The history of the Jews in Poland dates back over a millennium. 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. 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 after the German and Soviet occupation of Poland in 1939 and the ensuing Holocaust. Since the fall of communism there has been a Jewish Revival.

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 one of the most tolerant countries in Europe. 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. With the weakening of the Commonwealth and growing religious strife (due to the Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counter-Reformation), Poland’s traditional tolerance began to wane from the 17th century onward. 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, 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 contemporary Europe, was a growing problem.

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. Although the genocide occurred largely in German occupied Poland there was little Polish collaboration with the Germans, who made almost no attempt to set up a collaborationist government in Poland, and rejected overtures by Polish fascists and anti-Semites. Collaboration by individual Poles with the Nazis has been described as being less than that in other European countries. The attitude of non-Jewish Poles ranged from extreme cases of participation in massacres, as well as extortion, indifference to Jews’ plight to risking of one’s life to save Jews.

In the postwar period, many of the approximately 200,000 Polish Jewish survivors chose to emigrate from the communist People’s Republic of Poland to the nascent State of Israel and North or South America. Their departure was hastened by the destruction of most Jewish institutions, post-war pogroms and the hostility of the Communist Party to both religion and private enterprise. Most of the remaining Jews left Poland in the late 1960s as the result of the Soviet-sponsored anti-Semitic 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, though the actual number of Jews, including those who are not actively connected to Judaism or Jewish culture, may be several times larger.