F or the general populace in Poland the expulsion of the German - - PDF document

Violence against Jews in Poland, 1944–47: The State of Research and its Presentation

GRZEGORZ BERENDT

F

• r the general populace in Poland the expulsion of the German occupying

forces marked the end of an unprecedented period of persecution. However, it did not mean liberation and a return to a state of security. In the years 1944 to 1947 within the new borders of Poland, at least 30,000 people suffered violent deaths as a result of politically motivated killings or criminally motivated mur-

• ders. The victims included soldiers fighting for the

pro-independence under- ground, functionaries and supporters of the new regime,1 and those whom we

1 According to official publications dated before 1990 the balance sheet of irreversible losses in the years 1944–48 is as follows: officers of the State Security Service and Civic Militia, soldiers of the Internal Security Corps, Border Protection Troops and Polish Army, and members of the Civic Militia Volunteer Reserve—approx. 12,000; civilians associated with the communist regime—approx. 8000; Soviet soldiers—approx. 1,000; soldiers of the anti-communist, pro-independence underground—approx. 8,000; see Henryk Dominiczak, Ryszard Halaba, and Tadeusz Walichnowski, Z dziejów politycznych Polski 1944–1984, [On the political history of Poland 1944–1984] (Warsaw: Książka i Wiedza, 1984), 171–72; Ryszard Halaba, ed., Polegli w walce o władzę ludową. Materiały i zestawienia statystyczne [Those who fell for people’s power. Materials and statistical evaluations] (Warsaw: Książka i Wiedza, 1970), 7–72; Kazimierz Chociszewski, ed., Księga pamięci poległych funkcjonariuszy SB, MO, ORMO [Memorial book of fallen functionaries of the Security Service (SB), Civic Militia (MO), Volunteer Reserve of Civic Militia (ORMO)] (Warsaw: Komitet Obchodôw 25-lecia Milicji Obywatelskiej i Służby Bezpieczen̂stwa, 1971). Today, it is estimated that the

The Postwar Period

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Violence against Jews in Poland, 1944–47

can call the country’s ordinary citizens. The figures cited do not include soldiers fighting against the German forces until May 1945. Under these conditions, the end of the German occupation soon turned out to provide no guarantee of a peaceful life or security for the Jews. To date, the state of anomie in which the Polish populace functioned for months on end from 1944 to 1947 has been most fully described by Marcin Zaremba, who in 2012 introduced the very useful concept of the Great Fear.2 With regard to the situation of the Jews, the most comprehensive study was produced four years earlier by Jan Tomasz Gross.3 Today anyone who wishes to understand the situation in which the Jews found themselves in this period should first consult Zaremba’s work and only then that of Jan Tomasz Gross. Within the scope of the “final solution to the Jewish question,” the German Nazi state organized the murder of some three million Polish citizens. It was such an efficient operation that on the territories controlled by the Third Reich at most only 2 percent of Polish Jews survived. Consequently, the few survivors were all the more in need of security. As we know, it was not granted to them. Some became a target for aggression for the very same reasons as the victims of robbery, homicide, and murder of members of other ethnic groups. However, for Jews there were very often specific reasons behind the antipathy, hatred, or active hostility shown toward them. Homegrown criminals, who had been actively involved in the machin- ery of the Holocaust and were often its material beneficiaries, aimed to oblit- erate Jews who had witnessed their deeds. Others accused Jewish survivors

• f collaborating with the Soviets and with native communists in opposition

to Polish independence. The strangest manifestation of hostility to Jews

number of people killed in fighting and repression alone was as many as 50,000, though it is important to remember that this figure also includes soldiers in the Polish underground who were killed in the Eastern Borderlands following the reinvasion of the Red Army; see Marek

• J. Chodakiewicz, Po Zagładzie. Stosunki polsko-żydowskie 1944–1947 (Warsaw: Instytut

Pamięci Narodowej. Komisja Ścigania Zbrodni Przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu, 2008), 36. This was originally published in English as After the Holocaust: Polish-Jewish Conflict in the Wake of World War II (Boulder, CO: East European Monographs, 2003). 2 Marcin Zaremba, Wielka trwoga. Polska 1944–1947 [The great fear. Poland 1944–1947] (Krakôw: Wydawnictwo Znak: Instytut Studiôw Politycznych Polskiej Akademii Nauk, 2012). 3 Jan Tomasz Gross, Strach. Antysemityzm w Polsce tuż po wojnie. Historia moralnej zapaści (Krakôw: Znak, 2008)—originally published in a somewhat different form in English as Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland after Auschwitz: An Essay in Historical Interpretation (New York: Random House, 2006).

