It took place only a year after the end of the Second World War and the Holocaust, shocking Jews in Poland, non-Jewish Poles, and the international community.

It has been recognized as a symptom of the precarious condition of Eastern European Jewish communities in the aftermath of the Holocaust and as a catalyst for the flight from Poland of most remaining Polish Jews who had survived the war.

"[5] During the German occupation of Poland, Kielce[6] and the villages around it[7] were completely ethnically cleansed by the Nazis of its pre-war Jewish community, most of whom perished in The Holocaust.

A Civic Militia patrol of more than a dozen men was then dispatched on foot by the station commander Edmund Zagórski to search the house at 7 Planty Street for the place where Henryk had allegedly been kept.

[12] Civic Militia publicised the rumours of the kidnapping and further announced that they were planning to search for the bodies of non-Jewish Polish children supposedly ritually murdered and kept in the house, resulting in the gathering of civilian spectators.

[10] A confrontation ensued between the militia forces and officers of the Ministry of Public Security of Poland (UBP), which had been called in on the suspicion that the incident was a Jewish "provocation" to stir up unrest.

[10] Following the initial murders inside the building, numerous Jews were driven outdoors by soldiers and later attacked with stones and clubs by civilians who crowded surrounding streets.

A unit of Civic Militia cadets which also arrived at the scene did not intervene, but some of its members joined in the looting and violence which continued inside and outside the building.

The mob also killed a Jewish nurse (Estera Proszowska), whom the attackers had mistaken for a Polish female attempting to aid the Jews.

Regina Fisz, her three-week old child, and a male companion were abducted at their home at 15 Leonarda Street by a group of four men led by Civic Militia corporal Stefan Mazur.

At the funeral of the Jewish victims, the Minister of Public Security, Stanisław Radkiewicz, stated that the pogrom was "a deed committed by the emissaries of the Polish government in the West and General Anders, with the approval of Home Army soldiers."

Party memoranda and internal reports pointed out that the local population felt no sympathy for the victims and was unwilling to publicly condemn the perpetrators.

[19] The July 1946 report of the Radom Department of Information and Propaganda noted that "the Jewish pogrom in Kielce met with the moral approval of many groups in our society".

[19] According to Gross, the Communist Party decided not to publicly condemn the pogrom because at the time it was "deeply committed to the struggle for the hearts and minds of the Polish population".

[26] Bożena Spank [pl], a historian at Wrocław University estimated that from July 1945 until June 1946 about fifty thousand Jews crossed the Polish border illegally.

[10] Polish Minister Marian Spychalski, motivated by political and humanitarian reasons, signed a decree allowing Jews to leave officially without visas or exit permits, and the Jewish emigration from Poland increased dramatically.

The Jewish Community Council had approached the Bishop of Kielce, Czesław Kaczmarek [pl], requesting that he admonish the Polish people to refrain from attacking the Jews.

[31] The controversial stance of the Polish Roman Catholic Church towards anti-Jewish violence was criticised by the American, British and Italian ambassadors to Poland.

Reports of the Kielce pogrom caused a major sensation in the United States, leading the American ambassador to Poland to insist that Cardinal August Hlond hold a press conference and explain the position of the church.

In the conference held on 11 July 1946, Hlond condemned the violence, but attributed it not to racial causes but to rumours concerning the killing of Polish children by Jews.

This position was echoed by Polish rural clergy and Cardinal Adam Stefan Sapieha, who reportedly stated that the Jews had brought it upon themselves.

He documents that some meetings held to commemorate the victims were interrupted by antisemitic shouting and groups of workers could not reach agreement to pass resolutions condemning the pogrom.

[34][35] A monument by New York City-based artist Jack Sal entitled White/Wash II commemorating the victims was dedicated on 4 July 2006, in Kielce, on the 60th anniversary of the pogrom.

At the dedication ceremony, a statement from the President of the Republic of Poland Lech Kaczyński condemned the events as a "crime and a great shame for the Poles and tragedy for the Polish Jews".