History of the Jews in Poland

The history of the Jews in Poland dates back at least 1,000 years. For centuries, Poland was home to the largest and most significant Jewish community in the world. Poland was a principal center of Jewish culture, because of the long period of statutory religious tolerance and social autonomy which ended after the Partitions of Poland in the 18th century. During the Occupation of Poland (1939–1945) there was a nearly complete genocidal destruction of the Polish Jewish community (the Holocaust). Since the fall of communism in Poland, there has been a renewed interest in Jewish culture, featuring an annual Jewish Culture Festival in Kraków, new study programs at Polish secondary schools and universities, and the opening of Warsaw's Museum of the History of Polish Jews.

From the founding of the Kingdom of Poland in 1025 until the early years of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth created in 1569, Poland was the most tolerant country in Europe.

In 1939, at the start of World War II, Poland was partitioned between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union (see Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact). One-fifth of the Polish population perished during World War II; the 3,000,000 Polish Jews murdered in the Holocaust, who constituted 90% of Polish Jewry, made up half of all Poles killed during the war. and passive refusal to inform on them, to indifference, blackmail,

In the post-war period, many of the approximately 200,000 Jewish survivors registered at the Central Committee of Polish Jews or CKŻP (of whom 136,000 arrived from the Soviet Union) After the fall of the Communist regime in 1989, the situation of Polish Jews became normalized and those who were Polish citizens before World War II were allowed to renew Polish citizenship.

At the time of the 2021 Polish census, there were 17,156 Jews living in Poland. Travelling along trade routes leading east to Kiev and Bukhara, Jewish merchants, known as Radhanites, crossed Silesia. One of them, Ibrahim ibn Yaqub ( 961–62), a diplomat and merchant from the town of Tortosa in al-Andalus sent by the Umayyad Caliph of Córdoba, Al-Hakam II, was the first chronicler to mention the Polish state ruled by Prince Mieszko I. In the summer of 965 or 966, Jacob made a trade and diplomatic journey from his native Toledo in Muslim Spain to the Holy Roman Empire and then to the Slavic countries. The first mention of Jews in Polish chronicles was of a Jewish community in 11th century Gniezno, then the capital of the Polish kingdom of the Piast dynasty. Among the first Jews to arrive in Poland in 1097 or 1098 were those banished from Prague.

thumb|left|upright|Early-medieval Polish coins with Hebrew inscriptions

The first extensive Jewish migration from Western Europe to Poland occurred at the time of the First Crusade in 1098. Under Bolesław III (1102–1139), Jews settled throughout Poland, including over the border in Lithuanian territory as far as Kiev. Bolesław III recognized the utility of Jews in the development of the commercial interests of his country. Jews came to form the backbone of the Polish economy. Mieszko III employed Jews in his mint as engravers and technical supervisors, and the coins minted during that period even bear Hebraic markings.

The first mention of Jewish settlers in Płock dates from 1237, in Kalisz from 1287 and a Żydowska (Jewish) street in Kraków in 1304.

During the next hundred years, the Church pushed for the persecution of Jews while the rulers of Poland usually protected them. which, among other things, abolished the ancient privileges of the Jews "as contrary to divine right and the law of the land." Nevertheless, the king continued to offer his protection to the Jews. Two years later Casimir issued another document announcing that he could not deprive the Jews of his benevolence on the basis of "the principle of tolerance which in conformity with God's laws obliged him to protect them".

Center of the Jewish world: 1506–1569

thumb|[[Sigismund II Augustus followed his father's tolerant policy and also granted autonomy to the Jews]]

The most prosperous period for Polish Jews began following a new influx of Jews after the accession of Sigismund I in 1506. Sigismund protected the Jews in his realm, which encouraged many Jews to emigate to Poland, where they founded a community at Kraków.

Shalom Shachna (one of Jacob Pollak’s pupils) is counted among the pioneers of Talmudic scholarship in Poland. In 1515 Shachna established the yeshiva in Lublin, which had the third largest Jewish community in Poland during that period. Shachna’s yeshiva produced several prominent rabbis, including Moses Isserles and Solomon Luria, who succeeded Shachna as rosh yeshiva of Lublin.

