопротивление ассимиляции. В 1912 году Агудат Исраэль» возникла религиозная партия « .

Многие евреи принимали участие в польских восстаниях, особенно против России (поскольку цари жестко дискриминировали евреев). ( Восстание Костюшко 1794 г.), Ноябрьское восстание (1830–1831 гг.), Январское восстание (1863 г.) и Революционное движение 1905 г. - все они стали свидетелями значительного участия евреев в деле независимости Польши.

В период Второй Польской Республики в польском сейме было несколько видных еврейских политиков, таких как Аполинарий Хартглас и Ицхак Грюнбаум . Активно действовали многие еврейские политические партии, представляющие широкий идеологический спектр: от сионистов до социалистов и антисионистов. Одной из крупнейших из этих партий был Бунд, который был самым сильным в Варшаве и Лодзи.

Помимо социалистов, были популярны и сионистские партии, в частности, марксистская « Поалей-Цион» и ортодоксальная религиозная польская «Мизрахи». Генеральная сионистская партия стала самой известной еврейской партией в межвоенный период и на выборах 1919 года в первый польский сейм после разделов получила 50% голосов евреев.

В 1914 году немецкий сионист Макс Боденхаймер основал недолговечный Немецкий комитет освобождения русских евреев с целью создания буферного государства ( Pufferstaat ) в пределах еврейской черты оседлости, состоящей из аннексированных Россией бывших польских провинций , . де-факто протекторат Германской империи , который освободит евреев региона от российского гнета. План, известный как Лига восточноевропейских государств , вскоре оказался непопулярным как среди немецких чиновников, так и среди коллег Боденхаймера, и к следующему году был отменен.

Межвоенный период (1918–39)

Основная статья: История Польши (1918–1939).

Дополнительная информация: История евреев в Польше 20-го века.

Польские евреи и борьба за независимость Польши

Хасидские школьники в Лодзи , ок. 1910-е годы, во время разделов

Раввин Барух Штейнберг перед Большой синагогой Варшавы (1933 г.), зачитывает перекличку павших, организованную Союзом еврейских борцов за независимость Польши.

Хотя большинство польских евреев были нейтральны к идее польского государства, многие сыграли значительную роль в борьбе за независимость Польши во время Первой мировой войны ; около 650 евреев присоединились к Польскому легиону, созданному Юзефом Пилсудским , что больше, чем все другие меньшинства вместе взятые. Выдающиеся евреи были среди членов KTSSN , ядра временного правительства вновь возникающей суверенной Польши, включая Германа Фельдштейна, Хенрика Эйле, Поручника Самуэля Гершталя, доктора Зигмунта Лезера, Хенрика Орлеана, Виктора Хаеса и других. Пожертвования поступили, в том числе 50 000 австрийских крон от евреев Львова и 1500 банок с едой, подаренных фабрикой Блюменфельда среди других. Еврейской организацией во время войны, которая выступала против польских устремлений, был Komitee für den Osten (Kfdo) ( Комитет Востока ), основанный немецкими еврейскими активистами, который продвигал идею о том, что евреи на Востоке станут «острием немецкого экспансионизма», служа как «надежные вассалы Германии» по отношению к другим этническим группам региона. и служит «живой стеной против целей польских сепаратистов».

После Великой войны локальные конфликты охватили Восточную Европу между 1917 и 1919 годами. Многие нападения были предприняты против евреев во время Гражданской войны в России , польско-украинской войны и польско-советской войны , завершившейся Рижским мирным договором . Сразу после окончания Первой мировой войны Запад встревожился сообщениями о предполагаемых массовых погромах евреев в Польше. Давление на действия правительства дошло до того, что президент США Вудро Вильсон направил официальную комиссию для расследования этого дела. Комиссия, возглавляемая Генри Моргентау-старшим , в своем отчете Моргентау пришла к выводу , что обвинения в погромах были преувеличены. Он выявил восемь инцидентов в 1918–1919 годах из 37 в основном пустых претензий о возмещении ущерба и оценил число жертв в 280. Четыре из них были связаны с действиями дезертиров и недисциплинированных отдельных солдат; никто не был обвинен в официальной политике правительства. Среди инцидентов: во время битвы за Пиньск командир польского пехотного полка обвинил группу евреев в заговоре против поляков и приказал казнить тридцать пять евреев и молодых людей. The Morgenthau Report found the charge to be "devoid of foundation" even though their meeting was illegal to the extent of being treasonable. In the Lwów (Lviv) pogrom, which occurred in 1918 during the Polish–Ukrainian War of independence a day after the Poles captured Lviv from the Sich Riflemen – the report concluded – 64 Jews had been killed (other accounts put the number at 72).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.

The historians Anna Cichopek-Gajraj and Glenn Dynner state that 130 pogroms of Jews occurred on Polish territories from 1918 to 1921, resulting in as many as 300 deaths, with many attacks conceived as reprisals against supposed Jewish economic power and their supposed “Judeo-Bolshevism” The atrocities committed by the young Polish army and its allies in 1919 during their Kiev operation against the Bolsheviks had a profound impact on the foreign perception of the re-emerging Polish state. Concerns over the fate of Poland's Jews led the Western powers to pressure Polish President Paderewski to sign the Minority Protection Treaty (the Little Treaty of Versailles), protecting the rights of minorities in new Poland including Jews and Germans. This in turn resulted in Poland's 1921 March Constitution granting Jews the same legal rights as other citizens and guaranteed them religious tolerance and freedom of religious holidays.

The number of Jews immigrating to Poland from Ukraine and Soviet Russia during the interwar period grew rapidly. Jewish population in the area of former Congress of Poland increased sevenfold between 1816 and 1921, from around 213,000 to roughly 1,500,000. According to the Polish national census of 1921, there were 2,845,364 Jews living in the Second Polish Republic; but, by late 1938 that number had grown by over 16% to approximately 3,310,000. The average rate of permanent settlement was about 30,000 per annum. At the same time, every year around 100,000 Jews were passing through Poland in unofficial emigration overseas. Between the end of the Polish–Soviet War and late 1938, the Jewish population of the Republic had grown by over 464,000.

Jewish and Polish culture

Main articles: Jewish culture and Culture of Poland

Warsaw Great Synagogue

The newly independent Second Polish Republic had a large and vibrant Jewish minority. By the time World War II began, Poland had the largest concentration of Jews in Europe although many Polish Jews had a separate culture and ethnic identity from Catholic Poles. Some authors have stated that only about 10% of Polish Jews during the interwar period could be considered "assimilated" while more than 80% could be readily recognized as Jews.

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 1 September 1939 (approximately 10% of the total population) primarily centered in large and smaller cities: 77% lived in cities and 23% in the villages. They made up about 50%, and in some cases even 70% of the population of smaller towns, especially in Eastern Poland. Prior to World War II, the Jewish population of Łódź numbered about 233,000, roughly one-third of the city's population. The city of Lwów (now in Ukraine) had the third-largest Jewish population in Poland, numbering 110,000 in 1939 (42%). Wilno (now in Lithuania) had a Jewish community of nearly 100,000, about 45% of the city's total. In 1938, Kraków's Jewish population numbered over 60,000, or about 25% of the city's total population. 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.

L. L. Zamenhof, creator of Esperanto

Jewish youth and religious groups, diverse political parties and Zionist organizations, newspapers and theatre flourished. Jews owned land and real estate, participated in retail and manufacturing and in the export industry. Their religious beliefs spanned the range from Orthodox Hasidic Judaism to Liberal Judaism.

The Polish language, rather than Yiddish, was increasingly used by the young Warsaw Jews who did not have a problem in identifying themselves fully as Jews, Varsovians and Poles. Jews such as Bruno Schulz were entering the mainstream of Polish society, though many thought of themselves as a separate nationality within Poland. Most children were enrolled in Jewish religious schools, which used to limit their ability to speak Polish. As a result, according to the 1931 census, 79% of the Jews declared Yiddish as their first language, and only 12% listed Polish, with the remaining 9% being Hebrew. In contrast, the overwhelming majority of German-born Jews of this period spoke German as their first language. During the school year of 1937–1938 there were 226 elementary schools and twelve high schools as well as fourteen vocational schools with either Yiddish or Hebrew as the instructional language. Jewish political parties, both the Socialist General Jewish Labour Bund (The Bund), 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.

Isaac Bashevis Singer (Polish: Izaak Zynger), achieved international acclaim as a classic Jewish writer and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1978

The Jewish cultural scene was particularly vibrant in pre–World War II Poland, with numerous Jewish publications and more than one hundred periodicals. Yiddish authors, most notably Isaac Bashevis Singer, went on to achieve international acclaim as classic Jewish writers; Singer won the 1978 Nobel Prize in Literature. His brother Israel Joshua Singer was also a writer. Other Jewish authors of the period, such as Bruno Schulz, Julian Tuwim, Marian Hemar, Emanuel Schlechter and Bolesław Leśmian, as well as Konrad Tom and Jerzy Jurandot, were less well known internationally, but made important contributions to Polish literature. Some Polish writers had Jewish roots e.g. Jan Brzechwa (a favorite poet of Polish children). Singer Jan Kiepura, born of a Jewish mother and Polish father, was one of the most popular artists of that era, and pre-war songs of Jewish composers, including Henryk Wars, Jerzy Petersburski, Artur Gold, Henryk Gold, Zygmunt Białostocki, Szymon Kataszek and Jakub Kagan, are still widely known in Poland today. Painters became known as well for their depictions of Jewish life. Among them were Maurycy Gottlieb, Artur Markowicz, and Maurycy Trębacz, with younger artists like Chaim Goldberg coming up in the ranks.

Many Jews were film producers and directors, e.g. Michał Waszyński (The Dybbuk), Aleksander Ford (Children Must Laugh).

