Polish antisemitism was a result of the Germans! in 12-something the Polish King (Kuszmirz?) invited Germans to settle in Poland and granted then a bill of rights. Jews and non-Jews flocked there, and settled in the cities. The king’s plan was to create a class of traders and build up the country. The Germans formed into guilds, as they had in Germany, and worked hard to exclude their Jewish rivals. The Priests that came with them also had what to say against the Jews from the pulpits. Eventually the Jews were expelled from many cities (in Krakow, that meant moving to a new suburb) and many took up employment with the aristocracy. This separation worked, and at least kept the two side physically apart. BTW, the Germans didn’t all assimilate. Many retained their language and customs and were called volksdeutsche. Nazi German radio broadcasts into Poland attracted a massive following amongst this group and this incited serious antisemitism. All that said, there must have been underlying antisemitism – perhaps again fostered by the volkdeutsche and their priests – for it to have taken hold so quickly and so strongly, but excessive overt signs do not appear to have been historically present during the two or three centuries of separation. During the Chmielnicki massacres, the besieged Poles sold out the Jews a few times in return for their lives to the cossacks, but that is only to be expected.
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