The first books to be published in the Hebrew and Yiddish languages in Poland were produced by the Halicz brothers, who established the first Jewish printing press in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in Kraków in 1534. That year, they published Sha'are Dura, written in Hebrew by Isaac ben Meir Halevi. The same year, they also published Mirkevet ha-Mishne, the first book in the world to be printed in Yiddish. During this period, Jewish mysticism and Kabbalah became popular and eminent Polish-Jewish scholars such as Mordecai Yoffe and Joel Sirkis devoted themselves to its study.

From the 14th century until 1538, Jews functioned widely as the arendators (lease-holders) of royal prerogatives in Poland such as the mint, salt mines, customs, and tax farming. Pressured by the nobility, in 1538 the Sejm prohibited the Jews from participating in this highly lucrative activity. Although these "great arenda" became one of the protected privileges of the Polish nobility, Jews continued to function as the arendators of landed estates leased from the nobility.

Sigismund II Augustus followed his father's tolerant policy, granting limited autonomy to the Jews and laying the foundation for the qahal, or autonomous Jewish community. Poland-Lithuania became the main center for Ashkenazi Jewry and its yeshivot achieved fame during this period. Poland welcomed Jewish immigrants from Italy, as well as Sephardic Jews, Romaniote Jews, Mizrahi Jews, and Persian Jews. Jewish religious life thrived in many Polish communities. By the middle of the 16th century, about 75% of all Jews lived in Poland.

According to Gershon Hundert, the following eight or nine decades of relative prosperity and security experienced by Polish Jews witnessed the appearance of "a virtual galaxy of sparkling intellectual figures." Yeshivot were established in prominent Jewish communities such as Brześć, Lublin, Lwów, Ostróg, and Poznań.

It was during this period that a xenophobic pasquinade claiming that Poland was a "paradise for the Jews" was written. Despite the Warsaw Confederation, there was a significant increase in antisemitism at this time, partly due to the Counter-Reformation and the growing influence of the Jesuits. By the 1590s, there were anti-Jewish outbreaks in Poznań, Lublin, Kraków, Vilnius and Kiev. At the same time, laws were introduced to restrict Jews from living in the royal towns and cities in the Commonwealth, which increased their migration to the eastern parts of the country where they were invited by the magnates to their private towns. By the end of the 18th century, two-thirds of the royal towns and cities in the Commonwealth had pressed the king to grant them that privilege.

After the Union of Brest in 1595–1596, the Orthodox church was outlawed in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. This, along with the mass migration of Jews to Ruthenia and their negative perception by the local population,

The combined effects of the Cossack uprisings, along with internal conflicts in Poland and concurrent invasions of the Commonwealth by the Tsardom of Russia, the Swedish Empire, the Crimean Tatars, and the Ottoman Empire, ended the Polish Golden Age and caused a decline of Polish power during the period known as "the Deluge". The destruction, pillage and plunder during the Siege of Kraków (1657) was so methodical that parts of the city never recovered. The Polish general Stefan Czarniecki was responsible for massacres of the Ruthenian and Jewish population during this time. Many Jews along with the townsfolk of Kalisz, Kraków, Poznań, Piotrków and Lublin also fell victim to recurring epidemics.

After these disturbances ended, Jews returned and rebuilt their destroyed homes. Although the Jewish population of Poland had decreased, it still was more numerous than that of the Jewish colonies in Western Europe, and Poland continued to be a spiritual center of Judaism. Through 1698, the Polish kings generally remained supportive of the Jews.

The rise of Jewish sectarianism

thumb|upright|[[Jacob Frank, 1895 depiction]]

The decade from the Khmelnytsky Uprising until after the Deluge (1648–1658) left a deep and lasting impression not only on the social life of the Polish–Lithuanian Jews, but on their spiritual life as well. Intellectual output was reduced and study of the Talmud became overly formalized and accessible to fewer students. Some rabbis busied themselves with quibbles concerning religious laws, while others wrote hair-splitting Talmudic commentaries. Certain Ashkenazic movements began to appear at this time. At the same time, many miracle-workers made their appearance among the Jews of Poland, culminating in a series of Messianic movements, such as Sabbatianism and Frankism.

In this time of Jewish mysticism and overly formal Rabbinism came the teachings of Israel ben Eliezer, known as the Baal Shem Tov, or BeShT, (1698–1760), which had a profound effect on the Jews of Eastern Europe and Poland in particular. His disciples taught and encouraged the new fervent brand of Judaism based on Kabbalah known as Hasidic Judaism. The rise of Hasidic Judaism within Poland's borders and beyond had a great influence on the rise of Haredi Judaism all over the world, with a continuous influence through its many Hasidic dynasties including those of Chabad, Aleksander, Bobov, Ger, and Nadvorna.

