Racism in Poland

Racism in Poland has been a subject of research, especially in the field of modern history, for the past three decades. Ethnic minorities had formed a sizeable proportion of Poland's population ‒ from the early Polish state to the Second Polish Republic ‒ until the Holocaust happened.[1] After World War II, Polish government statistics found that 94% of the population identified as Polish.[2][3]

Recent trend

As per the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) of the Organization of Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), hate crimes recorded by the Police of Poland dropped between 2018 and 2020, but rose steadily until 2022, reaching a level higher than 2018 (table below). Of the 440 prosecuted hate crimes, 268 (61%) were racist and xenophobic hate crimes, seconded by 87 (20%) antisemitic hate crimes, while only 6% were allegedly anti-Muslim hate crimes (25).[4][5]

Year Hate crimes recorded by police Prosecuted Sentenced
2022 1,180 440 312
2021 997 466 339
2020 826 374 266
2019 972 432 597
2018 1,117 397 315

Jews

Further information: Antisemitism, Jewish deicide, Supersessionism, and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion

Middle Ages

King Casimir III the Great brought Jews to Poland during the Black Death when Jewish communities were persecuted across Europe.[6][7]

Modern period

By mid-16th century, 80% of world Jewry lived in Poland.[6][7] During the 15th century, radical Catholics in Kraków incited pogroms[a] in 1469. In 1485, Jewish elders were forced to stop trading in Kraków. After the 1494 Kraków fire, pogroms happened again. King John I Albert forced the Jews to move to Kazimierz.[10] From 1527, Jews were no longer admitted into the city walls of Warsaw.[11]: 334 

20th century

Interwar period

In the Second Polish Republic (1918–1939), the government restricted Jews from civil service and licence acquisition. From the 1930s, the restrictions extended to college admission and almost all professions. In 1921‒22, 25% of college students were Jewish and the proportion fell to 8% by 1939, but the far-right Endecja (National Democracy) party continued organizing boycotts of Jews.[12]

After Polish Prime Minister Józef Piłsudski's death in 1935, the Endecja doubled down by vowing to "remove Jews from all spheres of social, economic, and cultural life in Poland". The government relented and organized the Obóz Zjednoczenia Narodowego (OZON, English: Camp of National Unity) to take over the Polish parliament in 1938. Laws against Jews were subsequently drafted.[12][13] American historian Timothy Snyder claimed that the pre-1939 Polish leadership[14]

[w]anted to be rid of most Polish Jews [...] make no sense. How could Poland arrange a deportation of millions of Jews while the country was mobilized for war? Should the tens of thousands of Jewish officers and soldiers be pulled from the ranks of the Polish army?

World War II

By the start of WWII, 12% of Polish population were Jewish, who were all but eliminated in the Holocaust.[12] Notable wartime pogroms in Nazi-occupied Poland included the 1941 Jedwabne pogrom, where a small number of ethnic Poles killed as many as 1,600 Jews in a village.[15][16]

Post-war period

Instances of post-war antisemitic violence, including the Kraków pogrom on August 11, 1945 and Kielce pogrom on July 4, 1946, also happened, which are claimed to have been caused by lawlessness[17] and the Żydokomuna ("Jewish communism") myth believed by some Poles.[18][19] Polish anthropologist Joanna Tokarska-Bakir estimated that 50 pogroms happened in Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Ukraine between 1944 and 1948.[20][21]

Dozens of anti-Jewish incidents happened in the Polish-Ukrainian borderlands[20][22] to the extent that Holocaust survivors were advised not to speak Yiddish in public.[20] Thomas Blatt, a Holocaust survivor, recounted:[20][23]

“ They surrounded us … the Polish people. And we were very afraid that they were going to kill us because they could not digest that … the Jews survived. ”

Some Holocaust survivors also hesitated to return to their original homes over reports of pogroms.[20][24] The state-sponsored antisemitic campaigns[25][26] under the Soviet Union and its puppet regimes in Soviet-occupied Eastern European states also made it harder for perpetrators of antisemitic violence to be put on trial.[20][27] Freda Dymbort, another survivor, said:[20][28]

