In the following, individuals and groups of people are referred to as Jews or Jewish who regarded themselves, in the broadest sense, as belonging to Judaism as a religious and ethnic community, and whose affiliation was further evidenced by factors such as membership of a Jewish community or congregation, family ties and language.

Ambiguities arise in the case of those groups of people who were ‘Jewish’ according to only some of these criteria, such as the Karaites (also known as Karaites), who were based in Lithuania, amongst other places, traced their origins back to pre-Talmudic Judaism and used Hebrew in religious contexts. The so-called Frankists – that is, followers of the Neo-Sabbatean (see below: Sabbatai Zevi) Jakob Frank (c. 1726–1791), maintained a Neo-Sabbatean and crypto-Jewish identity over several generations through family networks, particularly in Warsaw (Warszawa) and Prague (Praha).

In general, converts to Christianity were often still regarded as Jews both by their community of origin and within their new religious context, such as the author Stanisław Hoge (1791–1860) or the entrepreneur Leopold Kronenberg (1812–1878). Social Democrats or Communists of Jewish origin, who generally distanced themselves from any religious self-identification, continued to be regarded as ‘Jewish’ by non-Jewish, often anti-Semitic quarters and denounced as the epitome of a Judaism that was alleged to harbour a hostile attitude towards a supposedly Christian-European civilisation.

The genocide of European Jews destroyed Jewish life throughout the territory under Nazi Germany’s control and beyond. The eradication of Jewish life and Jewish culture was not merely a consequence of the campaigns in Eastern Europe, which were aimed at total subjugation and extermination, but a declared objective of German warfare.

Whilst the majority of Jews in the German Reich were able to escape persecution through emigration and flight in the years following the Nazi seizure of power, the vast majority of Jews in Eastern and Central Eastern Europe fell victim to the genocide. Of the approximately 350,000 people who, following the German invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939, were able to escape the immediate graspof Nazi Germany by fleeing to the Soviet Union, around 230,000 survived. The proportion of those killed was highest in Poland, at approximately 85–90 per cent of the pre-war Jewish population (approximately 3 out of 3.25 million), Lithuania (135,000 out of 155,000), Latvia (85,000 out of 95,000) and Czechoslovakia (270,000 out of 315,000). In Hungary, three-quarters of the Jewish population fell victim to persecution (300,000 out of 400,000), whilst in the occupied territories of the Soviet Union and in Romania, almost half perished (1.2 million out of 2.8 million and 400,000 out of 850,000 respectively).^[6]

Persecution and mass murder followed different patterns in various regions and time periods. Atrocities and massacres took place as early as 1939, followingNazi Germany’s invasion of Poland. Following the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, the Jewish population in the conquered territories was systematically murdered by the so-called Einsatzgruppen. As part of ‘Operation Reinhard’, between March and December 1942, nearly two million Jews were murdered in the extermination camps established for this purpose at Belzec (Bełżec), Sobibor (Sobibór) and Treblinka, as well as in the concentration and extermination camps at Auschwitz/Auschwitz-Birkenau, Kulmhof (Chełmno) and Majdanek. The Jewish population in the satellite states allied withNazi Germany – Slovakia, Romania and Hungary – also later fell victim to systematic persecution; in the case of Hungary, this occurred within the space of just a few weeks following the occupation by the Wehrmacht (18 March 1944).

A minority of the Jewish population in Eastern Europe managed to survive the war and the genocide by fleeing, going into hiding or assuming a non-Jewish identity. In almost all cases, this was only possible thanks to the active and deliberate assistance of non-Jewish fellow citizens, who, following rigorous vetting procedures by the Israeli memorial centre Yad Vashem, are recognised and honoured as the ‘Righteous Among the Nations’.

The involvement of members of the local non-Jewish population in the persecution and murder of Jews in Eastern Europe byNazi Germany varied considerably depending on location, context and scale. The process of coming to terms with this has taken place amid public controversies that were at times protracted and fiercely contested; it continues to this day and, in some cases, remains unresolved (see historical controversies).

