Podcast: Loyalty. Jews and the Army: between integration and exclusion

Dr Christhardt Henschel will talk about the Polish Army’s changing attitude towards its Jewish recruits and soldiers in the interwar period.

Listen to the podcast from the lecture (7.03.2019):

In the interwar period, Jews’ willingness to serve in the army was a yardstick to measure their loyalty towards the Polish state. At the same time, the state’s attitude towards Jewish soldiers as well as the Jewish attitude towards army service kept evolving. Jews fought in Józef Piłsudski’s Legions and yet, during the Polish-Bolshevik War, the Jewish legionaries were interned at the camp in Jabłonna. Why did the Polish administration mistrust them? Did the situation changed with time? What was the Jewish milieus’ reaction towards such a national policy?

During his lecture, Christhardt Henschel will explain how the Polish Army, while balancing between the exclusion and integration of Jews, sought its own ways of treating Jewish recruits and soldiers.

Dr Christhardt Henschel is a researcher at the German Historical Institute in Warsaw. He is interested in the history of Poland in the 19th and 20th centuries, and the history of Jews in East-Central Europe. He is currently involved in research as part of the project North Mazovia between Polish statehood and the German occupying force in the mid-20th century.

The lecture will be delivered in Polish.

The event accompanies the exhibition In King Matt’s Poland. The 100th Anniversary of Regaining Independence.