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

The Polish September campaign

The number of Jews in Poland on September 1st 1939 amounted to about 3,474,000 people. One hundred thirty thousand soldiers of Jewish descent served in Polish Army at the outbreak of the Second World War, thus being among the first to launch armed resistance against the Nazi Germany. It is estimated that during the entirety of World War II as many as 32,216 Jewish soldiers and officers died and 61,000 were taken prisoner by the Germans; the majority did not survive. The soldiers and non-commissioned officers who were released ultimately found themselves in the ghettos and labor camps and suffered the same fate as other Jewish civilians.

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

Territories annexed by the USSR

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

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

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

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

While most Poles of all ethnicities had anti-Soviet and anti-communist sentiments, a portion of the Jewish population, along with ethnic Belorussians, Ukrainians and communist Poles had initially welcomed Soviet forces. The general feeling amongst Polish Jews was a sense of relief in having escaped the dangers of falling under Nazi rule, as well as from the overt policies of discrimination against Jews which existed in the Polish state, including discrimination in education, employment and commerce, as well as antisemitic violence that in some cases reached pogrom levels. Some Jewish communists, like Aleksander Wat stated that Jews were more inclined to cooperate with the Soviets Norman Davies claimed that among the informers and collaborators, the percentage of Jews was striking, and they prepared lists of Polish "class enemies" , while other historians have indicated that the level of Jewish collaboration could well have been less than that of ethnic Poles. Holocaust scholar 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. A large group of scholars note that while not pro-communist, many Jews saw the Soviets as the lesser threat compared to the Nazis. They stress that stories of Jews welcoming the Soviets on the streets are largely impressionistic and not reliable indicators of the level of Jewish support for the Soviets. Additionally, it has been noted that ethnic Poles were as prominent as Jews were in filling civil and police positions in the occupation administration, and that Jews, both civilians and in the Polish military, suffered equally at the hands of the Soviet occupiers. 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.

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

There were also many Jews, who regardless of some negative Jewish experiences in the prewar years, considered themselves both good Poles and good Jews and demonstrated loyalty toward Poland, assisting Poles during brutal Soviet occupation. Among Polish officers killed by the NKVD in 1940 in the 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 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, many to join the Irgun. General Anders decided not to prosecute the deserters. The others fought in Italy, so the cemetery of Polish soldiers who died during the Battle of Monte Cassino contains also headstones bearing a Star of David.

The Holocaust: German-occupied Poland

The Polish Jewish community suffered the most in the Holocaust. About six million Polish citizens perished during the war, half of them (three million) Polish Jews - all but about 300,000 of the Jewish population - who were killed at the Nazi extermination camps of Auschwitz, Treblinka, Majdanek, Belzec, Sobibór, Chełmno or died of starvation in ghettos. Poland became the largest site of the Nazi extermination program, since this was where most of the intended victims lived. In 1939 several hundred synagogues were blown up or burnt by the Germans who sometimes forced the Jews to do it themselves. In many cases Germans turned the synagogues into factories, places of entertainment, swimming-pools or prisons. Jewish rabbis were ordered to dance and sing in public with their beards cut or torn. Some rabbis were set on fire or hung.

Within a few days, Germans ordered all Jews to register with them and the word "Jude" was stamped on their identity cards. Jews were placed outside the law and their lives were regulated by German orders or edicts. Series of restrictions and prohibitions were introduced and brutally enforced. Jews were forbidden to walk on the sidewalks, use public transport, enter places of leisure, sports arenas, theaters, museums and libraries. On the street, Jews had to lift their hat to passing Germans and contact between Jews and non-Jews was banned. 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. The German-controlled Polish language press ran anti-Jewish articles that urged people to adopt an attitude of indifference towards the Jews.

Many Jews in what was then Eastern Poland also 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 even active participation of Poles themselves: for example, the massacre in Jedwabne, 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 part of Jedwabne's citizens. 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 anti-Semitism, 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 (although the majority of Polish Jews prior to the war constituted some of Poland's poorest citizens), and of course coercion by the Nazis to participate in such massacres.

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

The Germans also established a number of ghettos in which Jews were confined, slowly starved and cruelly offered hopes of survival but eventually ended up being killed.

The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest, with 380,000 people and the Łódź Ghetto, the second largest, holding about 160,000. Other Polish cities with large Jewish ghettos included Białystok, Częstochowa, Kielce, Kraków, Lublin, Lwów, and Radom. Ghettos were also established in smaller settlements.

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

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

Hidden Jewish children were kept in cellars and attics, where they had to keep quiet, even motionless, for hours on end. In rural areas, hidden children lived in barns, chicken coops, and forest huts. Any noise—conversation, footsteps—could arouse neighbors suspicion and perhaps even prompt a Gestapo raid. During bombings, Jewish children had to remain hidden, unable to flee to the safety of shelters. Under these conditions, the children often suffered from a lack of human interaction and endured boredom and fear.

