Moï Ver Moï Ver (Moshé Raviv-Vorobeichic) was born in 1904 in Vilnius, Lithuania, where he also studied painting. In 1927, visited the Bauhaus in Dessau to take courses with Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, and Joseph Albers, before he left for Paris to study at the Ecole de Photo Ciné. After several unrealised projects for photographic books, necessity led him to begin a career as a reporter. He immigrated to Palestine in 1934, and from 1950 he devoted himself to painting. He died in 1995. Moi Ver: Paris In Paris, his quintessential avant-garde book object published in 1931, Mo- Ver succeeds in blending dynamic photographic montage with an elaborate graphic layout. Utilizing the double-spread as one unified plane, each turn of the page not only surprises, but accentuates the charged rhythm built into the book itself. The bulk of information in these pictures documents mundane street activities in cobblestoned Paris of the late twenties. But the method in which Moi Ver chose to present his material, in its kaleidoscopic layering and frenzied repetitiveness, emphasizes an experimental approach to picture-construction; as if we, the viewers, were walking about bombarded by noise and reflected light. Within each picture, visual data is spliced with pattern, alluding to a lapse of time, as if they were short film vignettes. M. Vorobeichic, who also used the artist name Moi Ver, and whose real name was Moses Vorobeichic (1904), in Israel renamed Moshe Raviv. This painter/photographer is known for his picture-books on the Ghetto of Wilna and Paris (end of the twenties), early examples of the Bauhaus photographic style. (German) From the Preface The Jewish Lane in Light and Shadow by S. Chneour About Paris : 'The book that introduced Moi Ver to the world is exhilaratingly eccentric, definitely avant-garde.... Moi Ver's Paris is a city in motion, hurtling almost out of control. Cobblestone streets, bustling crowds, facades, railway tracks, bridges. the glittering river, and countless monuments shift and shatter here.... Moi Ver's version of Paris was eclipsed two years later by the publication of Brassai's more conventionally seductive Paris de Nuit, but no one has yet matched Moi Ver's vision of the brutal, chaotic, irresistible modern city.'-Vince Aletti, from the Book of 101 Books In Paris, his quintessential avant-garde book, Moï Ver succeeded in blending dynamic photographic montage with elaborate graphic layouts. Utilizing the double-spread as one unified place, each turn of the page not only surprised but accentuated the charged rhythm built into the book itself. The bulk of information in these pictures documents mundane street activities in the cobblestone-covered Paris of the late 20s. But the method in which Moi Ver chose to present his material, in its kaliedoscopic layering and frenzied repetitiveness, emphasized an experiential approach to picture construction-as if we, the viewers, were walking about, bombarded by noise and reflected light. Originally published in 1931 by Editions Jeanne Walter with an introduction by Futurist Fernand Leger, now long out of print and exceptionally rare, this facsimile reproduction of Paris brings back into circulation one of the seminal photographic books of the century. "My grandfather on my mother’s side was a photographer and artist named Moshé Raviv-Vorobeichic (who also worked under the pen name Moï Ver). He lived from 1904 to 1995. Born and raised in Vilna, now Vilnius in Lithuania, Moshé lived and worked in Paris before moving to Tel Aviv and eventually settling in Safed in northern Israel. In the late 1920s he studied at the famous Bauhaus school in Dessau, Germany, where his instructors included Paul Klée and Vassily Kandinsky. Moshe produced many paintings, especially in the later part of his career. As a young man, however, he was recognized primarily as a photographer, employing many innovative and creative techniques. Two major books of his photography were published. The first, “The Ghetto Lane in Vilna” (published in 1931) documented the everyday life of the city’s Jewish residents. In the same year, his second book, titled “Paris” was published by Jeanne Walter, with an introduction by Fernand Leger (it was republished in 2004 as “Ci-Contre - 110 Photos by Moï Ver,” by Ann and Jürgen Wilde, with commentary by Inka Graeve Ingelmann and Hannes Böhringer). An exhibition of these photographs was held in the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich in the winter of 2004/05." taken from flickr. ***** Moi Ver (1904–1955) was a photographer and painter. Life and work Moi Ver was born in 1904 in Vilnius, Lithuania as Moses Vorobeichic, Moi Ver initially studied painting. In his early 20s he matriculated at the Bauhaus, taking courses with Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, and Joseph Albers, and left from there to attend the Ecole Photo One in Paris. In his book Moi Ver: Paris, he produced avant-garde photomontages. Originally published in 1931 by Editions Jeanne Walter with an introduction by Futurist Fernand Léger. He adopted Zionism in 1934 and immigrated to what was then known as Palestine. Moshe Raviv-Vorobeichic (as he called himself in Israel) focus more on painting than photography and lived in Safed until his death in 1995. ***** Moï Ver Moï Ver (Moshé Raviv-Vorobeichic) was born in 1904 in Vilnius, Lithuania, where he also studied painting. In 1927, visited the Bauhaus in Dessau to take courses with Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, and Joseph Albers, before he left for Paris to study at the Ecole de Photo Ciné. After several unrealised projects for photographic books, necessity led him to begin a career as a reporter. He immigrated to Palestine in 1934, and from 1950 he devoted himself to painting. He died in 1995.****** The history of the Jews in Poland dates back over a millennium.