Imagining ‘the Jews’ in Stalinist Poland: nationalists or cosmopolites?

Abstract

Despite the annihilation of 90% of the Jewish population of Poland during the Second World War, the new Communist regime's official fight against anti-Semitism and its granting of equal rights for the tens of thousands of survivors who chose to remain in their home country, the ‘Jewish question’ remained a burning issue in post-war Poland. Yet, after episodes of anti-Jewish violence in 1945–46, the issue seemed to vanish precisely at a time when it was manipulated through an ‘anti-cosmopolitan’ campaign launched in the Soviet Union and spread through most of the Eastern Bloc. This paper focuses on the reaction of Polish authorities and society to this campaign. Could the slogan of ‘cosmopolitanism’ work against Polish citizens of Jewish origin viewed mostly, within Polish society, as non-national and communists? Did Poland follow a particular path during the years 1949–54, when compared to neighbouring countries of the Eastern Bloc; and if so, how can it be explained? The paper argues that a specific vocabulary was used in Poland and that the consequences of this campaign are more to be sought in the background and against ‘invisible Jews’ rather than in the spotlight of show trials or any persecution of the small Jewish community.