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> I multiple times had exchanges online where Poles absolutely refused to acknowledge any antisemitism was ever present and that everything was the Germans’ fau

by Tade0 2y ago

> I multiple times had exchanges online where Poles absolutely refused to acknowledge any antisemitism was ever present and that everything was the Germans’ fault Perhaps it's just that antisemitism didn't stand out among other -isms and frankly paled in comparison to nazi industrialized genocide. Make no mistake - it was there - but pre-WW2 Poland was actually fairly diverse with ethnic Poles being 69% of the population and the rest consisting of (population numbers in descending order) Ukrainians, Jews, Belarusians and Germans. It was a melting pot of mutual antipathy. Case in point: to this day in literature there are two terms for the largest of these minorities - Ukrainians and the Rus' (the generally agreed on definition notwithstanding), the difference being that the latter did not display ambitions of forming an independent state. For a fledgling state any such notion was of course dangerous and Ukrainians were treated in accordance to that (badly).

surfingdino 2y ago
There's a long history of persecutions of Jews in Europe. They found Poland relatively liberal and settled there. Germans chose Poland to make it their graveyard. Poland is not immune from antisemitism, but there is also a long history or Poles and Jews living together and Poles helping Jews during the Holocaust. Poland was also used as a route to transport tens of thousands of Jews from the failing Soviet Union during Gorbachev rule when Israel set up a resettlement programme. Antisemitism has always been used by those seeking to gain power through ripping up the society to shreds and it was not and is not limited to Poland.
Detrytus 2y ago
And for Jews specifically, it might sound weird, but in Poland they were actually better off than average citizen. It's just an artifact of our history: even in 18th century, before partitioning of Poland the social structures we like this: Polish nobles > Jewish bankers, merchants, clerks, lawyers, doctors > Polish peasants. This structure persisted through 19th century into the 1920s and 1930s. You could say, that Poland basically outsourced most of the middle-class jobs to Jews. In the late 1930s Poland actually ran kind of "affirmative action" to get more Polish students accepted to Polish universities, which had pretty high percentage of Jewish students: 15-25%, compared to 8.5% of Jews in general population. All this naturally created some outrage against Jews, with Polish people feeling like a second class citizens in their own country, sometimes (but rarely) resulting in violence.

by Tade0 2y ago

surfingdino 2y ago

There's a long history of persecutions of Jews in Europe. They found Poland relatively liberal and settled there. Germans chose Poland to make it their graveyard. Poland is not immune from antisemitism, but there is also a long history or Poles and Jews living together and Poles helping Jews during the Holocaust. Poland was also used as a route to transport tens of thousands of Jews from the failing Soviet Union during Gorbachev rule when Israel set up a resettlement programme. Antisemitism has always been used by those seeking to gain power through ripping up the society to shreds and it was not and is not limited to Poland.

Detrytus 2y ago

And for Jews specifically, it might sound weird, but in Poland they were actually better off than average citizen. It's just an artifact of our history: even in 18th century, before partitioning of Poland the social structures we like this: Polish nobles > Jewish bankers, merchants, clerks, lawyers, doctors > Polish peasants. This structure persisted through 19th century into the 1920s and 1930s. You could say, that Poland basically outsourced most of the middle-class jobs to Jews. In the late 1930s Poland actually ran kind of "affirmative action" to get more Polish students accepted to Polish universities, which had pretty high percentage of Jewish students: 15-25%, compared to 8.5% of Jews in general population. All this naturally created some outrage against Jews, with Polish people feeling like a second class citizens in their own country, sometimes (but rarely) resulting in violence.