From the mid-13th century onwards, various letters of protection (privileges) issued by local rulers and kings invited members of Jewish communities living in German territories to settle in regions of Eastern Central Europe (1244: Frederick II’s privilege for Austrian territories; 1254/56: the privilege granted by Přemysl Ottokar II for Bohemian and Moravian territories; 1264: the privilege granted by Bolesław VI for Polish territories; 1388: the privilege granted by Vytautas for Lithuanian territories). These privileges were characterised by comprehensive promises of protection (against violence as well as against slander such as accusations of ritual murder), freedom of movement in the sphere of gainful employment, and the granting of far-reaching internal self-determination based on Jewish, religiously bound legal traditions (Hebrew: halakha), as well as independence from local, non-Jewish jurisdiction. In addition to the settlement privileges, the Crown granted general privileges. The latter established the right of Jewish communities to appoint their own leadership, to appoint rabbis and to establish educational institutions (such as yeshivot, i.e. Talmud schools).

The structure of the community statutes (Hebrew: takanot) was based on German-Jewish models from the period following the devastation of the Crusades, when the so-called takanot shum were formulated at a series of synods (the abbreviation derived from the initial letters of the most prestigious Jewish communities in the Rhineland – Speyer, Worms and Mainz). They provided for cooperation between the religious and political leadership and established a stable governing elite. In this context, the religious and political leadership were in a relationship characterised by both interdependence and competition. In contemporary Jewish documents, the political leadership was referred to as rashe’i medina, that is, ‘leaders of the land’, whilst the leading religious authorities were known as rashe’i yeshivot, that is, heads of the Talmud schools.

From a Jewish perspective, the individual Jewish community constituted a distinct religious, political and legal entity, a sanctified community (Hebrew: kehila k’doscha), which was founded on a religiously formulated act of establishment. By virtue of this status, it possessed legal capacity and the ability to enter into contracts, as well as autonomy, although the extent to which this legal autonomy could be exercised depended on the political and material resources of the respective community.

The individual communities were led by a board (Hebrew: kahal) acting on a voluntary and fiduciary basis, which was re-elected in a process taking place annually (usually during the Passover festival). This was usually a process of negotiation amongst the leading families of the respective community, who divided the honorary posts to be filled amongst themselves. The office of community leader (Hebrew: parnas) was usually divided amongst four people, each of whom held the post for three months at a time, in order to minimise any potential loss of income. Other prominent roles were likewise carried out on a voluntary basis: bookkeeper and custodian (Hebrew: ne’eman), treasurer (Hebrew: gabbai), judges (Hebrew: dajan) and tax assessors (Hebrew: schamai), as well as overseers of individual institutions such as schools, charitable organisations or places of worship (Hebrew: gabbai ormemuniah), and the heads of craft guilds. These and other associations (Hebrew: chewra, chewrot) constituted an important element of the communal structure, the organisation of which varied from community to community. The chewrot were essentially religiously motivated, but performed important charitable, social, professional or educational functions at a level below that of the community leadership.

Each community also had a number of paid officials who were bound by the instructions of the executive committee. Prominent among these were the rabbis, whose main task was to uphold and implement Jewish law and who held the chair in the local Jewish courts (Hebrew: bet din). Large communities had several courts. The Chair of the highest court of appeal in a larger community (Hebrew: aw bet din) was regarded as the Chief Rabbi. Rabbis were usually appointed by the community council for a term of three years and were paid by it. Their modest basic salary was supplemented by tax concessions, court fees and fees for performing ritual duties (betrothal and marriage contracts, weddings). The rabbi’s direct financial dependence on the local elites meant that, particularly in cases of dispute amongst Jews, recourse to non-Jewish jurisdiction was often the obvious course of action. Other paid officials included scribes, prayer leaders and cantors, doctors, midwives, synagogue attendants and guards. Larger communities also paid an advocate (Hebrew: shadlan; Latin: syndikus; Polish: syndyk) for his services, which consisted of representing the community’s interests before the local rulers or other authorities.