[4] For centuries, Poland was home to the largest and most significant Jewish community in the world. Poland was the centre of Jewish culture thanks to a long period of statutory religious tolerance and social autonomy. This ended with the Partitions of Poland and persecution especially by the Russian authorities. There was nearly complete genocidal destruction of the Polish Jewish community by Nazi Germany in the 20th century during the 1939–1945 German and Soviet occupation of Poland and the ensuing Holocaust. Since the fall of communism there has been a Jewish revival in Poland, characterized by the annual Jewish Culture Festival, new study programmes at Polish high schools and universities, the work of synagogues such as the Nozyk, and the Museum of the History of Polish Jews. From the founding of the Kingdom of Poland in 1025 through to the early years of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth created in 1569, Poland was the most tolerant country in Europe.[5] Known as paradisus Iudaeorum (Latin for Jewish paradise) it became a unique shelter for persecuted and expelled European Jewish communities and a home to the world's largest Jewish community. According to some sources, about three-quarters of all Jews lived in Poland by the middle of the 16th century.[6][7][8] With the weakening of the Commonwealth and growing religious strife (due to the Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counter-Reformation), Poland’s traditional tolerance[9] began to wane from the 17th century onward.[10] After the partitions of Poland in 1795 and the destruction of Poland as a sovereign state, Polish Jews were subject to the laws of the partitioning powers, primarily the increasingly anti-Semitic Russian Empire,[11] but also Austro-Hungary and Kingdom of Prussia (later known as the German Empire). Still, as Poland regained independence in the aftermath of World War I, it was the center of the European Jewish world with one of world's largest Jewish communities of over 3 million. Anti-Semitism, however, from both the political establishment and from the general population, common throughout Europe, was a growing problem.[12] At the start of World War II, Poland was partitioned between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union (see: Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact). The war resulted in the death of one-fifth of the Polish population, with 90% or about 3 million of Polish Jewry killed along with approximately 3 million Polish Gentiles (Christians).[13] Although the Holocaust occurred largely in German occupied Poland there was little collaboration with the Nazis by her citizens. Collaboration by individual Poles has been described as smaller than in other occupied countries.[14][15] Statistics of the Israeli War Crimes Commission indicate that less than 0.1% of Polish gentiles collaborated with the Nazis.[16] Examples of Polish gentile attitudes to German atrocities varied widely, from actively risking death in order to save Jewish lives,[17] and passive refusal to inform on them; to indifference, blackmail,[18] and in extreme cases, participation in pogroms such as the Jedwabne massacre. Grouped by nationality, Poles represent the biggest number of people who rescued Jews during the Holocaust.[19][20] In the postwar period, many of the approximately 200,000 Jewish survivors registered at CKŻP (of whom 136,000 arrived from the Soviet Union)[20][21][22] left the communist People's Republic of Poland for the nascent State of Israel and North or South America. Their departure was hastened by the destruction of Jewish institutions, post-war violence and the hostility of the Communist Party to both religion and private enterprise, but also because in 1946–1947 Poland was the only Eastern Block country to allow free Jewish aliyah to Israel,[23] without visas or exit permits.[24][25] Britain demanded from Poland to halt the exodus, but their pressure was largely unsuccessful.[26] Most of the remaining Jews left Poland in the late 1960s as the result of the Soviet-sponsored "anti-Zionist" campaign. After the fall of the communist regime in 1989, the situation of Polish Jews became normalized and those who were Polish citizens before World War II were allowed to renew Polish citizenship. Religious institutions were revived, largely through the activities of Jewish foundations from the United States. The contemporary Polish Jewish community is estimated to have approximately 20,000 members,[27] though the actual number of Jews, including those who are not actively connected to Judaism or Jewish culture, may be several times larger. As soon as the Polish independence movement took hold in 1912–1914 with the aim to put forth an armed struggle for sovereign Poland—following a century of partitions – the main freedom organization was formed, called Komisja Skonfederowanych Stronnictw Niepodległościowych. It served as an interim government. Polish Jews played a significant role in it. Personalities such Herman Feldstein, Henryk Eile (future Lieutenant of the Polish Army), dr Samuel Herschthal, dr Zygmunt Leser, Henryk Orlean, Wiktor Chajes among others, worked in its various sub-commissions. On top of that, Jews made substantial financial contributions to the formation of the Polish military fund called Polski Skarb Wojskowy Interwar period 1918–1939 During World War I, while many other non-Polish minorities were ambivalent or neutral to the idea of a sovereign Polish state, Jews actively participated in the fight for Poland's independence between 1914 and 1918 – a significant number joining Józef Piłsudski at the famous Oleandry area in Kraków, among them Bronisław Mansperl-Chaber killed in 1915 as the First Lieutenant of Brigade I of the Polish Legions. In Lwów, chaired by Maria Loewenstein, two existing Jewish Women's Associations united as Ognisko Kobiet, for the purpose of financial support and caring for the families of soldiers and their children. Representatives of the local Jewish merchant associations adopted a resolution declaring their participation in the struggle for Poland's independence and issued an appeal to the Jewish masses. Similar proclamations came from the Jewish youth organization Zjednoczenie.[1] During the military conflicts that engulfed Eastern Europe at the time—the Russian Civil War, Polish-Ukrainian War, and Polish-Soviet War—many pogroms were launched against the Jews by all sides. A substantial number of Jews were perceived to have supported the Bolsheviks in Russia. They came under frequent attack by all those opposed to the Bolshevik regime.