The Lure of Eastern Europe to Jews and What Developed

 Nadene Goldfoot

POLAND                                                         

From the founding of the Kingdom of Poland in 1025 until the early years of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth created in 1569, Poland was the most tolerant country in Europe.  Historians have used the label paradisus iudaeorum (Latin for "Paradise of the Jews"). Poland became a shelter for Jews persecuted and expelled from various European countries and the home to the world's largest Jewish community of the time. According to some sources, about three-quarters of the world's Jews lived in Poland by the middle of the 16th century.

The 1st  Jewish settler into Poland was in the 9th century before Poland's actual creation,  and originated either from Germany where Jews were found by 321 CE and emperor Constantine issuing regulations of community with rabbis  or Bohemia (which became  Czechoslovakia with Jews in Prague from 900s,  or the came from the South where the Kingdom of Kiev and the Byzantine Empire (Byzantium was the Eastern Roman Empire with their capital in Constantinople which was so large that it included Palestine.  They held onto it up to 637 where Jews also were living) lay.  No one is sure.  

                                                                    

      German Jews forced to wear this get-up in 13th century-men that were far from being                      dunces with such hats, who produced an Einstein by 19th century.  

I'd bet on more coming from Germany, especially those along the Rhineland. I say this because Ashkenazi Jews speak Yiddish, a combination of Hebrew and German.   They were reinforced by Jews of the Khazar Kingdom of those days.  That was a well-known kingdom of amazing repute that lay on the Silk Road to China.  The kingdom was visited by Jews, Muslims and Christians because of trading business.  The "king" of Khazaria had to make a decision as to what religion his kingdom would accept-being pressured by a few, and chose Judaism.  It became a haven for Jews under duress.  The period of the Dark Ages was a period of Jewish traders who had to travel a lot.  They opened up  the areas to civilizing influences.  Interestingly, they would tend to marry women of the areas they passed through on many an occasion, according to our deep ancestry DNA testing of today.  

In Poland, the legend is that Jews were given a charter in 905.  Polish coins created in the 12th and 13th century were made by Jewish mint-masters that bear Hebrew inscriptions.  It shows that Jews were significant in their economic life.  

                                                                       

The Tartars invaded in 1240 and utterly devastated Poland.  To restore the economy, the kings encouraged the immigration of merchants from Germany.  They were followed and accompanied by Jews, who brought with them their language, the Ashkenazi ritual, and their passionate devotion to Talmud study. ( which is the studying of Jewish Law of the Torah-Old Testament)  This became the dominant feature in Polish Jewry.   A model charter of protection was issued by Boleslaw the Pious in 1264.  This in turn was extended by Casimir the Great to all of Poland by the Statute of Kalisz;

To White Russia  in 1364 (Belorussia) Jews came here from Poland,

 Little/Lesser Poland in 1364 ( southern and south-eastern Poland. Its capital and largest city is Kraków.)

Lithuania in 1321, 1388-1389.  1398 settled by 10,000 Karaites (Jewish sect who refused the Oral Law)  who were given a charter in 1529, 

Ukraine:  Entered between 9th to 12th century from Khazaria, Caliphate and Byzantium, also from Central Europe in 14th to 15th century, and Poland from 16th to 17th century.  Thousands of Jews were killed in the HAIDAMAK Cossack disorders of 1768 in the Ukraine.  At Kiev in the ravine of Babi Yar, tens of thousands of Jews were killed in September 1941 by the Nazis.  The place was used by the Soviet poet, Evgeni Yevtuschenko in his poem, Babi Yar 1962., later used in a symphony and a novel.  No memorial was erected to remember all these Jews until the 1980's.  

Russia: In 986 Jews lived here since classical times ie, in Crimea, Caucasus, Khazars, Lithuania,, Turkestan, Ukraine, etc.  By 986, the Duke Vladimir converted to Christianity.  They put up a Jewish gate in the 12th century when the Jewish quarter was looted in 1113.  By 1786, all Jews were restricted to live in Pale of Settlement. 

