Poles and Jews in Wartime Scotland: Setting the Record Straight
Examining the complex relationship between Jews and Poles in Scotland during World War II.
The relationship between Jews and Poles in Scotland during the Second World War was deeply complex. In many ways the interactions were correct, even cordial at best, but fraught, hostile and potentially violent at worst and problems tended to follow the desperate wartime conditions. Attitudes followed patterns that had been formed during the many centuries of Jewish life in Poland and which in the twentieth century represented the greatest Jewish community in Europe. Poland’s three million Jews formed an important section of the country’s thirty million people, forming around a third of its urban population.