How did the Jews end up in Poland? Polish Jews through the eyes of Alter Katsizne
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Poland
For four days, as part of the Israeli delegation, I participated in visiting places associated with the Holocaust: the Warsaw ghetto, Treblinka, Majdanek, Tykocin, Krakow ghetto, Auschwitz... And in the “march of life” that concluded this visit.
But this “march of life” was at the end of the trip, and first we visited Warsaw.
Before the war, about three and a half million Jews lived in Poland. And Warsaw Jews were mostly rich, educated, successful - and great patriots of Poland. There, on the main avenue of Warsaw, Marszałkowska Street, stood the mansions of my great-grandfather’s brothers, Max Szpiro, Markus and Leo. There were also banks owned by them.
The most prosperous time for Polish Jews was between the two world wars. This can only be judged today by the Jewish cemetery. There are no living Jews in Poland today.
During this period, on rich monuments you can read in Polish and Hebrew: To dear parents from loving children.
After the formation of the Warsaw ghetto, this cemetery ended up on its territory. And in order to prevent infections from the corpses decomposing in the streets, the Judenrat (Jewish self-government of the ghetto) ordered them to be buried in this cemetery in a common pit.
Burial of corpses in the Warsaw ghetto.
This place is fenced with stones.
And this is a symbolic slab at the site of a mass grave.
Grave of Adam Chernyakov, head of the Judenrat, and his family.
When he realized that all the promises and promises of the Germans about ending the actions were false, and that he could not save even the smallest part of the people (and he believed in this for a long time), he committed suicide.
This house is all that remains today of the huge ghetto area of Warsaw, and it is decorated with pre-war photographs.
All the capital's Jews and many from the nearest suburbs and towns were driven into the ghetto - a total of 450 thousand people; the ghetto was surrounded by a brick wall.
Photos from the ghetto.
And a piece of the wall still remains.
We were there in the evening and filmed in the dark, so the quality was not so great.
Over this wall at night, Jewish smugglers threw their goods: food, textiles, medicines, bags of silk underwear for girls from the Ghetto cabaret, champagne, red and black caviar for a few rich people...
However, rich and poor, hungry and well-fed, smugglers and Jewish policemen, members of the Judenrat with their families, workers and children of orphanages, humanists and traitors - all, in the end, equally ended up in Treblinka, where from the moment of arrival until death in the gas chamber About forty minutes passed.
Children climbed over this wall at night, having obtained bread or potatoes for the family on the “Aryan side”. Immediately, German, Lithuanian or Ukrainian guards shot these regime violators.
Through this wall and in the tunnels below it, weapons were carried into the ghetto, with the help of which the ghetto rebels resisted the full power of German armored vehicles and aircraft for several months, killing, according to Stroop's report, eighteen Germans and wounding ninety-three.
Search the wall.
These twenty-year-old guys had no illusions; they knew that they were doomed. They wanted one thing - to preserve their honor, to die in battle. “Morituri te salutant, Judea!” (“Those who go to their death salute you, O Judea!”) was their motto.
With homemade bombs, these boys and girls threw themselves under German tanks and jumped off roofs. To suppress the uprising and finish off the enraged ghetto, the Germans had to burn house after house with flamethrowers, and every basement was full of death for both sides.
Photo accompanying the report of Jürgen Stroop, the SS officer tasked with suppressing the uprising.
The rebels hoisted two flags on the roof of one of the tall buildings: the blue and white Israeli flag and the red and white flag of Poland. They were great Polish patriots, these guys. Warsaw, which only listened to the explosions in the ghetto, looked in amazement for four days at the Polish flag banned by the authorities.
Monument to the participants of the uprising.
Seven thousand rebels died in battle, the same number were burned in their houses, the last fifteen thousand were captured and sent to Treblinka. So by the fall of 1943 the ghetto ceased to exist.
Liquidation of the ghetto. From photographs taken by the SS.
Several dozen rebels were saved, some of them died, joining the Polish Resistance, several people survived and left evidence of the uprising.
And this is Umschlagplatz - the station square where rounded up Jews from the ghetto waited, sometimes for several days, to be herded into trains heading to Treblinka.
Today it is built up, tram tracks run through it, and it takes a lot of imagination to imagine the past...
In Warsaw we met one unusual Pole, Rafal Betlejewski.
Charming, handsome, Oxford graduate. As a child, he asked the question: why is there a Jerusalem Street in Warsaw? He was embarrassedly told that Jews once lived in Poland.