The Charters regulated legal conditions.  economic employment laws, judicial laws between Jews and Christians,  safeguards for Jewish life and property, freedom of trade, etc.                                                          

On the other hand, the German traders introduced anti-Jewish sentiments and the growth of the Jewish population  led to complaints from the clergy.  As a result, Vladislauis Jagiello (1386-1434)  refused to confirm the Jewish privileges.  

There were Blood Libels (the accusations that Jews murdered Christians in order to obtain blood needed in their rituals, like at Passover) at Posen in 1399 and Cracow in 1407, a host desecration charge in 1400, and in the following year,, students in Cracow began an anti-Jewish riot.  In 1454, the Jewish privileges were largely abolished, and in the same period, attacks on the Jews took place in many cities, such as Cracow, Lvov, and Posen, where Jews were regarded by the merchants as economic competitors.  In many places they were expelled, such as in Warsaw in 1483, Cracow in 1491.  However, at such a time, Jews had been playing an important part in keeping the commerce in good condition.                                      

  1492  Spanish Inquisition with Pope's Proclamation Against Jews                       

Sigismund III of Poland, Lithuania and Sweden Sigismund III Vasa was King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania from 1587 to 1632 as well as King of Sweden and Grand Duke of Finland from 1592 to 1599. He was the first Polish sovereign from the House of Vasa.               

Under the influence of the Counter-reformation, reaction set in under his successor, Sigismund III (1587-1632) who nevertheless, protected Jews from the Church (especially the Jesuit) persecutions.  Conditions improved by the 16th century under the liberal Sigismund (1500-1848), and under Sigismund II Augustus (1548-1572) when Jewish revenue collectors, bankers, physicians, etc. occupied key-positions in the economic and political life.  From this period onward, Poland was a renowned center of rabbinic study and its talmudic scholars profoundly affected Jewry as a whole. For fiscal reasons, the foundations were laid for the Autonom of the organized communities, called Kehillot,  which became better situated and economically stronger,  while the struggle with the cities intensified.  Probably the closest thing we have to a Kehillot in the  USA is the Jewish Community Center and its many activities .  

The Kehillot joined  Polish forces to become provincial councils and reached their climax in the COUNCIL OF THE FOUR LANDS that was abolished in 1764. In other words, they had political influence with the politics of the land for its betterment.  This strengthening of reaction led to changes in the economic life of Polish Jewry, especially in the villages, where the Jewish lessees were exploited by the nobles to oppress the peasants, especially in the Ukraine, which then was a Polish suburb.

                                                                      

The Jews, relying on the protection of their charters, appealed for royal protection, and with the mediation of the king, obtained agreements and concessions.  Stephen Bathory (1576-1586) confirmed Jewish privileges and sharply attacked Blood Libel.   Stephen Báthory was Voivode of Transylvania, Prince of Transylvania, King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania. The son of Stephen VIII Báthory and a member of the Hungarian Báthory noble family, Báthory was a ruler of Transylvania in the 1570s, defeating another challenger for that title, Gáspár Bekes.

                                                                            

 Now, what they call "privileges," are simply rights that everyone else had at that time.  All this time, countries were practicing RACIAL DISCRIMINATION.  JEWISH RIGHTS did not matter at all, till the kings wanted something from the  Jews.  Charters were the 1st form of BLACK RIGHTS MATTER-but for Jews, 1st people to be discriminated against.  

                               WORST TIMES FOR JEWS

                                                                  

Bogdan Chmielnicki (1593-1657) was a Cossack leader who in 1648 led the uprising of the Cossacks and Ukrainian masses against Polish landowners, who were the Catholic clergy, and the Jews.  The rebellion destroyed hundreds of Jewish communities and the brutal murder of hundreds of thousands of Jews whose only way of escaping death was to accept baptism.  744 communities were reported to be wiped out.  The horror of these events sent a shock throughout Jewry and this gained support for the false Messiah of that day, Shabetai Tsevi.  The Ukrainians have made Chmielnicki a national hero, but to us, he was another pre-Hitler type.  

