The Encounter between Jews and Poles in Lublin District after Liberation,1944-1945

In recent years, the historiography of Jewish-Polish relations after the Holocaust has often shown a marked tendency to trace the conflict between these peoples to the central role of Jews in the new communist ruling system. Poles murdered hundreds of Jews, mainly in 1944 to 1946, for various reasons—some ideological, others economic. The collective guilt that the Polish political right and some of Polish society assigned to the Jews, however, proves to be inaccurate when one examines the community of Jewish survivors who gathered in the Lublin district, the first area to be liberated from Nazi occupation (summer of 1944). Most survivors were roundly disinterested, let alone involved, in politics, and the issue of communism in Poland was totally alien to them. Their main concerns had to do with family property that had been abandoned during the deportations, an attempt to locate lost family members, and, above all, an effort to reengage with the life that the Nazi bloodbath had broken off. They were stunned to confront the intensity of Polish society’s resentment and hostility toward them and the governing authorities’ bureaucratic indifference. The conflation of these two factors prompted many to abandon their prior places of residence, to move to new areas of settlement, or to leave Poland forever.