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revived accusations of ritual murder. A transformed version of this “black legend,” whose proponents emerged in more than a dozen large cities, not to mention smaller places, was the most extreme manifestation of aggressive anti-Semitism to have cast its shadow on postwar Polish–Jewish relations. Its victims’ only “crime”—as during the German occupation—was the fact that they were born Jewish. Not surprisingly, it is the crimes that were clearly prompted by racism that have occupied and continue to occupy the attention

• f commentators.

The conditions for conducting historical research in Poland before 1989 meant that the earliest studies on the real reasons for pogroms and other dis- plays of anti-Jewish violence were described mostly in books published outside Poland, perhaps with one exception—an essay written in 1983 by Jôzef Orlicki, a former employee of the communist security apparatus in Western Pomerania who had spent many years working on “Zionist issues.”4 Foreign publications took a different approach. The first to write at length about such violence were journalists visiting Poland in the first few years after the war.5 Then, in the 1950s and 1960s, one could find remarks about this question in memory-books published by emigrants from the destroyed Jewish communities of Poland. In his memoir published in 1959, Jonas Turkow detailed events from the first year after the German occupation ended.6 So too did Salomon Strauss-Marko7 and Yitzhak Zuckerman,8 a few years later. Their information came from the press and accounts of Polish citizens. The fact that these first books were published in Yiddish limited their range of influence.

4 Jôzef Orlicki, Szkice z dziejów stosunków polsko-żydowskich 1918–1949 [Sketches on the history of Polish-Jewish relations 1918–1949] (Szczecin: Krajowa Agencja Wydawnicza, 1983). 5 For example, Ch. Szoszkes, Poyln—1946 (Eyndrukn fun a rayze) [Poland—1946 (Impressions of a journey)] (Buenos Aires: Tsentral-farband fun Poylishe Yidn in Argentine, 1946); Sz. L. Sznajderman, Tsvishn shrek un hofenung (A rayze iber dem nayem Poyln) [Between terror and hope (A journey in the New Poland)] (Buenos Aires: Tsentral- farband fun Poylishe Yidn in Argentina, 1947); P. Nowik, Oyrope tsvishn milkhome un sholem [Europe between war and peace], (New York: Ikkuf Farlag, 1948); M. Tsanin, Iber shtayn un

• shtok. A rayze iber hundert khoyrev-gevorene kehilot in Poyln [Over stone and branch. A jour-

ney to a hundred destroyed Jewish communities in Poland] (Tel Aviv: Letste nayes, 1952). 6 Jonas Turkow, Nokh der bafrayung (Zikhroynes) [After the liberation (Memoirs)] (Buenos Aires: Tsentral farband fun Poylishe Yidn in Argentine, 1959). 7 Salomon Strauss-Marko, Di geshikhte fun yidishn yishuv in nokhmiklhomdikn Poyln [The history of the Jewish community in postwar Poland] (Tel Aviv: Aroysgegebn fun meḥaber, 1987). 8 Yitzhak Zuckerman (“Antek”), A Surplus of Memory: Chronicle of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).

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Violence against Jews in Poland, 1944–47

The information in them came from the press and from the testimony of local inhabitants. Scholars who subsequently analyzed postwar events include Lucjan Dobroszycki,9 Michał (Mosze) Chęcin̂ski,10 and Marian Muszkat.11 Israel Gutman explored the issue in his short history of Jews in Poland after 1944, as did other historians from Israel and the United States. A major contribution to understanding the circumstances of aggression toward Jews in postwar Poland is found in David Engel’s article, “Patterns of Anti-Jewish Violence in Poland 1944–1946” (1998).12 Engel essentially pro- duced the first academic statistical analysis of incidences of murders commit- ted in that period whose victims were Jews. Similarly, and writing in Polish in more recent years, Marek J. Chodakiewicz explored the same topic,13 but also referenced territories that belonged to Poland before September 1, 1939. Probably the best-known work on this issue is, as alluded to above, Jan Tomasz Gross’s Fear, published in English in 2006 and in Polish in 2008.14 In Poland itself, Alina Cała, in a brief work published in 1992, was one of the first to write about the antipathy shown to Jews after the war.15 Evidence

