Anti-Jewish violence in Poland from 1944 to 1946 preceded and followed the end of World War II in Europe and influenced the postwar history of the Jews and Polish-Jewish relations. It occurred amid a period of violence and anarchy across the country caused by lawlessness and anti-communist resistance against the Soviet-backed communist takeover of Poland. The estimated number of Jewish victims varies, ranging up to 2,000. In 2021, Julian Kwiek published the first scientific register of incidents and victims of anti-Jewish violence in Poland from 1944 to 1947; according to Kwiek's calculations, the number of victims was 1,074 to 1,121. Jews constituted between two and three percent of the total number of victims of postwar violence in the country, including Polish Jews who managed to escape the Holocaust in territories of Poland annexed by the Soviet Union, and returned after the border changes imposed by the Allies at the Yalta Conference. Incidents ranged from individual attacks to pogroms.

Jewish emigration from Poland surged, partly as a result of this violence but also because Poland was the only Eastern Bloc country to allow free Jewish emigration (aliyah) to Mandatory Palestine. By contrast, the Soviet Union brought Soviet Jews from DP camps back to the USSR by force. Uninterrupted traffic across the Polish borders intensified, with many Jews passing through on their way west or south. In January 1946, 86,000 survivors were registered with the Central Committee of Polish Jews (CKŻP). By the end of summer, the number had risen to 205,000 to 210,000 (with 240,000 registrations and over 30,000 duplicates). About 180,000 Jewish refugees came from the Soviet Union after the repatriation agreement. Most left without visas or exit permits, thanks to a decree from General Marian Spychalski. By the spring of 1947, only 90,000 Jews lived in Poland.

According to Polish historian Lukasz Krzyzanowski, the violence and its causes have become politicized. Krzyzanowski says that the attribution of antisemitic motives to all attackers, or ascribing all anti-Jewish violence to ordinary criminality, is reductionist; in many cases, however, "the Jewishness of the victims was unquestionably the chief, if not the sole, motive for the crime". Tens of thousands of people were killed in Poland's two-year civil war, also due to indiscriminate postwar lawlessness and abject poverty. Among Jewish victims were functionaries of the new Stalinist regime, assassinated by the "cursed soldiers" of the anti-communist underground due to their political loyalties. Their percentage was not large, however; among the victims recorded by Julian Kwiek were only 84 people identified with the new government. Jan T. Gross noted that "only a fraction of [the Jewish] deaths could be attributed to antisemitism" and anti-Jewish violence caused panic among Jews not so much because of its intensity and spread, but because of the "atmosphere of widespread anti-Semitism" they experienced after the end of the war. Resentment of returning Jews by some local Poles included concerns that they would reclaim their property.

Background Property claims and restitution "On Abandoned Real Estate", a 6 May 1945 restitution law, allowed property owners who had been dispossessed or their relatives and heirs to reclaim private property under a simplified inheritance procedure. The law was in effect until the end of 1948. An expedited court process, with minimal costs, was put in place to handle claims. Applications had to be examined within 21 days, and many claims were processed the day they were filed. The Communist government enacted legislation on "abandoned property", placing severe limitations not present in pre-war inheritance law (which allowed inheritance by second-degree relatives) and limiting restitution to the original owners or direct heirs.Weizman, Yechiel. "Unsettled possession: the question of ownership of Jewish sites in Poland after the Holocaust from a local perspective." Jewish Culture and History 18.1 (2017): 34-53. The initial 1945 decrees were superseded by a 1946 lawBeyond Violence: Jewish Survivors in Poland and Slovakia, 1944–48, Cambridge University Press, Anna Cichopek-Gajraj, page 72 with a claim deadline of 31 December 1947 (later extended to 31 December 1948), after which property devolved to the Polish state.The Plunder of Jewish Property during the Holocaust, Palgrave, page 101 Even if Jews regained de jure control, additional lengthy proceedings were required when it was occupied by Poles.Searching for Justice After the Holocaust: Fulfilling the Terezin Declaration and Immovable Property Restitution, Oxford University Press, page 325 Most Jewish claimants could not afford the restitution process without financial help, due to filing costs, legal fees, and inheritance tax.false Beyond Violence: Jewish Survivors in Poland and Slovakia, 1944–48, Cambridge University Press, Anna Cichopek-Gajraj, page 82

Jewish property was unclaimed because some Jews were murdered when they sought to reclaim family property and most Jews left postwar Poland. The murders intimidated Jews against filing claims. Unclaimed Jewish property devolved to the Polish state on 31 December 1948, but many Jews who had fled to the Soviet Union were not repatriated until after that date. Polish legislation in 1947 severely restricted intestate succession, limiting inheritance by distant family members.The Plunder of Jewish Property during the Holocaust: Confronting European History, Palgrave, Laurence Weinbaum, pages 100-1 Jews who returned to Poland from the Soviet Union and settled in territories Poland acquired from Germany were entitled to material compensation on an equal footing with ethnic Poles who were displaced from eastern Poland.Robbery and Restitution: The Conflict Over Jewish Property in Europe, Berghan Books in association with United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Dariusz Stola, pages 244-248 Although it is difficult to estimate how many Jews got their property back, the number was probably few.Shattered Spaces, Harvard University Press, page 52

Holocaust survivors and returnees Polish Jewish survivors of the Nazi Holocaust who returned home were fearful of being physically assaulted, robbed and murdered. The situation was complicated by the fact that there were more Jewish survivors returning from the Soviet Union than those who survived in occupied Poland.

