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Poland and the Jews
Leslie Rübner
[Written in 2010]
The first major wave of Jewish settlers in Poland was refugees escaping the endemic anti-Semitism in the Rhine Valley and the pogroms committed there by the crusaders of Peter the Hermit in 1096 and followed by others. These Jewish immigrants were mostly traders, farmers and vine-growers.
By the rule of King Kasimierz the Great (from 30 April 1310 until 5 November 1370), already thirty-five Lower Silesian towns had Jews living in and the King was favourably disposed toward them. On 9 October 1334, he ratified the General Charter of Jewish Liberties known as the Statute of Kalisz issued by the Duke of Greater Poland Boleslaus the Pious on 8 September 1264 in Kalisz.
The statute served as the basis for the legal position of Jews in Poland and led to creation of a Yiddish-speaking Jewish autonomy, which lasted until 1795. The statute granted exclusive jurisdiction over Jewish matters to the Beth Din and established a separate tribunal for interfaith matters involving Christians and Jews. Additionally, it guaranteed safety and personal liberties for Jews such as freedom of religion, trade, and travel. Kasimierz III added to these privileges by prohibiting, under penalty of death, the kidnapping of Jewish children for baptism. He also meted out heavy punishment for the desecration of Jewish cemeteries; later, in 1539, King Sigismund I also ratified the Statute of Kalisz.
During the thirteen and fourteen hundred Jews were involved in all kinds of trade, including weaving, dealing in horses, and cattle. Polish Jewish trade reached Venice, and the Genoese colonies in the Crimea, and Constantinople.
Jews were accused of unfair competition and in 1485, were forced to give up most of their trades and crafts. These accusations may have led to the Jewish expulsion from Cracow in 1495. However, anti Jewish sentiments had manifested already before the Crakow expulsion. Riots flared up in Breslau (Wrocław) and Lower Silesia in 1454. The papal envoy, a Franciscan friar, John of Capistrano exhorted the masses to massacre the Jews under the pretext that the Jews were profaning Christianity; consequently, the Jews were expelled from Lower Silesia.
By the mid-1500s, 80% of the world’s Jews lived in Poland. In 1503, the Polish king appointed Rabbi Jacob Polak, the official Chief Rabbi of Poland. By 1551, Jews were given the right to elect their own Chief Rabbi. The Chief Rabbinate had autonomous right to rule over law and finance, appointing dayanim and other officials, but Rabbinate also had the duty to collect taxes for the Crown. In this period Poland-Lithuania became the main centre for Ashkenazi Jewry and its yeshivot achieved fame from the early 1500s. One the great Talmudic scholar of the 1500’s was Moses ben Israel Isserles (1525-1572), the founder of the Cracow Yeshivah.
In 1569, Poland and Lithuania unified and then Poland annexed the Ukraine. Many Jews were sent to colonise these territories.
Jews became involved in the wheat export industry, built and ran mills and distilleries, transported the grain to the Baltic Ports and shipped it to the West. In return they imported wine, cloth, dyes and luxury goods for the Polish nobility. Jews acted as intermediaries between the nobility and their surfs. About this period of time the Jewish villages and small towns, the shtetls came about. The Jews of Poland enjoyed a great degree of autonomy; the Council of Four Lands (Va’ad Arba Artsot) is a manifestation of this.
By the end of the 1600s, Poland was involved in a war against Sweden and Moscow. This weakened Poland and the nobility put financial pressure on the Jews who in turn, pressurised the peasants.
Bogdan (or Bohdan) Chmielnicki, Chmiel the Wicked was the supreme head of the Cossacks based in south central Ukraine from 1648 until his death. With Tartar help, he was responsible for leading a successful revolt against the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which dominated Ukraine. Chmielnicki was bent on eradicating the Jews from the Ukraine. He was the initiator of the terrible 1648-49 massacres (gezerot tah ve-tat). Chmielnicki has gone down in history as the figure principally responsible for the holocaust of Polish Jewry in the period. Most of the massacres took place at the beginning of the uprising; the communities east of the Dnieper were immediately destroyed. Some converted to Christianity to save their lives; many were seized and sold into slavery.
During the summer, the persecutions spread to the western bank of the Dnieper and by the middle of June there were no more Jews in the villages and the open cities. The overwhelming majority, with the exception of those who had been murdered while fleeing, crowded into several fortified cities which were also occupied by Polish garrisons. Even these however were unable to sustain the siege of the peasant hordes, and after the towns were taken, most of the Jews were butchered.
The first large-scale massacre took place in Nemirov. Rather than converting to Christianity the town’s Jews chose martyrdom. Chmielnicki’s hordes massacred about 6,000 souls in the town... and they drowned several hundreds in the water and by all kinds of cruel torments.
“In the synagogue, before the Holy Ark, they slaughtered with butchers' knives... after which they destroyed the synagogue and took out all the Torah... they tore them up... and they laid them out... for men and animals to trample on... they also made sandals of them... and several other garments”
(Shabbetai b. Meir ha-Kohen, Megillah Afah).
In 1650, the leaders of the Council of the Four Lands “took upon themselves and their children after them to fast in the Four Lands every year on the 20th day of the month of Sivan, the day upon which the calamity began in... Nemirov.” In the city of Tulchin the Polish defenders handed the Jews over to the rebels in exchange for their own lives, but the Jews resisted even after they had been driven out of Tulchin. At that time, all the Jews in the towns bordering upon Belorussia were massacred; only those living in the surroundings of Brest-Litovsk succeeded in escaping. Tens of thousands, according to some up to 200,000 Jewish men, women and children were killed and 300 communities destroyed.