When he grew up, he learned that before the war there were about three hundred thousand Jews in Warsaw, a third of the city. And even later he read a book by historian Jan Tomas Gross about the pogrom in Jedwabne.
Jedwabne was one of the many shtetls - small towns in Poland, where the majority of the population were Jews. In 1941, when the Germans, having passed through Poland with lightning speed, entered the USSR, the Poles of Jedwabne, on their own initiative, staged a pogrom. At first they killed the Jews one by one, and then they drove all the survivors - about two thousand - into a barn - and burned them alive.
And Rafal Betleevsky suddenly realized that both of them, both the murderers and the killed, were Polish citizens. And Jews lived in Poland for about a thousand years, their culture and world are part of the Polish world and culture. And that with the disappearance of the Jews, Polish culture became impoverished, a black hole remained in it.
And he began to write graffiti on the walls, in Polish and English:
"Tęsknię za Tobą, Żydzie!" - "I miss you, Jews!"
Rafal created his own website, in two languages, where he talks about shtetl culture, gives lectures, and now he has hundreds of followers among Polish youth...
There is a black Jewish kippah on the chair.
Only there are no more Jews in Poland.
Tykocin
Another shtetl, Tiktin in Hebrew. In the 16th century it was a developed trading city, as it stood on the navigable Narew River. By the end of the 19th century, when the railway network developed, it fell into disrepair. Before the war, about three thousand Jews lived here.
Synagogue-museum. 
In 1939, after the Molotov-Ribbentropp Pact, when Germany and the USSR tore Poland apart, Tykocin found himself on Soviet territory. The Jewish residents of the town went to their respected rebbe and other old people and asked how they should behave with the new government?
“We Jews must be loyal to the authorities so that they do not interfere with our lives,” the old people said, after thinking.
And in the summer of 1941, according to Barbarossa’s plan, the German advanced troops passed through Tykotsyn without stopping there. And the Poles immediately remembered the Jews’ loyalty to the Soviets and staged a pogrom. Someone was killed, someone was mutilated.
And then new Germans arrived, who had already stayed in the town for a long time. They announced that they were bringing with them a new German order, and that they would not allow lawlessness like the recent pogrom. And that all Jews must gather in the city square in the morning to be sent to work. Those who do not show up will be shot.
And again the Jews went to their rebbe and other old people and asked what they should do?
“We Jews must be loyal to the authorities so that they do not interfere with our lives,” the old men said. “And order and law are good!”
And all three thousand people gathered in the square in the morning. They were taken to a nearby forest.
Here in this magically beautiful forest...
And they shot me. In two days, all three thousand people.
Only one escaped from all of Tykocin, the boy Abram Kapitsa. He was the eldest in a family with six other children, and his father whispered to him when everyone was sitting in the square (and shots were heard from the forest): “Go home, see how it is there.” Abram managed to escape unnoticed in the darkness. He made his way to his house and saw that the Poles, their closest neighbors, had already moved in.
He survived and left a testimony, otherwise we would not know anything about Tykocin, just as we do not know about dozens of completely disappeared shtetls.
A monument at the site of the execution, erected by American relatives.
This is what happened with the shtetlByhava.
Before the war, two and a half thousand people lived here, two thousand of whom were Jews. The Poles lived side by side with them, were involved in their trade and crafts, worked as shabes goyim (they extinguished candles in the synagogue on Saturday), Polish and Jewish children studied at school together.
The Jews were taken from here to the Belzec extermination camp, where every single one of them died. This is what the building of the local synagogue looks like, used as a warehouse.
We sang several Jewish songs there.
And memorial candles were lit.
Suddenly, a half-crazed old woman called out to us from her house.
Are you Jewish? - she asked.
- Yes, we are Jews.
- Oh, darlings, finally I see Jews again! I grew up with them, I went to school with them until the fourth grade!
And then they were taken away, they were all taken away!..
Broken gravestones... 
And crows. 
Jewish organizations in Poland published an open letter last Monday expressing outrage at the surge of intolerance, xenophobia and anti-Semitism that has gripped their country since the adoption of the “Holocaust law,” which caused an international scandal.
The website of The Jerusalem Post newspaper wrote about this on Tuesday, February 20.
The message, posted on the website of the Union of Jewish Communities of Poland and signed by dozens of Polish Jews, states that hate propaganda has gone beyond the Internet and into the public sphere.