“ [We] heard that after the war there were a lot of pogroms and that the Jewish people who would come to claim their homes and their belongings … were killed … I was afraid to go back … purpose why I came to the nearest town was to find out what happened to my father. ”

21st century

In 2022, the American civil rights group Anti-Defamation League (ADL) conducted a global survey on antisemitism, which found 35% of Poland's people to have "harbour[ed] antisemitic attitudes", the second highest among the 10 European states surveyed, despite the percentage significantly lower than the previous survey.[29]

Whereas, the Czulent Jewish Association, a Polish Jewish group,[30] reported in 2023 that 488 antisemitic incidents had been recorded in 2022, 86% of which involved online harassment and insults. It noted that "Jew" was often used to smear a perceived enemy as "disloyal, an outsider and unpatriotic."[31] Comments peddling antisemitic tropes and blaming all Jews for the Gaza War are also common in Reddit's subreddit r/Poland (1.1M subscribers).[32]

In June 2023, Polish-Canadian historian Jan Grabowski held a seminar on Poland's history of antisemitism in Warsaw. Far-right MP Grzegorz Braun forced its cancellation by smashing Grabowski's microphone.[33] During the 2023 Hanukkah, the same MP put out a menorah with a fire extinguisher in the Polish parliament.[34] He was expelled by the parliament and charged with hate crimes.[34] His behavior caused global outrage,[35] while being praised by users in Reddit's subreddit r/Poland who claimed to be "only anti-Israel". The subreddit is noted for antisemitism.[32] Despite Grzegorz Braun's actions, he was elected to the European Parliament in June 2024.[36]

On 1 May 2024, the Nożyk Synagogue in Warsaw was hit with three firebombs by a 16-year old. Poland's President Andrzej Duda condemned the attack.[37]

Roma

Main articles: Roma people and Antiziganism

In June 1991, a riot broke out in the Polish town Mława after a Romani teenager drove into three Poles in a crosswalk, killing one Polish man and permanently injuring another, before fleeing the scene.[38] A mob attacked wealthy Romani settlements in the town. Both the Mława police chief and University of Warsaw sociology researchers claimed the riot to have been caused by class envy, while the town's mayor and townsfolk believed it to have been racially motivated.[39] It is claimed that the riot's news coverage comprised anti-Roma stereotypes.[40]

Africans

The most common word in Polish for a Black person is Murzyn, often deemed neutral in the past but a slur nowadays.[41][42] In Communist Poland, translations of the Uncle Tom's Cabin were widely circulated due to the communist regime's perception of the book's "anti-capitalist" nature, despite it having reinforced anti-Black stereotypes.[42]

Footnotes

  1. ↑ From Russian: погром ("pogrom"); from "громить" IPA: [grʌˈmitʲ] ‒ to wreak havoc, to demolish violently) is a form of riot attacking people and property.[8][9]