[2] Just after the end of World War I, the West became alarmed by reports about alleged massive pogroms in Poland against Jews. American pressure for government action reached the point where president Woodrow Wilson sent an official commission to investigate the issue. The commission, led by Henry Morgenthau, Sr., announced that the reports of pogroms were exaggerated, and in some cases may have even been fabricated. It identified eighty nine major incidents in years 1918–1919, and estimated the number of victims at 200–300 Jews. Four of these were attributed to the actions of deserters and undisciplined individual soldiers; none were blamed on official government policy. Among the incidents, in Pinsk a Polish officer accused a group of Jewish communists of plotting against the Poles, shooting 35 of them. In Lviv (then Lemberg) in 1918, as the Polish army captured the city, hundreds of people were killed in the chaos, among them about 72 Jews. In Warsaw soldiers of Blue Army assaulted Jews on the streets, but they were punished by military authorities. When the Polish troops entered Vilnius in 1919, the first Lithuanian pogrom in modern city on Lithuanian Jews took place, as noted by the Timothy D. Snyder, citing Michał Pius Römer.[3] Many other events in Poland were later found to have been exaggerated, especially by contemporary newspapers like New York Times, although serious abuses against the Jews, including pogroms, continued elsewhere, especially in the Ukraine. The result of the concern over the fate of the Jews of western Poland was a series of explicit clauses in the Paris Peace Conference protecting the rights of Jews in Poland. The number of Jews immigrating to Poland from Ukraine and the Soviet Russia during the interwar period grew rapidly. According to Polish national census of 1921, there were 2,845,364 Jews living in the Second Polish Republic; but, by late 1938 that number has grown by over 16 per cent to approximately 3,310,000. The average rate of permanent settlement was about 30,000 per annum. At the same time, every year around 100,000 Jews were passing through Poland in unofficial emigration overseas. Between the end of the Polish–Soviet War and late 1938, the Jewish population of the Republic has grown by over 464 thousands.[4] Jews preferred to live in relatively tolerant Poland rather than in the USSR, and continued to integrate, to marry into Polish Gentile families, to bring Polish Gentiles into their community through marriage, to feel Polish and to form an important part of Polish society.[5] Between 1933 and 1938, around 25,000 German Jews fled Nazi Germany to sanctuary in Poland.[6] Jewish and Polish culture The newly independent Second Polish Republic had a large Jewish minority—by the time World War II began, Poland had the largest concentration of Jews in Europe. According to the 1931 Polish Census there were 3,130,581 Polish Jews measured by the declaration of their religion. Taking into account both population increase and the emigration from Poland between 1931 and 1939, there were around 3,474,000 Jews in Poland as of September 1, 1939 (approximately 10% of the total population).[7] Jews were primarily centered in large agglomerations: 77% lived in the cities and 23% in the villages. In 1939 there were 375,000 Jews in Warsaw, or one third of the city's population.[8][9] Only New York City had more Jewish residents than Warsaw. Jewish religious groups, political parties, newspapers and theatre thrived. Most Warsaw Jews spoke Yiddish, but Polish was increasingly used by the young who have not had a problem in identifying themselves fully as Jews, Varsovians and Poles. Polish Jews were entering the mainstream of Polish society, though many thought of themselves as a separate nationality within Poland. During the school year of 1937–1938 there were 226 elementary schools and twelve high schools as well as fourteen vocational schools with either Yiddish or Hebrew as the instructional language.[10] The YIVO (Jidiszer Wissenszaftlecher) Scientific Institute was based in Wilno before transferring to New York during the war. Jewish political parties, both the Socialist General Jewish Labour Bund (The Bund)[11] as well as parties of the Zionist right and left wing and religious conservative movements, were represented in the Sejm (the Polish Parliament) as well as in the regional councils.[citation needed] The Jewish cultural scene was particularly vibrant and blossomed in pre-World War II Poland.[12] There were many Jewish publications and over 116 periodicals. Yiddish authors, most notably Isaac Bashevis Singer, went on to achieve international acclaim as classic Jewish writers, and in Singer's case, win the 1978 Nobel Prize. Other Jewish authors of the period, like Janusz Korczak, Bruno Schulz, Julian Tuwim, Jan Brzechwa (a favorite poet of Polish children) and Bolesław Leśmian were less well-known internationally, but made important contributions to Polish literature. Singer Jan Kiepura was one of the most popular artist of that era and pre-war songs of Jewish composers like Henryk Wars or Jerzy Petersburski are still widely known in Poland today. In 1918 Julian Tuwim co-founded the cabaret, "Picador," and worked as a writer or artistic director with many other cabarets such as "Czarny kot" (Black Cat 1917–1919), "Qui pro Quo" (1919–1932), "Banda" The Gang and "Stara Banda" The Old Gang (1932–1935) and finally "Cyrulik Warszawski" (Barber of Warsaw 1935–1939). Marian Hemar also wrote for some of the mentioned cabarets. Scientist Leopold Infeld, mathematician Stanislaw Ulam or professor Adam Ulam contributed to the world of science. Others are Moses Schorr, Georges Charpak, Samuel Eilenberg, Emanuel Ringelblum just to name a few from the long list of Polish Jews who are known internationally. The term genocide was coined by Raphael Lemkin (1900–1959), a Polish-Jewish legal scholar. Leonid Hurwicz was awarded the 2007 Nobel Prize in Economics. The Main Judaic Library and the Institute of Judaic Studies were located in Warsaw, religious centers had at their disposal Talmudic Schools (Jeszybots), as well as synagogues, many of which were architecturally outstanding. Yiddish theatre also flourished; Poland had fifteen Yiddish theatres and theatrical groups. Warsaw was home to the most important Yiddish theater troupe of the time, the Vilna Troupe, which staged the first performance of The Dybbuk in 1920 at the Elyseum Theatre. Some future Israeli leaders studied at University of Warsaw—Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir, among others. The influence of Polish and Jewish cultures was reciprocal.