Shimon Peres, born in Poland as Szymon Perski, served as the ninth President of Israel between 2007 and 2014

Scientist Leopold Infeld, mathematician Stanisław Ulam, Alfred Tarski, and professor Adam Ulam contributed to the world of science. Other Polish Jews who gained international recognition are Moses Schorr, Ludwik Zamenhof (the creator of Esperanto), Georges Charpak, Samuel Eilenberg, Emanuel Ringelblum, and Artur Rubinstein, just to name a few from the long list. The term "genocide" was coined by Rafał Lemkin (1900–1959), a Polish–Jewish legal scholar. Leonid Hurwicz was awarded the 2007 Nobel Prize in Economics. The YIVO (Jidiszer Wissenszaftlecher Institute) Scientific Institute was based in Wilno before transferring to New York during the war. In Warsaw, important centers of Judaic scholarship, such the Main Judaic Library and the Institute of Judaic Studies were located, along with numerous Talmudic Schools (Jeszybots), religious centers and synagogues, many of which were of high architectural quality. Yiddish theatre also flourished; Poland had fifteen Yiddish theatres and theatrical groups. Warsaw was home to the most important Yiddish theater troupe of the time, the Vilna Troupe, which staged the first performance of The Dybbuk in 1920 at the Elyseum Theatre. Some future Israeli leaders studied at University of Warsaw, including Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir.

There also were several Jewish sports clubs, with some of them, such as Hasmonea Lwów and Jutrzenka Kraków, winning promotion to the Polish First Football League. A Polish–Jewish footballer, Józef Klotz, scored the first ever goal for the Poland national football team. Another athlete, Alojzy Ehrlich, won several medals in the table-tennis tournaments. Many of these clubs belonged to the Maccabi World Union.

Between antisemitism and support for Zionism and Jewish state in Palestine

In contrast to the prevailing trends in Europe at the time, in interwar Poland an increasing percentage of Jews were pushed to live a life separate from the non-Jewish majority. The antisemitic rejection of Jews, whether for religious or racial reasons, caused estrangement and growing tensions between Jews and Poles. It is significant in this regard that in 1921, 74.2% of Polish Jews spoke Yiddish or Hebrew as their native language; by 1931, the number had risen to 87%.

Roman Dmowski, the founder and chief ideologue of the National Democracy (Endecja) in Poland, often ostentatiously demonstrated antisemitism

Besides the persistent effects of the Great Depression, the strengthening of antisemitism in Polish society was also a consequence of the influence of Nazi Germany. Following the German-Polish non-aggression pact of 1934, the antisemitic tropes of Nazi propaganda had become more common in Polish politics, where they were echoed by the National Democratic movement. One of its founders and chief ideologue Roman Dmowski was obsessed with an international conspiracy of freemasons and Jews, and in his works linked Marxism with Judaism. The position of the Catholic Church had also become increasingly hostile to the Jews, who in the 1920s and 1930s were increasingly seen as agents of evil, that is, of Bolshevism. Economic instability was mirrored by anti-Jewish sentiment in the press; discrimination, exclusion, and violence at the universities; and the appearance of "anti-Jewish squads" associated with some of the right-wing political parties. These developments contributed to a greater support among the Jewish community for Zionist and socialist ideas.

In 1925, Polish Zionist members of the Sejm capitalized on governmental support for Zionism by negotiating an agreement with the government known as the Ugoda. The Ugoda was an agreement between the Polish prime minister Władysław Grabski and Zionist leaders of Et Liwnot, including Leon Reich. The agreement granted certain cultural and religious rights to Jews in exchange for Jewish support for Polish nationalist interests; however, the Galician Zionists had little to show for their compromise because the Polish government later refused to honor many aspects of the agreement. During the 1930s, Revisionist Zionists viewed the Polish government as an ally and promoted cooperation between Polish Zionists and Polish nationalists, despite the antisemitism of the Polish government.

Matters improved for a time under the rule of Józef Piłsudski (1926–1935). Piłsudski countered Endecja's Polonization with the 'state assimilation' policy: citizens were judged by their loyalty to the state, not by their nationality. The years 1926–1935 were favourably viewed by many Polish Jews, whose situation improved especially under the cabinet of Pilsudski's appointee Kazimierz Bartel. However, a combination of various factors, including the Great Depression, meant that the situation of Jewish Poles was never very satisfactory, and it deteriorated again after Piłsudski's death in May 1935, which many Jews regarded as a tragedy. The Jewish industries were negatively affected by the development of mass production and the advent of department stores offering ready-made products. The traditional sources of livelihood for the estimated 300,000 Jewish family-run businesses in the country began to vanish, contributing to a growing trend toward isolationism and internal self-sufficiency. The difficult situation in the private sector led to enrolment growth in higher education. In 1923 the Jewish students constituted 62.9% of all students of stomatology, 34% of medical sciences, 29.2% of philosophy, 24.9% of chemistry and 22.1% of law (26% by 1929) at all Polish universities. It is speculated that such disproportionate numbers were the probable cause of a backlash.

Student's book (indeks) of Jewish medical student Marek Szapiro at Warsaw University, with rectangular "ghetto benches" ("odd-numbered-benches") stamp

The interwar Polish government provided military training to the Zionist Betar paramilitary movement, whose members admired the Polish nationalist camp and imitated some of its aspects. Uniformed members of Betar marched and performed at Polish public ceremonies alongside Polish scouts and military, with their weapons training provided by Polish institutions and Polish military officers; Menachem Begin, one of its leaders, called for its members to defend Poland in case of war, and the organisation raised both Polish and Zionist flags.

With the influence of the Endecja (National Democracy) party growing, antisemitism gathered new momentum in Poland and was most felt in smaller towns and in 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 ghetto benches, which forced Jewish students to sit in sections 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 (1918) and the late 1930s. The restrictions were so inclusive that – while the Jews made up 20.4% of the student body in 1928 – by 1937 their share was down to only 7.5%, out of the total population of 9.75% Jews in the country according to 1931 census.

While the average per capita income of Polish Jews in 1929 was 40% above the national average – which was very low compared to England or Germany – they were a very heterogeneous community, some poor, some wealthy. Many Jews worked as shoemakers and tailors, as well as in the liberal professions; doctors (56% of all doctors in Poland), teachers (43%), journalists (22%) and lawyers (33%). In 1929, about a third of artisans and home workers and a majority of shopkeepers were Jewish.

Although many Jews were educated, they were almost completely excluded from government jobs; as a result, the proportion of unemployed Jewish salary earners was approximately four times as great in 1929 as the proportion of unemployed non-Jewish salary earners, a situation compounded by the fact that almost no Jews were on government support. In 1937 the Catholic trade unions of Polish doctors and lawyers restricted their new members to Christian Poles. In a similar manner, the Jewish trade unions excluded non-Jewish professionals from their ranks after 1918. The bulk of Jewish workers were organized in the Jewish trade unions under the influence of the Jewish socialists who split in 1923 to join the Communist Party of Poland and the Second International.

Anti-Jewish sentiment in Poland had reached its zenith in the years leading to the Second World War. Between 1935 and 1937 seventy-nine Jews were killed and 500 injured in anti-Jewish incidents. National policy was such that the Jews who largely worked at home and in small shops were excluded from welfare benefits. In the provincial capital of Łuck Jews constituted 48.5% of the diverse multiethnic population of 35,550 Poles, Ukrainians, Belarusians and others. Łuck had the largest Jewish community in the voivodeship. In the capital of Brześć in 1936 Jews constituted 41.3% of general population and some 80.3% of private enterprises were owned by Jews. The 32% of Jewish inhabitants of Radom enjoyed considerable prominence also, with 90% of small businesses in the city owned and operated by the Jews including tinsmiths, locksmiths, jewellers, tailors, hat makers, hairdressers, carpenters, house painters and wallpaper installers, shoemakers, as well as most of the artisan bakers and clock repairers. In Lubartów, 53.6% of the town's population were Jewish also along with most of its economy. In a town of Luboml, 3,807 Jews lived among its 4,169 inhabitants, constituting the essence of its social and political life.

Demonstration of Polish students demanding implementation of "ghetto benches" at Lwów Polytechnic (1937).

The national boycott of Jewish businesses and advocacy for their confiscation was promoted by the National Democracy party and Prime Minister Felicjan Sławoj-Składkowski, declared an "economic war against Jews", while introducing the term "Christian shop". As a result a boycott of Jewish businesses grew intensively. A national movement to prevent the Jews from kosher slaughter of animals, with animal rights as the stated motivation, was also organized. 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 Poles and Polish Jews alike to the extent that by the end of the 1930s, a substantial portion of Polish Jews lived in grinding poverty. As a result, on 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.

The main strain of antisemitism in Poland during this time was motivated by Catholic religious beliefs and centuries-old myths such as the blood libel. This religious-based antisemitism was sometimes joined with an ultra-nationalistic stereotype of Jews as disloyal to the Polish nation. 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". According to the British Embassy in Warsaw, in 1936 emigration was the only solution to the Jewish question that found wide support in all Polish political parties. The Polish government condemned wanton violence against the Jewish minority, fearing international repercussions, but shared the view that the Jewish minority hindered Poland's development; in January 1937 Foreign Minister Józef Beck declared that Poland could house 500,000 Jews, and hoped that over the next 30 years 80,000-100,000 Jews a year would leave Poland.

