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
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