• f this antipathy still remained in the minds of the twenty-seven witnesses

whom she interviewed several decades after the war. The tragedy of the Kielce pogrom was also touched on in Krystyna Kersten’s monograph, Narodziny sys- temu władzy (The birth of the system of power).16

9 Lucjan Dobroszycki, “Restoring Jewish Life in Post-war Poland,” Soviet-Jewish Affairs, 3 (1973): 58–72; “Re-emergence and Decline of a Community: The Numerical Size of the Jewish Population in Poland, 1944–1947,” YIVO Annual 21 (1993). 10 Michał Chęcin̂ski, Poland. Communism–Nationalism–Anti-Semitism (New York: Karz-Cohl Publishers, 1982). 11 Marian Muszkat, Philo-Semitic and Anti-Jewish Attitudes in Post-Holocaust Poland (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1992). 12 David Engel, “Patterns of Anti-Jewish Violence in Poland 1944–1946,” Yad Vashem Studies 26 (1998): 43–85. 13 Marek J. Chodakiewicz, Żydzi i Polacy 1918–1955. Współistnienie—Zagłada—Komunizm [Jews and Poles 1918–1955. Co-existence—Genocide—Communism] (Warsaw: Fronda, 2000); Marek J. Chodakiewicz, ed., Ejszyszki, kulisy zajść w Ejszyszkach. Epilog stosunków polsko-żydowskich na Kresach, 1944–45. Wspomnienia-dokumenty [Eyshishok, the back- ground of the violence in Eyshishok. An epilogue to Polish-Jewish relations in the Eastern Borderlands, 1944–1945] (Warsaw: Fronda, 2002); Chodakiewicz, Po Zagładzie. 14 See footnote 3. 15 Alina Cała, Wizerunek Żyda w polskiej kulturze ludowej (Warsaw: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, 1992), English edition: The Image of the Jew in Polish Folk Culture (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1995). 16 Krystyna Kersten, Narodziny systemu władzy. Polska 1943–1948 [The beginnings of a power

• system. Poland, 1943–1948] (Paris: Libella, 1986).

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Part Two Historiographic Questions

Four incidences of mass or organized aggression toward Jews are covered in detailed monographs. Bożena Szaynok was the first to write at length on the Kielce pogrom of July 4, 1946.17 Her findings were supplemented by other publica- tions,18 including two volumes of analyses and materials published by the Institute

• f National Remembrance.19 At about the same time, though providing less thor-
• ugh research, Krystyna Kersten also explored the causes and consequences of

the Kielce pogrom,20 a massacre that for the past quarter century has received particular attention. This is understandable, considering that forty-two Jewish vic- tims were killed within the city of Kielce and about thirty more were murdered in the surrounding area. Scholars have mentioned the significance of the criminal behavior of soldiers and civic militia functionaries, the criminal and hostile behav- ior of some of the civilian population of Kielce, the incomprehensible passivity of local communist security service agents and political decision makers, and also the far-reaching consequences of the panic that overcame the Jewish community when they realized that once again they were unsafe, even in a relatively large city, and that those who should have been defending them were among the aggressors. A few years after the scholarship on the Kielce pogrom was published, two

• ther mass actions against Jews finally acquired their own researchers and ana-

lysts: the incidents that took place in June and August 1945, in Rzeszôw and Krakôw, respectively. Anna Cichopek wrote about the pogrom in Krakôw,21 and Krzysztof Kaczmarski produced a study on the earlier incident in Rzeszôw.22

17 Bożena Szaynok, Pogrom Żydów w Kielcach 4 lipca 1946 [The pogrom of Jews in Kielce on 4 July 4, 1946] (Warsaw: Bellona, 1992). 18 Tadeusz Wiącek, Zabić Żyda. Kulisy i tajemnice pogrom kieleckiego 1946 [Kill the Jew. The background and secrets of the Kiecle pogrom] (Kielce: Wydawnictwo DCF, 1992); Stanisław Meducki and Zenon Wrona, eds., Antyżydowskie wydarzenia kieleckie 4 lipca 1946