The leasing of estates became a major source of livelihood, and the lessees employed many other Jews as subordinates.  This was one of the causes of the massacres at the time of the  CHMIELNICKI uprising in 1648-1649.  The uprising destroyed hundreds of communities.  During the latter 17th century, the kings of Poland endeavored to foster the rehabilitation of the Jewish  communities but were frustrated by the general anti-Jewish atmosphere.  Economic restrictions, pogroms, and Ritual Murder charges were recurrent.  The position was particularly bad under the Saxon kings of 1697-1763 when there was a series of Ritual Murder trials, attempts at forced conversion, expulsions, riots, etc.   

                                                KABBALAH 

The influence of the Kabbalah was strong in Poland from the 16th century on.  In the 17th century, Polish Jewry was profoundly influenced by the messianic claims of Shabbatai Tzevi , a false but famous prophet or messiah, and thereafter, was a center of Shabbetains.  It was the start of a bad reputations religiously to other Jews.  This culminated in the strange movement led by Jacob Frank, which ultimately resulted in an attack on the Talmud and large numbers of nominal conversions. 

                                                                   

 On the other hand, this atmosphere resulted also in the emergence in the mid-18th century of the HASIDIM in the act of compensating for the bad move.  As a result of the WAR and resulting partitions of Poland in the late 18th century, many areas were severed from the kingdom.  Those of the province of Posen that reinforced Prussian Jewry;  those of Galicia  as well as  those of the Eastern provinces constituting the kernel of Russian Jewry all went to Austro-Hungary. (Hasidism, sometimes spelled Chassidism, and also known as Hasidic Judaism, is a subgroup of Haredi Judaism that arose as a spiritual revival movement in the territory of contemporary Western Ukraine during the 18th century, and spread rapidly throughout Eastern Europe.)

The National Movement which now sprang up in the truncated kingdom discussed the amelioration of the Jewish position and some degree of emancipation was advocated by the QUADRENNIAL DIET in 1790 and granted under Napoleon in 1807, but not carried out.  

After 1815, the bulk of Poland was under the oppressive Russian rule.  By 1828,, 2/3 of Poland's Jews lived in towns, where they constituted 50% of the total urban population.  Most of them lived by petty trade, handicrafts, liquor distilling and domestic industries, particularly textile manufacture.  Some Jews participated in the 1830 revolt, the aftermath of which brought rises in taxation and no relaxation of restrictions.  Jews played an important rule in economic life, particularly in Warsaw and Lodz.  

The revolutionary rising of 1863 proclaimed equal rights for Jews and its suppression the following year left in its wake a certain trend toward assimilation among the Polish Jewish intelligentsia.  Jews now held key-positions in foreign trade, in the timber, grain, and metal trades, in all branches of finance, in industry, and in the free professions.

                                                       

A pronounced anti-Semitic trend prevailed at the end of the 19th century.  Polish anti-Semites were supported by the clergy and the press launched a campaign against the Jews, which was supported by the great majority of political groups.  There was a pogrom in Warsaw in 1881. 

                                                        

• Aliyah is the immigration of Jews from the diaspora to the Land of Israel (Eretz Israel in Hebrew). Also defined as "the act of going up"—that is, towards Jerusalem—"making Aliyah" by moving to the Land of Israel is one of the most basic tenets of Zionism. The opposite action, emigration from the Land of Israel, is referred to in Hebrew as yerida ("descent").
• The State of Israel's Law of Return gives Jews and their descendants automatic rights regarding residency and Israeli citizenship.

For much of Jewish history most Jews have lived in the diaspora where aliyah was developed as a national aspiration for the Jewish people, although it was not usually fulfilled until the development of the Zionist movement in the late nineteenth century. The large-scale immigration of Jews to Palestine began in 1882.

• Since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, more than 3 million Jews have moved to Israel.
• As of 2014, Israel and the Palestinian territories together contain 42.9% of the world's Jewish population.