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

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

The Warsaw Ghetto was established by the German Governor-General Hans Frank on October 16, 1940. Around 138,000 Jews were forced into the ghetto from various districts around the city of Warsaw, whilst 113,000 Poles were forced to leave the area and were assigned quarters in so-called 'Aryan' districts. The German authorities allowed a Jewish Council (Judenrat) of 24 men, led by Adam Czerniaków, to form its own police to maintain order in the ghetto. Some Jewish policemen distinguished themselves with their fearful corruption and immorality. Judenrat was also responsible for organizing the labour battalions demanded by the Germans. At the beginning the Judenrat served as a representative of the Jewish community, trying with bribes and submission to soften the Nazi blows. With the passage of time the Germans imposed new and more brutal demands on the Judenrat. The slightest sign of insubordination by the Judenrat was punished by death. In many towns the Judenrat refused cooperation and were subsequently executed with another group taking their place. The President of Warsaw Judenrat Adam Czerniakow, cooperated with the German authorities until he was ordered to compile daily lists of Jews destined for "resettlement". Knowing what resettlement meant, he refused and committed suicide.

At this time, the population of the ghetto was estimated to be about 380,000 people, about 30% of the population of Warsaw. However, the size of the Ghetto was about 2.4% of the size of Warsaw. The Germans then closed off the Warsaw Ghetto from the outside world on November 16 of that year, building a wall around it. 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 July 22, 1942, the mass deportation of the Warsaw Ghetto inhabitants began; during the next fifty-two days (until September 12, 1942) about 300,000 people were transported by train to the Treblinka extermination camp. The deportations were carried out by fifty German SS soldiers, 200 soldiers of the Latvian Schutzmannschaften Battalions, 200 Ukrainian Police, and 2,500 Jewish Ghetto Police. Employees of the Judenrat, including the Ghetto Police, along with their families and relatives, were given immunity from deportations in return for their cooperation. Additionally, in August 1942, Jewish Ghetto policemen, under the threat of deportation themselves, were ordered to personally "deliver" five ghetto inhabitants to the Umschlagplatz train station. On January 18, 1943, some Ghetto inhabitants, including members of ŻOB (Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa, Jewish Combat Organisation), resisted, often with arms, German attempts for additional deportations to Treblinka.

The first ghetto uprising is believed to have occurred in 1942 in the small town of Łachwa in the Polesie Voivodship.

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 led by Mordechaj Anielewicz. He recruited more than 750 fighters, but amassed only 9 rifles, 59 pistols and a couple of grenades. A developed network of bunkers and fortifications were formed. The Jewish fighters also received support from the Polish Underground (Armia Krajowa). The Germans assembled a force of 2,842 men to enter the ghetto and brought 7,000 security forces into Warsaw. Their greatest fear was that the rebellion would spread to the Polish side of the city. Germans were unable to defeat the Jews in open street combat. After several days, the Germans switched tactics and began burning down houses. The ZOB headquarters on 18 Mila Street fell on May 8, 1943; at this time Mordechai Anielewicz died fighting. The battle raged for 27 days, when it was over German general Jürgen Stroop claimed to have destroyed 6,065 Jews. As a "celebration" Heinrich Himmler ordered the Great Synagogue on Tlomacka Street (which was outside the ghetto) blown up as a symbol of the fact that "the Jewish quarter of Warsaw no longer exists." 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. There were still hundreds of Jews living in the ruins of the ghetto after May 16, 1943. Many succeeded in making contact with Poles in other parts of the city. The Warsaw Ghetto uprising empowered Jews throughout Poland. After the ghetto was liquidated, Jewish leaders continued to work underground on the "Aryan" side by hiding Jews and issuing forged documents. Many Jews became active in the Polish underground of Greater Warsaw.

The 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, which reverberated throughout Poland and the rest of the world as an example of courage and defiance, was followed by other failed Ghetto uprisings in Nazi occupied Poland. As late as the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, when the Poles rose up against the Germans in anticipation of the entry of the Soviet Army, there were still a few Jews eking out an existence in the ruins of the former ghetto. 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 Polish resistance movement Armia Krajowa and immediately joined Polish fighters. Only few of them survived. Polish commander of one Jewish unit, Waclaw Micuta, described them as one 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 woman, took part in combat against Nazis during 1944 Warsaw Uprising. During 1944 Warsaw Uprising as many as 17,000 Polish Jews, who either fought with the AK units (Krzysztof Kamil Baczyński) or had been discovered in hiding, lost their lives. After the failed 1944 Warsaw Uprising, the city of Warsaw was razed to the ground by the Germans and more than 150,000 Poles were sent to labor or concentration camps. On January 17, 1945, the Soviet Army entered destroyed and inhabited Warsaw. Some 300 Jews were found hiding in the ruins on the Polish part of the city (Wladyslaw Szpilman).