As the Polish government sought to lower the numbers of the Jewish population in Poland through mass emigration, it embraced close and good contact with Ze'ev Jabotinsky, the founder of Revisionist Zionism, and pursued a policy of supporting the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. The Polish government hoped Palestine would provide an outlet for its Jewish population and lobbied for creation of a Jewish state in the League of Nations and other international venues, proposing increased emigration quotas and opposing the Partition Plan of Palestine on behalf of Zionist activists. As Jabotinsky envisioned in his "Evacuation Plan" the settlement of 1.5 million East European Jews within 10 years in Palestine, including 750,000 Polish Jews, he and Beck shared a common goal. Ultimately this proved impossible and illusory, as it lacked both general Jewish and international support. In 1937 Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs Józef Beck declared in the League of Nations his support for the creation of a Jewish state and for an international conference to enable Jewish emigration. The common goals of the Polish state and of the Zionist movement, of increased Jewish population flow to Palestine, resulted in their overt and covert cooperation. Poland helped by organizing passports and facilitating illegal immigration, and supplied the Haganah with weapons. Poland also provided extensive support to the Irgun (the military branch of the Revisionist Zionist movement) in the form of military training and weapons. According to Irgun activists, the Polish state supplied the organisation with 25,000 rifles, additional material and weapons, and by summer 1939 Irgun's Warsaw warehouses held 5,000 rifles and 1,000 machine guns. The training and support by Poland would allow the organisation to mobilise 30,000-40,000 men.

In 1938, the Polish government revoked Polish citizenship from tens-of-thousands Polish Jews who had lived outside the country for an extended period of time. It was feared that many Polish Jews living in Germany and Austria would want to return en masse to Poland to escape anti-Jewish measures. Their property was claimed by the Polish state.

By the time of the German invasion in 1939, antisemitism was escalating, and hostility towards Jews was a mainstay of the right-wing political forces post-Piłsudski regime and also the Catholic Church. Discrimination and violence against Jews had rendered the Polish Jewish population increasingly destitute. 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 1939 the pro-government Gazeta Polska 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." Escalating hostility towards Polish Jews and an official Polish government desire to remove Jews from Poland continued until the German invasion of Poland.

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

Main article: History of Poland (1939–45)

Polish September Campaign

Main article: Invasion of Poland

Graves of Jewish–Polish soldiers who died in 1939 September Campaign, Powązki Cemetery

The number of Jews in Poland on 1 September 1939, amounted to about 3,474,000 people. One hundred thirty thousand soldiers of Jewish descent, including Boruch Steinberg, Chief Rabbi of the Polish Military, served in the Polish Army at the outbreak of the Second World War, thus being among the first to launch armed resistance against Nazi Germany. During the September Campaign some 20,000 Jewish civilians and 32,216 Jewish soldiers were killed, while 61,000 were taken prisoner by the Germans; the majority did not survive. The soldiers and non-commissioned officers who were released ultimately found themselves in the Nazi ghettos and labor camps and suffered the same fate as other Jewish civilians in the ensuing Holocaust in Poland.In 1939, Jews constituted 30% of Warsaw's population. With the coming of the war, Jewish and Polish citizens of Warsaw jointly defended the city, putting their differences aside. Polish Jews later served in almost all Polish formations during the entire World War II, many were killed or wounded and very many were decorated for their combat skills and exceptional service. Jews fought with the Polish Armed Forces in the West, in the Soviet formed Polish People's Army as well as in several underground organizations and as part of Polish partisan units or Jewish partisan formations.

Territories annexed by the USSR (1939–1941)

The Soviet Union signed a Pact with Nazi Germany on 23 August 1939 containing a protocol about partition of Poland (generally known but denied by the Soviet Union for the next 50 years). The German army attacked Poland on 1 September 1939. The Soviet Union followed suit by invading eastern Poland on 17 September 1939. The days between the retreat of the Polish army and the entry of the Red Army, September 18–21, witnessed a pogrom in Grodno, in which 25 Jews were killed (the Soviets later put some of the pogromists on trial).

Within weeks, 61.2% of Polish Jews found themselves under the German occupation, while 38.8% were trapped in the Polish areas annexed by the Soviet Union. Jews under German occupation were immediately maltreated, beaten, publicly executed, and even burnt alive in the synagogue. As a result 350,000 Polish Jews fled from the German-occupied area to the Soviet area. Upon annexing the region, the Soviet government recognized as Soviet citizens Jews (and other non-Poles) who were permanent residents of the area, while offering refugees the choice of either taking on Soviet citizenship or returning to their former homes.

The Soviet annexation was accompanied by the widespread arrests of government officials, police, military personnel, border guards, teachers, priests, judges etc., followed by the NKVD prisoner massacres and massive deportation of 320,000 Polish nationals to the Soviet interior and the Gulag slave labor camps where, as a result of the inhuman conditions, about half of them died before the end of war.

Jewish refugees under the Soviet occupation had little knowledge about what was going on under the Germans since the Soviet media did not report on the goings-on in territories occupied by their Nazi ally. Many people from Western Poland registered for repatriation back to the German zone, including wealthier Jews, as well as some political and social activists from the interwar period.

Synagogues and churches were not yet closed but heavily taxed. The Soviet ruble of little value was immediately equalized to the much higher Polish zloty and by the end of 1939, zloty was abolished. Most economic activity became subject to central planning and the NKVD restrictions. Since the Jewish communities tended to rely more on commerce and small-scale businesses, the confiscations of property affected them to a greater degree than the general populace. The Soviet rule resulted in near collapse of the local economy, characterized by insufficient wages and general shortage of goods and materials. The Jews, like other inhabitants of the region, saw a fall in their living standards.

Under the Soviet policy, ethnic Poles were dismissed and denied access to positions in the civil service. Former senior officials and notable members of the Polish community were arrested and exiled together with their families. At the same time the Soviet authorities encouraged young Jewish communists to fill in the newly emptied government and civil service jobs.

Yiddish election notice for Soviet local government to the People's council of the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic in Białystok, occupied Poland.

While most eastern Poles consolidated themselves around the anti-Soviet sentiments, a portion of the Jewish population, along with the ethnic Belarusian and Ukrainian activists had welcomed invading Soviet forces as their protectors. The general feeling among the Polish Jews was a sense of temporary relief in having escaped the Nazi occupation in the first weeks of war. The Polish poet and former communist Aleksander Wat has stated that Jews were more inclined to cooperate with the Soviets. Following Jan Karski's report written in 1940, historian Norman Davies claimed that among the informers and collaborators, the percentage of Jews was striking; likewise, General Władysław Sikorski estimated that 30% of them identified with the communists whilst engaging in provocations; they prepared lists of Polish "class enemies". Other historians have indicated that the level of Jewish collaboration could well have been less than suggested. Historian Martin Dean has written that "few local Jews obtained positions of power under Soviet rule."

The issue of Jewish collaboration with the Soviet occupation remains controversial. Some scholars note that while not pro-Communist, many Jews saw the Soviets as the lesser threat compared to the German Nazis. They stress that stories of Jews welcoming the Soviets on the streets, vividly remembered by many Poles from the eastern part of the country are impressionistic and not reliable indicators of the level of Jewish support for the Soviets. Additionally, it has been noted that some ethnic Poles were as prominent as Jews 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. 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. 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.

A number of younger Jews, often through the pro-Marxist Bund 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 concept of "Judeo-communism" was reinforced during the period of the Soviet occupation (see Żydokomuna).

Jewish–Polish soldier's grave, Monte Cassino, Italy

There were also Jews who assisted Poles during the Soviet occupation. Among the thousands of Polish officers killed by the Soviet NKVD in the Katyń 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 a Gulag. Small numbers of Polish Jews (about 6,000) were able to leave the Soviet Union in 1942 with the Władysław 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 to settle in Palestine, and many joined the Irgun. General Anders decided not to prosecute the deserters and emphasized that the Jewish soldiers who remained in the Force fought bravely. The Cemetery of Polish soldiers who died during the Battle of Monte Cassino includes headstones bearing a Star of David. A number of Jewish soldiers died also when liberating Bologna.

The Holocaust

Main article: The Holocaust in Poland

Map of the Holocaust in Poland under German occupation

Poland's Jewish community suffered the most in the Holocaust. Some six million Polish citizens perished in the war – half of those (three million Polish Jews, all but some 300,000 of the Jewish population) being killed at the German extermination camps at Auschwitz, Treblinka, Majdanek, Belzec, Sobibór, and Chełmno or starved to death in the ghettos.

Poland was where the German program of extermination of Jews, the "Final Solution", was implemented, since this was where most of Europe's Jews (excluding the Soviet Union's) lived.

In 1939 several hundred synagogues were blown up or burned by the Germans, who sometimes forced the Jews to do it themselves. In many cases, the Germans turned the synagogues into factories, places of entertainment, swimming pools, or prisons. By war's end, almost all the synagogues in Poland had been destroyed. Rabbis were forced to dance and sing in public with their beards shorn off. Some rabbis were set on fire or hanged.

Starving Jewish children, Warsaw Ghetto

The Germans ordered that all Jews be registered, and the word "Jude" was stamped in their identity cards. Numerous restrictions and prohibitions targeting Jews were introduced and brutally enforced. For example, Jews were forbidden to walk on the sidewalks, use public transport, or 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. Rabbis were humiliated in "spectacles organised by the German soldiers and police" who used their rifle butts "to make these men dance in their praying shawls." The Germans "disappointed that Poles refused to collaborate", made little attempts to set up a collaborationist government in Poland, nevertheless, German tabloids printed in Polish routinely ran antisemitic articles that urged local people to adopt an attitude of indifference towards the Jews.

Polish Government-in-Exile, The Mass Extermination of Jews in German Occupied Poland, 1942, addressed to Poland's western Allies

Following Operation Barbarossa, many Jews in what was then Eastern Poland fell victim to Nazi death squads called Einsatzgruppen, which massacred Jews, especially in 1941. Some of these German-inspired massacres were carried out with help from, or active participation of Poles themselves: for example, the Jedwabne pogrom, in which between 300 (Institute of National Remembrance's Final Findings) and 1,600 Jews (Jan T. Gross) were tortured and beaten to death by members of the local population. The full extent of Polish participation in the massacres of the Polish Jewish community remains a controversial subject, in part due to Jewish leaders' refusal to allow the remains of the Jewish victims to be exhumed and their cause of death to be properly established. The Polish Institute for National Remembrance identified twenty-two other towns that had pogroms similar to Jedwabne. The reasons for these massacres are still debated, but they included antisemitism, resentment over alleged cooperation with the Soviet invaders in the Polish–Soviet War and during the 1939 invasion of the Kresy regions, greed for the possessions of the Jews, and of course coercion by the Nazis to participate in such massacres.

