page_title: Racism in Poland
section_title: Jews
hierarchical_section_title: Racism in Poland / Jews
caption_attribution_description: Polski: Plakat propagandowy w języku polskim z czasów wojny polsko-bolszewickiej w latach 1919-1921. Muzeum Niepodległości w Warszawie, nr inw. MN-Pl.2011. Według narracji mgr Sylwii Szczotki zatytułowanej "Wizerunek Bolszewika", ten jawnie antysemicki plakat ze stałej wystawy o nazwie "Polonia Restituta" miał inspirować lęk wśród ortodoksyjnych wyznawców we wschodnich regionach nowo tworzącej się Drugiej Rzeczypospolitej (patrz wieże cerkiewne z krzyżami bizantyjskimi). Paradoksalnie, ten plakat w języku polskim nie był przeznaczony dla polskich katolików. Polonia Restituta. O niepodległość i granice 1914-1921 w siedzibie muzeum. English: Polish-language propaganda poster from the Polish-Bolshevik war of 1919-1921. Nr inw. MN-Pl.2011, at the Museum of Independence, Warsaw. According to narrative by mgr Sylwia Szczotka entitled "Wizerunek Bolszewika" (An image of a Bolshevik) of the Museum, this overtly antisemitic limited-run print from the permanent exibit called "Polonia Restituta" was supposed to inspire fear among the Orthodox devotees (see steeples with three-barred Byzantine crosses) in the eastern regions of the newly forming Second Republic. Paradoxically, this Polish-language poster wasn't meant for the Polish Catholics.
context_page_description: Racism in Poland in the 20th and 21st century has been the subject of significant inquiry. While ethnic minorities made up a more significant proportion of the country's population from the founding of the Polish state through the Second Polish Republic, 21st century government statistics have shown 94% or more of the population self-reports as ethnically Polish. During the 16th century, many Jews lived in Poland, so much that it was called the center of the Jewish world. Jewish expulsions and pogroms punctuated the time period: from Krakow in 1494, to Warsaw in 1527 to Silesia in 1559 and 1582. 30,000 Jews were killed in the Chmielnicki Uprising. After the second partition of Poland, Frederick the Great, considering the territory a new colony and its people like the Iroquois of North America, began a Prussian colonisation campaign which sought to replace the Polish language and culture with German.
  During World War II Poland was the main scene of the Holocaust, the Porajmos, and the Nazi atrocities against the Polish nation.
context_section_description: King Casimir III the Great brought Jews to Poland during the Black Death at a time when Jewish communities were being persecuted and expelled from all over Europe. As a result of better living conditions, 80% of the world's Jews lived in Poland by the mid-16th century.
  During the 15th century in the royal capital of Kraków, extremist clergymen advocated violence towards the Jews, who gradually lost their positions. In 1469 Jews were expelled from their old settlement and forced to move to Spiglarska Street. In 1485 Jewish elders were forced to renounce trade in Kraków, which led many Jews to leave for Kazimierz which did not fall under the restrictions due to its status as a royal town. Following the 1494 fire in Kraków, a wave of anti-Jewish attacks occurred. King John I Albert forced the remaining Jews of Kraków to move to Kazimierz. Starting in 1527, Jews were no longer admitted into the city walls of Warsaw (generally speaking, temporary stays were possible in the royal palace). Only the Praga suburb was open to them. They were likewise barred from all of Silesia by Ferdinand I in 1559 and by Rudolph II in 1582.
  The Council of Four Lands created in 1581 was a Jewish diet presided over by community elders from each major part of Poland, another governing body was established in Lithuania in 1623.  Jewish communities were usually protected by the szlachta (nobles) in exchange for their work administering the nobles' domains.  As such, they were often on the front line in revolts against the lords of the land, as was the case during the Cossack revolts in 1630, 1637 and 1639.  It is estimated, in particular, that 30,000 Jews perished from 1648–9 as a result of the Chmielnicki Uprising.
  In Congress Poland, Jews gained civic rights with the ukase (edict) of 5 June 1862, two years before serfdom was abolished and the peasantry was freed. 35 years later, in 1897, the 1.4 million Jews represented 14% of the population of the Russian-administered partition, which included Warsaw and Lodz.
  In the Second Polish Republic, from the 1920s the Polish government excluded Jews: from receiving government bank credits, from public sector employment (in 1931, only 599 of 87,640 public servants were Jewish—in the domains of telephony, railroads, administration and justice), and from obtaining business licenses in the government-controlled sphere of the economy.  From the 1930s, limits were placed on Jewish enrollment in university education, Jewish shops, Jewish export firms, Shechita, Jewish admission to the medical and legal professions, Jews in business associations, etc. While in 1921-22 25% of students were Jews, by 1938-9 the proportion went down to 8%. The far-right National Democracy (Endeks) organized anti-Jewish boycotts. Following the death of Poland's ruler Józef Piłsudski in 1935, the Endeks intensified its efforts and in 1937 it declared that its "main aim and duty must be to remove the Jews from all spheres of social, economic, and cultural life in Poland", which lead to violence in a few cases (pogroms in smaller towns). In response the government organized the Camp of National Unity (OZON), which took control of the Polish parliament in 1938. The Polish parliament then drafted anti-Jewish legislation which was similar to anti-Jewish laws which existed in Germany, Hungary, and Romania. OZON advocated the mass emigration of Jews from Poland, boycotts of Jews, numerus clausus (see also Ghetto benches), and other limitations on Jewish rights. According to Timothy Snyder, in the years leading up to World War II the Polish leadership "wanted to be rid of most Polish Jews... [but] in simple logistical terms the idea... seemed to make no sense. How could Poland arrange a deportation of millions of Jews while the country was mobilized for war? Should the tens of thousands of Jewish officers and soldiers be pulled from the ranks of the Polish army?"
  In the mid-20th century, notable incidents of antisemitism in Poland included the Jedwabne pogrom of 1941 in the presence of German Ordnungspolizei (police officers) and Anti-Jewish vi
caption: Antisemitic propaganda poster dating to the Polish-Soviet War of 1919-1921
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