The Central Committee of Polish Jews also referred to as the Central Committee of Jews in Poland and abbreviated CKŻP, ( pl, Centralny Komitet Żydów w Polsce, yi, צענטראלער קאמיטעט פון די יידן אין פוילן, translit=Tsentraler Komitet fun di Yidn in Poyln) was a state-sponsored political representation of

Jews Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populou ...

at the end of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

. It was established on 12 November 1944, as the successor of the Provisional Central Committee of Polish Jews formed a month earlier under the umbrella of the communist

Polish Committee of National Liberation The Polish Committee of National Liberation (Polish: ''Polski Komitet Wyzwolenia Narodowego'', ''PKWN''), also known as the Lublin Committee, was an executive governing authority established by the Soviet-backed communists in Poland at the la ...

(PKWN). The CKŻP provided care and assistance to Jews who survived

the Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europ ...

. It legally represented all CKŻP-registered

Polish Jews The history of the Jews in Poland dates back at least 1,000 years. For centuries, Poland was home to the largest and most significant Ashkenazi Jewish community in the world. Poland was a principal center of Jewish culture, because of the l ...

in their dealings with the new government and its agencies. It existed until 1950 when, together with the ''Jewish Cultural Society'', representatives of CKŻP founded the ''Socio-Cultural Association of Jews in Poland''. The Committee was instrumental in organizing and implementing the Jewish

aliyah Aliyah (, ; he, עֲלִיָּה ''ʿălīyyā'', ) is the immigration of Jews from the diaspora to, historically, the geographical Land of Israel, which is in the modern era chiefly represented by the State of Israel. Traditionally descri ...

efforts to

British Mandate for Palestine The Mandate for Palestine was a League of Nations mandate for British administration of the territories of Mandatory Palestine, Palestine and Emirate of Transjordan, Transjordan, both of which had been conceded by the Ottoman Empire following ...

, and from mid May 1948, to the newly formed State of

Israel Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...

.Devorah Hakohen
''Immigrants in turmoil: mass immigration to Israel and its repercussions...''
Syracuse University Press, 2003 - 325 pages. Page 70. The workers of CKŻP registered 86,000 survivors in January 1946 from across the prewar

Polish Second Republic The Second Polish Republic, at the time officially known as the Republic of Poland, was a country in Central and Eastern Europe that existed between 1918 and 1939. The state was established on 6 November 1918, before the end of the First World ...

. By the end of summer, the number Jews who signed up had risen to about 205,000–210,000 (240,000 registrations with over 30,000 duplicates). Well over 100,000 refugees (or, about 180,000 according to Engel), many with working knowledge of

Yiddish Yiddish (, or , ''yidish'' or ''idish'', , ; , ''Yidish-Taytsh'', ) is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated during the 9th century in Central Europe, providing the nascent Ashkenazi community with a ve ...

, came to PRL from the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...

thanks to a Polish–Soviet repatriation agreement. Gen. Spychalski signed a decree allowing them to leave Poland without visas or exit permits. Poland was the only

Eastern Bloc The Eastern Bloc, also known as the Communist Bloc and the Soviet Bloc, was the group of socialist states of Central and Eastern Europe, East Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America under the influence of the Soviet Union that existed du ...

country to do so. By the spring of 1947, helped by CKŻP over 150,000 Jews emigrated (additional number, outside of that period).Richard C. Lukas
''Out of the Inferno: Poles Remember the Holocaust''
University Press of Kentucky 1989 - 201 pages. Page 13; also in Richard C. Lukas, ''The Forgotten Holocaust: The Poles Under German Occupation, 1939-1944'', University Press of Kentucky 1986 - 300 pages. To secure their release, CKŻP collected group testimonies, nevertheless, the Polish decree was easily approved by the Kremlin, seeking to undermine the British influence in the Middle East. The emigration of Jews (known as

Berihah Bricha ( he, בריחה, translit. ''Briẖa'', "escape" or "flight"), also called the Bericha Movement, was the underground organized effort that helped Jewish Holocaust survivors escape post– World War II Europe to the British Mandate ...