“We are no longer surprised when members of local councils, parliaments and government officials introduce anti-Semitism into public discourse. The number of threats and insults against the Jewish community in Poland is growing.",” the publication cites excerpts from this letter.
The authors of the message express their gratitude to President Andrzej Duda, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and the leader of the Law and Justice party Jaroslaw Kaczynski for condemning anti-Semitism, however, emphasizing that these words fall into thin air and will not have any impact without decisive action.
“On the eve of the fiftieth anniversary of the anti-Semitic campaign of 1968 and 75 years after the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, Polish Jews once again feel unprotected in this country.”, the letter says.
Let us recall that on February 6, Polish President Andrzej Duda signed the scandalous “Holocaust law”, introducing criminal liability for promoting the ideology of Ukrainian nationalists, denying the Volyn massacre and allegations of Polish complicity with the Nazis during World War II.
We are talking about amendments to the law on the Institute of National Remembrance, approved by the Polish Senate on February 1, according to which, in particular, a person who publicly accuses Poland of crimes committed during the Holocaust, complicity with Nazi Germany, war crimes or crimes against humanity may be sentenced to three years' imprisonment.
The law prohibits the use of the phrase “Polish death camp” when describing concentration camps that existed in the territory of occupied Poland. Those who try to “consciously downplay the responsibility of the true perpetrators of these crimes” will also be punished.
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This law has caused mixed reactions in Israel. In the days leading up to the Polish Senate's approval of the law, its contents drew angry reactions from many Israeli politicians, including the country's prime minister and president.
Today it is very difficult to write about the history of our people in Poland: the once thriving community of Israel no longer exists in this country
At the end of the Middle Ages, tens of thousands of persecuted Jews came from Germany to another country of dispersion - Poland. They understood the name of the country, "Polin", as a combination of two Hebrew words - By -"here and lin- “spend the night”, deciding that “here” there will be rest and peace for the rest of the night of exile... until the Guardian proclaims that “morning” has come. They hoped to live to see the morning light, but darkness came and swallowed them all. May their blood be avenged!
We had hard times in Poland, and we also had bright ones. The country's leaders did not accept us out of good feelings, but in anticipation of the benefits that the Jews could bring to it with their talents and money. And when they believed that there was nothing to get from us, they coldly handed us over to our enemies. “Under three the earth trembles: ... and under the feet of a slave who became a king...”. After a hundred years of oppression, the Polish people finally gained freedom and began to rule their land, but trouble came, and he became an assistant to the executioners.
Mourning the Jews who, having died, were not even honored with a grave, we ask again and again: why does our people suffer more than all other peoples? It’s time to despair, but “there is no place for despair in the world.” One cannot dare to blame the dead righteous, but it is also impossible to challenge the justice of the Creator. “The sin of Judah is written with an iron pen. We sinned and were angry - You did not forgive.” Having received permission, the destroyer does not bother, and the righteous are the first to pay the bill. Were Jews sinless in other periods of history? Of course not. But there are eras when sin increased many times over. We sinned the same sins because of which the Temple was destroyed, those because of which we were expelled from our Land. We remember the tragedies that our people have experienced throughout our history. It’s hard to believe that this is a chain of coincidences, so we can only believe that the Almighty is right! Following the prophet, we repeat: “Return us to Yourself, and we will return. Restore to us the former days” (Eicha 5:21).
Shelter for generations
We do not know the time of the beginning of Jewish settlement in Poland. Divine Providence chose this country as our refuge for many generations, and here the spiritual flowering of the Jewish people took place. The socio-political structure of Poland eased the problems of emigration. The noble minority owned almost all the land of the agricultural country. The bulk of the population was the serf peasantry. The country's small middle class was mainly represented by Germans - potential allies of Germany, which was constantly striving to the East and dreamed of seizing Polish lands. The Polish authorities gladly accepted Jewish merchants and artisans who had fled persecution in Germany, whose loyalty to the country that gave them shelter was beyond doubt.
In Poland, Jews founded their own community and lived according to the laws of the Torah. They saw work as a means of earning food. The purpose of life was considered to be the study of the Torah and observance of its commandments. Many spent their youth in teaching houses and yeshivas.
In 5024 (1264) Count Bolesław of Kalisz granted special status to Jews. Now the Jews reported directly to the count and did not depend on the city government and local nobles. Under pain of corporal punishment, it was forbidden to harm Jews and their property. It was strictly forbidden to charge Jews with ritual murder. The gentry and the Catholic clergy were dissatisfied with this decree and tried to evade its implementation. Under weak rulers, they repeatedly set the mob against the Jews. Still, the situation in Poland was much better than in Germany.
