History of the Jews in 19th-century Poland

It proposed that Jews be allowed to attend school and even to own land, but it restricted them from entering Russia, banned them from the brewing industry, and included a number of other prohibitions.

In the 1820s, the Cantonist Laws passed by Tsar Nicolas kept the traditional double taxation on Jews in lieu of army service, while actually requiring all Jewish communities to produce boys to serve in the military, where they were often forced to convert.

Most of the graduates formed Warsaw's progressive Jewish elite: entrepreneurs, merchants, scientists, journalists, artists and patrons of the arts.

In the 1881 outbreak, pogroms also occurred in Russia, in a riot in Warsaw twelve Jews were killed, many others were wounded, and women were raped while over two million rubles worth of property was destroyed.

[3] The new czar, Alexander III, blamed the Jews for the riots and issued a series of harsh restrictions on Jewish movements, but large numbers of pogroms continued until 1884, with at least tacit government approval.

They prompted a great flood of Jewish immigration to the United States, with almost two million Jews leaving the Pale by the late 1920s, and the pogroms set the stage for Zionism.

By the late 19th century, Haskalah and the debates it caused created a growing number of political movements within the Jewish community itself, covering a wide range of views and vying for votes in local and regional elections.

Jews also took up socialism, forming General Jewish Labour Bund and the Folksists (People's Party) which supported assimilation and the rights of labor.

[4] Although Christians weren't allowed by the police to participate in his burial, Michał Landy became soon a powerful symbol of Polish Jewish brotherhood.