ABSTRACT
Poland, as I just suggested, was the primary “killing fi eld” of the Holocaust. With the largest Jewish population in Europe, over half of the Jews who were killed were Polish Jews, and thousands of others from other countries were exterminated in death camps located in this country.1 Most of my extended European family were among those who were killed, but my father and uncle were among the 10 percent of Polish Jewry, a saving remnant, who survived. Jewish life in Poland can be traced to the tenth century, when Jews, often fl eeing persecution, emigrated from the west, south, and east.2 The medieval kings and princes of Poland, who were eager to develop a mercantile middle class, often welcomed Jewish refugees, in spite of objections from the Roman Catholic Church, which prohibited Jewish residents in towns under its control.3 In various localities Jews were granted legal charters that gave them the right to practice their religion as well as engage in commercial trade and money-lending activities, which were especially open to Jews because of the Church’s prohibition of usury. Nonetheless, Polish Jews suff ered the anti-Semitic hostility and discriminatory treatment that was generally true of Jews throughout Europe, as I noted in the previous chapter. The circumstances of Polish Jews varied from one locality to another. They were often barred from occupational guilds and denied opportu-
nities to own land. Mostly they pursued an economic livelihood as merchants, artisans, or professionals. Although some Jews engaged in agriculture, most lived in urban areas. In the fourteenth and fi fteenth centuries, Jews played a signifi cant role as middlemen in the trade between Poland and other European countries. Because of links with Jewish communities outside of Poland, Jewish merchants at times gained advantage over non-Jewish businessmen. In addition, Jews functioned in administrative capacities as estate managers for wealthy landowners and the nobility. At times these positions involved collecting taxes and supervising the labor of peasant sharecroppers. All this bred resentment among Poles, especially Ukrainian Poles, who saw Jews as their economic competitors and as the source of their misfortune. Along with the hostility engendered by the Church, such resentment often broke out in violent pogroms against the Jewish population. By the latter part of the eighteenth century, Poland was divided among three conquering powers: Russia, Prussia, and Austria. Under these regimes Jews gained a measure of equality, provided they were willing to abandon their religious-cultural traditions and distinctiveness as a people and adopt the culture of the dominant society. According to Israel Gutman, the opportunity for assimilation “found a ready response among a limited sector of wealthy and educated Jews . . . [who] played a role in the development of a capitalist economy in Poland, and . . . [who] distinguished themselves in science . . . and the arts, clearing a path for modern culture to penetrate into Jewish society.”4 But as these Jews assimilated into the dominant culture, they were essentially “lost to the Jewish people within a generation or two, whereas the Jewish masses remained faithful to their heritage.” By the early part of the twentieth century, Jews for the most part remained “a non-assimilable community” that stood out from the general Polish population by their dress, habits, names and surnames, and mannerisms.5 But even Jews who wanted to modernize were generally denied the opportunities needed to do so. Aleksander Hertz characterizes it as a caste system from which escape was diffi cult, and Polish Jews were among the poorest of all the Jewish communities in Europe.6 Still, leaders of the rising right-wing Polish nationalist movement
began advocating a political program that rejected Jewish assimilation and which, on the eve of World War I, embarked on an aggressive antiSemitic campaign that included economic boycotts of Jewish businesses. At the same time Zionism, the Jewish nationalist movement to create a Jewish state in Palestine (now Israel), also took hold among some Polish Jews.7 Poland gained its sovereignty in the aftermath of World War I. This national rebirth, however, was accompanied by much internal political turmoil and anti-Jewish violence. The Versailles Minority Treaty, which the victors of World War I imposed on Poland, guaranteed political rights to minorities, including Jews and Ukrainians, who each constituted about 10 percent of the Polish population. The treaty was perceived by Poles as an “insult to their national honor,” and discrimination and violence against Jews, tolerated if not condoned by the government, became a means of defi ance.8 Poland experienced 14 separate governments between 1918 and 1925, until Marshal Józef Piłsudski seized power in a military coup in 1926. The Jews actually fared better under Piłsudski’s regime, but after his death in 1935 the new government returned to anti-Semitic zealotry. Eff orts were made to dislodge Jews from positions of infl uence and to close down opportunities for aspiring Jewish youths to be admitted to institutions of higher education. Jews continued to be the object of economic boycotts as well as anti-Semitic propaganda and violence. The Polish government even took a cue from its Nazi neighbor in Germany and began to advocate emigration of Jews (to Madagascar, for example) as a solution to its “Jewish problem.” In a 1937 speech to the Polish parliament, Foreign Minister Józef Beck argued that Poland had space for only about half a million Jews.9 Such was the state of aff airs for Polish Jews on the eve of World War II.