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 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, 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.

Communist rule: 1945–89

Postwar

Between 40,000 and 100,000 Polish Jews survived the Holocaust in Poland by hiding or by joining the Polish or Soviet partisan units. Another 50,000–170,000 were repatriated from the Soviet Union and 20,000–40,000 from Germany and other countries. At its postwar peak, there were 180,000–240,000 Jews in Poland settled mostly in Warsaw, Łódź, Kraków, Wrocław and Lower Silesia, e.g., Legnica, Dzierżoniów and Bielawa.

The character of Poland had changed however. Poland was left with a government-in-exile that had failed to negotiate a plan for postwar liberation and reconstruction and had no coherent policy towards the encroaching Soviet Union. In spite of the major Polish contribution to World War II, Poland was placed under direct Soviet control due to British and the US dependence on the Soviet military commitment to the defeat of Hitler and Franklin D. Roosevelt's unwillingness to confront Stalin over his future plans for Poland. The Soviet style Communism was established and the boundaries of Poland were moved west. The Soviet Union swallowed the eastern regions, which had many ethnic minorities including Jewish shtetl communities.

For the survivors, returning to life as it had been before the Holocaust was impossible. Jewish communities no longer existed in Poland. When people tried to return to their homes from camps or hiding places, they found that, in many cases, their homes had been looted or taken over by others who were not happy to see survivors return.

Soon after the end of the Second World War, Jews began to flee Poland. The exodus took place in stages. After the war, the vast majority of survivors left for various reasons, often more than one. Many left simply because they did not want to live in a communist country. Some left because the refusal of the Communist regime to return prewar property. Others did not wish to rebuild their lives in the places where their families were murdered. Yet others wanted to go to British Mandate of Palestine, which soon became Israel. Some of the survivors had relatives abroad.

The attitude of Christian Poles toward Jews hardened significantly, since many Poles believed that all Jews were Communists, the new oppressors of the Polish state.

Postwar Poland was also a chaotic country in which Communists and post Home Army anti-Communist formations fought each other. High proportion of Jews among the Communist leadership and Communist Secret Service (UB) fanned prejudices and many Christian Poles viewed Jews with deep hostility. Ordinary Polish Jews sometimes incurred lethal risks. Anti-Jewish riots broke out in several Polish cities and hundreds of Jews were murdered in anti-Jewish violence (see: Anti-Jewish violence in Poland, 1944-1946) . The best-known case is the Kielce pogrom of 1946, in which thirty seven Jews were brutally murdered. The massacre at Kielce was a turning point in the attempt to rebuild a Jewish community and convinced most survivors that they had no future in Poland. The Kielce tragedy has been variously described as an event stage-managed by the Communists and the outcome of old religious hostilities exacerbated by the war and the participation of Jews in the postwar Communist-dominated administration.

The Communist government's response to the pogrom was initially decisive. Special investigators were despatched to the town on the same day and military tribunals assumed responsibility for the prosecutions that followed. Under investigation were not only those who had directly participated in the pogrom. The local administration as well as the responses of the Milicja Obywatelska and the Ministry of Public Security of Poland were scrutinized. The heads of the MO and the UB were both arrested and questioned. Nine participants in the pogrom were sentenced to death; three were given lengthy prison sentences. Until today the debate in Poland continues whether the murderers were leftists or rightists and who inspired the killings.

Between 1945 and 1948, 100,000–120,000 Jews left Poland. Their departure was largely organized by the Zionist activists in Poland such as Adolf Berman and Icchak Cukierman under the umbrella of a semi-clandestine organization Berihah ("Flight"). Berihah was also responsible for the organized emigration of Jews from Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia totaling 250,000 (including Poland) Holocaust survivors.

A second wave of Jewish emigration (50,000) took place during the liberalization of the Communist regime between 1957 and 1959. The last mass migration of Jews from Poland took place in 1968-69, after Israel's 1967 War, because of the anti-Jewish policy adopted by Polish communist party, which closed down Jewish youth camps, schools and clubs. One might call this event as an expulsion of Jews of 1968. Thereafter almost all Jews who decided to stay in Poland "stopped" being Jewish.

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. The Soviet Union's secret police essentially governed Poland and Stalin's anti-Semitic regime stifled Jewish cultural and religious activities. Jewish schools were nationalized in 1948-49 and Yiddish was no longer used as the language of instruction.

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. The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and ORT opened schools and hospitals for the Jewish communities in Poland. Some Jewish cultural institutions were established including the Yiddish State Theater founded in 1950 and directed by Ida Kaminska, 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").

Stalin’s death in 1953 eased the situation for the Jews, who then were allowed to reestablish connections with Jewish organizations abroad and began producing Jewish literature. In this 1958-59 period, 50,000 Jews emigrated to Israel, which was the only country Jews were able to migrate to under Polish law.