Zionism took a strong hold  before 1881 while the BUND (Jewish labor Movement) also flourished. 1881 is the year of the 1st Aliyah to Palestine occurred.    A major wave of Zionist immigration (aliyah) to Ottoman Palestine between 1881 and 1903 took place.   Jews who migrated in this wave came mostly from Eastern Europe and from Yemen.  An estimated 25,000–35,000 Jews immigrated. Many of the European Jewish immigrants during the late 19th-early 20th century period gave up after a few months and went back to their country of origin, often suffering from hunger and disease.  Because there had been immigration to Palestine in earlier years as well, the use of the term "First Aliyah" is controversial.  

Very great numbers of Polish Jews emigrated at this period, particularly to Western Europe and the USA.  395,223 Jews left Poland left from 1921 to 1937.                          

                                                  

                         Unemployed Jewish seamstress 1926 

The independent state of Poland established after World War I undertook to protect its minorities, but its attitude toward the Jews left much to be desired.  The economic position of its Jews sharply deteriorated as the new Polish middle-class tended to push them out of trade, handicrafts, and industry.  

                                                  

 The 1939 press announcing that Germans were coming....

By 1938, 300,000 Jewish breadwinners were unemployed and emigration continued on a large scale.  World War II was about to break out with Germany attacking Poland.  At this time, there had been great progress in the public and cultural life , especially in the field of Jewish education, while Polish-Jewish literature and press flourished.  The struggle for the full enjoyment of civic and national rights was tortuous and difficult.  Then it happened on  September 1, 1939, when German forces under the control of Adolf Hitler bombard Poland on land and from the air. World War II had begun.

In 1939, Poland had over 3 million Jews in their population.  Under Nasi occupation, they underwent wholesale massacre and suffered martyrdom.  Ghettos were set up at Warsaw, Lodz, Bialystok, etc, and these proved the prelude to the CONCENTRATION CAMPS  and GAS CHAMBERS.  Great numbers of Jews were brought to Poland from other parts of Nazi-occupied Europe for annihilation.  Jewish youth participated in the underground struggle of the Partisans, while the ghetto risings at Warsaw, Bialystok, and elsewhere produced acts of desperate courage.                   

Mourners crowd around a narrow trench as coffins of pogrom victims are placed in a common grave, following a mass burial service. Kielce, Poland, after July 4, 1946. —Wide World Photo

After World War II, Jews who had escaped to Russia or had been exiled, returned to try and pick up the threads of life in Poland, mostly settling in Silesia, Lodz, Warsaw, and Cracow.  Despite the opposition of the Communist regime, there occurred cases of assault and even more pogroms, such as what happened at Kielce in 1946, causing considerable emigration and a drastic reduction in the size of the new settlement." The mass violence of the Kielce pogrom drew on an entrenched local history of antisemitism—especially false allegations accusing Jews of using the blood of Christian children for ritual purposes (a charge known as a “blood libel”)—with the intent of discouraging the return of Jewish Holocaust survivors to Poland. While the pogrom was not an isolated instance of anti-Jewish violence in postwar Poland, the Kielce massacre convinced many Polish Jews that they had no future in Poland after the Holocaust and spurred them to flee the country. Coming just one year after the end of World War II, the massacre shocked people around the world."

                                                                         

From 1955,, open anti-Semitic activity appeared, certain communist circles deliberately directing discontent against the Jews.  After the Gomulka regime came to power in 1956, Jews were permitted to emigrate.                                                                             

Between 1948 and 1958, about 140,500 Jews left Poland for Israel.  After the Six-Day War in 1967 , a strong anti-Semitic reaction in the government deprived Jews of leading positions in various walks of life and led to a further emigration.  The numbers remaining in 1990 were estimated at about 16,000 Jews.  A few Christians are now finding they were really Jews living in Poland. One girl, Marcjanna Kubala, living only 40 miles from Auschwitz tells about this.  It looks like Poland's Jewish community is again beginning to thrive, and the cycle may be repeating. 

Resource:

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Jews_in_Poland

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sigismund_III_of_Poland-Lithuania_and_Sweden_(Martin_Kober).jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lesser_Poland

Netflicks:  The wife of the Zookeeper-1939 Poland, hiding of Jews

https://time.com/5534494/poland-jews-rebirth-anti-semitism/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Aliyah

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lesser_Poland