Recently released color footage of the Warsaw Ghetto.WARNING GRAPHIC IMAGES
1098: Information on Jews in Poland begins to appear in Polish chronicles
1241: A new era of colonization in Poland begins and Jewish immigrants are sought
1264: Polish Prince Boleslaus issues the Statute of Kalisz, the General Charter of Jewish Liberties in Poland
Early 1300s: Fewer than 1,000 Jews in Poland
1407: Jews in Krakow are attacked by mobs
Late 1400s: More than 60 Jewish communities are known in Poland; population is thought to be 20,000 to 30,000
1515: Rabbi Shalom Shachna founds Poland’s first yeshiva in Lublin
1525-1572: Rabbi Moses Ben Israel Isserles lives in Krakow, where he founds a yeshiva and writes a commentary to the Shulchan Aruch, the Code of Jewish Law
1573: Confederation of Warsaw of 1573 guarantees religious tolerance in Poland
1500s and early 1600s: Some Jews expelled from Spain move to Poland; Jewish social, cultural and economic life flourishes; population estimated at 80,000 to 100,000
1648-49: Chmielnicki revolt and massacre brings 30 years of bloodshed and suffering to Jews in Poland; golden age in Poland ends
1700-1760: Israel ben Eliezer, known as the Ba’al Shem Tov, founds modern Chasidism
1764: Jewish population about 750,000; worldwide Jewish population estimated at 1.2 million
1772: Partitions of Poland begin between Russia, Prussia and Austria
1791 -Russian government restricts Jews to the Settlement of Pale, which includes lands formerly in Poland
1800s: Tremendous growth of Jewish population (in 1781, 3,600 Jews in Warsaw or 4.5 percent of population; in 1897, 219,000 Jews in Warsaw or 33.9 percent of population)
1862: Jews are given equal rights
1897: 1.3 million Jews in Poland
Early 1900s: On eve of World War I, strained relations between Poles and Jews, with decline of influence of Jewish assimilationists and rise in Jewish nationalism
1918: Major pogrom in Lvov, part of general reign of terror against the Jews
Post-World War I: Poland becomes sovereign state
1921: Jewish population 2,989,000, making up 10.5 percent or more of Polish population
1930: Rabbi Meir Shapiro founds Hachmei Yeshiva in Lublin; it is destroyed by the Nazis and its synagogue reopens in 2007
Late 1930s: Rise of Hitler in Germany and new round of pogroms in Poland
1939: Jewish population more than 3.3 million, with almost 400,000 in Warsaw, or one-third of the city’s total population
Sept. 1, 1939: Invasion of Poland and outbreak of World War II
April-May 1943: Warsaw Ghetto uprising
June 1945: About 50,000 Jews survive in Poland, an additional 100,000 return from the camps and another 200,000 return from the Soviet Union
1944-1950: Mass emigration of Jews from Poland continues to deplete population, leaving about 57,000
1946: Post-war pogrom in Kilce, killing 37 and injuring more than 80
By 1950: Stalinization of Poland instigates anti-Semitism
1956: Wladyslaw Gromulka comes to power; new wave of anti-Semitism results in some 30,000 to 40,000 Jews leaving country
1968: After Six-Day War, a major outburst of anti-Semitism ensues, with more Jews allowed to immigrate to Israel
1970s and 1980s: About 6,000 Jews live in Poland
2007: Jewish population 5,000 according to official counts but estimated at 30,000 or more by Jewish leaders
Dancing to celebrate Yom Ha’atzmaut at the Izzak Synagogue in Krakow
Texas rabbi Neil Katz talks about his second tour of Poland
Sources: Encyclopaedia Judaica, Second Edition, Volume 16. Steinlauf, Michael C., “Bondage to the Dead: Poland and the Memory of the Holocaust,” Syracuse University Press, 1997. Maciej Kozlowski, a historian and ambassador-at-large for Polish-Jewish relations for Poland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. http://www.diapozytyw.pl/en/site/slownik_terminow/demografia/.