The Partitions of Poland

thumb|Jewish dress in 17th (top) and 18th centuries

thumb|[[Berek Joselewicz (1764–1809)]]

In 1742 most of Silesia was annexed by Prussia as a result of the Silesian Wars. Further disorder and anarchy ensued in Poland in 1764, after the accession to the throne of its last king, Stanislaus II Augustus Poniatowski. Eight years later, triggered by the Confederation of Bar against Russian influence and the pro-Russian king, the outlying provinces of Poland were overrun from all sides by different military forces and divided for the first time by the three neighboring empires, Russia, Austria, and Prussia. The Commonwealth lost 30% of its land during the annexations of 1772, and even more of its peoples. Jews were most numerous in the territories that fell under the military control of Austria and Russia.

By 1764, there were about 750,000 Jews in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The worldwide Jewish population at that time was estimated at 1.2 million.

In 1768, the Koliivshchyna, a rebellion in Right-bank Ukraine west of the Dnieper in Volhynia, led to ferocious murders of Polish noblemen, Catholic priests and thousands of Jews by haydamaks. Four years later, in 1772, the military Partitions of Poland had begun between Russia, Prussia, and Austria.

The permanent council established at the insistence of the Russian government (1773–1788) served as the highest administrative tribunal, and occupied itself with the elaboration of a plan that would make practicable the reorganization of Poland on a more rational basis. The progressive elements in Polish society recognized the urgency of popular education as the first step toward reform. The Commission of National Education — the first ministry of education in the world — was established in 1773, and founded numerous new schools while remodelling older ones. Chancellor Andrzej Zamoyski and other members of the commission demanded that religious toleration and the inviolability of their persons and property should be guaranteed to Jews. However, they also insisted that Jews living in the cities should be separated from Christians, that Jews having no clear occupation should be banished from the kingdom, and that Jews should not be allowed to possess land. On the other hand, some szlachta and intellectuals proposed a national system of government characterized by civil and political equality of the Jews. This was the only example in modern Europe before the French Revolution of tolerance and broadmindedness in dealing with the Jewish question. But all these reforms were too late: a Russian army soon invaded Poland, followed by a Prussian one.

A second partition of Poland was made on 17 July 1793. Jews, in a Jewish regiment led by Berek Joselewicz, took part in the Kościuszko Uprising the following year, when the Poles tried to again achieve independence, but were brutally put down. Following the revolt, the third and final partition of Poland took place in 1795 transferring the territories concentrating most of the Jewish population to Russia.

Under foreign rule many Jews inhabiting formerly Polish lands were indifferent to Polish aspirations for independence. However, most Polonized Jews supported the revolutionary activities of Polish patriots and participated in national uprisings. Polish Jews took part in the November Insurrection of 1830–1831, the January Insurrection of 1863, as well as in the revolutionary movement of 1905. Many Polish Jews were enlisted in the Polish Legions, which fought for the Polish independence, achieved in 1918 when the occupying forces disintegrated following World War I.

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

thumb|Jewish merchants in 19th-century [[Warsaw]]

Official Russian policy would eventually prove to be substantially harsher to the Jews than that under independent Polish rule. In 1772, Catherine II instituted the Pale of Settlement, restricting Jews to the western parts of the empire, which eventually included much of Poland, although it excluded some areas in which Jews had previously lived. By the late 19th century, over four million Jews lived in the Pale.

Tsarist policy towards the Jews of Poland alternated between harsh rules, and inducements meant to break the resistance to large-scale conversion. In 1804, Alexander I of Russia issued a "Statute Concerning Jews", meant to accelerate the process of assimilation of the Empire's new Jewish population. The Polish Jews were allowed to establish schools with Russian, German or Polish curricula. However, they were also restricted from leasing property, teaching in Yiddish, and from entering Russia. They were banned from the brewing industry. The harshest measures designed to compel Jews to merge into society at large called for their expulsion from small villages, forcing them to move into towns. Once the resettlement began, thousands of Jews lost their only source of income and turned to Qahal for support. Their living conditions in the Pale began to dramatically worsen. These years were not counted towards their twenty-five years of required military service. To escape this fate, children were sent to Congress Poland where Jewish conscription was not instituted until 1844.

