Of the 3.3 million Jews who lived in Poland in 1939, only about one in ten survived the war. Most of the 300,000 Polish Jewish survivors decided to leave Europe entirely, and settled in Israel, the United States, Australia, or Canada. Others, including Paula and her mother, returned to their former homes in Poland, where they encountered antisemitic hostility and violent pogroms.
The largest of these pogroms was in Kielce, a city which had been home to about 20,000 Jews before the war. After the Soviet Army liberated the area, about 150 survivors returned home to Kielce. Local non-Jews began a campaign against a renewed Jewish presence in the town. Rumors spread that the Jews were planning to reclaim their property, which had been seized by the Germans and then claimed by non-Jewish Polish people. On July 4, 1946, a crowd attacked a group of unarmed Jewish people who were housed in a Jewish community building. These people — who had already survived the impossible conditions of the Holocaust — were shot, stoned, and beaten. 42 were killed.
After the Kielce massacre and a series of other pogroms, 100,000 Jews left Poland. These survivors were part of the Beriha movement, in which about 250,000 survivors of the Holocaust migrated from eastern Europe toward Palestine and the west. Many were aided by underground and former partisan groups, and tens of thousands became residents of Displaced Persons camps.