Members of the former Communist Party of Poland (KPP) returned home from the Soviet Union as functionaries of the new regime. Among them were a number of Poles of Jewish origin, who became active in the Polish Workers' Party, the Polish United Workers' Party and the Ministry of Public Security. They included Hilary Minc, third in command in Bolesław Bierut's political apparatus and Jakub Berman, head of State Security Services, who was considered Joseph Stalin's right-hand man in Poland between 1944 and 1953. Jewish representation in Bierut's apparatus of political oppression was higher than their proportion of the general Polish population. It was hypothesized that Stalin had intentionally employed some in positions of repressive authority (such as Roman Romkowski and director of the Special Bureau Anatol Fejgin) to put non-Jewish and Jewish Poles "on a collision course." A study by the Polish Institute of National Remembrance indicated that between 1944 and 1954, 37.1 percent of the ministry's 450 directors were Jewish. The underground anti-communist press held them responsible for the murder of Polish opponents of the regime.

Anti-communist armed resistance

As the victory over Nazi Germany was celebrated in the West in May 1945, Polish partisans attacked country offices of the PUBP, MO (communist state police), UB and NKVD (which employed a number of Jewish functionaries; up to 80 percent of the officers and 50 percent of the militiamen in Lublin and up to 75 percent of the officers in Silesia were Jewish. According to Eisenstein's estimates, 90 percent of the Jewish functionaries at the state security office in Katowice changed their names to Polish ones after 10 November 1945 for anonymity. In May 1945, public security offices were destroyed by the anti-communist underground in Krasnosielc and Annówka (1 May), Kuryłówka (7 May), Grajewo and Białystok (9 May), Siemiatycze and Wyrzyki (11 May), Ostrołęka and Rembertów (18–21 May), Biała Podlaska (21 and 24 May), Majdan-Topiło (Białowieża Forest, 28 May), and Kotki (Busko-Zdrój) (28 May). Several hundred or more political prisoners were freed, many of whom were later recaptured and murdered. The human-rights violations and abuse of power by the ministry strengthened anti-Jewish sentiments, adding to the Żydokomuna stereotype with Poles who generally had anti-Communist and anti-Soviet attitudes. Accusations that Jews were supportive of the communist regime and were a threat to Poland also came from high officials of the Catholic Church.

The provisions of the Yalta Conference allowed Stalin to forcibly return Jewish refugees and Soviet nationals from DP camps to the USSR "irrespective of their personal wishes". The former Polish citizens, the second-largest refugee group in the West, did not began to return until late 1946. Polish–Jewish DPs (25 percent of their total at the beginning of 1947) were declared non-repatriable (due, in part, to US pressure), which forced the British government to open the borders of Palestine. By the spring of 1947, the number of Jews in Poland (largely from the Soviet Union) declined from 240,000 to 90,000 due to mass migration and the post-Holocaust absence of Jewish life in Poland. The flight of Jews was motivated by civil war in Poland and the efforts of a strong Polish-Jewish lobby at the Jewish Agency working towards a higher standard of living and special privileges for immigrants from Poland. Yitzhak Raphael, director of the Immigration Department (who lobbied on behalf of Polish refugees), insisted on their preferential treatment in Israel.

Reports of political repression by Communist forces in Poland and political murders by security forces under Soviet control were mounting. Arthur Bliss Lane, United States ambassador to Poland, was troubled by the mass arrests of Polish non-Communists and their intimidation by security police. The wave of state-sponsored terror and large-scale deportations was followed by the January 1946 nationalization decree. In response to his protests, Bierut told Lane to "mind his own business."

Pogroms The prewar Polish intelligentsia ceased to exist. Of a 1946 population of 23.7 million, only 40,000 university graduates (less than 0.2 percent of the general population) survived the war. Between 1944 and 1956, 350,000 to 400,000 Poles were held in Stalinist prisons. Sporadic anti-Jewish disturbances or riots were sparked by blood libel accusations against Jews in Kraków, Kielce, Bytom, Białystok, Bielawa, Częstochowa, Legnica, Otwock, Rzeszów, Sosnowiec, Szczecin, and Tarnów. Acts of anti-Jewish violence were also recorded in villages and small towns in central Poland, where the overwhelming majority of attacks occurred. According to Bozena Szaynok, the perpetrators of antisemitic acts were seldom punished.

The Kraków pogrom of 11 August 1945 was the first antisemitic riot in postwar Poland and resulted in the shooting death of Róża Berger, who was hiding from security forces. The riot was caused by a rumour that the bodies of Christian children were hidden in Kupa Synagogue. Jews were attacked in Kazimierz and other parts of the city's Old Town, and a fire was set in Kupa Synagogue. One hundred forty-five people were arrested including 40 militiamen and six Polish Armed Forces soldiers. In September and October 1945, about 25 of those arrested were charged and 10 were imprisoned. Shortly after the Kielce pogrom, violence against Jews in Poland ceased.

Kielce pogrom