[13] Jewish chess players such as Akiba Rubinstein were ranked among the best, and they contributed to the Polish world championship in 1930. Many Yiddish-language films were produced in Poland, including Yidl Mitn Fidl (1936), The Dybbuk (1937), Der Purimszpiler (1937), and Mamele (1938). In 1937, the Polish-Jewish community was served by 150 Yiddish-language newspapers and journals (with a combined circulation of 600,000) and a number of Polish-language newspapers (circulation 180,000).Rising Anti-Semitism An ever-increasing proportion of Jews in interwar Poland lived separate lives from the Polish majority. In 1921, 74.2 percent of Polish Jews listed Yiddish or Hebrew as their native language, but the number has risen to 87 percent by 1931 already, resulting in growing tensions between Jews and Poles.[15] Jews were often not identified as Polish nationals; a problem caused not only by the reversal of assimilation shown in national censuses between 1921 and 1931, but also, by the influx of Russian Jews escaping persecution especially in Ukraine where up to 2,000 pogroms took place during the Civil War, in which an estimated 30,000 Jews were massacred directly and a total of 150,000 died.[16][17] A large number of Jews immigrated to Poland from the East, as they were entitled by the Peace treaty of Riga to choose the country they preferred. Several hundred thousand refugees joined the already numerous Jewish minority of the Polish Second Republic. More than 75 per cent of them lived in the urban areas. There was, therefore, a disproportionate concentration of Jews in these communities, with higher than average number of women, children and elderly.[18] Poland was an underdeveloped country struggling with remnants of devastating economic exploitation by the partitioners and their ensuing trade embargos. For many years, there was wide spread poverty among all citizens regardless of ethnicity, but especially among the unemployed Jews – for whom the help from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee was slow in coming. Plans for their retraining, considered by the Committee in 1929, were out of touch with the depth of Polish depression. The average standard of living of Polish Jews was among the worst among major Jewish communities in the world. The mostly nonexistent new job opportunities before Poland's industrialization of the mid 1930s were blamed on anti-Semitism, although Jewish per capita income among the working Jews was more than 40% higher in 1929 than that of Polish non-Jews.[4][19][20][21][22] The impoverished families relied on local Jewish charity, which had reached universally unprecedented proportions in 1929, providing services such as religion, education, health and other services to the amount of 200 million zloty a year.[23] The effects of the Great Depression had been very severe. The political situation of Jews in Poland was most amiable under the rule of Józef Piłsudski (1926–1935). Piłsudski replaced Endecja's 'ethnic assimilation' with the 'state assimilation' policy: citizens were judged by their loyalty to the state, not by their nationality.[3] The years 1926–1935 were favourably viewed by many Polish Jews, whose situation improved especially under the cabinet of Pilsudski's appointee Kazimierz Bartel.[24] However, a combination of various reasons, including the Great Depression, meant that the situation of Jewish Poles was never too satisfactory, and it deteriorated again after Piłsudski's death in May 1935. Many Jews regarded his death as tragedy, since no pogroms were perpetrated during his term in office.[3][25][26] Both Polish Jews and Polish Gentiles had nationalist movements of their own. Revisionist Zionism had a following among Polish Jews, who also experienced the revival of the Hebrew language and a growth of the idea of Aliyah. Meanwhile, the Polish nationalist Endecja movement and the National Radical Camp were also openly anti-Semitic despite being anti-Nazi. With their party influence growing, antisemitism gathered a new momentum and was most felt in smaller towns and in public arenas. In Grodno, antisemitic incidents led to the creation of a student self-defense group called Brit HaHayal (Soldier's Alliance) consisting of stronger Jewish youth. Polish high-school students, influenced by the Endeks, bullied their Jewish colleagues to stand up. The teachers were usually afraid to intervene. Jewish children often fell victim to antisemitic incidents on their way to or from school.[27] Further academic harassment, anti-Jewish riots, and semi-official or unofficial quotas (Numerus clausus) introduced in 1937 in some universities cut in half the number of Jews in Polish universities into the late 1930s. From 1935 to 1937, 79 Jews were killed and 500 injured in anti-Semitic incidents.[6] There were also victims among anti-Semites.[28] The Jewish community in Poland was large and vibrant internally, yet substantially poorer and less integrated than the Jews in most of Western Europe. Towards the end of 1930s, despite the impending threat to the Polish Republic from Nazi Germany, there was little effort seen in the way of reconciliation between Polish and Jewish societies. Many Polish Christians held that there were far too many Jews in the country. Polish government began actively helping the Zionist movement with its goal of creating the state of Israel, and armed and trained Polish Jews in paramilitary groups such as Haganah, Irgun and Lehi. Antisemitism in Poland was escalating. Discrimination and violence against Jews sweeping across much of Central and Eastern Europe had rendered the Polish Jewish population increasingly destitute. In 1937 the Catholic trade unions of Polish doctors and lawyers restricted their new members to Christian Poles while many government jobs continued to be unavailable to Jews during this entire period. In July 1939 Gazeta Polska, the unofficial organ of the Polish government[29] wrote: "The fact that our relations with the Reich are worsening does not in the least deactivate our program in the Jewish question—there is not and cannot be any common ground between our internal Jewish problem and Poland's relations with the Hitlerite Reich."