Lunchtime Lecture: Polska Jerozolima: To a new life

Join our webinar with Rita Nash, who will examine the post-war experiences of Polish Jews escaping to the USSR.

Polska Jerozolima – Polish Jerusalem! That was the name ascribed to Lower Silesia, the heartbeat of the post war Jewish return to Poland. Wanting to establish a communist satellite, Stalin needed to fill the void with Polish citizens and he had just the ticket – repatriate the approximately 200,000 Jews who fled to or had been deported into the Soviet Union. On their return, these Jews began “a naye leben” – a new life. But it was not to be: Polish anti-Semitism had never gone away and Communist handcuffs had tightened. This lecture will consider the post war experience for these Jews.

This lecture is the second of a two-part series presented by Rita Nash. In the first lecture, Rita will look at the escape of Polish Jews to the USSR. In the second, she will look at their post-war experience in the immediate aftermath of the war.

Image: the Jews take control of their new life in Lower Silesia – First meeting of the Provincial Committee of Lower Silesian Jews, Reichenbach, June 1945.