A number of Polish Jews participated in the establishment of the Communist regime in the People's Republic of Poland between 1944 and 1956 and played an important role in the apparatus of oppression, holding, among others, prominent posts in the Politburo of the Polish United Worker's Party (e.g. Jakub Berman, Hilary Minc – responsible for establishing a Communist-style economy), and the security apparatus Urząd Bezpieczeństwa (UB) and in diplomacy/intelligence. After 1956, during the process of destalinisation in Poland under Władysław Gomułka's regime, some Urząd Bezpieczeństwa officials including Roman Romkowski (born Natan Grunsapau-Kikiel), Jacek Różański (born Jozef Goldberg), and Anatol Fejgin were prosecuted for "power abuses" including the torture of Polish anticommunists (among them, Witold Pilecki), and sentenced to long prison terms. A UB official, Józef Światło, (born Izaak Fleichfarb), after escaping in 1953 to the West, exposed through Radio Free Europe the methods of the UB which led to its dissolution 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 to escape prosecution for genocide. Helena Wolińska-Brus, a former Stalinist prosecutor, now a British citizen living in Oxford, is fighting being extradited to Poland on charges related to the execution of a Second World War resistance hero August Fieldorf.

1967–1989

In 1967, following the Six-Day War between Israel and the Arab states, communist Poland broke off diplomatic relations with Israel. The Israeli victory over the Soviet backed Arab states in 1967 was greeted by Poles with glee; "Our Jews have given the Soviet Arabs a drumming!" By 1968 most of Poland's 40,000 remaining Jews were assimilated into Polish society, but over the next year they became the center of a Soviet backed, centrally organized campaign, equating Jewish origins with Zionist sympathies and thus disloyalty to Poland.

In March 1968 student-led demonstrations in Warsaw (see Polish 1968 political crisis) gave Gomułka's government an excuse to channel public anti-government sentiment into another avenue. Thus his security chief, Mieczysław Moczar, used the situation as a pretext to launch an anti-Semitic 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 Worker's Party and from teaching positions in schools and universities. Due to economic, political and police pressure, 25,000 Jews were forced to emigrate during 1968–1970. The campaign, though ostensibly directed at Jews who had held office in the Stalinist era and at their families, affected most of the remaining Polish Jews, whatever their backgrounds.

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 anti-Semitism and opposed the campaign. Some of the people who emigrated to the West at this time founded organizations which encouraged anticommunist opposition inside Poland.

In 1977, communist Poland began to try to improve its image regarding Jewish matters. Partial diplomatic relations were restored in 1986 — the first of the communist bloc countries to take this step — full diplomatic relations were not restored until 1990, a year after Poland ended its communist rule.

During the late 1970s some Jewish activists were engaged in the anticommunist 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

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 Massacre in Jedwabne, the Koniuchy Massacre, the Kielce pogrom, the Auschwitz cross, and Polish-Jewish wartime relations in general).

According to the Coordination Forum of Countering Antisemitism there were eighteen anti-Semitic incidents in Poland in the period from January 2001 to November 2005. Half of them was propaganda, eight were violent incidents such as vandalism or desecration (the last of them took place in 2003), and one was verbal abuse. There were no anti-Semitic attacks by means of weapons in Poland. However, according to a 2005 survey, the portion of the population holding anti-Semitic views is somewhat higher than in some European countries. According to a survey carried out by CBOS and published in January, 2005, in which Poles were asked to assess their attitudes toward other nations, 45% claimed to feel antipathy towards Jews, 18% to feel sympathy, while 29% felt indifferent and 8% were undecided. Those surveyed were asked to express their feeling on the scale from -3 (strong antipathy) to +3 (strong sympathy), with 0 taken to indicate indifference. The average score for attitude towards Jews was -0.67. Another contemporary nationwide survey indicated that as of January 2004 40 percent of Poles believed that their country with the Jewish population of less that 20,000 out of 39 million populations is still "being governed by Jews". "Cultural Anti-Semitism" is still in existence in Poland today. It is exemplified in the saying "Don't be a Jew". Even the word "Zyd" ("Jew" in Polish) has a pejorative connotation.

Football stadiums are a recruiting ground for extremist organizations, and neo-fascist symbols are a common sight there and often seen as graffiti in major Polish cities.

Poland has many legal provisions to combat antisemitism, neo-fascism, extremism and has ratified all the major international conventions pertaining to human rights protection and anti-discrimination. Jewish religious life has been revived with the help of the Ronald Lauder Foundation, the Polish Jewish community employs two rabbis, operated a small network of Jewish schools and summer camps, and sustains several Jewish periodicals and book series events. In 1993 the Union of Jewish Religious Communities in Poland was established with the aim of organizing the religious and cultural life of the members of the communities in Poland.