Some Jewish historians have written of the negative attitudes of some Poles towards persecuted Jews during the Holocaust. While members of Catholic clergy risked their lives to assist Jews, their efforts were sometimes made in the face of antisemitic attitudes from the church hierarchy. Anti-Jewish attitudes also existed in the London-based Polish Government in Exile, although on 18 December 1942 the President in exile Władysław Raczkiewicz wrote a dramatic letter to Pope Pius XII, begging him for a public defense of both murdered Poles and Jews. In spite of the introduction of death penalty extending to the entire families of rescuers, the number of Polish Righteous among the Nations testifies to the fact that Poles were willing to take risks in order to save Jews.

Holocaust survivors' views of Polish behavior during the War span a wide range, depending on their personal experiences. Some are very negative, based on the view of Christian Poles as passive witnesses who failed to act and aid the Jews as they were being persecuted or liquidated by the Nazis. Poles, who were also victims of Nazi crimes, were often afraid for their own and their family's lives and this fear prevented many of them from giving aid and assistance, even if some of them felt sympathy for the Jews. Emanuel Ringelblum, a Polish–Jewish historian of the Warsaw Ghetto, wrote critically of the indifferent and sometimes joyful responses in Warsaw to the destruction of Polish Jews in the Ghetto. However, Gunnar S. Paulsson stated that Polish citizens of Warsaw managed to support and hide the same percentage of Jews as did the citizens of cities in Western European countries. Paulsson's research shows that at least as far as Warsaw is concerned, the number of Poles aiding Jews far outnumbered those who sold out their Jewish neighbors to the Nazis. During the Nazi occupation of Warsaw 70,000–90,000 Polish gentiles aided Jews, while 3,000–4,000 were szmalcowniks, or blackmailers who collaborated with the Nazis in persecuting the Jews.

Ghettos and death camps

The German Nazis established six extermination camps throughout occupied Poland by 1942. All of these – at Chełmno (Kulmhof), Bełżec, Sobibór, Treblinka, Majdanek and Auschwitz (Oświęcim) – were located near the rail network so that the victims could be easily transported. The system of the camps was expanded over the course of the German occupation of Poland and their purposes were diversified; some served as transit camps, some as forced labor camps and the majority as death camps. While in the death camps, the victims were usually killed shortly after arrival, in the other camps able-bodied Jews were worked and beaten to death. The operation of concentration camps depended on Kapos, the collaborator-prisoners. Some of them were Jewish themselves, and their prosecution after the war created an ethical dilemma.

Jewish Ghettos in German-occupied Poland and Eastern Europe

Between October 1939 and July 1942 a system of ghettos was imposed for the confinement of Jews. The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest in all of World War II, with 380,000 people crammed into an area of 1.3 sq mi (3.4 km²). The Łódź Ghetto was the second largest, holding about 160,000 prisoners. Other large Jewish ghettos in leading Polish cities included Białystok Ghetto in Białystok, Częstochowa Ghetto, Kielce Ghetto, Kraków Ghetto in Kraków, Lublin Ghetto, Lwów Ghetto in present-day Lviv, Stanisławów Ghetto also in present-day Ukraine, Brześć Ghetto in present-day Belarus, and Radom Ghetto among others. Ghettos were also established in hundreds of smaller settlements and villages around the country. The overcrowding, dirt, lice, lethal epidemics such as typhoid and hunger all resulted in countless deaths.

Further information: Jewish ghettos in German-occupied Poland

Walling-off Świętokrzyska Street (seen from Marszałkowska Street on the "Aryan side")

During the occupation of Poland, the Germans used various laws to separate ethnic Poles from Jewish ones. In the ghettos, the population was separated by putting the Poles into the "Aryan Side" and the Polish Jews into the "Jewish Side". Any Pole found giving any help to a Jewish Pole was subject to the death penalty. Another law implemented by the Germans was that Poles were forbidden from buying from Jewish shops, and if they did they were subject to execution. Many Jews tried to escape from the ghettos in the hope of finding a place to hide outside of it, or of joining the partisan units. When this proved difficult escapees often returned to the ghetto on their own. If caught, Germans would murder the escapees and leave their bodies in plain view as a warning to others. Despite these terror tactics, attempts at escape from ghettos continued until their liquidation.

NOTICE
Concerning:
the Sheltering of Escaping Jews.
....There is a need for a reminder, that in accordance with paragraph 3 of the decree of 15 October 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

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....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 – Częstochowa 9/24/42

Since the Nazi terror reigned throughout the Aryan districts, the chances of remaining successfully hidden depended on a fluent knowledge of the language and on having close ties with the community. Many Poles were not willing to hide Jews who might have escaped the ghettos or who might have been in hiding due to fear for their own lives and that of their families.

While the German policy towards Jews was ruthless and criminal, their policy towards Christian Poles who helped Jews was very much the same. The Germans would often murder non-Jewish Poles for small misdemeanors. Execution for help rendered to Jews, even the most basic kinds, was automatic. In any apartment block or area where Jews were found to be harboured, everybody in the house would be immediately shot by the Germans. For this thousands of non-Jewish Poles were executed.

Announcement of death penalty for Jews captured outside the Ghetto and for Poles helping Jews, November 1941

Hiding in a Christian society to which the Jews were only partially assimilated was a daunting task. They needed to quickly acquire not only a new identity, but a new body of knowledge. Many Jews spoke Polish with a distinct Yiddish or Hebrew accent, used a different nonverbal language, different gestures and facial expressions. People with physical characteristics such as dark curly hair and brown eyes were particularly vulnerable.

Some individuals blackmailed Jews and non-Jewish Poles hiding them, and took advantage of their desperation by collecting money, or worse, turning them over to the Germans for a reward. The Gestapo provided a standard prize to those who informed on Jews hidden on the 'Aryan' side, consisting of cash, liquor, sugar, and cigarettes. Jews were robbed and handed over to the Germans by "szmalcowniks" (the 'shmalts' people: from shmalts or szmalec, Yiddish and Polish for 'grease'). In extreme cases, the Jews informed on other Jews to alleviate hunger with the awarded prize. The extortionists were condemned by the Polish Underground State. The fight against informers was organized by the Armia Krajowa (the Underground State's military arm), with the death sentence being meted out on a scale unknown in the occupied countries of Western Europe.

Janusz Korczak's orphanage

To discourage Poles from giving shelter to Jews, the Germans often searched houses and introduced ruthless penalties. Poland was the only occupied country during World War II where the Nazis formally imposed the death penalty for anybody found sheltering and helping Jews. The penalty applied not only to the person who did the helping, but also extended to his or her family, neighbors and sometimes to entire villages. In this way Germans applied the principle of collective responsibility whose purpose was to encourage neighbors to inform on each other in order to avoid punishment. The nature of these policies was widely known and visibly publicized by the Nazis who sought to terrorize the Polish population.

Food rations for the Poles were small (669 kcal per day in 1941) compared to other occupied nations throughout Europe and black market prices of necessary goods 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 (6,339).

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 and through the activities of Witold Pilecki, a 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. 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 (Żegota) specifically aimed at helping the Jews in Poland.

The Warsaw Ghetto and its uprising

Main article: Warsaw Ghetto

Further information: Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

Ghetto fighters memorial in Warsaw built in 1948 by sculptor Nathan Rapoport

Deportation to Treblinka at the Umschlagplatz

The Warsaw Ghetto and its 1943 Uprising represents what is likely the most known episode of the wartime history of the Polish Jews. The ghetto was established by the German Governor-General Hans Frank on 16 October 1940. Initially, almost 140,000 Jews were moved into the ghetto from all parts of Warsaw. At the same time, approximately 110,000 Poles had been forcibly evicted from the area. The Germans selected Adam Czerniakow to take charge of the Jewish Council called Judenrat made up of 24 Jewish men ordered to organize Jewish labor battalions as well as Jewish Ghetto Police which would be responsible for maintaining order within the Ghetto walls. A number of Jewish policemen were corrupt and immoral. Soon the Nazis demanded even more from the Judenrat and the demands were much crueler. Death was the punishment for the slightest indication of noncompliance by the Judenrat. Sometimes the Judenrat refused to collaborate in which case its members were consequently executed and replaced by the new group of people. Adam Czerniakow who was the head of the Warsaw Judenrat committed suicide when he was forced to collect daily lists of Jews to be deported to the Treblinka extermination camp at the onset of Grossaktion Warsaw.

The population of the ghetto reached 380,000 people by the end of 1940, about 30% of the population of Warsaw. However, the size of the Ghetto was only about 2.4% of the size of the city. The Germans closed off the Ghetto from the outside world, building a wall around it by 16 November 1940. During the next year and a half, Jews from smaller cities and villages were brought into the Warsaw Ghetto, while diseases (especially typhoid) and starvation kept the inhabitants at about the same number. Average food rations in 1941 for Jews in Warsaw were limited to 253 kcal, and 669 kcal for Poles, as opposed to 2,613 kcal for Germans. On 22 July 1942, the mass deportation of the Warsaw Ghetto inhabitants began. During the next fifty-two days (until 12 September 1942) about 300,000 people were transported by freight train to the Treblinka extermination camp. The Jewish Ghetto Police were ordered to escort the ghetto inhabitants to the Umschlagplatz train station. They were spared from the deportations until September 1942 in return for their cooperation, but afterwards shared their fate with families and relatives. On 18 January 1943, a group of Ghetto militants led by the right-leaning ŻZW, including some members of the left-leaning ŻOB, rose up in a first Warsaw uprising. Both organizations resisted, with arms, German attempts for additional deportations to Auschwitz and Treblinka. The final destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto came four months later after the crushing of one of the most heroic and tragic battles of the war, the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

The cover page of The Stroop Report with International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg markings.