References

  1. ↑
    • "Murder of the Jews of Poland". Yad Vashem. Retrieved October 16, 2024.
    • "POLISH VICTIMS". Holocaust Encyclopedia. Retrieved October 16, 2024.
    • "Unter der NS-Herrschaft ermordete Juden nach Land. / Jews by country murdered under Nazi rule". Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung / Federal Agency for Civic Education (Germany). April 29, 2018.
    • Grabowski, Jan; Klein, Shira (February 9, 2023). "Wikipedia's Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust". The Journal of Holocaust Research. 37 (2): 133–190. doi:10.1080/25785648.2023.2168939. Retrieved January 20, 2025. Four distortions dominate Wikipedia's coverage of Polish–Jewish wartime history: a false equivalence narrative suggesting that Poles and Jews suffered equally in World War II; a false innocence narrative, arguing that Polish antisemitism was marginal, while the Poles' role in saving Jews was monumental; antisemitic tropes insinuating that most Jews supported Communism and conspired with Communists to betray Poles (Żydokomuna or Judeo–Bolshevism), that money-hungry Jews controlled or still control Poland, and that Jews bear responsibility for their own persecution.
  2. ↑ Główny Urząd Statystyczny, Wyniki Narodowego Spisu Powszechnego Ludności i Mieszkań 2011 Archived 21 October 2012 at the Wayback Machine, Warszawa 2012, pp. 105-106
  3. ↑ Polish population census 2002 nationalities tables 1 or 2
  4. ↑ "OSCE ODIHR HATE CRIME REPORT: Poland". ODIHR. Retrieved October 16, 2024. The police records represent the number of proceedings initiated by police for hate crimes cases in 2022, including proceedings that were later discontinued owing to a lack of evidence.
  5. ↑ "Poland Hate Crime Report 2022". ODIHR. Retrieved October 16, 2024.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 "Poland – Virtual Jewish History Tour" at Jewish Virtual Library via Internet Archive.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 "Polish Jews History", at PolishJews.org via Internet Archive.
  8. ↑
  9. ↑
  10. ↑ The Torah Ark in Renaissance Poland: A Jewish Revival of Classical Antiquity, Ilia M. Rodov, Brill, pages 2-6
  11. ↑ Ducreux, Marie-Élizabeth (2011). "Les Juifs dans les sociétés d'Europe centrale et orientale". In Germa, Antoine; Lellouch, Benjamin; Patlagean, Evelyne (eds.). Les Juifs dans l'histoire: de la naissance du judaïsme au monde contemporain (in French). Ed. Champ Vallon. pp. 331–373.
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 Laqueur, Walter (July 30, 2009). "Toward the Holocaust". The Changing Face of Anti-Semitism: From Ancient Times to the Present Day. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780195341218. Retrieved November 1, 2024.
  13. ↑ Hagen, William W. (1996). "Before the 'final solution': Toward a comparative analysis of political anti-Semitism in interwar Germany and Poland". The Journal of Modern History. 68 (2): 351–381. doi:10.1086/600769. S2CID 153790671.
  14. ↑ Snyder, Timothy (2015). "The Promise of Palestine". Black earth: the Holocaust as history and warning (1 ed.). New York: Tim Duggan Books. ISBN 978-1-101-90345-2.
  15. ↑
  16. ↑
  17. ↑ Grabski, August. "Book review of Stefan Grajek: Po wojnie i co dalej? Żydzi w Polsce, w latach 1945−1949 translated from Hebrew by Aleksander Klugman, 2003" (PDF). Central and Eastern European Online Library (CEEOL) (in Polish). Kwartalnik Historii Żydów (Jewish History Quarterly). p. 240 – via direct download, 1.03 MB.
  18. ↑
    • Polonksy, Antony; Michlic, Joanna B., eds. (2003). "Explanatory notes". The Neighbors Respond: The Controversy over the Jedwabne Massacre in Poland. Princeton University Press. p. 469. ISBN 978-0-691-11306-7.
    • Belavusau, Uladzislau (2013). Freedom of Speech: Importing European and US Constitutional Models in Transitional Democracies. Routledge. p. 151. ISBN 978-1-135-07198-1.
    • Smith, S. A., ed. (2014). The Oxford Handbook of the History of Communism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 206. ISBN 9780191667510. Here anti-communism merged with antisemitism as concepts such as Polish żydokomuna (Jewish Communism) suggest.