Synagogues can be found in Warsaw, Cracow, Zamosc, Tykocin, Lesko, Lanco, Rzeszow, Kielce and Gora Kalwaria, but not all are functioning today. The oldest synagogue in Poland, Stara Synagoga, built in the early 15th century, can be found in Cracow. Today, it hosts a Jewish museum. The Yeshiva Chachmei Lublin was reopened in Lublin in 2007, the first synagogue to be renovated and dedicated in Poland since World War II solely through funding from Polish Jewry, without government or charitable support. Prior to World War II, the yeshiva was Europe's largest.

The leading Jewish publications are the monthly Midrasz, Dos Jidische Wort, Jidele for youth and Sztendlach for primary school children. All of these publications are printed in Polish except for Dos Jidische Wort, which is published in a bi-lingual Yiddish-Polish edition. Jewish Institutions include the Jewish Historical Institute, the E.R. Kaminska State Yiddish Theater in Warsaw, and the Jewish Cultural Center in Cracow.

Academic Jewish studies programs were established at Warsaw University and the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. Kraków became home to the Judaica Foundation, which has sponsored a wide range of cultural and educational programs on Jewish themes for a predominantly Polish audience. The building of the new Museum of the History of Polish Jewry in Warsaw will be based on a design of a Finnish architect, Rainer Mahlamaecki. The plot of land for the museum and an additional $13 million were donated by the city of Warsaw and additional $13 million were donated by the Polish government.

Of the Communist Bloc countries that interrupted diplomatic relations with Israel in 1967 (i.e. all communist countries except Romania), Poland was the first to restart them again in 1986, and to fully restore them in 1990. Government relations between Poland and Israel are steadily improving, resulting in the mutual visits of the presidents and the ministers of foreign affairs.

It is also possible to visit the extermination camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Majdanek and Treblinka. Auschwitz currently houses the Oswiecim State Museum, exhibiting documents from Nazi crimes. Block Number 27 is set aside for martyrology of the Jews and the millions who were killed there. All that remains of Treblinka is a mausoluem and monument consisting of thousands of shards of broken stone. At Majdanek, there is a museum and a monument, which incorporates a mound of human ashes commemorating the 350,000 people who were murdered there.

Besides the camps, Poland also has the largest Jewish burial ground in Europe, which is found in Łodz. Historic grave sites can be found in Gora Kalwaria (the Ger) and Lesajsk (Lezensk). Poles have preserved and catalogued the graves in Jewish cemeteries.

In June 2004, during an excavation of the site of the Great Synagogue in Oświęcim, archeologists uncovered a unique collection of Jewish treasures. Oświęcim's population was 70 percent Jewish, but was wiped out after the German invasion of Poland. It is also where the Auschwitz death camp was built. In this project initiated by a young Israeli named Yariv Nornberg, archaeologists dug at the site based on the testimony of Holocaust survivor Yishayahu Yarod, who remembered the relics being hidden by the Jews before the Nazis razed the synagogue. Many Jewish ritual objects were found at the site, including three bronze candelabras, a bronze menorah, ten chandeliers and a ner tamid. Tiles, marble plaques and charred wood from the synagogue were also discovered. The objects will most likely go through a year-long restoration process and then be displayed in the Auschwitz Jewish Center.

The Memorial of the Heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto is located on a square which was once the site of one the main bunkers of the Jewish Combat Organization. This monument is the work of Natan Rappaport; it is made of the bronze and granite (labradorite) ordered by Hitler from Sweden in 1942 for a monument "honoring the victory of Germany." The Warsaw Ghetto Memorial was unveiled on April 19th, 1948 - the fifth anniversary of the outbreak of the Warsaw ghetto Uprising.

On July 4, 2006, a memorial to Holocaust survivors killed and wounded in Kielce, Poland after World War II will was unveiled. The city of Kielce and the U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad financed the memorial. On that day in 1946, residents killed more than 40 Jews who had returned to the town after the war to reclaim their property. The massacre consolidated the perception among survivors that they couldn’t return to Poland.

Today there is greater awareness of Poland's rich Jewish past as well as of the tragedies of the Holocaust. Interest in learning about and preserving the artifacts of Jewish culture is quite strong, especially among the young. Zaglada, a journal devoted to the Holocaust, was first published in 2005 by a special division of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Other publications have also been published recently dealing with the subject, most notably from the Institute of National Remembrance.

There have been a number of Holocaust remembrance activities in Poland in recent years. In September 2000, dignitaries from Poland, Israel, the United States, and other countries (including Prince Hassan of Jordan) gathered in the city of Oświęcim (the site of the Auschwitz concentration camp) 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. Additionally, in April of each year, the March of the Living from Auschwitz to Birkenau to honor victims of the Holocaust, draws young people from Israel and elsewhere, as well as Poles, as marchers to mark two of the most significant dates: Holocaust Remembrance Day and Israel Independence Day. The purpose of this trip is to give students a first hand look at history and the evils of mankind. There are also more general activities, like the Jewish Culture Festival in Kraków.

