960 – A Jewish merchant and trader from Spain, Ibrahim ibn Yaqub (Abraham ben Jacob), travels to Poland and writes the first description of the country and the city of Kraków.
[1] 1264 – Polish Prince Boleslaus the Pious issues Statute of Kalisz – The General Charter of Jewish Liberties in Poland, an unprecedented document in medieval history of Europe that allows Jews personal freedom, legal autonomy and separate tribunal for criminal matters as well as safeguards against forced baptism and blood libel.
1343 – Persecuted in Western Europe, the Jews are invited to Poland by King Casimir the Great.
After massive expulsions of Jews from the Western Europe (England, France, Germany, and Spain), they found a refuge in the lands of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
During the Jagiellon Era Poland became the home to Europe's largest Jewish population, as royal edicts warranting Jewish safety and religious freedom from the 13th century contrasted with bouts of persecution in Western Europe, especially following the Black Death of 1348–1349, blamed by some in the West on Jews themselves.
Large parts of Poland suffered relatively little from the outbreak, while the Jewish immigration brought valuable manpower and skills to the rising state.
The greatest increase in Jewish numbers occurred in the 18th century, when Jews came to make up 7% of the Polish population.
1525 – The first Jew is promoted to knighthood by king Sigismund I of Poland, without being forced to leave Judaism.
1534 – King Sigismund I of Poland abolishes the law that required Jews to wear special clothes.
1648 – 1655 The Ukrainian Cossack Bohdan Khmelnytsky leads Uprising resulting in massacres of Polish szlachta and Jewry that leaves ca.
1759 – Unprecedented event of the voluntary conversion of around 3,000 of the followers of Jacob Frank who convert to Catholicism and are accepted into the ranks of Polish nobility szlachta with all the social benefits.
Hundreds of thousands of Jews, especially shopkeepers or other professionals who are forbidden to work in the Soviet Union, settle in Poland.
Germans in occupied Poland built six major death camps: Auschwitz II (Auschwitz-Birkenau), Chełmno, Belzec, Majdanek, Sobibor, and Treblinka.
1964 – The Second Vatican Council states in its Nostra aetate Declaration, that the Jews are not responsible for the death of Christ.