Polish-Jewish Relations as Reflected in Memoirs of the Interwar Period

Summary

INTRODUCTION

THE Jewish population-or ‘people of the Mosaic faith', as the 1931 census expressed it-made up 9.8 per cent of the inhabitants of Poland. They were not evenly distributed throughout the country: 76.4 per cent lived in towns. A quarter of Polish Jews lived in one of the five largest cities-Warsaw, Łódź, Vilna, Kraków, and Lwów-where they made up 30.6 per cent of the total population. In some voivodships the proportion of Jews in the total urban population was even higher: in the Polesie voivodship it was 49.2 per cent; in Wołyń 49.1 per cent; in Lublin 42.9 per cent; in Nowogródek 42.6 per cent. There were quite a few towns and small towns in interwar Poland where Nowogródek Jews constituted more than 50 per cent of the total number of residents. Apart from the voivodships where the above-mentioned cities were situated, Jews were also to be found in other parts of Poland in considerable numbers: they made up 13 per cent of the total population of the Lublin voivodship, 12.3 per cent of the Bialystok voivodship, 10.1 per cent of the Polesie voivodship, and 10 per cent of the Wołyń voivodship.

It was not only the pattern of their residence in Poland which distinguished Jews from other residents of that country, but also differences in religion, tradition, and lifestyle, their different social and professional structures, and the specific mode of dress of a substantial part of the Jewish community. If we also bear in mind the growing tensions in Polish-Jewish relations before the outbreak of the Second World War and the fate to which the Nazis subjected Jews during that war, then it is understandable that in virtually all the memoirs published on the interwar period after the war, Jews or the entire Jewish community in various places are mentioned to a greater or lesser degree.

The aim of this essay is to describe both the sporadic and the permanent contacts or links which united Poles and Jews, and also the differences, contradictions, and even antagonisms between the members of these two peoples. The study is based on everyday events noted by the actual participants in and witnesses of the facts and episodes described.