[30][31] Escalating hostility towards Polish Jews and the official government support for Jewish Palestine led by Ze'ev Jabotinsky continued right up until the Nazi invasion of Poland.[32] WWII and the destruction of Polish Jewry (1939–1945) Until the outbreak of World War II, the relations between the Jews and the local Gentile population which contained Byelorussians, Ukrainians but mostly Poles – had been generally good with the exception of Eastern Poland, especially the Wołyń area, where Jewish shopkeepers were ruthlessly chased out by the Ukrainian nationalists from some 3,000 villages.[33] On August 23, 1939, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany entered into a Non-Aggression Pact, the so-called Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, with a secret protocol providing for the partition of Poland. On September 1, 1939, Germany attacked Poland and two weeks later, the Soviets invaded on September 17, 1939. Unlike the Vichy French or the Norwegian Quisling regime, Poles did not form a pro-Nazi collaborationist government. Further, Poles did not form collaborationist Nazi units such as the 29th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS RONA (1st Russian). Further information: History of Poland (1939–1945 The Polish September campaign In anticipation of the German attack, during the Summer of 1939, Jews and ethnic Poles cooperated preparing anti-tank fortifications.[34] The number of Jews in Poland on September 1, 1939, amounted to about 3,474,000 people.[7] Contrary to what many people believe, Jews in Poland were not simply victims of the ensuing Holocaust. Jewish Polish soldiers were among the first,[35] to launch armed resistance against the Nazi German forces during the 1939 Invasion of Poland.[36] Among one million Polish soldiers fighting the Germans in September 1939 , 13 percent (130,000) were Polish citizens of Jewish descent, who fought in all branches of Polish Armed Forces.[37] It is estimated that during the entirety of World War II as many as 32,216 Jewish soldiers and officers died and 61,000 were taken prisoner by the Germans; the majority did not survive.[38] The soldiers and non-commissioned officers who were released ultimately found themselves in the ghettos and labor camps and suffered the same fate as other Jewish civilians. Germans killed about 20 000 civilians in September 1939, a number of them Jewish. For example, in Częstochowa 227 civilians were murdered on September the 4th, 22 of them Jewish. Soviet-occupied Poland In newly partitioned Poland, according to 1931 census, 61.2% of Polish Jews found themselves under German occupation while 38.8% were in the Polish areas annexed by the Soviet Union. Based on population migration from West to East during and after the Invasion of Poland the percentage of Jews in the Soviet-occupied areas was probably higher than that of the 1931 census. The Soviet annexation was accompanied by the widespread arrests of government officials, police and military personnel, teachers, priests, judges, border guards, etc., followed by executions and massive deportation to Soviet interior and forced labour camps were many perished as a result of harsh conditions. The largest group of all those arrested or deported were ethnic Poles but Jews accounted for significant percentage of all the prisoners. Jewish refugees from Western Poland who registered for repatriation back to the German zone, wealthy Jewish capitalists, prewar political and social activists were labelled "class enemies" and deported for that reason. Jews caught for illegal border crossings or engaged in illicit trade and other "illegal" activities were also arrested and deported. Several thousand, mostly captured Polish soldiers were executed on the spot, some of them were Jewish. Private property, land, banks, factories, businesses, shops, and large workshops were nationalized. Political activity ceased and political prisoners filled the jails, many of whom were later executed. Zionism was designated as counter-revolutionary and forbidden. All Jewish and Polish newspapers were shut down within a day of the entry of the Soviet forces and anti-religious propaganda was conducted mainly through the new Soviet press which attacked religion in general and the Jewish faith in particular. Although the synagogues and churches were not shut down, they were heavily taxed. Sovietization of the economy affected the entire population. However, the Jewish communities were more vulnerable because of their distinctive social and economic structure. Red Army also brought with them new and different economic norms expressed in low wages, shortages in materials, rising prices, and a declining living standard. The Soviets also implemented a new employment policy that enabled many Jews to find jobs as civil servants while Poles were denied access to them and former Polish senior officials and leading personalities were arrested and exiled to remote regions of Russia together with their families. While most Poles of all ethnicities had anti-Soviet and anti-communist sentiments, a portion of the Jewish population, along with ethnic Belorussians, Ukrainians and communist Poles had initially welcomed Soviet forces.[39][40][41] The general feeling amongst Polish Jews was a sense of relief in having escaped the dangers of falling under Nazi rule, as well as from the overt policies of discrimination against Jews which existed in the Polish state, including discrimination in education, employment and commerce, as well as antisemitic violence that in some cases reached pogrom levels.[42][43] The Polish poet and former communist Aleksander Wat has stated that Jews were more inclined to cooperate with the Soviets[44][45] Norman Davies claimed that among the informers and collaborators, the percentage of Jews was striking, and they prepared lists of Polish "class enemies",[44] while other historians have indicated that the level of Jewish collaboration could well have been less than that of ethnic Poles.