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Polish Jews

Participants in the Miszpucha Foundation trip for Polish Jewish emigrants and their descendants have lunch at the Jewish Community Center in Warsaw, Poland. (Adam de Kaminski via JTA)
June 13, 2026, 3:54 pm
13,000 Jews were driven out of Poland in 1968. Now, some are returning to tell their story
Decades after anti-Zionist purge virtually decimated what was left of post-Holocaust Jewish life, government-funded trip brings emigrants back for reunion with those who remained
By Shira Li Bartov
Vladka Meed’s false identification card, issued in the name of Stanisława Wąchalska, 1943. (Courtesy, Benjamin Meed/ United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)
April 14, 2026, 8:48 am
Avenging angel risked her life to try to save Warsaw’s Jews — and lived to write about it
Updated English translation of Vladka Meed’s 1948 Yiddish memoir, ‘On Both Sides of the Wall,’ breathes new life into her experiences with the Jewish resistance against the Nazis
By Renee Ghert-Zand
A man puts a candle by new plaques recently placed near a Polish monument to Jews murdered by their Polish neighbors in the 1941 Jedwabne massacre, July 10, 2025. (Wojtek RADWANSKI / AFP)
July 14, 2025, 3:58 pm
In Polish town where locals burned Jews alive, ‘alternate memorial’ denies complicity
Far-right activist erected history-falsifying plaques at site of 1941 Jedwabne massacre ahead of last week’s commemoration, smearing Jewish victims and exonerating Polish perpetrators
By Shira Li Bartov
Protesters wave Palestinian flags and claim a genocide is unfolding in Gaza outside the Auschwitz extermination camp in Poland on May 6, 2024. (Canaan Lidor/Times of Israel)
July 6, 2025, 10:07 pm
Pro-Palestinian activists assail Polish film fest over sponsor’s Israel investments
Even as anti-Israel groups call for a boycott due to sponsorship by BNP Paribas, Wrocław festival condemns ‘genocide’ in Gaza
By ToI Staff
Supporters of Poland's presidential candidate Karol Nawrocki hold Polish flags as they gather to attend a campaign rally in Warsaw on May 25, 2025, a week ahead of the second round of presidential elections. (Photo by Wojtek RADWANSKI / AFP)
May 31, 2025, 1:42 pm
Poland to vote for next president, with Holocaust history an apparent item on the ballot
In Sunday’s crucial runoff election, Warsaw’s liberal-centrist mayor faces a right-wing historian who helmed a nationalist effort to rewrite the country’s role in the Holocaust
By Shira Li Bartov
Jesse Eisenberg arrives at the Oscars on Sunday, March 2, 2025, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. (Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP)
March 8, 2025, 3:26 pm
Jesse Eisenberg receives Polish citizenship after film wins Oscar
At NY ceremony, actor, screenwriter and director tells Polish president it’s the ‘honor of a lifetime’; movie ‘A Real Pain’ tells story of 2 cousins exploring family’s Holocaust history
By Shira Li Bartov
Polish archaeology students at work excavating a Jewish cemetery in Warsaw, September 2024. (Shira Li Bartov/ JTA)
March 1, 2025, 4:09 pm
Archaeology students excavating a Warsaw Jewish cemetery are uncovering a forgotten world
200,000 Jews are interred at the Okopowa Street burial ground, but decades of neglect and the Nazi destruction of archives left many unable to access their roots – until now
By Shira Li Bartov
Polish students learn the history of Oświęcim's Jewish community at the Oshpitzin Jewish Museum on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, January 27, 2025 (Zev Stub/Times of Israel)
February 2, 2025, 9:30 am
In the shadow of Auschwitz, a museum commemorates an ancient Polish Jewish community
Before the Nazis chose Oswiciem as the site of the infamous death camp, Jews thrived in the city for half a millennium. Now, the last Jewish resident keeps their memory alive
By Zev Stub
German-Jewish philosopher Prof. Martin Buber teaching a class at Hebrew University in 1949. (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
January 28, 2025, 7:40 pm
Newly found letter shows Martin Buber’s concern over the fate of Polish Jews in 1945
On February 5, 1945, some Hebrew University scholars launched an appeal to fellow faculty members encouraging them to mobilize for European Jews
By Rossella Tercatin
A woman passes the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw, Poland, July 16, 2019. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)
November 7, 2024, 11:09 am
Poland’s Jewish museum marks its first decade, made tumultuous by politics
In the heart of the former Warsaw Ghetto, locals get a lesson in the 1,000-year history of Polish Jews, who numbered 3 million before the Holocaust and are now just a few thousand
By Shira Li Bartov
Hillel attendees in Berlin build a sukkah. (Debi Simon for Hillel Deutschland/ via JTA)
October 16, 2024, 2:11 pm
Despite record post-Oct. 7 antisemitism, European Jews are out and proud this Sukkot
From Milan to Warsaw, Jewish communities are building huts and brandishing the four species as usual — with a little bit of extra protection
By Mati Wagner
Katarzyna and Artur Goławski, co-managers of the Kuzmiuk Bakery, hold their signature cebularz, once called pletzel by Lublin's Yiddish-speaking Jews. (Shira Li Bartov/ JTA)
August 27, 2024, 3:39 pm
Owners of Lublin’s oldest bakery learn it had belonged to Jewish family killed by Nazis
Before 99% of the city’s Jews were murdered, the Kuźmiuk Bakery brought customers from near and far; the descendants of the family who took over only learned of its origins in 2017
By Shira Li Bartov
Rabbi Meir Shapiro sits in the library of the Chachmei Lublin Yeshiva in a photograph taken between the yeshiva's opening in 1930 and his death in 1933. The fate of the yeshiva's library under the Nazis is a subject of mystery. (Courtesy Grodzka Gate-NN Theater Center)
May 6, 2024, 10:03 am
Thought to be destroyed by Nazis, books of the Lublin Yeshiva Library are turning up
Though story has it that the texts were burned in 1939, this is uncorroborated. Local Piotr Nazaruk has located and digitized 850 of them – the tip of the iceberg, he says
By Shira Li Bartov
Students shout slogans and display a banner reading "Long live the student intifada" as they take part in an anti-Israel rally at the Sorbonne University in Paris on April 29, 2024. (Geoffroy Van Der Hasselt/AFP)
May 2, 2024, 2:18 pm
France seen as more antisemitic than Poland in new poll among Israelis
Almost half of respondents say Poles were as much to blame for the Holocaust as Germans; Germany now seen as least antisemitic
By Canaan Lidor
Screen capture from video of Polish ultra far-right lawmaker Grzegorz Braun from Confederation (Konfederacja) using a fire extinguisher to put out a Hanukkah menorah placed in the parliament lobby, Warsaw, Poland, on December 12, 2023. (TVN24/AFP)
April 9, 2024, 9:09 pm
Far-right Polish MP charged after extinguishing parliament’s Hanukkah candles
Grzegorz Braun indicted for insulting people on religious grounds; disrupting Jewish community event, lawmaker described holiday as ‘satanic,’ said he was restoring ‘normality’
By Reuters
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