Polish underground formations were getting people out of the Warsaw Ghetto as late as the middle of June 1943, as one Polish resistance man remembered: "the Ghetto was entered by our patrols, which maintained contact with the Jewish fighters battling in the ruins, the so called rubble men. We supplied them with ammunition, grenades, food, bandages and on our way back we took the wounded. We could evacuate only as many as there were in our patrols, for each of us could bring out only one Jew. We moved through the sewers ... The evacuated rubble men were mostly taken to my flat ... how else could one have acted in those days?"
Individuals were still crossing over to the 'Aryan' side as late as September and October. One man escaped in January 1944.
Many Jews fought in the 1944 Warsaw Rising, including a number of veterans of the Ghetto Uprising. Some served in specifically Jewish units. Most fought in the leftist GL. At least 500 Jews were killed fighting in the Uprising. A further 100 are reported as having been killed by gentile Poles. Only 12 Jewish Fighting Organisation fighters survived until the liberation.
The destruction wrought in 1939 and during and after the 1943 and 1944 risings had destroyed considerable tracts of the city. In the former Jewish quarter some of that destruction was absolute, with not a building standing, apart from Christian churches which the Germans had spared. The destruction of the Jewish district moved Warsaw's centre-of-gravity significantly to the east and deprived the city of many shops and businesses, which the post-war Communist government did not replace.
When the Red Army finally liberated Warsaw on 17th January 1945 300 Jews were still living in the ruined city. With the return of concentration camp survivors and people who had fled to the USSR that figure had grown to 5,000 by the end of 1945. The first post-war Jewish theatrical performance was held in 1946.
In the first year of peace over 353 Jews were murdered by anti-Semites. The worst incident happened on 4th July 1946 at Kielce, between Warsaw and Kraków. After this event about half the Jewish population of Poland (over 100,000 people) emigrated. In Warsaw only 2,000 remained, grouped around the Nozyk synagogue.
Nonetheless various Jewish institutions were created after the war, including ZIH, founded in 1947. It was based in the Judaic Library buildings at 3/5 Tlomackie Street, where various Jewish newspapers were printed, including a Yiddish-language paper called Dos Naje Leben (The New Life).
In the 1950s Jewish institutions came under State control. Zionists were expelled and the aid activities of the 'Joint' discontinued.
In 1957-1958, following a political 'thaw' and a change in the Polish leadership, there was a purge of Jews from the military and many higher education institutions. 50,000 Jews left Poland, many of them Varsovians.
After the 1967 Six Day War Poland broke off relations with Israel (they were not resumed until 1990). An anti-Zionist campaign followed, which was really the result of infighting within the Communist Party. Up to 30,000 Jews left Poland between 1968 and 1972, including academic Gabriel Temkin, who had fought in the Red Army in the Second World War. Temkin emigrated to the USA, where he wrote his autobiography, My Just War: The Memoir of a Jewish Red Army Soldier in World War II (Presidio Press, 1998).
Those Polish Jews who had chosen to remain only became active again in the 1970s, and by 1983 young Jews close to the Solidarity trade union had begun to study Jewish texts and celebrate Jewish holidays. With the decline and then fall of Communism new memorials began to appear in Warsaw, such as those on the Path of Remembrance (1988).
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| A car parked near the Jewish National Theatre and the Nozyk synagogue on a Saturday in December 2000 |
Warsaw became permanent the residence of the Chief Rabbi of Poland in 1989. In 1991 a Jewish kindergarten opened in Warsaw, and in 1994 a primary school, Warsaw's first in 45 years. Today the Jewish population of Warsaw remains at between 2,000 and 5,000, no higher than it was in 1945, but there is a growth of Jewish consciousness among the young.
Jewish Warsaw prior to 1939 * War & Occupation * The Warsaw Ghetto
The Great Deportation * The Jewish Fighting Organisation * The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising