Welcome to PolandJews.com.

This site is dedicated to a community that largely no longer exists - the Jews who once called Poland home. From Warsaw to Crakow to Lodz to Tarnow and Gur. The vast majority were murdered by the Nazis during World War II. Those few who remained alive mostly chose to leave Poland after the war. Today, there is an ongoing discussion of what role the Poles played during the war - did they try to protect their Jewish neighbors or did they try to help the Germans rid the land of its Jews? The answer probably lies somewhere in the middle.

There were towns like Jedwabne, who even today try to hide the horror of what they did. Jedwabne is about the murder of one half a town (the Jews), by their Christian neighbors. There were no German troops there in Jedwabne that day in 1941 when the Jews were rounded up and murdered. It was the Poles who murdered and the Poles who tried to hide the truth for decades that followed.

And then there are stories of the many  Poles who tried to save their Jewish neighbors and friends. Many of these have been documented - many more, like the Jews who vanished without a trace, are lost to history. Before and beyond the Holocaust, there is a rich and long history of Jews in Poland. This site attempts to describe that history as well.

But ultimately, all roads lead back to those defining moments in history when Poland's Jews were taken to Auschwitz and Treblinka and Maidanek and Chelmno and to the ghettoes and mass graves.