After the pogroms that swept across Germany during the smallpox epidemic (5108/1348), the Polish king Casimir III (5093–5130/1333–1370) received thousands of Jews in Poland. The epidemic did not reach Poland, but even in this country there were instigators who called for revenge on the Jews for allegedly poisoning the wells. King Casimir III managed to protect the Jews by approving Boleslav's charter. And although pogroms occurred during his reign, his reign was still a period of heyday for the Polish community. Under the next rulers, the situation of the community worsened, in particular, under the influence of Catholic traders who were eager to destroy their competitors.
The situation of Jews in Lithuania was much better. The idolatrous Lithuanians have not yet learned anti-Semitism from Catholic priests. However, when the Lithuanian prince Jagielo was baptized and, having married the Polish princess Jadwiga, united both countries, the position of the Lithuanian community did not worsen.
Jewish autonomy in Poland
A quiet time for Polish Jews was the period when the Lithuanian prince Casimir IV (5207/1447) ascended the Polish throne. He removed the Jews from the jurisdiction of the Catholic court and granted them internal autonomy. From now on, a dispute between a Jew and a Christian was subject only to the direct judgment of the king. To stop the bloody accusations, Casimir IV decided to accept such cases for consideration only on the testimony of four witnesses. And when the fanatical monk Capistrano demanded that King Casimir abolish the rights of the Jews, the king refused him this.
Anti-Semites could not calmly look at the happy Jewish life and tried to use any excuse to worsen the situation of the Jews. When in 5214 (1454) the king was defeated in a war with the German knights, the priests immediately began to incite the people, claiming that the defeat in the war was a punishment for the king: in violation of the laws of the church, he treated the Jews too well. Small nobles saw this as an opportunity not to repay debts and demanded that the rights granted to Jews be abolished or limited. The king had to give in. But after his victory in the war and the signing of the peace in Torino (5226/1466), the situation of the Jews improved again.
During the reign of Casimir IV, thousands of refugees from Germany poured into the country. Thanks to their activities, the country's economy has greatly strengthened. The benefits of the Jewish presence were obvious to everyone. The king handed over to the Jews the collection of taxes, which annually replenished the treasury with enormous sums. The position of royal tax collectors in a number of cases gave Jews an advantage over Christians, but on the other hand, in the eyes of the people, Jews turned into hated plunderers. After the Pope declared a crusade against the Turks, a crowd of would-be crusaders attacked the community of Krakow and killed thirty Jews. The king was indignant. He imposed a fine on the city and demanded guarantees that this would not happen again. After the death of King Casimir (5252/1492), one of his sons, Jan, inherited the Polish crown, and the other, Alexander, the Lithuanian one. In Poland, the right to try Jews was transferred from the royal court to the church court. In 5255 (1495) the Jews were expelled from Lithuania. Yet, when the Polish king died and Prince Alexander reunited the two countries, he allowed Jews to settle in Lithuania and returned their property to them. In Poland, the rights of Jews were also practically restored.
Persecutors and patrons
King Sigismund 1 (5266-5308/1506-1548), highly appreciating the benefits brought by Jews, encouraged the immigration of Jews into the country from Germany and the Czech Republic and protected them from priests and petty gentry. Large landowners shared the king's views on the Jewish question, and when the gentry limited the rights of Jews, they, led by the king, invited refugees to settle on their lands.
Sigismund II (5308-5332/1548-1572) officially restored the charter of King Casimir IV. His personal physician was a Jew, R. Yehuda Ashkenazi, the same one who then, having moved to Turkey, became a prominent diplomat. So that Jews could take part in fairs, the king moved the market day in his domain from Saturday to another day of the week. Sigismund II expanded the rights of communities and allowed them to independently collect a special Jewish tax, which Jews paid instead of serving in the army. He also commanded that one of the judges in a case between a Christian and a Jew should be the head of the Jewish community. But when the struggle began between the Lutheran and Catholic churches for the religious future of Poland, the first to suffer, of course, were the Jews. Since the king refused to persecute both Lutherans and Jews, Catholics resorted to a classic accusation that has always inflamed the mob at all times: the Jews were accused of desecration of the holy gifts (this time in the fact that Jews allegedly take consecrated bread out of the church and pierce his). Four Jews and a Christian girl were arrested on this charge in the city of Holem. Under torture, the unfortunates confessed to the truth of the accusation and were condemned to death. The king refused to approve the sentence, but the mayor quickly carried out the sentence, regardless of the opinion of the monarch. One of the convicts managed to escape, the rest, before execution, refused the confessions extracted from them under torture and died the death of the righteous. To prevent this from happening again, the king ordered henceforth all cases on charges of ritual murder and desecration of holy gifts to be heard only in the royal presence. King Stefan Batory, who ruled after Sigismund II, continued to protect the Jews. He ordered execution for false denunciation with the same execution that was intended for the accused.