) was motivated by the destruction of Jewish life in Poland and anti-Jewish violence in Poland, the best known incident being the Kielce pogrom."What! Still Alive?!": Jewish Survivors in Poland and Israel Remember Homecoming
Monika Rice, Syracuse University Press, page 91

Organization

The member composition of the Central Committee was drafted in June 1946 on the basis of a compromise between the already functioning Jewish political parties legalized in the Soviet-controlled

People's Republic People's republic is an official title, usually used by some currently or formerly communist or left-wing states. It is mainly associated with soviet republics, socialist states following people's democracy, sovereign states with a democratic- ...

. Accordingly: six seats were given to Jewish communists (the Jewish faction of the

Polish Workers' Party The Polish Workers' Party ( pl, Polska Partia Robotnicza, PPR) was a communist party in Poland from 1942 to 1948. It was founded as a reconstitution of the Communist Party of Poland (KPP) and merged with the Polish Socialist Party (PPS) in 194 ...

), four seats to Bund representatives, four seats to

Ihud Ihud ( he, איחוד, 'Unity') was a small binationalist Zionist political party founded by Judah Leon Magnes, Martin Buber, Ernst Simon and Henrietta Szold, former supporters of Brit Shalom, in 1942 Poale Zion Poale Zion (also spelled Poalei Tziyon or Poaley Syjon, meaning "Workers of Zion") was a movement of Marxist– Zionist Jewish workers founded in various cities of Poland, Europe and the Russian Empire in about the turn of the 20th century a ...

Left (leftist faction of Poale Zion), three to

Poale Zion Poale Zion (also spelled Poalei Tziyon or Poaley Syjon, meaning "Workers of Zion") was a movement of Marxist– Zionist Jewish workers founded in various cities of Poland, Europe and the Russian Empire in about the turn of the 20th century a ...

Right, and one place to

Hashomer Hatzair Hashomer Hatzair ( he, הַשׁוֹמֵר הַצָעִיר, , ''The Young Guard'') is a Labor Zionist, secular Jewish youth movement founded in 1913 in the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, Austria-Hungary, and it was also the name of the gro ...

. The CKŻP had established nine provincial and seven regional chapters across Poland.

Białystok Białystok is the largest city in northeastern Poland and the capital of the Podlaskie Voivodeship. It is the tenth-largest city in Poland, second in terms of population density, and thirteenth in area. Białystok is located in the Białystok U ...

branch of the Central Committee was run by

Szymon Datner Szymon Datner (Kraków, 2 February 1902 – 8 December 1989, Warsaw) was a Polish historian, Holocaust survivor and underground operative from Białystok, best known for his studies of the Nazi war crimes and events of The Holocaust in the Biały ...

. The Committee was chaired by Emil Sommerstein of Ihud, who was replaced in 1946 by

Adolf Berman Adolf Avraham Berman (, 17 October 1906 – 3 February 1978) was a Polish-Israeli activist and communist politician. Biography Born in Warsaw in the Russian Empire (today in Poland), the younger brother of Jakub Berman. Berman attended the Univ ...

from Poale Zion Left. Berman was succeeded in 1949 by Hersh Smolar, official representative of the

Polish United Workers' Party The Polish United Workers' Party ( pl, Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza; ), commonly abbreviated to PZPR, was the communist party which ruled the Polish People's Republic as a one-party state from 1948 to 1989. The PZPR had led two other lega ...

in CKŻP. The Central Committee of Polish Jews was discontinued on 29 October 1950 and, a new organization was formed, ''Towarzystwo Społeczno-Kulturalne Żydów w Polsce'' (TSKŻ), which at present, is the biggest Jewish organization in Poland with 17 regional chapters.

Notes and references

{{Jews and Judaism in Poland Jewish Polish history Defunct political parties in Poland 1944 establishments in Poland Political parties established in 1944 Political parties disestablished in 1950 Jews and Judaism in Warsaw