Pale of Settlement

thumb|Map of [[Pale of Settlement, showing Jewish population densities]]

The Pale of Settlement (, , , , , ) was the term given to a region of Imperial Russia in which permanent residency by Jews was allowed and beyond which Jewish permanent residency was generally prohibited. It extended from the eastern pale, or demarcation line, to the western Russian border with the Kingdom of Prussia (later the German Empire) and with Austria-Hungary.

The archaic English term pale is derived from the Latin word , a stake, extended to mean the area enclosed by a fence or boundary.

With its large Catholic and Jewish populations, the Pale was acquired by the Russian Empire (which was a majority Russian Orthodox) in a series of military conquests and diplomatic maneuvers between 1791 and 1835, and lasted until the fall of the Russian Empire in 1917. It comprised about 20% of the territory of European Russia and mostly corresponded to historical borders of the former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth; it covered much of present-day Lithuania, Belarus, Poland, Moldova, Ukraine, and parts of western Russia.

From 1791 to 1835, and until 1917, there were differing reconfigurations of the boundaries of the Pale, such that certain areas were variously open or shut to Jewish residency, such as the Caucasus. At times, Jews were forbidden to live in agricultural communities, or certain cities, as in Kiev, Sevastopol and Yalta, excluded from residency at a number of cities within the Pale. Settlers from outside the pale were forced to move to small towns, thus fostering the rise of the shtetls.

Although the Jews were accorded slightly more rights with the Emancipation reform of 1861 by Alexander II, they were still restricted to the Pale of Settlement and subject to restrictions on ownership and profession. The existing status quo was shattered with the assassination of Alexander in 1881 – an act falsely blamed upon the Jews.

Pogroms in the Russian Empire

thumb|upright|Caricature of Russian Army assailant in 1906 [[Białystok pogrom]]

The assassination prompted a large-scale wave of anti-Jewish riots, called pogroms (;) throughout 1881–1884. In the 1881 outbreak, pogroms were primarily limited to Russia, although in a riot in Warsaw two Jews were killed, 24 others were wounded, women were raped and over two million rubles worth of property was destroyed. The new czar, Alexander III, blamed the Jews for the riots and issued a series of harsh restrictions on Jewish movements. Pogroms continued until 1884, with at least tacit government approval. They proved to be a turning point in the history of the Jews in partitioned Poland and throughout the world. In 1884, 36 Jewish Zionist delegates met in Katowice, forming the Hovevei Zion movement. The pogroms also prompted a wave of Jewish emigration to the United States.

An even bloodier wave of pogroms broke out from 1903 to 1906, at least some of them believed to have been organized by the Tsarist Russian secret police, the Okhrana. They included the Białystok pogrom of 1906 in the Grodno Governorate of Russian Poland, in which at least 75 Jews were murdered by marauding soldiers and many more Jews were wounded. According to Jewish survivors, ethnic Poles did not participate in the pogrom and instead sheltered Jewish families.

Haskalah and Halakha

The Jewish Enlightenment, Haskalah, began to take hold in Poland during the 19th century, stressing secular ideas and values. Champions of Haskalah, the Maskilim, pushed for assimilation and integration into Russian culture. At the same time, there was another school of Jewish thought that emphasized traditional study and a Jewish response to the ethical problems of antisemitism and persecution, one form of which was the Musar movement. Polish Jews generally were less influenced by Haskalah, rather focusing on a strong continuation of their religious lives based on Halakha ("rabbis's law") following primarily Orthodox Judaism, Hasidic Judaism, and also adapting to the new Religious Zionism of the Mizrachi movement later in the 19th century.

Politics in Polish territory

thumb|right|upright=1.3|Executive Committee of the Warsaw Garment Workers' Union, 1917. Displayed in the back are portraits of [[Vladimir Medem and Karl Marx.]]

By the late 19th century, Haskalah and the debates it caused created a growing number of political movements within the Jewish community itself, covering a wide range of views and vying for votes in local and regional elections. Zionism became very popular with the advent of the Poale Zion socialist party as well as the religious Polish Mizrahi, and the increasingly popular General Zionists. Jews also took up socialism, forming the Bund labor union which supported assimilation and the rights of labor. The Folkspartei (People's Party) advocated, for its part, cultural autonomy and resistance to assimilation. In 1912, Agudat Israel, a religious party, came into existence.