A weakened Poland was subjected to disturbances (1655–1658). Charles X of Sweden’s army overran Poland; and the whole country was in his hands. Those Jews who were spared by the Swedes were attacked by the Poles, accusing them of aiding the enemy. The Polish general Stefan Czarniecki, in his flight from the Swedes, treated the Jews without mercy. The Polish partisan detachments treated the non-Polish inhabitants with equal severity.
As soon as the disturbances had stopped, the Jews began to return and to rebuild their destroyed homes; and while it is true that the Jewish population of Poland had decreased and become impoverished, it still was more numerous than that of the Jewish of Western Europe; and Poland remained as the spiritual centre of Judaism, and, the Polish kings generally remained supportive of the Jews, despite a hostile clergy and nobility. The disturbances left 500,000 Jews dead, and Poland lost one third of its population — approximately three million of its citizens.
As a result of the Chmielnicki revolt the community increasingly withdrew into itself and at the same time, religious revival movements were emerging. Chassidic movement was created by Israel ben Eliezer, the Ba’al Shem Tov, or, Besht. This movement sought redemption through though prayer and joyous contemplation of the world. Chassidism developed into individual schools, centred on tsaddiks.
In 1670 a large wave of Jewish immigration from Vienna took place. Most of the Polish Jews were Ashkenazim speaking the Yiddish language. The few Sepharadim invited by Chancellor Jan Zamoyski were Jewish refugees from Spain and Portugal and settled in the city of Zamość (now in the south-west of Poland). The three partitions between 1764 and ‘95 divided Poland between Prussia, Russia and the Habsburg Empire. The districts under Russian rule became part of the Pale of Settlement.
Catherine the Great established the Pale in 1791. The Pale was the only territory in Russia where Jews were allowed to live. Apart from Poland, the Pale of Settlement included the territories of present day Latvia, Lithuania, the Ukraine and Belorussia. More than 90% of Russian Jews had to live in appalling conditions in the Pale, which made up only 4% of imperial Russia.)
By the end of the 19th century, a numerically small but highly influential Jewish professional class had emerged, especially in Warsaw. The Jews constituted an urban, middle and working class element while the Poles were either landed gentry or landless peasants working the land. However, as time passed by, the Jews were gradually losing ground to the Poles in the crafts, trade and commerce. The new Polish middle classes resented the competition presented by the Jews. In Poland anti-Semitism was ripe and endemic and this gained impetus in the 20th century.
The collapse of Germany, Russia and Austria/Hungary at the end of World War I was followed by Polish independence proclaimed on 3 November 1918 and later confirmed by the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. The same treaty also returned to Poland the territories annexed by the Germans and Austrians during the partitions. The eastern borders were determined by the Polish victory in the Polish-Soviet War. The new state was 46% Polish, 40% Ukrainian, 11% Jewish with some Byelorussians and Germans, theoretically, the Jews having the balance of power.
Poland signed a treaty with the Allied Powers obligating herself to protect the national rights of all her minorities, specifically promising Jews their own schools and to respect the Jewish Sabbath. The Polish constitution too, formally abolished all discrimination based on religion, race or nationality, and recognised the Jews as a distinct nationality. However, as far as the Jews were concerned, Poland would not honour her obligations.
In the mid nineteen thirties, three million, six hundred thousand Jewish people were living in Poland. Many Poles resented the Jews as aliens who did not belong, fermenting strong prejudice and hatred against the Jews. In the 1920s and ‘30s, a large proportion of Polish Jews were just about surviving in abject poverty. The newly independent dictatorial Polish government under President Józef Piłsudski was anti-Semitic and sanctioned a series of anti-Jewish measures. Jews had limited access to Polish universities (Numerus Clausius) and to the professions. Because they were so oppressed, the Jews of Poland were in no position to defend themselves against the extremely severe measures that were to follow.
On 23 August 1939, Hitler and Stalin signed a non-aggression pact, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Treaty. In a secret protocol of that treaty, Poland was to be divided between the Communist Soviet Union and Nazi Third Reich. According to this agreement, Russia would have Latvia, Estonia, and Finland, while Germany would have Lithuania and Danzig. Poland proper was going to be divided in to three parts. The Warthland, a large area bordering Germany, would be an integral part the German Reich with a 100% German population. To this end, all non-Germans were to be resettled in the East. The parts of Poland to be acquired by the Soviets (more than 77,000 square miles in the east, with a population of over thirteen million) would be annexed by the Soviet Union. The central area was designated to become a German Protectorate, called the General Government, under German civil authority.
On 1 September 1939, 1.8 million German troops invaded Poland on three fronts: from East Prussia in the north, Germany in the west and Slovakia in the south. They attacked with 2600 tanks against the Polish 180, and over 2000 aircraft supported by the world largest bomber force, against the Polish 420. Their new method of warfare the “Blitzkrieg” was a great success. Within a fortnight, the Germans surrounded Warsaw.
On 17 September, the Red Army invaded from the east.
Poland surrendered on 5 October 1939.
Two months after the German attack, on 30 October 1939, Himmler ordered the removal of all Jews and “any particularly undesirable Poles” from the western territories incorporated into the Reich.
On 23 November 1939 in the central German administered Poland Hans Frank, an appointee of Hitler, as Governor General, decreed that, on penalty of death, all Jews over the age of 10 had to wear a white armband with a yellow six pointed star (let us not call it Star of David) on their right arm.
Clearly marked, Jews became even more the victims of anti-Semitic attacks and harassment. The limiting of free movement of Jews came next, followed by the creation of the first ghettos in Łodź and Piotrkow (a town in central Poland, about 16 miles south of Łodź).
The next step was the confiscation of Jewish property. In the ghettos, there was utter degradation and death by starvation became rampant. Many Poles greatly benefited and welcomed the prosecution of the Jews. They appropriated Jewish businesses, homes and valuables. As much as they hated the occupiers, most of them approved of Germany making Poland Jew free.
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