Jillian Rubin

The effect of the First World War upon Jews living in Western Europe was that about 100,000 Jews were serving in Germany’s armed forces, 12,000 died in combat (315). During World War I in Western Europe, Jews were being recruited for important public positions. One the war was in a stalemate during 1915-1916 there began to be a great amount of national frustrations towards the Jews. Germans believed that Jews were “taking over” national institutions. There were a lot of problems for Jews living in Russia during World War I. As soon as World War one started the Jews in Russia were seen as being untrustworthy, as many as 45,000 Jewish civilians in Europe were serving in the army however they could not receive officer’s ranking, this shows that they were seen as a separate population in Europe (317). In Russia, Yiddish was now seen as a foreign language, and Jews were no longer allowed to use it in public. In addition, there were rumors going around that Jews in Russia were giving aid to the enemy that the Russians were fighting. This shows that World War I had a very negative effect on the Jewish population in Western Europe because there were rumors circulating about them, and they were not allowed to practice parts of their lifestyle (speaking Yiddish) that made them comfortable.
In Eastern Europe such as Poland, Russia, and the Ukraine the War had effects on Jews as well. In Ukraine the War had negative effects on the Jewish population. Under the May Laws the Jewish population which was around 1.927 million, were now considered town-dwellers. They no longer counted as being part of the population of Ukraine. This is very bad for the Jews living in Ukraine during this time because they are no longer going to feel like they belong in their own country.
The postwar “minorities treaties” were made up of twelve articles. One part of the treaty was that there was now going to be full civil, religious, and political rights granted to every citizen of the new Poland, there were also linguistic rights which allowed minorities in Poland the right to use their language in areas such as commerce, courts of law, and also for children in primary schools. This treaty that was first signed by the Polish Prime Minister at the time was extremely important because very similar documents were signed in countries such as Armenia, Greece, Romania, Serbia, and Czechoslovakia. Therefore, the original signing allowed these other countries to do the same thing and grant more freedom to their Jewish citizens.