• roku. Dokumenty i materiały [The anti-Semitic events in Kielce on July 4, 1946. Documents

and materials] (Kielce: Urząd Miasta Kielce, 1992); and Kielce—July 4, 1946. Background, Context and Events (Toronto: The Polish Educational Foundation in North America, 1996). 19 Łukasz Kamin̂ski and Jan Żaryn, eds., Wokół pogromu kieleckiego [On the Kielce pogrom] (Warsaw: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, Komisja Ścigania Zbrodni przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu, 2006), Leszek Bukowski, Andrzej Jankowski, and Jan Żaryn, eds., Wokół pogromu kieleckiego [On the Kielce pogrom], vol. 2 (Warsaw: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, Komisja Ścigania Zbrodni przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu, 2008). 20 Her most detailed work is Polacy, Żydzi, komunizm. Anatomia półprawd 1939–1968 [Poles, Jews, communism. The anatomy of a half-truth 1939–1968] (Warsaw: Niezależna Oficyna Wydawnicza, 1992). 21 Anna Cichopek, Pogrom Żydów w Krakowie 11 sierpnia 1945 r. [The pogrom of Jews in Krakôw, August 11, 1945] (Warsaw: Żydowski Instytut Historyczny, 2000). 22 Krzysztof Kaczmarski, Pogrom, którego nie było. Rzeszów, 11–12 czerwca 1945 r. Fakty- hipotezy-dokumenty [The pogrom which didn’t take place. Rzeszôw, June 11-12, 1945. Facts, hypothesis, documents] (Rzeszôw: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, Komisja Ścigania Zbrodni przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu, Oddział w Rzeszowie, 2008).

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Violence against Jews in Poland, 1944–47

A selection of sources on displays of aggression was published in a collection on postwar Jewish life in Poland by Alina Cała and Helena Datner.23 The topic has also been discussed by Natalia Aleksiun24 and August Grabski.25 In 2011, Andrzej Żbikowski compiled a countrywide-scale work on the consequences of aggression by identifying causes and pretexts, phases, and numbers of victims.26 A year later Alina Cała published a comprehensive book, covering several centuries, on the causes and manifestations of antipathy toward Jews on Polish territory. By necessity, in this work she devoted relatively little space to the years 1944–1947;27 however, she described the same issue far more extensively in 2014, in a publication about the “Special Commissions” set up by the Central Committee of Jews in Poland.28 Incidents of postwar aggres- sion toward Jews were also discussed in studies published in the past few years by Joanna Tokarska-Bakir29 and Jolanta Żyndul.30

23 Alina Cała and Helena Datner-Śpiewak, eds., Dzieje Żydów w Polsce 1944–1968. Teksty źrôdłowe [The history of Jews in Poland, 1944–1968. Sources] (Warsaw: Żydowski Instytut Historyczny, 1997). 24 Natalia Aleksiun, Dokąd dalej? Ruch syjonistyczny w Polsce (1944–1950) [Where to proceed? The Zionist movement in Poland, 1944–1950] (Warsaw: Centrum Badania i Nauczania Dziejôw Żydôw w Polsce im. Mordechaja Anielewicza, 2002). 25 August Grabski, Żydowski ruch kombatancki w Polsce w latach 1944–1949 [The Jewish combatant movement in Poland in the years 1944–1949] (Warsaw: Trio, 2002); Centralny Komitet Żydów w Polsce (1944–1950). Historia polityczna [The Central Committee of Jews in Poland, 1944–1950. A political history] (Warsaw: Żydowski Instytut Historyczny im. Emanuela Ringelbluma, 2015). 26 Andrzej Żbikowski, “Morderstwa popełniane na Żydach w pierwszych latach po wojnie” [Murders of Jews in the first years after the war] in Następstwa zagłady Żydów. Polska 1944– 2010, ed. Feliks Tych and Monika Adamczyk-Garbowska (Lublin: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytet Marii Curie-Skłodowskiej and Żydowski Instytut Historyczny im. Emanuela Ringelbluma, 2011). English version, Jewish Presence in Absence: Aftermath of the Holocaust in Poland, 1945– 2010 (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, International Institute for Holocaust Research, 2012). 27 Alina Cała, Żyd—wróg odwieczny? Antysemitizm w Polsce i jego źródła [The Jew—an eternal enemy? Anti-Semitism in Poland and its origins] (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Nisza, 2012). 28 Alina Cała, Ochrona bezpieczeństwa fizycznego Żydów w Polsce powojennej. Komisje spec- jalne przy centralnym Komitecie Żydów w Polsce [The physical protection of Jews in post- war Poland. The Special Commissions of the Central Committee of Jews in Poland] (Warsaw: Żydowski Instytut Historyczny im. Emanuela Ringelbluma, 2014). 29 Joanna Tokarska-Bakir, Legendy o krwi. Antropologia przesądu [The myths about blood. The anthropology of a prejudice] (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo WAB, 2008); Okrzyki pogromowe. Szkice z antropologii historycznej Polski lat 1939–1946 [Pogrom shouts. Sketches of the anthropologi- cal history of Poland in the years 1939–1946] (Wołowiec: Wydawnictwo “Czarne,” 2012). 30 Jolanta Żyndul, Kłamstwo krwi. Legenda mordu rytualnego na ziemiach polskich w XIX i XX wieku [The falsehood of blood. The myth of ritual murder on the Polish lands in the nine- teenth and twentieth centuries] (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Cyklady, 2011).

