[Cronos]

With due respect dfw -- I think it's only been complex since the mid-1800s with the rise of nationalism

Before that and especially in the old Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth, Jews could live peacefully and they were supportive of the Polish kings and nobility even in times when Poland was invaded by Swedes, Russians, Germans and Turks

There were no pogroms in the commonwealth as in England or France or Germany.

[dfwgator]

And as someone menioned above, the Kielce Progrom was instigated by the NKVD, who wanted to drive a wedge between Poles and Jews in post-war Poland to make it easier for the Soviets to bring Poland into their orbit.

[pierrem15]

The only European country in the late Middle Ages or early Modern period where at least some Jews were elevated to the nobility, for bravery in battle against foreign invaders.

[pierrem15]

That's also my impression from reading Polish history-- antisemitism became more pronounced as the Poles came to identify themselves as a Polish speaking, Catholic nation after the partition. Even then a lot of the antisemitism took the form of trying to force the assimilation of Yiddish speaking Jews.

The Commonwealth was a cultural empire, made up of mainly Polish and Lithuanian speaking nobleman (Polish established itself as the main language of the nobility over time) made up of many ethnic and religious groups: Poles, Lithuanians, Jews, Germans, Catholics, Protestants and even a small contingent of Muslims. In the 17th century, many nobleman were Protestant.

The same struggle between the "cosmopolitan" understanding of the Republic (exemplified by Pilsudski) and the Polish nationalist vision (exemplified by Dmowski) was a real point of contention in Polish interwar politics, and there are still strong echoes of it in contemporary Polish politics in arguments between PiS (Kaczynski) and Civic Platform (Kopacz).