Education to Unity
Jewish Schools in Poland during the Interwar Era
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
On the basis of the Minorities Treaty, many secular and religious Jewish schools came into being in Poland after 1919. Religious organisations and political groups, especially those influenced by socialism and Zionism, founded school networks. Their programmes reflected the heterogeneity of the Polish Jewish community. Schools with a Zionist orientation stood next to those who stressed Jewish national autonomy within Polish society, moderate religious institutions next to ultra-Orthodox facilities. Many Jews predisposed to assimilation sent their children to public Polish schools. During the 1930s, nationalist, anti-minority government policy and widespread anti-Semitism increasingly destabilized the Jewish school system.
(Osteuropa 10/2012, pp. 53–70)