The history of the Jews in Poland dates back at least 1,000 years. For centuries, Poland was home to the largest and most significant Jewish community in the world. Poland was a principal center of Jewish culture, because of the long period of statutory religious tolerance and social autonomy which ended after the Partitions of Poland in the 18th century. During the Occupation of Poland (1939–1945) there was a nearly complete genocidal destruction of the Polish Jewish community (the Holocaust). Since the fall of communism in Poland, there has been a renewed interest in Jewish culture, featuring an annual Jewish Culture Festival in Kraków, new study programs at Polish secondary schools and universities, and the opening of Warsaw's Museum of the History of Polish Jews.
From the founding of the Kingdom of Poland in 1025 until the early years of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth created in 1569, Poland was the most tolerant country in Europe. Poland became a shelter for Jews persecuted and expelled from various European countries and the home to the world's largest Jewish community of the time. According to some sources, about three-quarters of the world's Jews lived in Poland by the middle of the 16th century. With the weakening of the Commonwealth and growing religious strife (due to the Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counter-Reformation), Poland's traditional tolerance began to wane from the 17th century. After the Partitions of Poland in 1795 and the destruction of Poland as a sovereign state, Polish Jews became subject to the laws of the partitioning powers, including the increasingly antisemitic Russian Empire, as well as Austria-Hungary and Kingdom of Prussia (later a part of the German Empire). When Poland regained independence in the aftermath of World War I, it was still the center of the European Jewish world, with one of the world's largest Jewish communities of over 3 million. Antisemitism was a growing problem throughout Europe in those years, from both the political establishment and the general population. Throughout the interwar period, Poland supported Jewish emigration from Poland and the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. The Polish state also supported Jewish paramilitary groups such as the Haganah, Betar, and Irgun, providing them with weapons and training."In 1937, the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs viewed the League of Nations as the right place for manifesting its support for the cause of developing a Jewish state in Palestine. This had been declared at the League by Foreign Minister Józef Beck.11 He also supported the idea of an international conference and campaign for organising and facilitating Jewish emigration.12 Talks were held with British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, and in the US, with President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Jewish members of the Sejm who protested against the heightened Antisemitism in Poland took pains to thank Beck for furthering the cause of establishing a Jewish state in Palestine." Szymon Rudnicki, Marek Karliner & Laurence Weinbaum, "Linking the Vistula and the Jordan: The Genesis of Relations between Poland and the State of Israel", Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs, 8:1, 2014, pp. 103–114."Rydz Smigły agreed to support Irgun, The Zionists' military arm, for the fight in Palestine. Weapons were provided for 10,000 men, and Polish officers trained Irgun fighters in the Tatra Mountains located in southern Poland." Archibald L. Patterson, Between Hitler and Stalin: The Quick Life and Secret Death of Edward Smigły, p. 101.
In 1939, at the start of World War II, Poland was partitioned between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union (see Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact). One-fifth of the Polish population perished during World War II; the 3,000,000 Polish Jews murdered in the Holocaust, who constituted 90% of Polish Jewry, made up half of all Poles killed during the war. While the Holocaust occurred largely in German-occupied Poland, it was orchestrated and perpetrated by the Nazis. Polish attitudes to the Holocaust varied widely, from actively risking death in order to save Jewish lives, The Path of the Righteous: Gentile Rescuers of Jews During the Holocaust, Mordecai Paldiel, KTAV Publishing House, pp. 176–236 and passive refusal to inform on them, to indifference, blackmail, and in extreme cases, committing premeditated murders such as in the Jedwabne pogrom. Collaboration by non-Jewish Polish citizens in the Holocaust was sporadic, but incidents of hostility against Jews are well documented and have been a subject of renewed scholarly interest during the 21st century.
In the post-war period, many of the approximately 200,000 Jewish survivors registered at the Central Committee of Polish Jews or CKŻP (of whom 136,000 arrived from the Soviet Union) left the Polish People's Republic for the nascent State of Israel or the Americas. Their departure was hastened by the destruction of Jewish institutions, post-war anti-Jewish violence, and the hostility of the Communist Party to both religion and private enterprise, but also because in 1946–1947 Poland was the only Eastern Bloc country to allow free Jewish aliyah to Israel, without visas or exit permits. Most of the remaining Jews left Poland in late 1968 as the result of the "anti-Zionist" campaign.Dariusz Stola. "The Anti-Zionist Campaign in Poland of 1967–1968." The American Jewish Committee research grant. See: D. Stola, Fighting against the Shadows (reprint), in Robert Blobaum, ed.; Antisemitism and Its Opponents in Modern Poland. Cornell University Press, 2005. After the fall of the Communist regime in 1989, the situation of Polish Jews became normalized and those who were Polish citizens before World War II were allowed to renew Polish citizenship.
At the time of the 2021 Polish census, there were 17,156 Jews living in Poland.