New troubles
The Polish throne was not inherited. After the death of the king, a noble diet met and elected the head of the country. This gave a certain advantage to the petty gentry and the princes of the church, to whom candidates for the throne curried favor. After the election, the king's dependence on the gentry continued. After the death of Stefan Batory, weak kings succeeded one after another on the Polish throne. The period of the gentry freemen began.
It was an era of religious hostility and intolerance, when two Christian churches fought for the possession of Europe. Religious intolerance between Christians only fueled hatred of Jews. City councils restricted their trading rights and, together with the priests, incited the crowd to organize pogroms: Jews were killed and their property was plundered. The blood libel, the accusation of desecration of the holy gifts - everything was put into action. The weak kings could not do anything - they needed the protection of the Catholic Church too much. Only large landowners understood that Jews could be useful and did not give them offense. As a result, communities located in the royal domains disintegrated, and Jews moved from them to the lands of large counts. Many, having fled to Ukraine, which at that time belonged to Poland, became managers of the estates of Polish lords and prospered until the terrible crisis that broke out in 5408 (1648).
Published with permission from Shvut Ami Publishing House
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In order for anti-Semitism to bloom in full bloom, the presence of Jews in a country where anti-Semitism has triumphed is not at all necessary.
In 1967-1968 A large-scale anti-Semitic campaign was launched in Poland. It was headed by the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers' Party - PUWP, Wladyslaw Gomułka. This shameful campaign led to the emigration from this country of Jews who miraculously survived the Holocaust.
Before World War II, Poland had the largest Jewish community in Europe. It exceeded 3.5 million people. The Holocaust killed 2.8 million. Few survived, but even they, in fact, were forced to flee. In 1967-1968 Of the 30 thousand Jews remaining in Poland, the vast majority left the country. This was the result of an anti-Semitic campaign led by Gomułka. It was carried out under the banner of “the fight against Zionism.”
Poland was the first country in Europe to offer armed resistance to the Nazi invaders. Not a single military unit under the Polish flag fought on the side of Nazi Germany. Poland was the only European country without a puppet government. Many Poles fought in the armies of the anti-Hitler coalition, and there was a broad Resistance movement in the country itself.
The German occupation of Poland was particularly brutal. Hitler included part of Poland into the Third Reich. The remaining captured territories were turned into a General Government. Industrial and agricultural production in Poland were subordinated to the military needs of Germany. The occupiers simply closed Polish universities and other universities, and the intelligentsia was persecuted. It would seem that in such a situation the Poles have no time for Jews and no time for anti-Semitism. Ah, no. Even under the conditions of occupation, anti-Semite phobes, of whom there were always plenty in Poland, were in a hurry to prove themselves in this shameful field.
The small Polish town of Jedwabne is located near the eastern border of Poland. Before the war, 1,600 Jews lived here, making up more than half of its population. On June 23, 1941, German troops entered the town, and on June 25, the Poles began pogroms against Jews. They killed their neighbors with axes, pierced them with pitchforks, cut out their tongues, gouged out their eyes, drowned them in a pond, and chopped off their heads. The local priest refused to stop the bloodshed because he considered all Jews to be communists. The Poles “coordinated” the pogrom with the German authorities. Then the Nazis gave the order to exterminate all the Jews still alive. The Poles carried out the order. They herded the Jews to the central square, then took them to a barn on the outskirts of the town, where they had previously thrown the bodies of the torn victims. There they burned them together - alive and dead. Until recently, at the burial site of Jews there was a monument with the inscription that the victims killed by the German fascists were buried here. Now a new monument has been erected, on which is carved the inscription: “In memory of the Jews killed and burned.”