In 2000, Poland's Jewish population is generally estimated to have risen to somewhere between 8,000 and 12,000 — 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. The Centre estimates that there are approximately 100,000 Jews in Poland, of which 30,000 to 40,000 have some sort of direct connection to the Jewish community, either religiously or culturally.

Poland will ease the way for Jews to reclaim citizenship 40 years after the start of massive expulsions. In a letter released March 3, 2008, Polish Interior Minister Grzegorz Schetyna said he would "order the implementation of the appropriate procedures today." Piotr Kadlcik, the president of the Union of Religious Jewish Communities in Poland, told JTA he had already received verbal confirmation that Schetyna endorsed the plan to re-naturalize Jews who fled between 1968 and 1970. Some 15,000 Polish Jews were deprived of their citizenship.

See also

• Timeline of Jewish Polish history
• List of Polish Jews
• Jewish history
• Jewish ethnic divisions

Notes

1. polishjews.org
2. Poland, at that time, was the most tolerant country in Europe "From Counter-Reformation to Glorious Revolution" by Hugh Redwald Trevor-Roper University of Chicago Press 1992, page 51
3. In accordance with its tradition of religious tolerance, Poland refrained from participating in the excesses of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation "Central Europe: Enemies, Neighbors, Friends" by Lonnie R. Johnson Oxford University Press 1996
4. Although traditional narrative holds that as a consequence, the predicament of the Commonwealth’s Jewry worsened, declining to the level of other European countries by the end of the eighteenth century, recent scholarship by Gershon Hundert, Moshe Rosman, Edward Fram, and Magda Teter, suggest that the reality was much more complex. See for example, the following works, which discuss Jewish life and culture, as well as Jewish-Christian relations during that period: M. Rosman Lords' Jews: Magnate-Jewish Relations in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth during the Eighteenth Century (Harvard University Press, new ed. 1993), G. Hundert The Jews in a Polish Private Town: The Case of Opatów in the Eighteenth Century (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), E.Fram Ideals Face Reality: Jewish Law and Life in Poland, 1550–1655 (HUC Press, 1996), and M. TeterJews and Heretics in Pre-modern Poland: A Beleaguered Church in the Post-Reformation Era (Cambridge University Press, 2006).
5. Beyond the Pale Online exposition
6. William W. Hagen, Before the "Final Solution": Toward a Comparative Analysis of Political Anti-Semitism in Interwar Germany and Poland, The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 68, No. 2 (Jun., 1996), 351–381.
7. Paulsson, Gunnar S (2002). Secret City: The Hidden Jews of Warsaw, 1940-1945. New Haven: Yale University Press. pp. p. 245. ISBN 0-300-09546-5. There were people everywhere who were prepared, for whatever motives, to do the Nazis' work for them. And if there was more antisemitism in Poland than in many other countries, there was also less collaboration.... The Nazis generally preferred not to count on outbursts of 'emotional antisemitism', when what was needed to realize their plans was 'rational antisemitism', as Hitler himself put it. For that, they neither wanted nor received significant help from the Poles. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help)
8. Unveiling the Secret City H-Net Review: John Radzilowski
9. Poland's Jewish Secret Unearthed DW-World.de
10. "I know this Jew!" Blackmailing of the Jews in Warsaw 1939-1945. Polish Center for Holocaust Research
11. The Polish Undergroud State and Home Army
12. Polish Righteous, Those Who Risked Their Lives
13. Poland, Members of the Malkiewicz Family, Who Were Awarded the Title of Righteous Gentiles After the War (image)
14. ^ Donald L. Niewyk, Francis R. Nicosia, The Columbia Guide to the Holocaust, Columbia University Press, 2000, ISBN 0231112009, Google Print, p.114
15. ^ Antony Polonsky, 'My Brother's Keeper?': Recent Polish Debates on the Holocaust, Routledge, 1990, ISBN 0415042321, Google Print, p.149
16. Richard Lukas 'Forgotten Holocaust, Hippocrene Books, 2nd revised ed., 2001, ISBN 0-7818-0901-0.
17. 1367 pogrom Poznan. Google Books
18. The Encyclopedia of World History 1447-92. 2001
19. Frederic Cople Jaher A Scapegoat in the New Wilderness: The Origins and Rise of Anti-semitism in America, Harvard University Press, 1994, p.79–80
20. Iwo Cyprian Pogonowski Jews in Poland - New York 1998, p. 297.
