ABSTRACT
The non-Jewish population’s attitudes toward the Jews in Western Bielorussia were determined by the national and ethnic characters of the various population groups residing in the region, the political changes they had gone through and the neighborly relations that had been formed in the course of generations of living together. These relations had been replete with both crises and periods of relaxation but were relatively better than in the neighboring regions of Ukraine and Lithuania. The period of Polish independence had aggravated the attitudes of the non-Jews towards the Jews and the period of the Soviet regime, 1939–1941, saw the growth of antisemitic tensions that had previously lain dormant beneath the surface. With the German’s arrival, Nazi ideology found fertile soil for its propaganda and infected the non-Jewish population with a racialist antisemitism in its own spirit.