Polish historian Jan Tomasz Gross now lives in New York. He published an essay in which he spoke about the brutal extermination of the Jews of Jedwabne by the Poles. Then he published the book “Neighbors” with a detailed description of this barbaric crime. This book excited the whole of Poland and caused a resonance throughout the world. In 1949, the trial of the pogromists from Jedwabne took place. It took place in Lomza. Most of the accused were convicted and received from 8 to 15 years in prison. The trial in Lomza took place in secrecy, it was not reported in the press, and few people knew about the trial. The Jedwabne pogrom was not the only case of extermination of Jews at the hands of the Poles. This took place in Radziwillow, where 659 people were killed, in Wonsosha, Wizna and other cities and towns. At the funeral ceremony in Jedwabne, dedicated to the 60th anniversary of the pogrom, the then President of Poland, Alexander Kwasniewski, on behalf of himself and those Poles who feel great shame, asked for forgiveness from the Jewish people.
Anti-Semitism in Poland did not disappear after the war. It was especially fueled by the fact that the new leadership of the country included several Jews, in particular Jakub Berman and Hilary Mintz. In addition, several Jews worked in senior positions in the state security agencies, and this circumstance was exploited with all their might by the Judeophobes.
Historian Jan Tomasz Gross is a Jew who was born in post-war Poland. After the events of 1967-1968. and a short period of imprisonment, he left Poland and settled in the United States. Professor at Princeton University. Above we mentioned his book “Neighbors” about the pogrom in Edbavne. So, after “Neighbors,” he published another book, “Fear.” It is subtitled “Anti-Semitism in Poland after the war. A story of moral failure." The book “Fear” is dedicated to the relations between Jews and Poles after the war. The author describes the anti-Semitic sentiments of many Poles after the German occupation and the Holocaust. “Fear” tells about the Jewish pogroms in Poland after the war, about the events in Kielce in July 1946. Then, as a result of the largest pogrom in post-war Europe, 37 Jews were killed and 35 were mutilated. This is despite the fact that in total there were just over 200 Jews who miraculously survived in the city. Gross accuses the Poles of pathological anti-Semitism. He emphasizes that most of them were anti-Semites even during the war, and many killed Jews themselves.
Jan Gross's book "Fear" caused quite a strong reaction in Poland and abroad. Its author was accused of provocation. The Catholic Church sharply opposed Gross. Essentially, the book concluded that all Poles are anti-Semitic. The author wrote about this extremely harshly. Things got to the point that the Krakow prosecutor became interested in the book. Of course, one cannot agree with Gross that supposedly all Poles are anti-Semitic. There is no doubt that in Poland there are thousands of people who are disgusted by anti-Semitism. This fact convincingly demonstrates this. On the Avenue of the Righteous at the Yad Vashem Institute in Jerusalem, more than 6 thousand trees were planted in honor of the Poles who saved Jews during the Nazi occupation (for which they faced death). However, on the other hand, neither Krakow nor other Polish prosecutors will be able to refute the fact that anti-Semitism in the country has a long history and has taken deep roots. It is in this context that the anti-Semitic campaign organized in 1967-1968 by the Polish communists under the leadership of their then leader Wladyslaw Gomulka should be considered.
First of all, let us introduce the reader in a little more detail to the hero, or rather anti-hero, of this publication.
Wladyslaw Gomulka was born in February 1905 in the village of Bjallabzheg, near the town of Krasno, into a working-class family. After three years of school, at the age of 14 he began working at a factory as a mechanic. From a young age he took part in the revolutionary movement, was an organizer of a communist working group, and later became a “professional party activist” and agitator. He was arrested and tried, but the sentence was limited to a suspended sentence. In 1926-1929. was one of the leaders of the trade union of chemical industry workers. In 1932, he was sentenced to 4 years in prison for participating in an underground communist organization. He served half his sentence and was released due to illness. In 1934-1935 Gomulka studies at the Lenin School in Moscow. He was lucky then, he managed to avoid repression. The functionaries of the Polish Communist Party who were in the USSR were arrested, and the entire party was accused of Trotskyism. Returning to his homeland, Gomulka found himself in a Polish prison. He was imprisoned until World War II. When Warsaw was captured by the German occupiers, he escaped from prison and in 1941 moved to Lviv, which was occupied by the Red Army. When Germany attacked the USSR and Lviv was occupied by German troops, Gomułka went underground and was a member of the Resistance movement.
