Poland. 1918 – German part: strong Polish nationalism – anti- semitism – Austrian part: Poles had strong autonomy – Russian part: part industiralized,

Poland

Poland

• 1918– German part: strong Polish nationalism – anti-semitism– Austrian part: Poles had strong autonomy– Russian part: part industiralized, Galicia backwards

• Multinationalism: 21 mio – 1/3 non Poles• Democracy: Sejm– Jozef Pilsudski – 1926-35 authoritarian regime

• 1935 – influence of Nazism

Demography

• Jews: 1/3 of urban population• Lower middle class, proletariat

The Jewish Question in the New Poland

• Zionists negotiate to obtain Jewish national autonomy

• Treaty on Minorities – deep ressentment among Poles

• No Jewish autonomy despite the Treaty• 1918-20 pogroms tolerated by the army• Limited civil rights for Jews of Congress Poland

untill 1931

Zionists

• „The main thing is to take Jews to Palestine, not to spend valuable time and money on election campaigns.“

• Palestine : new Jewish workers society

4th aliyah

• 1924-26• Over 30 thousand Jews – for the 1st time

more Polish Jews to Palestine than to America• 1926 – economy crisis in Palestine

Violent anti-semitism in the 1930´s

• 1934 – German-Polish non agression pact increase of Nazi influence

• 1935 – antidemocratic constitution• 1936 – economic discrimination– Government supports Jewish emigration• Madagascar

Violent anti-semitism in the 1930´s

• 1935-36– Interdiction of the Jewish ritual slaughter– „ghetto benches“, student murders

• 1937 „Aryan paragraph“ – Jews can´t make part of doctors or journalists associations

• Economic boycott• Regular pogroms• Greater poverty

WWII– September 1 1939 started by a German attack of Poland – Soviet army immedietaly occupied the former Russian part,

Germany took the Western Poland including Lodz and Upper Silesia; since 1941 Germany took the Soviet part

– Polish intellectual elite murdered– Mass murders of Polish people in the countryside– 6 200 000 Polish victims – Second largest Jewish community in Europe– 2 700 000 Polish Jewish victims (3 million Polish Jews before WWII)– 6 extermination camps – 3,5 milion Jews murdered here

• Auschwitz since 1941• Belzec, Sobibor, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Majdanek, Lublin since

1942

Warszaw Ghetto Uprising• Largest ghetto in Poland since

1940 – to concentrate Jews before the deportation to the extermination camps; labour

• 1943• Largest act of the Jewish

resistance• First mass uprising in Nazi

occupied Europe• Inhabitants that were not

murdered at the place sent to Treblinka

• 60 000 Jews !!!

• Holy Week, 1990´s• film adaptation of Jerzy

Andrzejewski´s book by Andrzej Wajda

• Roman Polanski, The Pianist, 2002– http://youtu.be/itR0-I9idX

k– http://youtu.be/kkvDWm

9t9DM– Wladyslaw Szpilman

• http://youtu.be/_vb9c1NxGdg

• http://youtu.be/ZOwP6k8fp0M