There were Jews in Poland as early as the 10th century. Large-scale immigration occurred in 1096, following pogroms in western Europe. In 1264 Prince Boleslaw Pobozny granted privileges to Jews in Wielkopolska (Great Poland, the area around and to the north of Poznan), a statute that was famously extended to all Jews in Poland by King Kasimierz the Great in 1334.
Jews are first recorded in Warsaw in 1414. They were however banned from living in the city between 1527 and the late eighteenth century. After 1768 some Jews settled in jurydyki (private towns set up by nobles). Aleja Jerozolimskie (Jerusalem Avenue), the main east-west thoroughfare through modern Warsaw, is named after one such settlement. By 1792 6,750 Jews lived in Warsaw.
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Michal Landy On 8th April 1861 Michal Landy, a rabbinical seminary student born in Warsaw in 1844, was shot dead by Russian troops during a demonstration in Plac Zamkowy (Castle Square). He had just picked up a cross that had fallen from the hands of a Christian demonstrator who had been killed and had carried it over the heads of the demonstrators. He is buried in the Okopowa Street cemetery. |
When Poland was partitioned between the great powers (Prussia, Russia and Austria) at the end of the eighteenth century the Polish patriot Kosciuszko's army included a Jewish regiment. Warsaw's Jewish population rose when Prussian Jews came to the city before the Napoleonic Wars. When Napoleon defeated Prussia and created the Duchy of Warsaw its constitution theoretically granted equal rights to Jews. In reality they were heavily taxed and could not necessarily live where they chose. After Napoleon's defeat Warsaw ended up in the Russian sector of partitioned Poland, in the Pale of Settlement where all Russian Jews were forced to live. Its Jewish population rose from 15,600 in 1816 to 337,000 (38.1% of the city's total population) in 1914.
Restrictions against Jews were lifted in 1862, and Jews began to take part in Polish political life. Many Polish Jews were in favour of independence. They took part in demonstrations, and fought (and died) in the 1863 January Rising against the Russians. This did not prevent growing anti-Semitism from 1870, including a pogrom in 1881.
Warsaw became an important Hasidic centre. From 1871 to 1926 the community was led by assimilationists, but they did not represent the general population, who were Orthodox.
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Jewish political parties The Socialist Bund - wanted a Jewish future as a national minority within Poland. Worked with non-Jewish Socialist parties rather than with bourgeois Jewish groups. The Zionists - various organisations, some more to the left and some more to the right, all of whom actively sought the resettlement of Jews in Palestine. Also defended the national rights of Jews in the Diaspora and helped revive Hebrew. Agudath Israel - Orthodox and Hasidic. Also believed in a return to Palestine, but unlike the Zionists did not feel that man should interfere with God's plans. Disapproved of the use of Hebrew as a secular language. |
Some members of the community were wealthy bankers or captains of industry, or made money from Jewish control of the alcohol and salt trades, but most were humble tradesmen or small craftsmen. In the years before the First World War Jewish political parties, such as the Socialist Bund (founded 1897) or the religious Agudath Israel (founded 1912), came into existence.
Poland became an independent country again on 11th November 1918. In politics a minorities bloc, which included Jewish politicians, held the balance of power between right and left, but the bloc lost strength after 1922. Marshal Jozef Pilsudski, who seized power in 1926, was not anti-Semitic, but for Jews his regime never lived up to its early promise and after his death in 1935 Poland became increasingly racist.
The Great Depression hit Warsaw's Jews hard. In addition the nationalisation of branches of industry, for example alcohol, drove Jews out of sectors where they had traditionally played an important role without offering an alternative. There were virtually no Jews in the civil service. In the mid-1930s about 25% of Warsaw's Jewish residents were in poverty.
In 1939 there were 375,000 Jews in Warsaw (nearly one third of the city's population). Only New York had more Jewish residents than Warsaw. Jewish religious groups, political parties, newspapers and theatre thrived. Most Warsaw Jews spoke Yiddish, but Polish was increasingly used by the young. Jews were entering the mainstream of Polish society, though they thought of themselves as a separate nationality within Poland, unlike German Jews, who thought of themselves as Germans.
War & Occupation * The Warsaw Ghetto * The Great Deportation
The Jewish Fighting Organisation * The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising * After the Ghetto Uprising