When we invaded the Ghetto for the first time – wrote SS commander Jürgen Stroop – the Jews and the Polish bandits succeeded in repelling the participating units, including tanks and armored cars, by a well-prepared concentration of fire. (...) The main Jewish battle group, mixed with Polish bandits, had already retired during the first and second day to the so-called Muranowski Square. There, it was reinforced by a considerable number of Polish bandits. Its plan was to hold the Ghetto by every means in order to prevent us from invading it. — Jürgen Stroop, Stroop Report, 1943.

The Uprising was led by ŻOB (Jewish Combat Organization) and the ŻZW. The ŻZW (Jewish Military Union) was the better supplied in arms. The ŻOB had more than 750 fighters, but lacked weapons; they had only 9 rifles, 59 pistols and several grenades. A developed network of bunkers and fortifications were formed. The Jewish fighters also received support from the Polish Underground (Armia Krajowa). The German forces, which included 2,842 Nazi soldiers and 7,000 security personnel, were not capable of crushing the Jewish resistance in open street combat and after several days, decided to switch strategy by setting buildings on fire in which the Jewish fighters hid. The commander of the ŻOB, Mordechai Anielewicz, died fighting on 8 May 1943 at the organization's command centre on 18 Mila Street.

34 Mordechaj Anielewicz Street, Warsaw, Poland

It took the Germans twenty-seven days to put down the uprising, after some very heavy fighting. The German general Jürgen Stroop in his report stated that his troops had killed 6,065 Jewish fighters during the battle. After the uprising was already over, Heinrich Himmler had the Great Synagogue on Tłomackie Square (outside the ghetto) destroyed as a celebration of German victory and a symbol that the Jewish Ghetto in Warsaw was no longer.

A group of fighters escaped from the ghetto through the sewers and reached the Lomianki forest. About 50 ghetto fighters were saved by the Polish "People's Guard" and later formed their own partisan group, named after Anielewicz. Even after the end of the uprising there were still several hundreds of Jews who continued living in the ruined ghetto. Many of them survived thanks to the contacts they managed to establish with Poles outside the ghetto. The Uprising inspired Jews throughout Poland. Many Jewish leaders who survived the liquidation continued underground work outside the ghetto. They hid other Jews, forged necessary documents and were active in the Polish underground in other parts of Warsaw and the surrounding area.

Freed prisoners of Gęsiówka and the Szare Szeregi fighters after the liberation of the camp in August 1944

Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, was followed by other Ghetto uprisings in many smaller towns and cities across German-occupied Poland. Many Jews were found alive in the ruins of the former Warsaw Ghetto during the 1944 general Warsaw Uprising when the Poles themselves rose up against the Germans. Some of the survivors of 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, still held in camps at or near Warsaw, were freed during 1944 Warsaw Uprising, led by the Polish resistance movement Armia Krajowa, and immediately joined Polish fighters. Only a few of them survived. The Polish commander of one Jewish unit, Waclaw Micuta, described them as some of the best fighters, always at the front line. It is estimated that over 2,000 Polish Jews, some as well known as Marek Edelman or Icchak Cukierman, and several dozen Greek, Hungarian or even German Jews freed by Armia Krajowa from Gesiowka concentration camp in Warsaw, men and women, took part in combat against Nazis during 1944 Warsaw Uprising. Some 166,000 people lost their lives in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, including perhaps as many as 17,000 Polish Jews who had either fought with the AK or had been discovered in hiding (see: Krzysztof Kamil Baczyński and Stanisław Aronson). Warsaw was razed to the ground by the Germans and more than 150,000 Poles were sent to labor or concentration camps. On 17 January 1945, the Soviet Army entered a destroyed and nearly uninhabited Warsaw. Some 300 Jews were found hiding in the ruins in the Polish part of the city (see: Władysław Szpilman).

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943 saw the destruction of what remained of the Ghetto

The fate of the Warsaw Ghetto was similar to that of the other ghettos in which Jews were concentrated. With the decision of Nazi Germany to begin the Final Solution, the destruction of the Jews of Europe, Aktion Reinhard began in 1942, with the opening of the extermination camps of Bełżec, Sobibór, and Treblinka, followed by Auschwitz-Birkenau where people were killed in gas chambers and mass executions (death wall). Many died from hunger, starvation, disease, torture or by pseudo-medical experiments. The mass deportation of Jews from ghettos to these camps, such as happened at the Warsaw Ghetto, soon followed, and more than 1.7 million Jews were killed at the Aktion Reinhard camps by October 1943 alone.

The Białystok Ghetto and its uprising

Main article: Białystok Ghetto

Further information: Białystok Ghetto Uprising

In August 1941, the Germans ordered the establishment of a ghetto in Białystok. About 50,000 Jews from the city and the surrounding region were confined in a small area of Białystok. The ghetto had two sections, divided by the Biala River. Most Jews in the Białystok ghetto worked in forced-labor projects, primarily in large textile factories located within the ghetto boundaries. The Germans also sometimes used Jews in forced-labor projects outside the ghetto.

In February 1943, approximately 10,000 Białystok Jews were deported to the Treblinka extermination camp. During the deportations, hundreds of Jews, mainly those deemed too weak or sick to travel, were killed.

In August 1943, the Germans mounted an operation to destroy the Białystok ghetto. German forces and local police auxiliaries surrounded the ghetto and began to round up Jews systematically for deportation to the Treblinka extermination camp. Approximately 7,600 Jews were held in a central transit camp in the city before deportation to Treblinka. Those deemed fit to work were sent to the Majdanek camp. In Majdanek, after another screening for ability to work, they were transported to the Poniatowa, Blizyn, or Auschwitz camps. Those deemed too weak to work were murdered at Majdanek. More than 1,000 Jewish children were sent first to the Theresienstadt ghetto in Bohemia, and then to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where they were killed.

On 15 August 1943, the Białystok Ghetto Uprising began, and several hundred Polish Jews and members of the Anti-Fascist Military Organisation (Polish: Antyfaszystowska Organizacja Bojowa) started an armed struggle against the German troops who were carrying out the planned liquidation and deportation of the ghetto to the Treblinka extermination camp. The guerrillas were armed with only one machine gun, several dozen pistols, Molotov cocktails and bottles filled with acid. The fighting in isolated pockets of resistance lasted for several days, but the defence was broken almost instantly. As with the earlier Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of April 1943, the Białystok uprising had no chances for military success, but it was the second-largest ghetto uprising, after the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Several dozen guerrillas managed to break through to the forests surrounding Białystok where they joined the partisan units of Armia Krajowa and other organisations and survived the war.

Communist rule: 1945–1989

Main article: History of Poland (1945–1989)

Number of Holocaust survivors

The estimates of Polish Jews before the war vary from slightly under 3 million to almost 3.5 million (the last nationwide census was conducted in 1931).

The number of Polish Jews who survived the Holocaust is difficult to ascertain. The majority of Polish Jewish survivors were individuals who were able to find refuge in the territories of Soviet Union that were not overrun by Germans and thus safe from the Holocaust. It is estimated that between 250,000 and 800,000 Polish Jews survived the war, out of which between 50,000 and 100,000 were survivors from occupied Poland, and the remainder, survivors who made it abroad (mostly to the Soviet Union).

Following the Soviet annexation of over half of Poland at the onset of World War II, all Polish nationals including Jews were declared by Moscow to have become Soviet nationals regardless of birth. Also, all Polish Jews who perished in the Holocaust east of the Curzon Line were included with the Soviet war dead. For decades to come, the Soviet authorities refused to accept the fact that thousands of Jews who remained in the USSR opted consciously and unambiguously for Polish nationality. At the end of 1944, the number of Polish Jews in the Soviet and the Soviet-controlled territories has been estimated at 250,000–300,000 people. Jews who escaped to eastern Poland from areas occupied by Germany in 1939 were numbering at around 198,000. Over 150,000 of them were repatriated or expelled back to new communist Poland along with the Jewish men conscripted to the Red Army from Kresy in 1940–1941. Their families were murdered in the Holocaust. Some of the soldiers married women with the Soviet citizenship, others agreed to paper marriages. Those who survived the Holocaust in Poland included Jews who were saved by the Poles (most families with children), and those who joined the Polish or Soviet resistance movement. Some 20,000–40,000 Jews were repatriated from Germany and other countries. At its postwar peak, up to 240,000 returning Jews might have resided in Poland mostly in Warsaw, Łódź, Kraków, Wrocław and Lower Silesia, e.g., Dzierżoniów (where there was a significant Jewish community initially consisting of local concentration camp survivors), Legnica, and Bielawa.

The Jewish community in post-war Poland

Page from a register of several hundred Jewish survivors who returned to Oświęcim after the war; created by a local Jewish Committee in 1945. Most remained for only a brief period.

Following World War II Poland became a satellite state of the Soviet Union, with its eastern regions annexed to the Union, and its western borders expanded to include formerly German territories east of the Oder and Neisse rivers. This forced millions to relocate (see also Territorial changes of Poland immediately after World War II). Jewish survivors returning to their homes in Poland found it practically impossible to reconstruct their pre-war lives. Due to the border shifts, some Polish Jews found that their homes were now in the Soviet Union; in other cases, the returning survivors were German Jews whose homes were now under Polish jurisdiction. Jewish communities and Jewish life as it had existed was gone, and Jews who somehow survived the Holocaust often discovered that their homes had been looted or destroyed.