Many Jews took part in the Polish insurrections, particularly against Russia (since the Tsars discriminated heavily against the Jews). The Kościuszko Insurrection (1794), November Insurrection (1830–31), January Insurrection (1863) and Revolutionary Movement of 1905 all saw significant Jewish involvement in the cause of Polish independence.

During the Second Polish Republic period, there were several prominent Jewish politicians in the Polish Sejm, such as Apolinary Hartglas and Yitzhak Gruenbaum. Many Jewish political parties were active, representing a wide ideological spectrum, from the Zionists, to the socialists to the anti-Zionists. One of the largest of these parties was the Bund, which was strongest in Warsaw and Łódź.

In addition to the socialists, Zionist parties were also popular, in particular, the Marxist Poale Zion and the orthodox religious Polish Mizrahi. The General Zionist party became the most prominent Jewish party in the interwar period and in the 1919 elections to the first Polish Sejm since the partitions, gained 50% of the Jewish vote.

In 1914, the German Zionist Max Bodenheimer founded the short-lived German Committee for Freeing of Russian Jews, with the goal of establishing a buffer state (Pufferstaat) within the Jewish Pale of Settlement, composed of the former Polish provinces annexed by Russia, being de facto protectorate of the German Empire that would free Jews in the region from Russian oppression. The plan, known as the League of East European States, soon proved unpopular with both German officials and Bodenheimer's colleagues, and was dead by the following year.

Interbellum (1918–1939)

Polish Jews and the struggle for Poland's independence

thumb|[[Hasidic Judaism|Hasidic schoolchildren in Łódź, c. 1910s, during Partitions]]

thumb|Rabbi [[Baruch Steinberg before Warsaw Great Synagogue (1933), reading roll call of the fallen, organized by Union of Jewish Fighters for Polish Independence]]

thumb|Percentage of Jewish (by religion) population in each county of Poland according to the 1931 census

thumb|Jewish population of Poland's largest cities in 1931

While most Polish Jews were neutral to the idea of a Polish state, many played a significant role in the fight for Poland's independence during World War I. Around 650 Jews — more than all other minorities combined — joined the Legiony Polskie formed by Józef Piłsudski. Prominent Jews (including Herman Feldstein, Henryk Eile, Samuel Herschthal, Zygmunt Leser, Henryk Orlean, and Wiktor Chajes) were among the members of the KTSSN, which formed the nucleus of the interim government of re-emerging sovereign Poland.

Other Jews were opposed to the formation of a Polish state. For example, the Committee for the East, founded by German Jewish activists, which promoted the idea of Jews in the east becoming the "spearhead of German expansionism", serving as "Germany's reliable vassals" against other ethnic groups in the region and serving as a “living wall” against the aims of Polish separatists.

In the aftermath of the Great War localized conflicts engulfed Eastern Europe between 1917 and 1919. Many attacks were launched against Jews during the Russian Civil War, the Polish–Ukrainian War, and the Polish–Soviet War ending with the Treaty of Riga. Just after the end of World War I, the West became alarmed by reports about alleged massive pogroms in Poland against Jews. Pressure for government action reached the point where U.S. President Woodrow Wilson sent an official commission to investigate the matter. The commission, led by Henry Morgenthau, Sr., concluded in its Morgenthau Report that allegations of pogroms were exaggerated. It identified eight incidents in the years 1918–1919 out of 37 mostly empty claims for damages, and estimated the number of victims at 280. Four of these were attributed to the actions of deserters and undisciplined individual soldiers; none was blamed on official government policy. Among the incidents, during the battle for Pińsk a commander of Polish infantry regiment accused a group of Jewish men of plotting against the Poles and ordered the execution of thirty-five Jewish men and youth. 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. 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.

Population

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. According to the national census of 1931, there were 3,113,933 Jews living in Poland. By late 1938 that number had grown 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. According to the 1931 census one city had over 350,000 Jewish inhabitants (Warsaw), one city had over 200,000 Jewish inhabitants (Łódź), one city had around 100,000 Jewish inhabitants (Lwóv) and two cities had over 50,000 Jewish inhabitants each (Kraków and Wilno). In total these five cities had 766,272 Jews which was almost 25% of the total Jewish population of Poland. In cities and towns larger than 25,000 inhabitants there lived nearly 44% of Poland's Jews.

