Jewish–Polish history (1989–present)

After the fall of Communism in Poland in 1989, Jewish cultural, social, and religious life has experienced a revival. Many historical issues related to the Holocaust and the period of Soviet domination (1945–1989) in the country – suppressed by Communist censorship – have been reevaluated and publicly discussed leading to better understanding and visible improvement in Polish–Jewish relations. In 1990, there were 3,800 Jews in Poland, 0.01% of Poland’s population, compared to 3,250,000 before 1939. The number had dropped to 3,200 in 2010.

Jewish–Polish current events

In 1989, the Soviet-backed regime – notorious for its political repression – collapsed, exposing the rift between the Polish and Jewish communities arising from World War II remembrance and human rights violations committed by the Polish government between 1944 and 1989. Since 1989, the recent experiences of Polish Jews have been widely popularized, including the circumstances surrounding the Massacre in Jedwabne, the Koniuchy Massacre, the Polish–Jewish wartime as well as postwar relations in general, Stalinist reign of terror and the March 1968 events. Many negative stereotypes originating from the cold-war literature on the subject have been challenged. The rescue of Jews by Poles during the Holocaust suppressed by the Soviet-backed regime in an attempt to discredit the Polish resistance movements as reactionary has also been reasserted.

In 1993, the Union of Jewish Religious Communities in Poland (ZGWŻ) was formed to organise religious and cultural life of Jewish communities in Poland. It helps the descendants of Holocaust survivors in a variety of legal matters (communal as well as personal) such as, in the process of recovery and restoration of property once owned by Jewish communities and nationalized in communist Poland.