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Józef Piłsudski, one of the fathers of Polish independence, Marshal of Poland, prime minister and Chief of State, was born on December 5, 1867. Among the many aspects of his political activity, one cannot ignore his relations with the Jewish community. The Marshal treated Jews as equal citizens of Poland, and his attitude towards them was rather positive, but this did not necessarily translate into specific political actions.  The Jews themselves assessed Piłsudski differently depending on their political option, but generally, they saw in him hope for life in a country free from anti-Semitism.

On December 6, Prof. Joshua D. Zimmerman, author of the biography of Józef Piłsudski, Jozef Pilsudski. Founding Father of Modern Poland, will give a lecture about Marshal’s relations with Polish Jews.

The lecture will be held in English and will not be translated. The meeting will be broadcast on the JHI Facebook profile.

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Joshua D. Zimmerman is Professor of History at Yeshiva University in New York, where he holds the Eli & Diana Zborowski Chair in Holocaust Studies and East European Jewish History. He is the author of Jozef Pilsudski. Founding Father of Modern Poland (Harvard, 2022), The Polish Underground and the Jews, 1939-1945 (Cambridge, 2015), which appeared in Polish translation in 2018, and Poles, Jews and the Politics of Nationality: the Bund and the Polish Socialist Party in Late Tsarist Russia, 1892-1914 (Wisconsin, 2004). He is also editor of two contributed volumes: Jews in Italy under Fascist and Nazi Rule, 1922-1945 (2005), and Contested Memories: Poles and Jews during the Holocaust and its Aftermath (2003). Zimmerman’s articles in the popular press have appeared in the Washington Post, Politico, the Daily Beast, The Times of Israel, the Kyiv Post, Engelsberg Ideas, and Rzeczpospolita (Warsaw).