The Jews in Poland, Part II: 1795-1939
The eighteenth-century partitions and nineteenth-century uprisings worsened the livelihood of Jews in Poland, writes Adam Zamoyski.
At the end of the eighteenth century Poland and her Jewry were divided up between three powers who had not tolerated the presence of Jews, and were in no way prepared to cope with such a responsibility. It was largely due to their lack of policy that the Jewish problem came to tempt extremists to look for radical and ‘final’ solutions.
Only a century before, when, if anything, there had been more Jews in the area, there had been no ‘Jewish Problem’. Within the Polish Republic there had been room for any number of minorities, for it had been ruled not by a nation, or as a nation, but by a class as an empire.
Only after the decline of this principle had the population begun to polarize, and this was particularly noticeable in the case of the Jews. In the sixteenth century they had not been outwardly distinguishable from other citizens, but by the beginning of the nineteenth they could be recognized at a distance by their long black cassocks.
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