Tikvah
Editors’ Pick

August 20, 2020

The Battle of Warsaw and Its Mixed Legacy for Polish Jewry

The miracle on the Vistula and the internment of Jewish soldiers.

On August 16, 1920, the Red Army stood just outside Warsaw, ready to take the city, hoping that thereafter it could advance on Berlin and perhaps even Paris. But in one of the great military reversals of modern history—the so-called miracle on the Vistula—the Polish leader Jozef Pilsudski achieved a dramatic victory against the Soviets, after which his forces succeeded in pushing them out of Poland and parts of what is now Ukraine and Belarus. He thus saved the world’s second-largest Jewish community, numbering over 300,000 souls, from Soviet repression. But, writes Joshua D. Zimmerman, this was hardly a great moment for Polish Jewry:

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