The Jews in Poland

Before the Holocaust, Poland had the world's second-largest Jewish community (next to that of the U.S.). With its own flourishing culture, Polish Jewry was the seedbed of such movements as Zionism, socialism and neo-orthodoxies. But the Jews of Poland had an uneasy relationship with their gentile neighbors, the Russians and other peoples, and this is the theme of this set of scholarly papers. Jews in the 17th and 18th centuries, caught up in the bitter resentment of Cossacks and peasants, became the target of massacres and restrictions. Under Russia's Tsar for more than a century and later under Soviet domination, Poland's Jews have consistently been victims of anti-Semitism promoted as government policy. Essays here assess the efforts of the Polish resistance to rescue Jews from Hitler (""Not enough was done'') and review the precarious situation of Poland's tiny present-day Jewish community of 6000 survivors. (December