Early history to Golden Age: 966–1572
Early history: 966–1385
The first Jews to visit Polish territory were traders, while permanent settlement began during the Crusades.Kalina Gawlas, kuratorka galerii Pierwsze Spotkania w MHŻP, historia.wp.pl. Travelling along trade routes leading east to Kiev and Bukhara, Jewish merchants, known as Radhanites, crossed Silesia. One of them, Ibrahim ibn Yaqub ( 961–62), a diplomat and merchant from the town of Tortosa in al-Andalus sent by the Umayyad Caliph of Córdoba, Al-Hakam II, was the first chronicler to mention the Polish state ruled by Prince Mieszko I. In the summer of 965 or 966, Jacob made a trade and diplomatic journey from his native Toledo in Muslim Spain to the Holy Roman Empire and then to the Slavic countries. The first mention of Jews in Polish chronicles was of a Jewish community in 11th century Gniezno, then the capital of the Polish kingdom of the Piast dynasty. Among the first Jews to arrive in Poland in 1097 or 1098 were those banished from Prague. The first permanent Jewish community is mentioned in 1085 by a Jewish scholar Jehuda ha-Kohen in the city of Przemyśl.
As elsewhere in Central and Eastern Europe, the principal activity of Jews in medieval Poland was commerce and trade, including the export and import of goods such as cloth, linen, furs, hides, wax, metal objects, and slaves.
The first extensive Jewish migration from Western Europe to Poland occurred at the time of the First Crusade in 1098. Under Bolesław III (1102–1139), Jews settled throughout Poland, including over the border in Lithuanian territory as far as Kiev. Bolesław III recognized the utility of Jews in the development of the commercial interests of his country. Jews came to form the backbone of the Polish economy. Mieszko III employed Jews in his mint as engravers and technical supervisors, and the coins minted during that period even bear Hebraic markings. Jews worked on commission for the mints of other contemporary Polish princes, including Casimir the Just, Bolesław I the Tall and Władysław III Spindleshanks. Jews enjoyed undisturbed peace and prosperity in the many principalities into which the country was then divided; they formed the middle class in a country where the general population consisted of landlords (developing into szlachta, the unique Polish nobility) and peasants, and they were instrumental in promoting the commercial interests of the land.
Another factor for the Jews to emigrate to Poland was the Magdeburg rights (or Magdeburg Law), a charter given to Jews, among others, that specifically outlined the rights and privileges that Jews had in Poland. For example, they could maintain communal autonomy, and live according to their own laws. This made it very attractive for Jewish communities to pick up and move to Poland.
The first mention of Jewish settlers in Płock dates from 1237, in Kalisz from 1287 and a Żydowska (Jewish) street in Kraków in 1304.
The tolerant situation was gradually altered by the Roman Catholic Church on the one hand, and by the neighboring German states on the other. Some of the reigning princes were determined protectors of the Jewish inhabitants, who they saw as a key to economic development. Prominent among such rulers was Bolesław the Pious of Kalisz, Prince of Great Poland. With the consent of the class representatives and higher officials, in 1264 he issued a General Charter of Jewish Liberties (commonly called the Statute of Kalisz), which granted all Jews the freedom to worship, trade, and travel. Similar privileges were granted to the Silesian Jews by the local princes, Henryk IV Probus of Wrocław in 1273–90, Henryk III of Głogów in 1274 and 1299, Henryk V the Fat of Legnica in 1290–95, and Bolko III the Generous of Legnica and Wrocław in 1295. Article 31 of the Statute of Kalisz tried to rein in the Catholic Church from disseminating blood libels against the Jews.
During the next hundred years, the Church pushed for the persecution of Jews while the rulers of Poland usually protected them. The Councils of Wrocław (1267), Buda (1279), and Łęczyca (1285) each segregated Jews, ordered them to wear a special emblem, banned them from holding offices where Christians would be subordinated to them, and forbade them from building more than one prayer house in each town. However, those church decrees required the cooperation of the Polish princes for enforcement, which was generally not forthcoming, due to the profits which the Jews' economic activity yielded to the princes.
In 1332, King Casimir III the Great (1303–1370) amplified and expanded Bolesław's old charter with the Wiślicki Statute. Under his reign, streams of Jewish immigrants headed east to Poland and Jewish settlements are first mentioned as existing in Lvov (1356), Sandomierz (1367), and Kazimierz near Kraków (1386). Casimir, who according to a legend had a Jewish lover named Esterka from Opoczno was especially friendly to the Jews, and his reign is regarded as an era of great prosperity for Polish Jewry, and was nicknamed by his contemporaries "King of the serfs and Jews". Under penalty of death, he prohibited the kidnapping of Jewish children for the purpose of enforced Christian baptism. He inflicted heavy punishment for the desecration of Jewish cemeteries. Nevertheless, while the Jews of Poland enjoyed tranquility for the greater part of Casimir's reign, toward its close they were subjected to persecution on account of the Black Death. In 1348, the first blood libel accusation against Jews in Poland was recorded, and in 1367 the first pogrom took place in Poznań. Compared with the pitiless destruction of their co-religionists in Western Europe, however, Polish Jews did not fare badly; and Jewish refugees from Germany fled to the more hospitable cities in Poland.
The early Jagiellon era: 1385–1506