[46] Holocaust scholar Martin Dean has written that "few local Jews obtained positions of power under Soviet rule."[47] The issue of Jewish collaboration with the Soviet occupation remains controversial. A large group of scholars note that while not pro-communist, many Jews saw the Soviets as the lesser threat compared to the Nazis. They stress that stories of Jews welcoming the Soviets on the streets are largely impressionistic and not reliable indicators of the level of Jewish support for the Soviets. Additionally, it has been noted that ethnic Poles were as prominent as Jews were in filling civil and police positions in the occupation administration, and that Jews, both civilians and in the Polish military, suffered equally at the hands of the Soviet occupiers.[48] Whatever initial enthusiasm for the Soviet occupation Jews might have felt was soon dissipated upon feeling the impact of the suppression of Jewish societal modes of life by the occupiers.[49] The tensions between ethnic Poles and Jews as a result of this period has, according to some historians, taken a toll on relations between Poles and Jews throughout the war, creating until this day, an impasse to Polish-Jewish rapprochement.[50] Only a small percentage of the Jewish community had been members of the Communist Party of Poland during the inter-war era, though they had occupied an influential and conspicuous place in the party's leadership and in the rank and file in major centres, such as Warsaw, Lodz and Lwow. A larger number of younger Jews, often through the pro-Marxist Bund (General Jewish Workers' Union) or some Zionist groups, were sympathetic to Communism and Soviet Russia, both of which had been enemies of the Polish Second Republic. As a result of these factors they found it easy after 1939 to participate in the Soviet occupation administration in Eastern Poland, and briefly occupied prominent positions in industry, schools, local government, police and other Soviet-installed institutions. The anitisemitic Polish concept of "Judeo-communism" was reinforced during the period of the Soviet occupation (see Żydokomuna).[51][52] There were also many Jews who considered themselves both good Poles and good Jews and demonstrated loyalty toward Poland assisting Poles during brutal Soviet occupation. Among Polish officers killed by the NKVD in 1940 in the Katyń massacre there were 500–600 Jews, among them Baruch Steinberg, Chief Rabbi of the Polish Army during German invasion of Poland. . From 1939 to 1941 between 100,000 and 300,000 Polish Jews were deported from Soviet-occupied Polish territory into the Soviet Union. Some of them, especially Polish Communists (e.g. Jakub Berman), moved voluntarily; however, most of them were forcibly deported to Gulag. Small numbers of Polish Jews (about 6,000) were able to leave the Soviet Union in 1942 with the Władysław Anders army, among them the future Prime Minister of Israel Menachem Begin. During the Polish army's II Corps' stay in the British Mandate of Palestine, 67% (2,972) of the Jewish soldiers deserted, many to join the Irgun. General Anders decided not to prosecute the deserters. The cemetery of Polish soldiers who died during the Battle of Monte Cassino and the one in Casamassima[53] contains also headstones bearing a Star of David. The wartime continuation of the Second Polish Republic, the Polish Government in Exile, included Polish Jewish representatives: Szmul Zygielbojm and Ignacy Schwarzbart. The Polish Underground State and its military arm, the Armia Krajowa, as one of the largest anti-Nazi resistance movements in Europe, included Jewish units: the Jewish Military Union and the Jewish Combat Organization The Holocaust in German-occupied Poland Main article: The Holocaust in Poland The Polish Jewish community suffered the most in the Holocaust. About 6 million Polish citizens perished during the war,[54] half of them (3 million) Polish Jews—all but about 300,000 of the Jewish population—who were killed at the Nazi extermination camps of Auschwitz, Treblinka, Majdanek, Belzec, Sobibór, Chełmno or died of starvation in ghettos.[55] Poland became the largest site of the Nazi extermination program, since this was where most of the intended victims lived. In 1939 several hundreds of synagogues were blown up or burnt by the Germans who sometimes forced the Jews to do it themselves. In many cases Germans turned the synagogues into factories, places of entertainment, swimming-pools or prisons. Rabbis and other religious Jews were ordered to dance and sing in public with their beards cut or torn. Some rabbis were set on fire or hang. Within few days, Germans ordered all Jews to register and the word "Jude" was stamped on their identity cards. Jews were placed outside the law and their lives were regulated by orders or edicts. Series of restrictions and prohibitions were introduced and brutally enforced. Jews were forbidden to walk on the sidewalks, use public transport, enter places of leisure, sports arenas, theaters, museums and libraries. On the street Jews had to lift their hat to passing Germans and contact between Jews and non-Jews was banned. By the end of 1941 all Jews in German occupied Poland, except the children, had to wear an identifying badge with a blue Star of David.[56] Many Jews in what was then eastern Poland also fell victim to Nazi death squads called Einsatzgruppen, which massacred Jews, especially in 1941. Some of these German-inspired massacres were carried out with help from, or even active participation of Poles themselves: for example, the massacre in Jedwabne, in which between 300 (Institute of National Remembrance's Final Findings[57]) and 1,600 Jews (Jan T. Gross) were tortured and beaten to death by part of Jedwabne's citizens. The full extent of Polish participation in the massacres of the Polish Jewish community remains a controversial subject, in part due to Jewish leaders refusing to allow the remains of the Jewish victims to be exhumed and their cause of death to be properly established. The Polish Institute for National Remembrance identified twenty-two other towns that had pogroms similar to Jedwabne.