Both Wroclaw and almost all of Lower Silesia were a place that became home to thousands of Jews after the war. Not only the Holocaust survivors came here, but also the so-called repatriates from the Eastern Borderlands and former prisoners of the Gross-Rosen concentration camp and its numerous branches located in the region. Jews from the Soviet Union and other regions of Poland also came to Lower Silesia. Thus, such a large number of Jewish settlers was a phenomenon in the country, which was recovering from the conflagration of the war. Settlement was fostered by the ethnic population exchange in these areas, which made it possible to build post-war life away from family traumas, although this does not mean that Polish Jews were relieved after the Holocaust. On the contrary, the trauma associated with the war continues to this day in many families.
The center of Jewish activity in Wroclaw, both secular and religious, was the building at Włodkowica Street, which was a new-old Jewish district. It housed institutions, a kosher canteen, a synagogue with a mikveh, as well as books and press publications. Until 1951, the Jews of Wroclaw could use four synagogues: the White Stork Synagogue, the shul, i.e. a small synagogue, and the houses of worship at Oleśnicka 11 and Żeromskiego 24.
Rabbi Szulim Trejstman in Wroclaw (Yad Vashem, Photo Archive, Jerusalem)
Jewish settlement in Lower Silesia was also part of the communist ideology aimed at concentrating and unifying the resurgent Jewish life. It is estimated that 100,000 Jews settled here after the war, but this number gradually decreased over time. One of the most famous and significant political activists in Wroclaw was Jakub Egit, the chairman of the Provincial Committee of Polish Jews in Lower Silesia. The efforts of the author of the book Towards a New Life were intended at creating a strong Jewish center in the then Wroclaw Voivodeship. The Jewish settlement here was so large and its cultural and intellectual capital so great that researchers indicate that Lower Silesia was the most significant center of post-war Jewish life in Europe. However, Jakub Egit was active here only until 1949, when he was deprived of power, and accused of nationalist activities aiming at the separation of Lower Silesia.
There were important institutions under the aegis of the Provincial Jewish Committee, such as the publishing house and the Yiddish newspaper “Niderszlezje”. With the successive influx of Jewish population, cultural life flourished, and one of its outstanding manifestations was theatrical life. In 1946, the Lower Silesian Jewish Theatre began operating in Wroclaw, and although the plays were staged in Yiddish, the performances were open to all interested persons. Theatre, and comedies in particular, was one of the informal therapeutic measures that helped to deal with the trauma of the Holocaust. Its seat was at Świdnicka Street, one of the performers was Ida Kamińska, the most famous Jewish actress in Polish history, nominated for an Oscar and Golden Globes.
The first post-war years abounded in the formation of many new organizations in Wroclaw – numerous schools, social and political institutions. Jewish children could attend religious or secular schools, which put strong emphasis on teaching Hebrew or Yiddish. Artistic education was also at a high level – Jews could take lessons at the Wroclaw Ballet School of Sylwia Swen, the wife of the eminent theatre director Jakub Rotbaum, or attend the Wroclaw Jewish Music School. Unfortunately, the end of education came quite quickly, as the authorities ordered all the institutions to be nationalized in 1949. The Talmud-Torah Jewish Religious School at Włodkowica Street operated until the 1960s, while the Szolem Alejchem at Icchak Lejb Perec Street, where Yiddish was the language of tuition, operated the longest – it was closed only in 1968, when all Jewish children left the school.
The Bund, the Jewish workers’ party, also strengthened efforts to revive the national and cultural ideals of Jews, promoted Yiddish culture as the language of the Jewish masses, and insisted on staying in the country. At the same time, numerous Zionist organizations were active in the region. They insisted on learning Hebrew and organized colonies and kibbutzim.
Even before establishing the State of Israel, they encouraged to participate in military training in Lower Silesia, which was to prepare for the departure to Palestine. Regardless of political beliefs, post-war emigration was still relatively numerous, as anti-Semitic witch-hunt campaigns, robberies and killings were frequent. A particularly large emigration action took place as a result of the Kielce pogrom at the end of July 1946, when Jews realized that they could not feel safe in Poland. The Israeli Declaration of Independence in 1948 was also not without significance – it encouraged a large group of Jews to emigrate to the Jewish state.
Holocaust survivors (Bronisław Eidler / Taube Department of Jewish Studies)
The degradation of Jewish life took place after 1949, when all institutions were nationalized and the Polish United Workers’ Party took control of them. At that time, Jewish schools, clubs, libraries, cooperatives, organizations and parties were closed. The Social and Cultural Society of Jews in Poland was established by the merger of the Central Jewish Committee with the Jewish Cultural Society. Religious matters were supervised by the Congregation of the Mosaic Confession. Thus, after just a few years, a significant period of the post-war revival of Jewish life in Poland ended. The following decades and the intensifying anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist campaigns carried out by the authorities resulted in mass emigration and a slow disappearance of important manifestations of Jewish life in Wroclaw.
Poster of Lower Silesian Jewish Theatre in 1949 (National Library of Poland)