page_title: Ethnic minorities in Poland
section_title: Minorities in the Second Republic
hierarchical_section_title: Ethnic minorities in Poland / Historical / Minorities in the Second Republic
caption_attribution_description: English: Poland 1937 linguistic Polski: Polska 1937: języki Русский: Языки Польской Республики по состоянию на 1937 год
context_page_description: The population of Post-World War II Poland became nearly completely ethnically homogeneous as a result of the German-Nazi Holocaust, the radically altered borders, and the deportations ordered by the Soviet authorities, who wished to remove the sizeable Polish minorities from the Baltics and Eastern Europe.
context_section_description: The census of 1921 allocates 30.8% of the population in the minority. This was further exacerbated with the Polish victory in the Polish-Soviet War, and the large territorial gains in the east, made by Poland as a consequence. According to the 1931 Polish Census (as cited by Norman Davies), 68.9% of the population was Polish, 13.9% were Ukrainians, around 10% Jewish, 3.1% Belarusians, 2.3% Germans and 2.8% - others, including Lithuanians, Czechs and Armenians. Also, there were smaller communities of Russians, and Gypsies. The situation of minorities was a complex subject and changed during the period.
  Poland was also a nation of many religions. In 1921, 16,057,229 Poles (approx. 62.5%) were Roman (Latin) Catholics, 3,031,057 citizens of Poland (approx. 11.8%) were Eastern Rite Catholics (mostly Ukrainian Greek Catholics and Armenian Rite Catholics), 2,815,817 (approx. 10.95%) were Greek Orthodox, 2,771,949 (approx. 10.8%) were Jewish, and 940,232 (approx. 3.7%) were Protestants (mostly Lutheran). By 1931 Poland had the second largest Jewish population in the world, with one-fifth of all the world's Jews residing within its borders (approx. 3,136,000).
caption: Poland, linguistic 1937
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