Anti-Jewish violence and discrimination

Main article: Anti-Jewish violence in Poland, 1944–1946

Some returning Jews were met with antisemitic bias in Polish employment and education administrations. Post-war labor certificates contained markings distinguishing Jews from non-Jews. The Jewish community in Szczecin reported a lengthy report of complaints regarding job discrimination. Although Jewish schools were created in the few towns containing a relatively large Jewish population, many Jewish children were enrolled in Polish state schools. Some state schools, as in the town of Otwock, forbade Jewish children to enroll. In the state schools that did allow Jewish children, there were numerous accounts of beatings and persecution targeting these children.

The anti-Jewish violence in Poland refers to a series of violent incidents in Poland that immediately followed the end of World War II in Europe. It occurred amid a period of violence and anarchy across the country, caused by lawlessness and anti-communist resistance against the Soviet-backed communist takeover of Poland. The exact number of Jewish victims is a subject of debate with 327 documented cases, and range, estimated by different writers, from 400 to 2,000. Jews constituted between 2% and 3% of the total number of victims of postwar violence in the country, including the Polish Jews who managed to escape the Holocaust on territories of Poland annexed by the Soviet Union, and returned after the border changes imposed by the Allies at the Yalta Conference. The incidents ranged from individual attacks to pogroms.

The best-known case is the Kielce pogrom of 4 July 1946, in which thirty-seven Jews and two Poles were murdered. Following the investigation, the local police commander was found guilty of inaction. Nine alleged participants of the pogrom were sentenced to death; three were given lengthy prison sentences. The debate in Poland continues about the involvement of regular troops in the killings, and possible Soviet influences.

In a number of other instances, returning Jews still met with threats, violence, and murder from their Polish neighbors, occasionally in a deliberate and organized manner. People of the community frequently had knowledge of these murders and turned a blind eye or held no sympathy for the victims. Jewish communities responded to this violence by reporting the violence to the Ministry of Public Administration, but were granted little assistance. As many as 1500 Jewish heirs were often murdered when attempting to reclaim property.

Several causes led to the anti-Jewish violence of 1944–1947. One cause was traditional Christian anti-semitism; the pogrom in Cracow (11 August 1945) and in Kielce followed accusations of ritual murder. Another cause was the gentile Polish hostility to the Communist takeover. Even though very few Jews lived in postwar Poland, many Poles believed they dominated the Communist authorities, a belief expressed in the term Żydokomuna (Judeo-Communist), a popular anti-Jewish stereotype. Yet another reason for Polish violence towards Jews stemmed from the fear that survivors would recover their property.

Jewish property

Main article: Nationalization in Poland

After the war ended, Poland's Communist government enacted a broad program of nationalization and land reform, taking over large numbers of properties, both Polish- and Jewish-owned. As part of the reform the Polish People's Republic enacted legislation on "abandoned property", placing severe limitations on inheritance that were not present in prewar inheritance law, for example limiting restitution to the original owners or their immediate heirs. According to Dariusz Stola, the 1945 and 1946 laws governing restitution were enacted with the intention of restricting Jewish restitution claims as one of their main goals. The 1946 law carried a deadline of 31 December 1947 (later extended to 31 December 1948), after which unclaimed property devolved to the Polish state; many survivors residing in the USSR or in displaced-persons camps were repatriated only after the deadline had passed. All other properties that had been confiscated by the Nazi regime were deemed "abandoned"; however, as Yechiel Weizman notes, the fact most of Poland's Jewry had died, in conjunction with the fact that only Jewish property was officially confiscated by the Nazis, suggest "abandoned property" was equivalent to "Jewish property". According to Łukasz Krzyżanowski, the state actively sought to gain control over a large number of "abandoned" properties. According to Krzyżanowski, this declaration of "abandoned" property can be seen as the last stage of the expropriation process that began during the German wartime occupation; by approving the status-quo shaped by the German occupation authorities, the Polish authorities became "the beneficiary of the murder of millions of its Jewish citizens, who were deprived of all their property before death". A 1945 memorandum by the Joint states that "the new economic tendency of the Polish government... is against, or at least makes difficulties in, getting back the Jewish property robbed by the German authorities." Later laws, while more generous, remained mainly on paper, with an "uneven" implementation.

Many of the properties that were previously owned or by Jews were taken over by others during the war. Attempting to reclaim an occupied property often put the claimant at a risk of physical harm and even death. Many who proceeded with the process were only granted possession, not ownership, of their properties; and completing the restitution process, given that most properties were already occupied, required additional, lengthy processes. The majority of Jewish claimants could not afford the restitution process without financial help, due to the filing costs, legal fees, and inheritance tax. While it is hard to determine the total number of successful reclamations, Michael Meng estimates that it was extremely small.

In general, restitution was easier for larger organizations or well connected individuals, and the process was also abused by criminal gangs.

"Movable" property such as housewares, that was either given by Jews for safekeeping or taken during the war, was rarely returned willfully; oftentimes the only resort for a returnee looking for reappropriation was the courts. Most such property was probably never returned. According to Jan Gross, "there was no social norm mandating the return of Jewish property, no detectable social pressure defining such behavior as the right thing to do, no informal social control mechanism imposing censure for doing otherwise."

Facing violence and a difficult and expensive legal process, many returnees eventually decided to leave the country rather than attempt reclamation.

Following the fall of the Soviet Union, a law was passed that allowed the Catholic Church to reclaim its properties, which it did with great success. According to Stephen Denburg, "unlike the restitution of Church property, the idea of returning property to former Jewish owners has been met with a decided lack of enthusiasm from both the general Polish population as well as the government".

Decades later, reclaiming pre-war property would lead to a number of controversies, and the matter is still debated by media and scholars as of late 2010s. Dariusz Stola notes that the issues of property in Poland are incredibly complex, and need to take into consideration unprecedented losses of both Jewish and Polish population and massive destruction caused by Nazi Germany, as well as the expansion of Soviet Union and communism into Polish territories after the war, which dictated the property laws for the next 50 years. Poland remains "the only EU country and the only former Eastern European communist state not to have enacted [a restitution] law," but rather "a patchwork of laws and court decisions promulgated from 1945-present." As stated by Dariusz Stola, director of the POLIN Museum, "the question of restitution is in many ways connected to the question of Polish–Jewish relations, their history and remembrance, but particularly to the attitude of the Poles to the Holocaust."

Emigration to Palestine and Israel

Main article: Aliyah Bet

For a variety of reasons, the vast majority of returning Jewish survivors left Poland soon after the war ended. Many left for the West because they did not want to live under a Communist regime. Some left because of the persecution they faced in postwar Poland, and because they did not want to live where their family members had been murdered, and instead have arranged to live with relatives or friends in different western democracies. Others wanted to go to British Mandate of Palestine soon to be the new state of Israel, especially after General Marian Spychalski signed a decree allowing Jews to leave Poland without visas or exit permits. In 1946–1947 Poland was the only Eastern Bloc country to allow free Jewish aliyah to Israel, without visas or exit permits. Britain demanded Poland to halt the exodus, but their pressure was largely unsuccessful.

Between 1945 and 1948, 100,000–120,000 Jews left Poland. Their departure was largely organized by the Zionist activists including Adolf Berman and Icchak Cukierman, under the umbrella of a semi-clandestine Berihah ("Flight") organization. Berihah was also responsible for the organized Aliyah emigration of Jews from Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Poland, totaling 250,000 survivors. In 1947, a military training camp for young Jewish volunteers to Hagana was established in Bolków, Poland. The camp trained 7,000 soldiers who then traveled to Palestine to fight for Israel. The boot-camp existed until the end of 1948.

A second wave of Jewish emigration (50,000) took place during the liberalization of the Communist regime between 1957 and 1959. After 1967's Six-Day War, in which the Soviet Union supported the Arab side, the Polish communist party adopted an anti-Jewish course of action which in the years 1968–1969 provoked the last mass migration of Jews from Poland.

The Bund took part in the post-war elections of 1947 on a common ticket with the (non-communist) Polish Socialist Party (PPS) and gained its first and only parliamentary seat in its Polish history, plus several seats in municipal councils. Under pressure from Soviet-installed communist authorities, the Bund's leaders 'voluntarily' disbanded the party in 1948–1949 against the opposition of many activists. Stalinist Poland was basically governed by the Soviet NKVD which was against the renewal of Jewish religious and cultural life. In the years 1948–49, all remaining Jewish schools were nationalized by the communists and Yiddish was replaced with Polish as a language of teaching.

Rebuilding Jewish communities

For those Polish Jews who remained, the rebuilding of Jewish life in Poland was carried out between October 1944 and 1950 by the Central Committee of Polish Jews (Centralny Komitet Żydów Polskich, CKŻP) which provided legal, educational, social care, cultural, and propaganda services. A countrywide Jewish Religious Community, led by Dawid Kahane, who served as chief rabbi of the Polish Armed Forces, functioned between 1945 and 1948 until it was absorbed by the CKŻP. Eleven independent political Jewish parties, of which eight were legal, existed until their dissolution during 1949–50. Hospitals and schools were opened in Poland by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and ORT to provide service to Jewish communities. Some Jewish cultural institutions were established including the Yiddish State Theater founded in 1950 and directed by Ida Kamińska, the Jewish Historical Institute, an academic institution specializing in the research of the history and culture of the Jews in Poland, and the Yiddish newspaper Folks-Shtime ("People's Voice"). Following liberalization after Joseph Stalin's death, in this 1958–59 period, 50,000 Jews emigrated to Israel.