The table below shows the Jewish population of Poland's cities and towns with over 25,000 inhabitants according to the 1931 census:

{| class="wikitable sortable"

|+Jewish population in cities and towns of Poland with at least 25,000 inhabitants in 1931

!City or town #

!Voivodeship

!City or town

!Total population

!Jews

!Non-Jews

!Percentage of Jews

|Warsaw Voivodeship

|Warsaw

|1171898

|352659

|819239

|30.1%

|Łódź Voivodeship

|Łódź

|604629

|202497

|402132

|33.5%

|Lwów Voivodeship

|Lwów

|312231

|99595

|212636

|31.9%

|Poznań Voivodeship

|Poznań

|246470

|1954

|244516

|0.8%

|Kraków Voivodeship

|Kraków

|219286

|56515

|162771

|25.8%

|Wilno Voivodeship

|Wilno

|195071

|55006

|140065

|28.2%

|Silesian Voivodeship

|Katowice

|126058

|5716

|120342

|4.5%

|Poznań Voivodeship

|Bydgoszcz

|117200

|1692

|115508

|1.4%

|Kielce Voivodeship

|Częstochowa

|117179

|25588

|91591

|21.8%

!10

|Lublin Voivodeship

|Lublin

|112285

|38937

|73348

|34.7%

!11

|Kielce Voivodeship

|Sosnowiec

|108959

|20805

|88154

|19.1%

!12

|Silesian Voivodeship

|Chorzów

|101977

|2811

|99166

|2.8%

!13

|Białystok Voivodeship

|Białystok

|91101

|39165

|51936

|43.0%

!14

|Kielce Voivodeship

|Radom

|77902

|25159

|52743

|32.3%

!15

|Stanisławów Voivodeship

|Stanisławów

|59960

|24823

|35137

|41.4%

!16

|Kielce Voivodeship

|Kielce

|58236

|18083

|40153

|31.1%

!17

|Warsaw Voivodeship

|Włocławek

|55966

|10209

|45757

|18.2%

!18

|Łódź Voivodeship

|Kalisz

|55007

|19248

|35759

|35.0%

!19

|Pomeranian Voivodeship

|Grudziądz

|54014

|677

|53337

|1.3%

!20

|Pomeranian Voivodeship

|Toruń

|53993

|493

|53500

|0.9%

!21

|Łódź Voivodeship

|Piotrków

|51349

|11400

|39949

|22.2%

!22

|Lwów Voivodeship

|Przemyśl

|51038

|17326

|33712

|33.9%

!23

|Białystok Voivodeship

|Grodno

|49669

|21159

|28510

|42.6%

!24

|Polesie Voivodeship

|Brześć

|48385

|21440

|26945

|44.3%

!25

|Kielce Voivodeship

|Będzin

|47597

|21625

|25972

|45.4%

!26

|Łódź Voivodeship

|Pabianice

|45670

|8357

|37313

|18.3%

!27

|Kraków Voivodeship

|Tarnów

|44927

|19330

|25597

|43.0%

!28

|Lwów Voivodeship

|Borysław

|41496

|11996

|29500

|28.9%

!29

|Wołyń Voivodeship

|Równe

|40612

|22737

|17875

|56.0%

!30

|Łódź Voivodeship

|Tomaszów Maz.