[58] The reasons for these massacres are still debated, but they included anti-Semitism, resentment over alleged cooperation with the Soviet invaders in the Polish-Soviet War and during the 1939 invasion of the Kresy regions, greed for the possessions of the Jews (although the majority of Polish Jews prior to the war constituted some of Poland's poorest citizens), and of course coersion by the Nazis to participate in such massacres.[59] The Germans also established a number of ghettos in which Jews were confined, slowly starved and cruelly offered hopes of survival but eventually ended up being killed. The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest, with 380,000 people and the Łódź Ghetto, the second largest, holding about 160,000. Other Polish cities with large Jewish ghettos included Białystok, Częstochowa, Kielce, Kraków, Lublin, Lwów, and Radom. Ghettos were also established in smaller settlements. Living conditions in the Ghettos were terrible. Jews who tried to escape were shot to death with their bullet-riddled bodies to be left in public view until dusk as a warning. Many of those who fled to the Aryan side without connections with Christian Poles willing to risked their lives in order to help, returned to the ghettos when they were unable to find a place to hide.[60] Many were robbed and handed over to the Germans by "szmalcownik" Poles. Hundreds of four to five year old Jewish children went across en masse to the Aryan side, sometimes several times a day, smuggling food into the ghettos, returning with goods that often weighed more than they did. Smuggling was sometimes the only source of subsistence for these children and their parents, who would otherwise have died of starvation. Shooting of Jews who were caught trying to smuggle in food became routine. People were shot to death for bringing in a chicken or a liter of milk. Poles from the Aryan side found assisting Jews in obtained food were subject to the death penalty.[61][62] Poland was the only occupied country during World War II where the Nazis formally imposed the death penalty[63] for anybody found sheltering and helping Jews.[61][62] Food rations for Poles were very small (669 kcal per day in 1941) and black market prices of food were high, factors which made difficult to hide people and almost impossible to hide entire families, especially in the cities. Despite these draconian measures imposed by the Nazis, Poland has the highest number of Righteous Among The Nations awards at the Yad Vashem Museum. The Warsaw Ghetto[64] was established by the German Governor-General Hans Frank on October 16, 1940. The German authorities allowed a Jewish Council (Judenrat) of 24 men, led by Adam Czerniaków,[65][66] to form its own police to maintain order in the ghetto. Judenrat was also responsible for organizing the labour battalions demanded by the Germans. At this time, the population of the ghetto was estimated to be about 380,000 people, about 30% of the population of Warsaw. However, the size of the Ghetto was about 2.4% of the size of Warsaw. The Germans then closed off the Warsaw Ghetto from the outside world on November 16 of that year, building a wall around it. During the next year and a half, Jews from smaller cities and villages were brought into the Warsaw Ghetto, while diseases (especially typhoid) and starvation kept the inhabitants at about the same number. Average food rations in 1941 for Jews in Warsaw were limited to 253 kcal and 669 kcal for Poles as opposed to 2,613 kcal for Germans. On July 22, 1942, the mass deportation of the Warsaw Ghetto inhabitants began; during the next fifty-two days (until September 12, 1942) about 300,000 people were transported by train to the Treblinka extermination camp. The deportations were carried out by fifty German SS soldiers, 200 soldiers of the Latvian Schutzmannschaften Battalions, 200 Ukrainian Police, and 2,500 Jewish Ghetto Police. Employees of the Judenrat, including the Ghetto Police,[67] along with their families and relatives, were given immunity from deportations in return for their cooperation. Additionally, in August 1942, Jewish Ghetto policemen, under the threat of deportation themselves, were ordered to personally "deliver" five ghetto inhabitants to the Umschlagplatz train station. On January 18, 1943, some Ghetto inhabitants, including members of ŻOB (Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa, Jewish Combat Organisation), resisted, often with arms, German attempts for additional deportations to Treblinka. The first ghetto uprising is believed to have occurred in 1942 the small town of Łachwa in the Polesie Voivodship (see Lakhva Ghetto). The final destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto came four months later after the crushing one of the most heroic and tragic battles of the war, Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, led by Mordechaj Anielewicz. Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, which was reverberated throughout Poland and the rest of the world as an example of courage and defiance, was followed by other failed Ghetto uprisings in Nazi occupied Poland. Some of the survivors of Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, still held in camps at or near Warsaw were freed a year later during the larger 1944 Warsaw Uprising, led by Polish resistance movement Armia Krajowa and immediately joined Polish fighters. Only few of them survived. Polish commander of that Jewish unit, Waclaw Micuta, described them as one of the best fighters of the Warsaw Uprising, always at the front line. It is estimated that over 2000 Polish Jews, some as well known as Marek Edelman or Icchak Cukierman, and several dozen Greek,[68] Hungarian or even German Jews freed by Armia Krajowa from Gesiowka concentration camp in Warsaw, men and woman, took part in combat against Nazis during 1944 Warsaw Uprising. As many as 17,000 Polish Jews lost their lives during 1944 Warsaw Uprising, who either fought with the AK units or had been discovered in hiding. The fate of the Warsaw Ghetto was similar to that of the other ghettos in which Jews were