In 1944, under the auspices of the Soviet authorities, the Committee for the National Liberation of Poland was created in Lublin. It also included Gomułka. After the liberation of Poland, he returned to Warsaw with the so-called. Lublin government, in which he became deputy prime minister. He was elected general secretary of the Polish Workers' Party. After the creation of the Polish United Workers' Party, he became part of the leadership of this party. In 1949, Gomulka and his inner circle were accused of right-wing nationalist deviation and expelled from the party, and then arrested. Gomułka was released from prison in 1954. And in the context of the political crisis that broke out in the country, Wladyslaw Gomulka returned to power. On October 21, 1956, he was elected first secretary of the Central Committee of the PUWP. Some reforms have been carried out. Some collective farms in the countryside were liquidated, the persecution of the Roman Catholic Church was stopped, censorship was softened, etc. However, in general, Poland, even under Gomulka, followed Moscow’s lead, and the country’s new leadership pursued a policy approved by the Kremlin.
Gomulka's reformist fervor quickly dried up, and many of the problems that arose were either not noticed by the new leaders of Poland or simply ignored. This led to a political crisis that erupted in the country in the late 60s of the last century.
One of the goals of the anti-Semitic campaign launched in Poland in 1967-1968 was to divert public attention from pressing problems, and the old proven method was used - to make Jews extreme. Even Hitler said that if there were no Jews, they would have to be invented. The fact that there were almost no Jews left in Poland did not bother Gomulka and his circle. The catalyst was the Six Day War in June 1967. At a meeting in Moscow, the leaders of the socialist countries were instructed to sever diplomatic relations with Israel. Gomulka and others hastened to comply with the Kremlin's wishes. The exception was Romania. Ceausescu refused to do this.
Returning to Warsaw, the first secretary of the Central Committee of the PUWP began to spin the flywheel of Judeophobia. He spoke at a meeting of the capital’s party activists and declared the need to “repel Israeli aggression” and outlined all the arguments that he heard in Moscow. But, of course, it didn’t stop there. He said that Israel is supported by “Zionist circles” in Poland; they are carrying out subversive work. Gomulka exclaimed, not without pathos:
We don't need a fifth column!
Thus, the anti-Israeli campaign was called anti-Zionist, but in fact turned out to be anti-Semitic. It reached its peak in March 1968. At this time, the general situation in Poland worsened. It all started with student performances. The reason for them was the authorities banning the production of the play “Dziady” by Adam Mickiewicz at the National Theater. They saw in it an anti-Russian, anti-Soviet orientation. The students filed a protest to the Sejm. Thousands of Poles signed it. Gomulka and other leaders of the PUWP were very afraid that workers and trade unions would join the students, so they began to intensively expose the “machinations of Zionism.” At that moment, a huge number of anti-Semitic leaflets appeared, in which the events in the country were interpreted as the machinations of the Zionists and their allies - Polish intellectuals. The newspapers were full of articles in which they attacked the Zionists - “the enemies of people's Poland.” A favorite “revealing” technique is compiling lists of surnames indicating past names and surnames. All Polish publications, with very rare exceptions, took part in this shameful campaign. Then came the persecution of Jews, incredible for post-war Europe. A grandiose ideological campaign was launched, modeled after the Stalin era, although people were not killed. Everything else followed the same pattern. During the two weeks of the campaign, 1,900 party meetings alone were held condemning Zionism. Rallies were held, meetings of labor collectives were held, all with the same agenda. There were calls: “Cleanse Poland of Zionist Jews.” There were cases when Jews were dealt with physically.
Jews who value Israel more than Poland must leave our country.
It should be noted that, perhaps, no less a role, and perhaps even a greater one, in the persecution of Jews was played by the then Minister of Internal Affairs, General Mieczyslaw Moczar (real name and surname - Mikolay Demko), who had a large group of his supporters of the hardest line, opponents liberalism. At that time, a joke appeared: “What is the difference between anti-Semitism today and before the war? Before the war it was not mandatory."
As a result of the campaign against Zionism, thousands of people were fired from their jobs. First of all, Jews who worked in government agencies, universities and schools, and in the cultural sphere were expelled. As a result, about 20 thousand people left Poland. For Jews who wanted to go to Israel, the road was open. They were given an original document in which it was written that the bearer of this document was not a citizen of Poland. Engineers, doctors, scientists, university professors, journalists, musicians, etc. left the country.
As a result of this campaign, Gomulka's authority suffered greatly. This entire campaign caused deep indignation in the USA and Western Europe. And in Poland itself, many people reacted extremely negatively to the campaign launched by Gomułka and Moczar. They understood her vile purpose perfectly.
