Over the last millennium, Poland has been both a safe haven for European Jewry and the site of unparalleled death and destruction. At the outset of the last century, Poland was home to some 3.3 million Jews; this was the largest Jewish community in Europe and the epicenter of Ashkenazic Jewish life.

JDC Begins Working in Poland
The Polish Jewish community was ravaged by World War I. Over one million Jews were left homeless and starving, while 60 percent of the children were stricken with tuberculosis and 75,000 were orphaned. JDC responded by opening soup kitchens, equipping hospitals, founding orphanages, reestablishing schools, and organizing a tracing service to help reunite families.

The Holocaust
In the spring of 1943, some 200,000 Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto staged a valiant uprising, using homemade weapons to fight the well-armed German troops. One of them was JDC's representative, Isaac Giterman, who had infiltrated the ghetto to bring some measure of aid to the community. The ghetto fighters held out for an astounding 27 days, hoping and praying for outside help that never came. Three million Polish Jews were murdered by the Nazis during the Shoah. By the end of World War II, only 300,000 members of the community had survived.

Thousands of these survivors later perished in local pogroms. Those who remained found themselves living under a Communist regime, which viciously suppressed any expression of Jewish religion or culture. To protect themselves and their families, many survivors hid their Jewish identity and heritage even from their children.

JDC during the Communist Regime
In the immediate aftermath of the war, JDC contributed to the rehabilitation of the Polish Jewish community. In 1950, the political climate in Poland forced JDC to close its offices and leave the country. In 1959, JDC was invited back to Poland to provide assistance to over 19,000 Jews who had been repatriated from the Soviet Union; this program became JDC’s largest European operation at that time. In 1967, JDC was expelled from Poland once again.

A New Beginning
Since 1981, JDC has been helping Poland’s Jews to write a new chapter in their history. Polish Jewry, embracing the freedoms of the post-Communist era, has been rebuilding a vibrant and diverse Jewish community. JDC works in partnership with Polish Jewish organizations to help the Jews of Poland rediscover their heritage and rebuild Jewish communal life.

2005