The Interwar Polish Catholic Press on the Jewish Question

Until the very eve of the Holocaust, the Catholic church was engaged in a struggle against what it termed “liberalism,†namely, modern secular democracy and the separation of church and state. This struggle was framed by Catholic leaders as one of Catholic civilization against a Masonic-Jewish conspiracy to de-Christianize Europe. The charge of a Masonic-Jewish conspiracy was a staple of the Catholic press in interwar Poland. The church's efforts to create a Catholic Poland by overturning so-called liberal or Masonic democracy had patent implications for Jews, who were seen as the primary agents and beneficiaries of secularity. This article provides an overview of what the Catholic press wrote about so-called Jewish-Masonic efforts to create a secular Poland and places those writings within the context of the Vatican's crusade against modern secular liberal democracy, a crusade not officially repudiated until the Second Vatican Council—thirty years too late for Poland's Jews.