When they tried to start building “socialism with a human face” in Czechoslovakia, the Kremlin mobilized all its forces to fight the “Prague Spring.” Polish troops took part in the occupation of Czechoslovakia in August 1968.
At the end of 1970, a new political crisis broke out in Poland. It was associated with serious economic difficulties that the country was experiencing. The authorities announced price increases for food and basic consumer goods. A new payroll system was introduced. Unrest began. Workers went out to demonstrate. The unrest that broke out in Gdansk, Gdynia and Szczecin was suppressed by army units. 70 workers were killed and more than 1,000 wounded. Gomulka and other leaders of the PUWP again tried to explain the events in the country as “the machinations of the Zionists.” But there were no more Jews in the country and it just looked funny.
Wladyslaw Gomulka ruled Poland for 14 years. During this time he has come a long way. In October 1956, the newly elected first secretary of the PUWP said that if workers take to the streets, then the truth is on their side. In 1970, he also ordered to shoot at workers who went out onto the street. Gomulka had to resign from the post of first secretary of the Central Committee of the PUWP. He was succeeded by Edward Gierek. Mochar's hopes for power did not come true. After resigning, Wladyslaw Gomułka became an ordinary pensioner, forgotten by friends and enemies; he died in Warsaw in September 1982.
A new surge of anti-Semitic campaigns occurred in Poland already in the 70s. As before, the group of so-called “partisans”, which was part of the leadership of the PUWP, led by General Mieczyslaw Moczar, began again in every possible way to fan hatred of Jews, although at that time there were only a few thousand of them left in the country and they played practically no role in political life . It was then that the world press started talking about the Polish phenomenon of “anti-Semitism without Jews.”
The theme of the March 1968 events, the anti-Semitic campaign of that period, is finding an increasing response in modern Poland. At a meeting in connection with the 40th anniversary of those events, now Polish President Lech Kaczynski called the anti-Semitic campaign a disgrace for which there is no justification. In present-day Poland there is no state anti-Semitism. Good, even friendly relations have been established between Poland and Israel. Warsaw strongly emphasizes its affection for our country. But the so-called everyday Judeophobia still sometimes makes itself felt. But what to do, there are many people for whom anti-Semitism has become their calling, their profession, although often it is difficult to call them people.
Joseph TELMAN, candidate of historical sciences, Nesher
By the 16th century, a separate Jewish subethnic group was emerging in central and eastern Europe - the Ashkenazis, a significant part of which lived on the territory of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Here, unlike neighboring Germany, Jews were not constrained by a large number of laws that limited the scope of their professional activities, which ensured a constant influx of representatives of the Jewish faith into the Polish and Lithuanian lands. In the 16th century, out of the 11 million population of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, approximately 800 thousand were Jews.
The freedom that the Jews found themselves in worried many Poles. In particular, in 1485, Krakow Catholics tried to prohibit Jews from any activity other than “mortgaging for overdue debts.” However, they failed to turn Jews solely into moneylenders. In 1521, already the heads of the Lviv magistrate complained to Poznan:
“The infidel Jews deprived us and our fellow citizens engaged in merchants of almost all sources of food. They took over all trade, penetrated into towns and villages, and left nothing for the Christians.” However, in this case there was no reaction either. The king did not want to lose, in the person of Polish Jewry, a powerful trade and economic layer, which also ensured the financial stability of the state.
However, the Jews gradually concentrated their activities in a niche in which they could not be disturbed by representatives of other nationalities and religions - these were mediatory functions between townspeople and peasants. The essence of the activity is this: first, the Jewish intermediary bought raw materials from the peasants and resold them to the city, then bought finished products from the townspeople and resold them again to the village.
It was difficult for non-Jews to occupy such a niche: they had to work a lot and persistently, maneuver and adapt in order to become useful to both the city dweller and the peasant. The “profit” from such activities was small: if the tariff were slightly higher, the peasant and the city dweller would begin to negotiate directly.
Towards the end of the 16th century, Jews gradually emerged from the influence of the king and fell into the sphere of interests of the magnates. Jews are turning into, albeit dependent, but completely separate feudal class. They build taverns and taverns, roads and hotels, workshops and factories, thereby participating in the creation of the transport and economic infrastructure of the Kingdom. Jews in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth are respected, but most importantly, they are needed.
