Jews had lived in Kraków since the 11th century. In 1939, the year World War II began, an estimated 3,400,000 Jewish people lived in Poland. According to the 1931 census, 56,515 residents of Kraków identified themselves as Jews. Throughout the 1930s, the Jewish population of Kraków continued to grow, and by October 1939, there were 68,000 Jews living in the city.
Jewish religious, social and political institutions thrived in Kraków. Some Jews in Kraków were religious, while others were more assimilated into Polish society at-large. A considerably large proportion of Jews from Kraków, higher than in other parts of Poland, spoke Polish, rather than Yiddish, as their first language. Jewish children and teenagers attended a range of schools, including Polish public schools and Jewish day schools. Synagogues were found throughout the old Jewish Quarter, many dating back hundreds of years. Jews were part of the fabric of life in Kraków.
However, in the 1930s, grassroots antisemitism increased in Poland, resulting in public schools and university departments limiting the admission of Jewish students (the so-called numerus clausus policy), and nationalist university students enforcing the so-called ghetto benches, or a form of segregation in the seating of students. A boycotting campaign against Jewish shops was also encouraged, and a few anti-Jewish pogroms took place in Poland in the late 1930s.
Photo: Cracow, Poland, Prewar, Members of the Hebrew speaking organization 'Bialik'. Yad Vashem.