|38020

|11310

|26710

|29.7%

!31

|Kielce Voivodeship

|Dąbrowa Górnicza

|36942

|5150

|31792

|13.9%

!32

|Lublin Voivodeship

|Siedlce

|36931

|14793

|22138

|40.1%

!33

|Tarnopol Voivodeship

|Tarnopol

|35644

|13999

|21645

|39.3%

!34

|Wołyń Voivodeship

|Łuck

|35554

|17366

|18188

|48.8%

!35

|Stanisławów Voivodeship

|Kołomyja

|33788

|14332

|19456

|42.4%

!36

|Pomeranian Voivodeship

|Gdynia

|33217

|84

|33133

|0.3%

!37

|Warsaw Voivodeship

|Płock

|32998

|6571

|26427

|19.9%

!38

|Kielce Voivodeship

|Zawiercie

|32872

|5677

|27195

|17.3%

!39

|Lwów Voivodeship

|Drohobycz

|32261

|12931

|19330

|40.1%

!40

|Polesie Voivodeship

|Pińsk

|31912

|20220

|11692

|63.4%

!41

|Poznań Voivodeship

|Inowrocław

|34364

|139

|34225

|0.4%

!42

|Stanisławów Voivodeship

|Stryj

|30491

|10869

|19622

|35.6%

!43

|Kraków Voivodeship

|Nowy Sącz

|30298

|9084

|21214

|30.0%

!44

|Poznań Voivodeship

|Gniezno

|30675

|137

|30538

|0.4%

!45

|Lublin Voivodeship

|Chełm

|29074

|13537

|15537

|46.6%

!46

|Wołyń Voivodeship

|Kowel

|27677

|12842

|14835

|46.4%

!47

|Lwów Voivodeship

|Rzeszów

|26902

|11228

|15674

|41.7%

!48

|Łódź Voivodeship

|Zgierz

|26618

|4547

|22071

|17.1%

!49

|Kielce Voivodeship

|Ostrowiec

|25908

|9934

|15974

|38.3%

!50

|Warsaw Voivodeship

|Żyrardów

|25115

|2726

|22389

|10.9%

!51

|Białystok Voivodeship

|Łomża

|25022

|8912

|16110

|35.6%

! colspan="3" |Total in 51 cities and towns with over 25,000 inhabitants

!5052448

!1363390

!3689058

!27.0%

Jewish and Polish culture

thumb|[[Great Synagogue (Warsaw)|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.thumb|left|upright|[[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

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).

thumb|upright|[[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%.]]

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 Bolshevism. Anti-Jewish sentiment in the press, discrimination, exclusion, and violence at universities, and the appearance of "anti-Jewish squads" associated with some of the right-wing political parties contributed to greater support in the Jewish community for Zionist and socialist ideas.

In 1925, Polish Zionist members of the Sejm reached an agreement with prime minister Władysław Grabski granting Jews certain cultural and religious rights in exchange for support of Polish nationalist interests. The Polish government later refused to honor many aspects of the agreement. During the 1930s, Revisionist Zionists viewed the government as an ally and promoted cooperation between Zionists and Polish nationalists, despite the antisemitism of the 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 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 increased Jewish enrollment in higher education, which it was speculated contributed to a backlash against Jewish students.

thumb|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 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. 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, 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 unemployment rate was four times higher among the Jewish population than in the general population, a problem compounded by the fact that almost no Jews received unemployment benefits. 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. 32% of the population of Radom was Jewish, with 90% of small businesses in the city owned and operated by 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. introducing the term "Christian shop". A national movement to prevent the Jews from kosher slaughter of animals, with animal rights as the stated motivation, was also organized.. By the end of the 1930s, a substantial portion of Polish Jews lived in grinding poverty, due to the effects of the Great Depression and rioting.

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.

thumb|right|Hela and Selig Hoffenstand, a Jewish couple on the streets of Warsaw, 1934. Selig served in the Polish army. The couple immigrated to Mandatory Palestine in 1935. Most of his family stayed there and perished in the Holocaust

The Polish government embraced the vision of Ze'ev Jabotinsky, the founder of Revisionist Zionism, and pursued a policy of supporting the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. It 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. Poland helped the Zionist movement by organizing passports and facilitating illegal immigration, and supplied the Haganah with weapons. It 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 allowed the organisation to mobilise 30,000-40,000 men.

In 1938, the Polish government revoked the Polish citizenship of 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. 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)

Polish September Campaign

thumb|upright|Graves of Jewish–Polish soldiers who died in [[Invasion of Poland|1939 September Campaign, Powązki Cemetery]]

The number of Jews in Poland on 1 September 1939, amounted to about 3,474,000 people. 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.

Territories annexed by the USSR (1939–1941)

The Soviet Union signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany on 23 August 1939 containing a protocol about partition of Poland. 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. 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.

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. a portion of the Jewish population, along with the ethnic Belarusian and Ukrainian activists had welcomed invading Soviet forces as their protectors. The Polish poet 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". 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. 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

thumb|upright=1.25|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. Rabbis were forced to dance and sing in public with their beards shorn off. Some rabbis were set on fire or hanged.) 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,

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.

left|thumb|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 . 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.

thumb|Walling-off [[Świętokrzyska Street, Warsaw|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.

thumb|upright|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. 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.

left|thumb|[[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. 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

thumb|upright|[[Monument to the Ghetto Heroes|Ghetto fighters memorial in Warsaw built in 1948 by sculptor Nathan Rapoport]]

thumb|left|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.

thumb|upright|The cover page of [[Stroop Report|The Stroop Report with International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg markings.]]