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Part Two Historiographic Questions

Research on regional incidents includes a highly significant, if not definitive, work by Adam Kopciowski on the Lublin region.31 Recently, Mariusz Bechta wrote in detail about the attack by partisans on Parczew on February 5, 1946;32 his essay demonstrates how this particular attack fits the definition of both a pogrom and an act of revenge, aimed at people and insti- tutions belonging to the regime, but in which all local Jews were treated as the enemy regardless of their individual responsibility for the way the communists were exercising power in the town and the surrounding area. In alphabetical order, the Polish scholars Mariusz Bechta, Alina Cała, Anna Cichopek, Krzysztof Kaczmarski, Adam Kopciowski, Bożena Szaynok, Joanna Tokarska-Bakir, and Andrzej Żbikowski have published detailed source analyses that describe in context postwar incidences of aggression toward Jews. Other scholars of note have within the scope of their research recorded facts relevant to the killing of Jews in various locations in Poland after July 1944. These include Maciej Korkuć,33 who wrote about the circumstances in which more than a dozen Jews were killed outside Krościenko in May 1946, and Dariusz Libionka, author of a text on the circumstances under which Chaim Hirszman was killed in Lublin in March 1946. Research conducted over the past three decades has the forms, and to some extent the scale, of patently anti-Semitic behavior. However, analyses have faced obstacles in establishing the true circumstances under which most

• f the murdered Jews were killed between July 1944 and the beginning of 1947.

Without such information, we cannot establish how many Jews were killed because of their ethnicity and how many died for the same reasons as the thou- sands of other inhabitants of Poland who were killed in this period. It has been essential for historians and other specialists since 2000 to gain access to the files of the state security service, the civic militia, the civil and military prosecution service, the courts, and the Polish People’s Republic. Since the files of local administration services and political organizations became accessible, the political and social context can now be recreated. The files of

31 Adam Kopciowski, “Zajścia antyżydowskie na Lubelszczyżnie w pierwszych latach po dru- giej wojnie światowej” [Anti-Semitic violence in the Lublin area in the first years after the Second World War], Zagłada Żydów 3 (2007): 178–207. 32 Mariusz Bechta, Pogrom czy odwet? Akcja Zbrojna Zrzeszenia “Wolność i Niezawisłość” w Parczewie 5 lutego 1946 r. [Pogrom or revenge? The armed action of the Wolność i Niezawisłość

• rganization in Parczew on February 5, 1946] (Poznan̂: Zysk i S-ka Wydawnictwo, 2014).

