Some Observations on the Situation of the Jewish Minority in Poland during the Years 1918-1939

Summary

Contemporary history, especially political history which is written under the impact of recent events, has still a lively relevance, which is also - unfortunately - conditioned by current political needs. As a result, it frequently formulates its conclusions with a high degree of generality in a manner which is very often too unequivocal. This statement is especially true of issues which, until recently, still provoked bitter argument, and which even today are rarely treated with indifference, inviting, more often than not, opinions of an extreme nature which vary according to the author's point of view. The ‘Jewish problem’ undoubtedly falls into this category. We find confirmation of this both in popular works as well as in academic publications, and this judgement applies both to material published in Poland as well as to that appearing in print abroad. We frequently encounter in these works the categorical assertion that life for Jews during the Second Republic was either good or bad; or else the problem is approached from another direction, that of whether Poland was good or bad towards the Jews. In general, this kind of opinion is followed by a host of examples which are held to support the thesis. The adoption of such a standpoint, irrespective of the author's point of view and despite the legitimacy of the corroborative evidence, is - in my opinion - wrong. A judgement of this kind, failing to allow for a whole range of qualifiying factors, is not acceptable on methodological grounds. -After all without taking into consideration the evolution of the government's nationalities policy, and the religious, cultural, and above all the political and economic stratification of both the Jewish and the Polish populations, it can neither be correct nor incorrect, always assuming, of course, that such a thing as the ‘whole truth’ is possible in the writing of history. Wishing, therefore, to answer the question of the situation of the Jewish minority in interwar Poland, one needs first to carry out a certain process of division and classification.

A starting point for these deliberations is the answer to the - seemingly obvious - question, whom we should consider as belonging to this minority group.