Some Polish Communists of Jewish descent actively participated in the establishment of the communist regime in the People's Republic of Poland between 1944 and 1956. Hand-picked by Joseph Stalin, prominent Jews held posts in the Politburo of the Polish United Workers' Party including Jakub Berman, head of state security apparatus Urząd Bezpieczeństwa (UB), and Hilary Minc responsible for establishing a Communist-style economy. Together with hardliner Bolesław Bierut, Berman and Minc formed a triumvirate of the Stalinist leaders in postwar Poland. After 1956, during the process of de-Stalinisation in the People's Republic under Władysław Gomułka, some Jewish officials from Urząd Bezpieczeństwa including Roman Romkowski, Jacek Różański, and Anatol Fejgin, were prosecuted and sentenced to prison terms for "power abuses" including the torture of Polish anti-fascists including Witold Pilecki among others. Yet another Jewish official, Józef Światło, after escaping to the West in 1953, exposed through Radio Free Europe the interrogation methods used the UB which led to its restructuring in 1954. Solomon Morel a member of the Ministry of Public Security of Poland and commandant of the Stalinist era Zgoda labour camp, fled Poland for Israel in 1992 to escape prosecution. Helena Wolińska-Brus, a former Stalinist prosecutor who emigrated to England in the late 1960s, fought being extradited to Poland on charges related to the execution of a Second World War resistance hero Emil Fieldorf. Wolińska-Brus died in London in 2008.

The March 1968 events and their aftermath

In 1967, following the Six-Day War between Israel and the Arab states, Poland's Communist government, following the Soviet lead, broke off diplomatic relations with Israel and launched an antisemitic campaign under the guise of "anti-Zionism". However, the campaign did not resonate well with the Polish public, as most Poles saw similarities between Israel's fight for survival and Poland's past struggles for independence. Many Poles also felt pride in the success of the Israeli military, which was dominated by Polish Jews. The slogan "our Jews beat the Soviet Arabs" (Nasi Żydzi pobili sowieckich Arabów) became popular in Poland.

The vast majority of the 40,000 Jews in Poland by the late 1960s were completely assimilated into the broader society. However, this did not prevent them from becoming victims of a campaign, centrally organized by the Polish Communist Party, with Soviet backing, which equated Jewish origins with "Zionism" and disloyalty to a Socialist Poland.

In March 1968 student-led demonstrations in Warsaw (see Polish 1968 political crisis) gave Gomułka's government an excuse to try and channel public anti-government sentiment into another avenue. Thus his security chief, Mieczysław Moczar, used the situation as a pretext to launch an antisemitic press campaign (although the expression "Zionist" was officially used). The state-sponsored "anti-Zionist" campaign resulted in the removal of Jews from the Polish United Workers' Party and from teaching positions in schools and universities. In 1967–1971 under economic, political and secret police pressure, over 14,000 Polish Jews chose to leave Poland and relinquish their Polish citizenship. Officially, it was said that they chose to go to Israel. However, only about 4,000 actually went there; most settled throughout Europe and in the United States. The leaders of the Communist party tried to stifle the ongoing protests and unrest by scapegoating the Jews. At the same time there was an ongoing power struggle within the party itself and the antisemitic campaign was used by one faction against another. The so-called "Partisan" faction blamed the Jews who had held office during the Stalinist period for the excesses that had occurred, but the result was that most of the remaining Polish Jews, regardless of their background or political affiliation, were targeted by the communist authorities.

There were several outcomes of the March 1968 events. The campaign damaged Poland's reputation abroad, particularly in the U.S. Many Polish intellectuals, however, were disgusted at the promotion of official antisemitism and opposed the campaign. Some of the people who emigrated to the West at this time founded organizations that encouraged anti-Communist opposition inside Poland.

First attempts to improve Polish–Israeli relations began in the mid-1970s. Poland was the first of the Eastern Bloc countries to restore diplomatic relations with Israel after these have been broken off right after the Six-Day's War. In 1986 partial diplomatic relations with Israel were restored, and full relations were restored in 1990 as soon as communism fell.

During the late 1970s some Jewish activists were engaged in the anti-Communist opposition groups. Most prominent among them, Adam Michnik (founder of Gazeta Wyborcza) was one of the founders of the Workers' Defence Committee (KOR). By the time of the fall of Communism in Poland in 1989, only 5,000–10,000 Jews remained in the country, many of them preferring to conceal their Jewish origin.

Since 1989

Main article: Jewish Polish history (1989–present)

Further information: History of Poland (1989–present)

With the fall of communism in Poland, Jewish cultural, social, and religious life has been undergoing a revival. Many historical issues, especially related to World War II and the 1944–89 period, suppressed by Communist censorship, have been re-evaluated and publicly discussed (like the Jedwabne pogrom, the Koniuchy massacre, the Kielce pogrom, the Auschwitz cross, and Polish-Jewish wartime relations in general).

Chief Rabbi of Poland – Michael Schudrich

Lesko Synagogue, Poland

Reform Beit Warszawa Synagogue

Jewish religious life has been revived with the help of the Ronald Lauder Foundation and the Taube Foundation for Jewish Life & Culture. There are two rabbis serving the Polish Jewish community, several Jewish schools and associated summer camps as well as several periodical and book series sponsored by the above foundations. Jewish studies programs are offered at major universities, such as Warsaw University and the Jagiellonian University. The Union of Jewish Religious Communities in Poland was founded in 1993. Its purpose is the promotion and organization of Jewish religious and cultural activities in Polish communities.

A large number of cities with synagogues include Warsaw, Kraków, Zamość, Tykocin, Rzeszów, Kielce, or Góra Kalwaria although not many of them are still active in their original religious role. Stara Synagoga ("Old Synagogue") in Kraków, which hosts a Jewish museum, was built in the early 15th century and is the oldest synagogue in Poland. Before the war, the Yeshiva Chachmei in Lublin was Europe's largest. In 2007 it was renovated, dedicated and reopened thanks to the efforts and endowments by Polish Jewry. Warsaw has an active synagogue, Beit Warszawa, affiliated with the Liberal-Progressive stream of Judaism.

There are also several Jewish publications although most of them are in Polish. These include Midrasz, Dos Jidische Wort (which is bilingual), as well as a youth journal Jidele and "Sztendlach" for young children. Active institutions include the Jewish Historical Institute, the E.R. Kaminska State Yiddish Theater in Warsaw, and the Jewish Cultural Center. The Judaica Foundation in Kraków has sponsored a wide range of cultural and educational programs on Jewish themes for a predominantly Polish audience. With funds from the city of Warsaw and the Polish government ($26 million total) a Museum of the History of Polish Jews is being built in Warsaw. The building was designed by the Finnish architect Rainer Mahlamäki.

2005 March of the Living

Former extermination camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Majdanek and Treblinka are open to visitors. At Auschwitz the Oświęcim State Museum currently houses exhibitions on Nazi crimes with a special section (Block Number 27) specifically focused on Jewish victims and martyrs. At Treblinka there is a monument built out of many shards of broken stone, as well as a mausoleum dedicated to those who perished there. A small mound of human ashes commemorates the 350,000 victims of the Majdanek camp who were killed there by the Nazis. Jewish Cemetery, Łódź is one of the largest Jewish burial grounds in Europe, and preserved historic sites include those located in Góra Kalwaria and Leżajsk (Elimelech's of Lizhensk ohel).

The Great Synagogue in Oświęcim was excavated after testimony by a Holocaust survivor suggested that many Jewish relics and ritual objects had been buried there, just before Nazis took over the town. Candelabras, chandeliers, a menorah and a ner tamid were found and can now be seen at the Auschwitz Jewish Center.

The Warsaw Ghetto Memorial was unveiled on 19 April 1948—the fifth anniversary of the outbreak of the Warsaw ghetto Uprising. It was constructed out of bronze and granite that the Nazis used for a monument honoring German victory over Poland and it was designed by Nathan Rapoport. The Memorial is located where the Warsaw Ghetto used to be, at the site of one command bunker of the Jewish Combat Organization.

A memorial to the victims of the Kielce Pogrom of 1946, where a mob murdered more than 40 Jews who returned to the city after the Holocaust, was unveiled in 2006. The funds for the memorial came from the city itself and from the U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad.

Polish authors and scholars have published many works about the history of Jews in Poland. Notable among them are the Polish Academy of Sciences's Holocaust studies journal Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały as well as other publications from the Institute of National Remembrance. Recent scholarship has primarily focused on three topics: post-war anti-Semitism; emigration and the creation of the State of Israel, and the restitution of property.

President of the Republic of Poland, Lech Kaczyński, at the groundbreaking ceremony for the Museum of the History of Polish Jews, 26 June 2007

There have been a number of Holocaust remembrance activities in Poland in recent years. The United States Department of State documents that:

In September 2000, dignitaries from Poland, Israel, the United States, and other countries (including Prince Hassan of Jordan) gathered in the city of Oświęcim (Auschwitz) to commemorate the opening of the refurbished Chevra Lomdei Mishnayot synagogue and the Auschwitz Jewish Center. The synagogue, the sole synagogue in Oświęcim to survive World War II and an adjacent Jewish cultural and educational center, provide visitors a place to pray and to learn about the active pre–World War II Jewish community that existed in Oświęcim. The synagogue was the first communal property in the country to be returned to the Jewish community under the 1997 law allowing for restitution of Jewish communal property.

The March of the Living is an annual event in April held since 1988 to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust. It takes place from Auschwitz to Birkenau and is attended by many people from Israel, Poland and other countries. The marchers honor Holocaust Remembrance Day as well as Israel Independence Day.

"Shalom in Szeroka Street", the final concert of the 15th Jewish Festival

An annual festival of Jewish culture, which is one of the biggest festivals of Jewish culture in the world, takes place in Kraków.

In 2006, Poland's Jewish population was estimated to be approximately 20,000; most living in Warsaw, Wrocław, Kraków, and Bielsko-Biała, though there are no census figures that would give an exact number. According to the Polish Moses Schorr Centre and other Polish sources, however, this may represent an undercount of the actual number of Jews living in Poland, since many are not religious. There are also people with Jewish roots who do not possess adequate documentation to confirm it, due to various historical and family complications.

