Jews in Post-War Wrocław and L’viv by Izabela Kazejak

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Official Policy and Local Responses in comparative perspective, 1945–1970s

Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society

Izabela Kazejak examines the process of re-establishing Jewish communities in two cities: Wrocław, which passed from Germany to Poland in 1945, and L’viv, which passed from Poland to Soviet Ukraine. She compares the similarities and differences of the two regimesʼ policies, and why the effort to create self-identified Jewish yet loyal Communist communities did not succeed.

The first chapter looks into the pre-war history and wartime destruction of Jewish communities in Breslau, Germany, and Lwów, Poland. Subsequent chapters trace the efforts of the post-war regimes, supported by those Jews who had survived the Holocaust and chose to remain in Eastern Europe, to reconstitute Jewish life up to 1968 in the case of Wrocław and the 1970s in the case of L’viv.

The author explores and analyzes several context in relation to this process: the official policies towards Jews of the government of the Polish People’s Republic and the government of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic; the aims and effects of these official policies; the implementation of these central policies at the local level; the national contexts of Poland and Soviet Ukraine; popular and official antisemitism and its effect on the post-war Jewish communities; and finally, the effects of the economic and social modernization carried out by the Communist regimes on the development of the Jewish communities.

Year first published: 2023