    • Stone, Dan (2014). Goodbye to All That?: The Story of Europe Since 1945. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. p. 265. ISBN 978-0-19-969771-7.
    • Michnik, Adam; Marczyk, Agnieszka (2018). "Introduction: Poland and Antisemitism". In Michnik, Adam; Marczyk, Agnieszka (eds.). Against Anti-Semitism: An Anthology of Twentieth-century Polish Writings. New York: Oxford University Press. p. xvii (xi–2). ISBN 978-0-1-90624514.
    • Krajewski, Stanisław (2000). "Jews, Communism, and the Jewish Communists" (PDF). In Kovács, András (ed.). Jewish Studies at the CEU: Yearbook 1996–1999. Central European University. Archived from the original (PDF) on 30 October 2018.
  19. ↑
  20. ↑ 20.0 20.1 20.2 20.3 20.4 20.5 20.6 Waligórska, Magdalena; Weizman, Yechiel; Friedman, Alexander; Ina, Sorkina (May 27, 2023). "Holocaust Survivors Returning to their Hometowns in the Polish-Belarusian-Ukrainian Borderlands, 1944–1948". The Journal of Holocaust Research. 37 (2): 191–212. Retrieved May 16, 2025.
  21. ↑ Tokarska-Bakir, “Postwar Violence against Jews in Central and Eastern Europe,” p. 74.
  22. ↑ Adam Kopciowski, “Anti-Jewish Incidents in the Lublin Region in the Early Years after World War II,” Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały (2008): pp. 177–205, specifically p. 177; Kwiek, Nie chcemy Żydów u siebie, pp. 214–5.
  23. ↑ Philip Bialowitz, oral history interview, August 22, 1997, VHA.
  24. ↑ Audrey Kichelewski, “To Stay or to Go? Reconfigurations of Jewish Life in Post-War Poland, 1944–1947,” in Seeking Peace in the Wake of War: Europe, 1943–1947, ed. Stefan-Ludwig Hoffman, et al. (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2015), pp. 189, 194.
  25. ↑
  26. ↑
  27. ↑
    • Smilovitskiy, Yevrei Belarusi, pp. 136–7.
    • Exeler, “The Ambivalent State,” pp. 606–29; Penter, “Local Collaborators on Trial,” pp. 341–64; Melnyk, “Stalinist Justice as a Site of Memory,” pp. 223–48.
    • On antisemitism among Communist power organs after 1944, see Gross, Strach, pp. 257–274; Tokarska-Bakir, Pod klątwą, pp. 134–47; Bożena Szaynok, “Problematyka żydowska w polityce komunistów w latach 1949–1953,” in Nusech Pojln: Studia z dziejów kultury jidysz w powojennej Polsce, ed. Magdalena Ruta (Kraków: Austeria, 2008), pp. 9–26; Gross, Upiorna dekada, p. 82; Mitsel, Evrei Ukrainy v 1943–1953 gg., p. 26; Bemporad, Legacy of Blood; Skibińska, “Powroty ocalałych,” p. 573; Aleksiun, Dokąd dalej?, p. 98.
  28. ↑ Freda Dymbort (born Guterman), oral history interview, June 11, 1996, VHA.
  29. ↑
  30. ↑ "Addressing Antisemitism through Education in the Visegrad Group Countries. A Mapping Report". Żydowskie Stowarzyszenie Czulent. 5 October 2022. Retrieved October 15, 2024.
  31. ↑
  32. ↑ 32.0 32.1 Examples:
  33. ↑
  34. ↑ 34.0 34.1 Wright, George (18 January 2024). "Grzegorz Braun: Polish MP who doused Hanukkah candles loses immunity". BBC News. Retrieved 15 August 2024.
  35. ↑
  36. ↑
  37. ↑
  38. ↑ Rebecca Jean Emigh; Szelényi, Iván (2001). Poverty, Ethnicity, and Gender in Eastern Europe During the Market Transition. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 101–102. ISBN 978-0-275-96881-6. Retrieved 13 September 2019.
  39. ↑ "Poles Vent Their Economic Rage on Gypsies". The New York Times. July 25, 1991. Retrieved 13 September 2019.
  40. ↑ Anna Giza-Poleszczuk, Jan Poleszczuk, Raport "Cyganie i Polacy w Mławie - konflikt etniczny czy społeczny?" (Report "Romani and Poles in Mława - Ethnic or Social Conflict?") commissioned by the Centre for Public Opinion Research, Warsaw, December 1992, pp. 16- 23, Sections III and IV "Cyganie w PRL-u stosunki z polską większością w Mławie" and "Lata osiemdziesiąte i dziewięćdziesiąte".
  41. ↑ ""Murzyn" i "Murzynka"". www.rjp.pan.pl. Retrieved 2020-08-14.
  42. ↑ 42.0 42.1 "#DontCallMeMurzyn: Black Women in Poland Are Powering the Campaign Against a Racial Slur". Time. August 7, 2020.
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