Maybe interesting to our jewish friends... but not only!!!

[Marmot1]

Now I realize why number ow jews in poland was so high before WWII

February 24 1921 The Polish-Soviet Repatration Agreement permits 700,000 Jews to enter Poland from the USSR. About 800,000 Jewish refugees will be granted Polish citizenship.

and then

General Skladowski (one of the ministers in 20's) sheds light on Pilsudski's (Head of state in 20's) pro-Jewish sentiments:
In the fall of 1926 after the May coup d'etat had taken place, I found out that there were 600,000 Jews without Polish citizenship. These Jews had run away from Ukraine. Lithuania, and the Baltic States to Poland in fear of persecution by Kolczak, Denikin, and Petlura. These refugees did not have passports and needed passes to go from their towns to other sesctions of Poland and were thus treated as second-class citizens. When I reported this to Marshal Pilsudski, he answered that Poland could not afford second-class citizens and he decided that all of the 600,000 Jews, though not originally from Poland, should be given Polish passports and full citizenship rights. And so it was done.

Simon sochet in: "An Attempt to Identify the Polish-Jewish Officers Who were Prisoners in Katyn"

Also some statistics:
1931

Polish census shows 3,113,900 Jews in Poland (9.8% of the population). Almost 80% of Jews declare Yiddish to be their mother tongue. Per capita income for Jews is 830 zloty and 585 for non-Jews. Jews account for 40% of Poland's university graduates.

http://www.polandsholocaust.org/1917-1938.html

I found this while searching info about Katyń genocide...

Anyway interesting info about polish russian and polish german relations in XX century and in English!!!!

[UkrainianAmerican]

Thanks for the info bro. woot

[StarvingStudent47]

A main reason why so many Jews were in the Poland area around WWII goes back to the Tsars.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, Russia controlled what is now Poland (as well as what is now Belarus). The area near the Poland/Belarus border was called "the Pale of Russia." Jews from all over Russia were deported to the Pale of Russia to live in "ghettos" (this is the first use of the term, by the way). This was an interesting reversal from previous European policies of dispersing Jews as thinly as possible, going back to the diaspora at the hands of the Roman Empire (the Romans deported many Jews from the Holy Land, dispersing them into many small populations all over Europe).

The Pale of Russia is where my mother's family is from (we immigrated to the USA in the late 19th century). Half are from what is now Poland, half are from what is now Belarus. Both sides spoke Yiddish as their primary language.