21. Template:En icon Tadeusz Piotrowski (1997). Poland's Holocaust: Ethnic Strife, Collaboration with Occupying Forces and Genocide... McFarland & Company. pp. pp. 41-42. ISBN 0-7864-0371-3. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help); Cite has empty unknown parameters: |chapterurl= and |coauthors= (help)
22. Isaac Babel, 1920 Diary, Yale, 2002, ISBN 0-300-09313-6, ex. pp. 4, 7, 10, 26, 33, 84
23. Andrzej Kapiszewski, CONTROVERSIAL REPORTS ON THE SITUATION OF JEWS IN POLAND IN THE AFTERMATH OF WORLD WAR I Studia Judaica 7: 2004 nr 2(14) s. 257-304 (pdf)
24. ^ Timothy Snyder, The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569–1999, Yale University Press, ISBN 0-300-10586-XGoogle Books, p.144
25. Feigue Cieplinski, Poles and Jews: The Quest For Self-Determination 1919–1934, Binghamton Journal of History, Fall 2002, Last accessed on 2 June 2006.
26. DavidGorodok - Section IV - a
27. Herbert Arthur Strauss. Hostages of Modernization: Studies on Modern Antisemitism, 1870-1933/39. Walter de Gruyter, 1993.
28. Zvi Y. Gitelman. The Emergence of Modern Jewish Politics: Bundism and Zionism in Eastern Europe. University of Pittsburgh Press, 2002.
29. Joseph Marcus. Social and Political History of the Jews in Poland, 1919-1939. Mouton Publishers, Berlin-New York-Amsterdam, 1983.
30. The Routledge Atlas of the Holocaust by Martin Gilbert, pp.21. Relevant page viewable via Google book search
31. Herbert Arthur Strauss. Hostages of Modernization: Studies on Modern Antisemitism, 1870-1933/39. Walter de Gruyter, 1993:1081-1083.
32. Celia Stopnicka Heller. On the Edge of Destruction: Jews of Poland Between the Two World Wars. Wayne State University Press, 1993.
33. Ezra Mendelsohn. The Jews of East Central Europe Between the World Wars. Indiana University Press, 1983.
34. Edward D. Wynot, Jr., 'A Necessary Cruelty': The Emergence of Official Anti-Semitism in Poland, 1936-39. American Historical Review, no. 4, October 19711035-1058.
35. William W. Hagen. Before the "Final Solution": Toward a Comparative Analysis of Political Antisemitism in Interwar Germany and Poland. Journal of Modern History July, 1996: 1-31.
36. Joshua D. Zimmerman. Contested Memories: Poles and Jews During the Holocaust and Its Aftermath. Rutgers University Press, 2003.
37. The Death of Chaimke Yizkor Book Project, JewishGen: The Home of Jewish Genealogy
38. ^ Template:En icon Tadeusz Piotrowski (1997). Poland's Holocaust: Ethnic Strife, Collaboration with Occupying Forces and Genocide... McFarland & Company. pp. p. 49-65. ISBN 0-7864-0371-3. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help); Cite has empty unknown parameters: |chapterurl= and |coauthors= (help)
39. Joshua D. Zimmerman. Contested Memories: Poles and Jews During the Holocaust and Its Aftermath. Rutgers University Press, 2003.
40. Joanna B. Michlic. Poland's Threatening Other: The Image of the Jew from 1880 to the Present. University of Nebraska Press, 2006.
41. http://books.google.com/books?id=A4FlatJCro4C&pg=PA51&dq=Norman+Davies+Jews+NKVD&lr=&sig=ACfU3U2NR9gC3zptwuZb5zw0_XlJSbA3mg
42. http://books.google.com/books?id=A4FlatJCro4C&pg=PA51&dq=Norman+Davies+Jews+NKVD&lr=&sig=ACfU3U2NR9gC3zptwuZb5zw0_XlJSbA3mg
43. Marek Jan Chodakiewicz. Between Nazis and Soviets: Occupation Politics in Poland, 1939-1947. Lexington Books, 2004.
44. Martin Dean. Collaboration in the Holocaust: Crimes of the Local Police in Belorussia and Ukraine, 1941-44. Macmillan, 1999.
45. Samuel D. Kassow. Who Will Write Our History: Emmanuel Ringelblum, the Warsaw Ghetto and the Oyneg Shabes Archive Indiana University Press, 2007.
46. Jonathan Frankel. The Fate of the European Jews, 1939-1945: Continuity Or Contingency? Oxford University Press, 1998.
47. Joanna Michlic. The Soviet Occupation of Poland, 1939–41, and the Stereotype of the Anti-Polish and Pro-Soviet Jew. Jewish Social Studies: History, Culture, and Society.Spring/Summer 2007, Vol. 13, No. 3:135-176.
48. Krzysztof Szwagrzyk Żydzi w kierownictwie UB. Stereotyp czy rzeczywistość? (Jews in the authorities of the Polish Secret Security. Stereotype or Reality?), Bulletin of the Institute of National Remembrance (11/2005), p. 37-42, online article, entire issue
49. Death tolls in the Holocaust, from the US Holocaust Museum
50. Summary of IPN's final findings on Jedwabne (English)
51. Discussion of IPN findings
52. Note of December 10 1942, addressed by the Polish Government to the Governments of the United Nations concerning the mass extermination of Jews
53. Jan T. Gross, Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland After Auschwitz, Random House, 2006, ISBN 0-375-50924-0.