33 Maciej Korkuć, “Horror podmalowany” (Painted a spruced-up horror), Tygodnik Powszechny no. 9 (2008).

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the Soviet special services then operating within Poland are still inaccessible, but they may ultimately also cast light on other incidents that none of the afore- mentioned scholars has yet researched. If we compare statistics under the category of Jewish deaths as a result

• f aggression aimed at Jews in 1944–1947 with cases known to us, we can

conclude that the figures provided by David Engel are most strongly based

• n sources. He has presented statistical records of incidents of the murder
• f Jews mentioned in the press, in documents of the Central Committee of

Jews in Poland, and in documents issued by the state civil administration. I should stress that although seventeen years have passed since Engel’s text was published, the absolute majority of incidents have not been subjected to historical analysis based on research of archival material. Certain figures in the sources have not yet been fully confirmed in the incomplete materials known to us. These include, for instance, the figure of 353 Jews who were murdered in 1945, or the approximately 200 persons apparently killed in armed attacks on trains. So far, we lack an analytical record of all known cases of aggression against Jews that resulted in death. Alina Cała has gone furthest, in her book from 2014, in citing the largest number of source quotations with descriptions of specific killings. Only when a complete record based on source materials has been pro- duced will we be able to cite a more accurate minimum number of victims. We shall never know the full figure, but we can already maintain that the existing information citing 1,500–2,000 or even 3,000 fatalities does not result from full research of accurate sources. I cannot say how the authors reached these figures because they have not presented their methods for establishing them. An initial list of recorded instances of killings provides us with confirmation that between 1944 and 1947 about four hundred Jews were killed within the new borders of Poland, for a variety of reasons. Additionally, a study about people regarded as builders of the new regime from 1944 to 1948 cites forty-six people with Jewish names who were killed;34 recent sources indi- cate that at least two other persons included in this publication were Jews as well, although at the time of their death they had Polish surnames.35 These examples imply that there may be more cases of this kind. If we compare the

34 Halaba, Polegli w walce, 73–564. 35 They were Wanda Brzozowska (real name Dora Goldkorn), see Halaba, Polegli w walce, 101; Folks-Sztyme no. 3 (January 1947): 6; and Lieutenant Henryk Pszenica, see Halaba, Polegli w walce, 534; Dos Naye Lebn no. 28 (1946): 9.

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circumstances of the deaths of Jews who had no connection with the communist regime with the deaths of those who were its functionaries, we can see that representatives of the former category were often attacked and killed in groups, whereas most so-called “supporters of people’s power” died alongside their political comrades of other ethnicities, which leads us to con- clude that they died for political rather than racial reasons, or as the victims of common banditry. Regardless of how researchers ultimately establish the minimum number

• f Jews killed, we should note that in many of the cases known to us from

descriptions, some of the potential victims only escaped death because their attackers ran away, or thought they were dead when they were only badly

• wounded. These victims clearly owed their lives to luck, rather than to the

mercy or sympathy of the aggressors. This means that the number of fatalities resulting from known cases of attacks may be even greater. In view of the state of research, I believe that the curators of the postwar gallery at the Museum of the History of Polish Jews were right in their decision not to include estimates for the number of victims of postwar aggression. The descriptions to be found in the postwar gallery of the deaths of Jews in places such as Bolesławiec, Irena, Parczew, and Sokoły are very brief. However, these and other incidents were highly significant, because they were reported by the various political strands of the Jewish press. These press reports undoubtedly contributed to the intensification of a sense of alienation and threat among survivors who were aware that antipathy or hostility were present in many places, and that their personal negative experiences were not isolated incidents but part of a wider trend. In time, some of the descriptions and content presented by the muse- um’s multimedia displays and exhibits will have to be changed in accor- dance with new research findings. This is inevitable. A typical example is the attack by partisans on Parczew on February 5, 1946. We can already modify the description, as we now know that the Jewish victims were killed because they had contributed to the establishment of the local communist apparatus, and died because they were at their official posts when the attack took place. Had these positions been held by people of a different ethnicity, they would certainly have been killed, as were thousands of Polish citizens who “died in the struggle for people’s power” throughout the country, start- ing in 1944. The exhibition’s display on postwar aggression toward Jews clearly presents the absurdity of some of the accusations aimed at them, and the

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Violence against Jews in Poland, 1944–47

destructive intensity of the anti-Jewish mood that prevailed within parts of Polish society. Without this section of the exhibition it is impossible to under- stand why 150,000 Jews saw no future for themselves in Poland and hurriedly left it, and why those who remained never forgot the events that came to be symbolized by the Kielce pogrom of July 4, 1946.

Translated from Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones