Between Ethnic Democracy, Authoritarianism and Violence: Inter-War Experiences and Jewish Socio-Political Stances in Early Post-War Poland

This article focuses on Jewish political stances in early post-war and post-Holocaust Poland and explores why so many Polish Jews supported the new communist-dominated regime after 1945, despite the fact that only a small minority held communist political views. While acknowledging the impact of Holocaust experiences, the weakness of the Polish Jewish community after the war and the widespread perception that the communist regime was the only possible bulwark against post-war anti-Jewish violence, this article offers a different perspective in foregrounding the inter-war experiences of Polish Jews. Drawing upon a wide variety of sources in Polish, Yiddish, Hebrew and English, this article argues that inter-war experiences shaped Polish Jews’ understandings of the emerging post-war social and political system, as well as their political stances towards the new state.