concentrated. With the decision of Nazi Germany to begin the Final Solution, the destruction of the Jews of Europe, Aktion Reinhard began in 1942, with the opening of the extermination camps of Bełżec, Sobibór, and Treblinka, followed by Auschwitz-Birkenau where people were executed to death in the gas chambers and massive executions (death wall). Many died from hunger, starvation, disease, torture or by pseudo-medical experiments. The mass deportation of Jews from ghettos to these camps, such as happened at the Warsaw Ghetto, soon followed, and more than 1.7 million Jews were killed at the Aktion Reinhard camps by October 1943 alone. The Polish Government in Exile was the first (in November 1942) to reveal the existence of Nazi-run concentration camps and the systematic extermination of the Jews by the Nazis, through its courier Jan Karski and through the activities of Witold Pilecki, member of Armia Krajowa and the only person who volunteered for imprisonment in Auschwitz and organized a resistance movement inside the camp itself.[69] One of the Jewish members of the National Council of the Polish government in exile, Szmul Zygielbojm, committed suicide to protest the indifference of the Allied governments in the face of the Holocaust in Poland. The Polish government in exile was also the only government to set up an organization (Żegota) specifically aimed at helping the Jews in Poland. Communist rule: 1945–1989 Main article: History of Poland (1945–1989) Post-war Between 40,000 and 100,000 Polish Jews survived the Holocaust in Poland by hiding or by joining the Polish or Soviet partisan units. Another 50,000–170,000 were repatriated from the Soviet Union and 20,000–40,000 from Germany and other countries. At its postwar peak, there were 180,000–240,000 Jews in Poland settled mostly in Warsaw, Łódź, Kraków, Wrocław and Lower Silesia, e.g. Bielawa. Dzierżoniów. Soon after the end of the Second World War, Jews began to flee Poland. The exodus took place in stages. After the war, the vast majority of survivors left for several reasons, often more than one. Many left simply because they did not want to live in a communist country. Some left because the refusal of the Communist regime to return prewar property. Others did not wish to rebuild their lives in the places where their families were murdered. Yet others wanted to go to British Mandate of Palestine, which soon became Israel. Some of the survivors had relatives abroad. The dominant factor, however, was the country's major anti-Semitism[citation needed]. Jews incurred sometimes lethal risks. Postwar Poland was a chaotic country in which communists and nationalists fought each other. Hundreds of Jews were murdered in anti-Jewish violence.[70] The best-known case is the Kielce pogrom of 1946,[71] in which thirty seven Jews were brutally murdered. Until today the debate in Poland continues whether the murderers were leftists or rightists and who inspired the killings. Between 1945 and 1948, 100,000–120,000 Jews left Poland . Their departure was largely organized by the Zionist activists in Poland such as Adolf Berman and Icchak Cukierman under the umbrella of a semi-clandestine, tolerated by the government of Poland, organization Berihah ("Flight").[72] Berman's brother Jakub supervised security forces, so he was one of the most influential people in Poland. Berihah was also responsible for the organized emigration of Jews from Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia totaling 250,000 (including Poland) Holocaust survivors. A second wave of Jewish emigration (50,000) took place during the liberalization of the Communist regime between 1957 and 1959. Then there was the third major wave of emigration, which one might call an expulsion of Jews, in 1968–1969. Thereafter almost all Jews who decided to stay in Poland "stopped" being Jewish. The Bund took part in the post-war elections of 1947 on a common ticket with the (non-communist) Polish Socialist Party (PPS) and gained its first and only parliamentary seat in its Polish history, plus several seats in municipal councils. Under pressure from Soviet-installed Communist authorities, the Bund's leaders 'voluntarily' disbanded the party in 1948–1949 against the opposition of many activists. For those Polish Jews who remained, the rebuilding of Jewish life in Poland was carried out between October 1944 and 1950 by the Central Committee of Polish Jews (Centralny Komitet Żydów Polskich, CKŻP) which provided legal, educational, social care, cultural, and propaganda services. A countrywide Jewish Religious Community, led by Dawid Kahane, who served as chief rabbi of the Polish Armed Forces, functioned between 1945 and 1948 until it was absorbed by the CKŻP. Eleven independent political Jewish parties, of which eight were legal, existed until their dissolution during 1949–50. A number of Polish Jews participated in the establishment of the Communist regime in the People's Republic of Poland between 1944 and 1956, holding, among others, prominent posts in the Politburo of the Polish United Worker's Party (e.g. Jakub Berman, Hilary Minc – responsible for establishing a Communist-style economy), and the security apparatus Urząd Bezpieczeństwa (UB) and in diplomacy/intelligence. After 1956, during the process of destalinisation in Poland under Władysław Gomułka's regime, some Urząd Bezpieczeństwa officials including Roman Romkowski (born Natan Grunsapau-Kikiel), Jacek Różański (born Jozef Goldberg), and Anatol Fejgin were prosecuted for "power abuses" including the torture of Polish anticommunists (among them, Witold Pilecki), and sentenced to long prison terms. A UB official, Józef Światło, (born Izaak Fleichfarb), after escaping in 1953 to the West, exposed through Radio Free Europe the methods of the UB which led to its dissolution in 1954. Jerzy Borejsza was an important press and book editor, who attracted many talented writers. Some Jewish cultural institutions were established including the Yiddish State Theater founded in 1950 and directed by Ida Kaminska, the Jewish Historical Institute, an academic institution specializing in the research of the history and culture of the Jews in Poland, and the Yiddish newspaper Folks-Shtime. EBAY1075/18