Antony Polonsky
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- February 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781906764395
- eISBN:
- 9781800340763
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781906764395.003.0011
- Subject:
- Religion, Judaism
This chapter studies the situation of the Jews from the end of the Second World War to the collapse of the communist system. The Second World War left the world of east European Jewry devastated. ...
More
This chapter studies the situation of the Jews from the end of the Second World War to the collapse of the communist system. The Second World War left the world of east European Jewry devastated. Although the Nazis had been defeated, they had succeeded in murdering a large proportion of the Jews of eastern Europe. The end of the wartime Grand Alliance and the increasingly repressive character of the regimes in the Soviet Union and in Poland form the background against which attempts were made to rebuild the war-torn societies of eastern Europe and to recreate Jewish life. The Nazi occupation left a landscape laid waste by the effort to impose a racially structured New Order and the violent and often fratricidal resistance that it elicited. The departure of the Germans did not lead to the end of hostilities, and guerrilla war against the communist authorities continued in Poland, Ukraine, and Lithuania.Less
This chapter studies the situation of the Jews from the end of the Second World War to the collapse of the communist system. The Second World War left the world of east European Jewry devastated. Although the Nazis had been defeated, they had succeeded in murdering a large proportion of the Jews of eastern Europe. The end of the wartime Grand Alliance and the increasingly repressive character of the regimes in the Soviet Union and in Poland form the background against which attempts were made to rebuild the war-torn societies of eastern Europe and to recreate Jewish life. The Nazi occupation left a landscape laid waste by the effort to impose a racially structured New Order and the violent and often fratricidal resistance that it elicited. The departure of the Germans did not lead to the end of hostilities, and guerrilla war against the communist authorities continued in Poland, Ukraine, and Lithuania.
Joanna Michlic-coren
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- February 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781874774600
- eISBN:
- 9781800340701
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781874774600.003.0019
- Subject:
- Religion, Judaism
This chapter examines the Kielce pogrom. On July 4, 1946, the most horrifying outbreak of anti-Jewish violence in post-war Poland took place in Kielce. On that day, ordinary citizens of this central ...
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This chapter examines the Kielce pogrom. On July 4, 1946, the most horrifying outbreak of anti-Jewish violence in post-war Poland took place in Kielce. On that day, ordinary citizens of this central Polish town, together with soldiers and militiamen, murdered forty Polish Jews and injured more than a hundred. This was not an isolated act of anti-Jewish violence in this early post-war period, but one of many such events which took place between 1945 and 1947. Nevertheless, it was striking because of its dimensions, because of the brutality with which it was accompanied, and because of the participation of local forces representing the new communist authority. The Kielce pogrom was the most powerful indicator that Jews were not to be welcomed to restore their lives among the ethnic Polish population. The chapter then assesses the extent to which anti-Jewish attitudes were prevalent among Polish society during and after the Kielce pogrom.Less
This chapter examines the Kielce pogrom. On July 4, 1946, the most horrifying outbreak of anti-Jewish violence in post-war Poland took place in Kielce. On that day, ordinary citizens of this central Polish town, together with soldiers and militiamen, murdered forty Polish Jews and injured more than a hundred. This was not an isolated act of anti-Jewish violence in this early post-war period, but one of many such events which took place between 1945 and 1947. Nevertheless, it was striking because of its dimensions, because of the brutality with which it was accompanied, and because of the participation of local forces representing the new communist authority. The Kielce pogrom was the most powerful indicator that Jews were not to be welcomed to restore their lives among the ethnic Polish population. The chapter then assesses the extent to which anti-Jewish attitudes were prevalent among Polish society during and after the Kielce pogrom.