Poland is currently easing the way for Jews who left Poland during the Communist organized massive expulsion of 1968 to re-obtain their citizenship. Some 15,000 Polish Jews were deprived of their citizenship in the 1968 Polish political crisis. On 17 June 2009 the future Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw launched a bilingual Polish-English website called "The Virtual Shtetl", providing information about Jewish life in Poland.

In 2013, POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews opened. It is one of the world's largest Jewish museums. As of 2019 another museum, the Warsaw Ghetto Museum, is under construction and is intended to open in 2023.

Numbers of Jews in Poland since 1920

See also: Historical demographics of Poland

Historical core Jewish population (using current borders) with Jews as a % of the total Polish population
(Source: YIVO Encyclopedia & the North American Jewish Data Bank)

Year	1921	1939	1945	1946	1951	1960	1970	1980	1990	2000	2010
Population	2,845,000 (+14.2%)	3,250,000 (100%) 9.14% of the total	100,000 (−96.9%) 0.43%	230,000 (+130.0%) 0.97%	70,000 (−69.6%) 0.28%	31,000 (−55.7%) 0.10%	9,000 (−71.0%) 0.03%	5,000 (−44.4%) 0.01%	3,800 (−24.0%) 0.01%	3,500 (−7.9%) 0.01%	3,200 (−8.6%) 0.01%

However, most sources other than YIVO give a larger number of Jews living in contemporary Poland. In the 2011 Polish census, 7,353 Polish citizens declared their nationality as "Jewish," a big increase from just 1,055 during the previous 2002 census. There are likely more people of Jewish ancestry living in Poland but who do not actively identify as Jewish. According to the Moses Schorr Centre, there are 100,000 Jews living in Poland who don't actively practice Judaism and do not list "Jewish" as their nationality. The Jewish Renewal in Poland organization estimates that there are 200,000 "potential Jews" in Poland. The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and Jewish Agency for Israel estimate that there are between 25,000 and 100,000 Jews living in Poland, a similar number to that estimated by Jonathan Ornstein, head of the Jewish Community Center in Kraków (between 20,000 and 100,000).

See also

• History of the Jews in Poland before the 18th century
• History of the Jews in 18th-century Poland
• History of the Jews in 19th-century Poland
• History of the Jews in 20th-century Poland
• Timeline of Jewish-Polish history
• Galician Jews
• Golden age of Jewish culture in Spain
• History of the Jews in Austria
• History of the Jews in Germany
• History of the Jews in Russia
• Israel–Poland relations
• Jewish ethnic divisions
• Jewish Roots in Poland
• List of Polish rabbis

Библиография

• Марек Ян Ходакевич , После Холокоста , Восточноевропейские монографии, 2003, ISBN   0-88033-511-4 .
• Марек Ян Ходакевич , Между нацистами и Советами: оккупационная политика в Польше, 1939–1947 , Lexington Books, 2004, ISBN   0-7391-0484-5 .
• Уильям В. Хаген , «Перед« окончательным решением »: к сравнительному анализу политического антисемитизма в межвоенной Германии и Польше», Журнал современной истории , Vol. 68, № 2 (июнь 1996 г.), 351–381.
• Хундерт, Гершон Дэвид (2004). Евреи в Польше и Литве в восемнадцатом веке: генеалогия современности . Беркли: Издательство Калифорнийского университета. ISBN  0-520-23844-3 .
• МИД Польши (2014) [1942]. Роде, Александра Мисак (ред.). Немецкая оккупация Польши . Вашингтон, округ Колумбия: Книги Дейл Стрит. ISBN  978-1941656105 .
• Энтони Полонски и Джоанна Б. Михлик . Ответ соседей: спор по поводу резни в Едвабне в Польше , Princeton University Press, 2003 г. ISBN   0-691-11306-8 . ( Введение онлайн )
• Иво Киприан Погоновский , Евреи в Польше. Документальная история , Hippocrene Books , Inc., 1998, ISBN   0-7818-0604-6 .
• Дэвид Виталь, «Народ отдельно: политическая история евреев в Европе 1789–1939» , Oxford University Press, 2001.
• М. Дж. Росман, «Евреи Господа: магнатско-еврейские отношения в Речи Посполитой в восемнадцатом веке» , издательство Гарвардского университета, 1990, ISBN   0-916458-18-0
• Эдвард Фрам, Идеалы сталкиваются с реальностью: еврейская жизнь и культура в Польше 1550–1655 гг. , HUC Press, 1996, ISBN   0-8143-2906-3
• Магда Тетер, Евреи и еретики в досовременной Польше: осажденная церковь в эпоху после Реформации , Cambridge University Press, 2006, ISBN   0-521-85673-6
• Лоуренс Вайнбаум, Деассимиляция еврейского остатка в Польше , в: Этнос-Нация: европейский журнал, 1999, стр. 8–25.
• В эту статью включен текст из публикации, которая сейчас находится в свободном доступе : Певец, Исидор ; и др., ред. (1901–1906). "Россия". Еврейская энциклопедия . Нью-Йорк: Фанк и Вагналлс. Нью-Йорк: Фанк и Вагналлс. Значительное количество скопированных абзацев без встроенных цитат взято из главы «Россия» этого источника. Энциклопедия была издана, когда суверенной Польши не существовало после столетия разделов соседних империй. OCLC   632370258 .

Дальнейшее чтение

Основные статьи: Библиография истории Польши и Библиография Польши во время Второй мировой войны.

• Ходакевич, Марек Ян (2003). После Холокоста: польско-еврейский конфликт после Второй мировой войны, Восточноевропейские монографии . Издательство Колумбийского университета. ISBN  0-88033-511-4 .
• Чичопек-Гайрадж, А. (2021). Агентство и перемещение этнических польских и еврейских семей после Второй мировой войны . Польские американские исследования , 78 (1), 60–82.
• Диннер, Гленн . Люди шелка: Хасидское завоевание Польского еврейского общества. Нью-Йорк: Oxford University Press, 2006.
• Энгель, Дэвид (1998). «Модели антиеврейского насилия в Польше 1944–1946». Исследования Яд Вашем .
• Корицкий, Кейт. Использование прошлого в качестве оружия: коллективная память и евреи, поляки и коммунисты в Польше XXI века (Berghahn Books, 2023) онлайн-обзор книги
• Краевский, Станислав . Польша и евреи: размышления польского еврея , Краков: Austeria P, 2005.
• Левин, Гилель (1991). Экономические истоки антисемитизма: Польша и ее евреи в период раннего Нового времени . Нью-Хейвен, Коннектикут: Издательство Йельского университета. ISBN  9780300049879 . ОСЛК   22908198 .
• Никжентайтис, Альвидас , Стефан Шрейнер, Дарюс Сталюнас (редакторы). Исчезнувший мир литовских евреев . Родопи, 2004 г., ISBN   90-420-0850-4
• Полонский, Антоний . Евреи в Польше и России, Том 1: 1350–1881 (Библиотека еврейской цивилизации Литтмана, 2009 г.) ISBN   978-1-874774-64-8
• Полонский, Антоний. Евреи в Польше и России, Том 2: 1881–1914 (Библиотека еврейской цивилизации Литтмана, 2009) ISBN   978-1-904113-83-6
• Полонский, Антоний. Евреи в Польше и России, Том 3: 1914-2008 (Библиотека еврейской цивилизации Литтмана, 2011) ISBN   978-1-904113-48-5
• Прокоп-Янец, Э. (2019). Еврейские интеллектуалы, национальные страдания, современная Польша . Польское обозрение , 64 (2), 24–36.
• Ури, Скотт. Баррикады и знамена: революция 1905 года и трансформация варшавского еврейства , Stanford University Press, 2012. ISBN   978-0-804763-83-7
• Вайнер, Мириам; Польский государственный архив (в сотрудничестве) (1997). Еврейские корни в Польше: страницы прошлого и архивные описи . Секаукус, Нью-Джерси: Фонд Мириам Вайнер «Пути к корням». ISBN  978-0-96-565080-9 . OCLC   38756480 .
• Брак по расчету: Новая сионистская организация и польское правительство 1936-1939 Лоуренс Вайнбаум, Восточноевропейские монографии; расст. Издательство Колумбийского университета, 1993 г.

Внешние ссылки

Карты

• Казачье восстание и его последствия в Польше , Еврейские общины в Польше и Литве под властью Совета Четырех земель , Распространение хасидского иудаизма , Еврейские восстания против нацистов в Польше (Все карты из журнала «Иудаизм: история, вера и практика»)

История польских евреев

• Музей истории польских евреев
  • Виртуальный штетл
• Домашняя страница польских евреев
• Виртуальный тур по еврейской истории Польши
• Иудаизм в Прибалтике: Вильно как духовный центр Восточной Европы
• Евреи в Польше. Спасение от забвения – Обучение ради будущего
• Исторические места еврейской Варшавы
• Отдел польско-еврейских отношений посольства Польши в Вашингтоне.
• Джоанна Рогозинска, Сложное сосуществование: польско-еврейские отношения на протяжении веков , Central Europe Review, 28 января 2000 г.
• Еврейские организации в Польше перед Второй мировой войной
• Фонд сохранения еврейского наследия в Польше
• Фонд документации еврейских кладбищ в Польше

Вторая мировая война и Холокост

• Хроники Виленского гетто: фотографии и документы военного времени vilnaghetto.com
• Восстание в Варшавском гетто из Музея Холокоста США. Из того же источника см.:
  • Нееврейские польские жертвы Холокоста
  • Библиография польских еврейских отношений . Архивировано 8 декабря 2012 года в Wayback Machine во время войны.
• Хронология немецких антиеврейских мер. Архивировано 2 июля 2010 года в Wayback Machine во время Второй мировой войны в Польше.
• Католический сионист, который помог обеспечить независимость Израиля через ООН
• Польские евреи: загорается свет , The Economist , 20 декабря 2005 г.