References

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Singer, Isidore; et al., eds. (1901–1906). The Jewish Encyclopedia. New York: Funk & Wagnalls. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)

• Marek Jan Chodakiewicz, After the Holocaust, East European Monographs, 2003, ISBN 0-88033-511-4.
• Marek Jan Chodakiewicz, Between Nazis and Soviets: Occupation Politics in Poland, 1939–1947, Lexington Books, 2004, ISBN 0-7391-0484-5.
• William W. Hagen, "Before the 'Final Solution': Toward a Comparative Analysis of Political Anti-Semitism in Interwar Germany and Poland", The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 68, No. 2 (Jun., 1996), 351–381.
• Gershon David Hundert, Jews in Poland-Lithuania in the Eighteenth Century: A Genealogy of Modernity, University of California Press, 2004, ISBN 0-520-23844-3 Google Print
• Antony Polonsky and Joanna B. Michlic. The Neighbors Respond: The Controversy over the Jedwabne Massacre in Poland, Princeton University Press, 2003 ISBN 0-691-11306-8. (The introduction is online)
• Iwo Cyprian Pogonowski, Jews in Poland. A Documentary History, Hippocrene Books, Inc., 1998, ISBN 0-7818-0604-6.
• David Vital, A People Apart: A Political History of the Jews in Europe 1789–1939, Oxford University Press, 2001.
• M. J. Rosman, The Lord's Jews: Magnate-Jewish Relations in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth During the Eighteenth Century, Harvard University Press, 1990, ISBN 0-916458-18-0
• Edward Fram, Ideals Face Reality: Jewish Life and Culture in Poland 1550–1655, HUC Press, 1996, ISBN 0814329063
• Magda Teter, Jews and Heretics in Premodern Poland: A Beleaguered Church in the Post-Reformation Era, Cambridge University Press, 2006, ISBN 0521856736

Further reading

• Alvydas Nikžentaitis, Stefan Schreiner, Darius Staliūnas (editors). The Vanished World of Lithuanian Jews. Rodopi, 2004, ISBN 90-420-0850-4 Google print

Notes

See also Stanisław Krajewski, Poland and the Jews: Reflections of a Polish Polish Jew (Kraków: Austeria P, 2005).

Glenn Dynner, Men of Silk: The Hasidic Conquest of Polish Jewish Society (NY: Oxford University Press, 2006)

External links

Maps

• The Cossak Uprising and its Aftermath in Poland, Jewish Communities in Poland and Lithuania under the Council of the Four Lands, The Spread of Hasidic Judaism, Jewish Revolts against the Nazis in Poland (All maps from Judaism: History, Belief, and Practice)

History of Polish Jews

• The Polish Jews Home Page
• Beyond the Pale: A History of the Jews in Russia. See especially: Jews of Lithuania and Poland
• Mike Rose's History of the Jews in Poland before 1794 and After 1794
• Virtual Jewish History Tour of Poland
• Early History of the Polish Jewish Community from Medieval Jewish Civilization: An Encyclopedia
• Jews in Poland from the LNT Travel company.
• Judaism in the Baltic: Vilna as the Spiritual Center of Eastern Europe
• The Jews in Poland. Saving from oblivion - Teaching for the future
• Historical Sites of Jewish Warsaw
• Kazimierz in Kraków - History and Jewish Festivals
• Jewish presence in the history of Gliwice
• Polish-Jewish Relations section of the Polish Embassy in Washington
• Facts and Myths: on the Role of the Jews during the Stalinist Period
• A Complicated Coexistence:Polish-Jewish relations through the centuries, Joanna Rohozinska, Central Europe Review, 28 January 2000
• Primary sources for the premodern period in Jewish history and video presentations by scholars, including: Edward Fram, Moshe Rosman, Adam Teller, and Magda Teter on Jews in Poland-Lithuania

World War II and the Holocaust

• Chronicles of the Vilna Ghetto: wartime photographs & documents - vilnaghetto.com
• Warsaw Ghetto Uprising from the US Holocaust Museum. From the same source see:
  • Non-Jewish Polish Victims of the Holocaust
  • Bibliography of Polish Jewish Relations during the War
• Chronology of German Anti-Jewish Measures during World War II in Poland
• THE JEWS AND THE POLES: HOLOCAUST UNDERSTANDING & PREVENTION by Alexander Kimel
• The Catholic Zionist Who Helped Steer Israeli Independence through the UN

• Poland's Jews:A light flickers on, The Economist, 20 December 2005