In those regions of Eastern Central Europe where the large number of Jewish communities made the imposition and collection of fiscal taxes difficult, regional representative bodies or councils (Hebrew: wa’ad, wa’adim) were established. This was the case in Moravia (Hebrew: wa’ad medinat mehrin), in the Polish Crown Lands (the so-called Council of the Four Lands or wa’ad arba arazot) and in Lithuania (wa’ad medinat lite). Furthermore, these councils served as important forums for communication and strengthened inter-regional cohesion. They also represented Jewish interests on an ad hoc basis in dealings with the authorities, thereby fulfilling tasks that went beyond the responsibility for tax collection as defined by the state. The delegates of the Four-Country Council usually met twice a year on the fringes of the major annual fairs in Lublin and Jarosław. In Moravia, the Wa’ad Mehrin, under the leadership of the regional rabbi Menachem Mendel Krochmal (1600–1661), codified its decrees in the form of a statute which, in 1754, was translated as the General Police, Process and Commercial Ordinance, translated as ‘For the Jewish Community in the Margraviate of Moravia’ and became an integral part of Moravian Jewish legislation under the Habsburgs.

A key factor in the debates surrounding the legal and political status of Jewish communities in Eastern Europe was the emergence of critical public spheres (both non-Jewish and Jewish). Such discussions had been taking place since the mid-19th century, particularly in the emerging Jewish press, which was published in the local languages as well as in Hebrew and Yiddish. These press outlets also made a significant contribution to the emergence of a specifically Jewish, internationally networked and politically differentiated public sphere.

Following the wave of pogroms in Russia (1881/82), the Jewish national movement experienced its first – albeit relatively short-lived – surge as the so-called ‘Lovers of Zion’ (Hebrew: Chowewe Zion). Its supporters later joined the Zionist movement inspired by Theodor Herzl (1860–1904) (1st World Zionist Congress, 1897, in Basel). The objectives and degree of mobilisation within the Western and Eastern European Zionist movements differed considerably at various stages. At the same time, a specifically Jewish social democracy emerged, which successfully organised among proletarianised Jewish artisans and day labourers (1897: foundation of the General Jewish Workers’ Union, or ‘Bund’ for short, in Vilna/Vilnius/Wilno). Throughout Eastern and Central Eastern Europe, a multitude of Jewish political parties emerged from the 1880s onwards. These reflected a Jewish public sphere that was distinct in political, linguistic and everyday terms, as well as a significantly lower degree of integration of the Jewish minority compared with the situation in Western European or German countries. An exception to this were the social democratic and social revolutionary parties, in which Jewish men and women were prominently represented throughout Eastern Europe – not least because of their specific experience of marginalisation and exclusion.

The reorganisation of Eastern Central Europe following the First World War took place under conditions that gave rise to considerable tensions. The principle of the right to self-determination for those peoples who had resisted imperial foreign rule was countered by the aim of protecting the interests of the numerous national minorities now living within the territory of newly founded nation states (minority protection treaties). The situation of the Jewish minority was further exacerbated by military confrontations (the Polish–Soviet War of 1918–1921, the Ukrainian–Polish conflict of 1918–19), revolution and civil war (in 1917 in the former Russian Empire, and in 1919 in Hungary). The Czechoslovak Republic (ČSR) continued the comprehensive gender equality of the Jewish population introduced during the Habsburg era and granted Jewish citizens the right—which was frequently exercised—to declare their Jewish nationality.

The protective clauses for national minorities defined in the Paris Peace Treaties were a prerequisite for the recognition of the nation states founded after 1918 and were of considerable importance for Jewish minorities, particularly in Lithuania, Poland, Hungary and Romania. The clauses were widely regarded, particularly by nationalist-conservative movements, as an unacceptable diktat. Whilst they ensured the political and cultural development of national minorities, they also represented a considerable burden on domestic politics in the states concerned. In Hungary, the so-called Numerus Clausus Act of 1920 made it more difficult for Jews to gain access to higher education. In Lithuania, the protective clauses were suspended again in 1926. In Poland, following the death of Marshal Józef Piłsudski (1867–1935), conservative and reactionary parties sought to put pressure on the Jewish minority, for example by restricting ritual slaughter and enforcing observance of Sunday rest.

Immediately after the end of hostilities in 1944–45 and the catastrophe of the Holocaust, the question that initially faced Jewish survivors was whether remaining in their former homeland was conceivable or desirable. The establishment of one-party regimes under Soviet control was accompanied by massive restrictions on communal and political self-organisation in all areas of social life, including Jewish communities, parties and other institutions. Show trials, including those against Jewish leaders in the communist and workers’ parties dependent on the Soviet Union (such as those in Hungary from 1949 to 1954, the Slánský trial in Czechoslovakia in 1952, and in Romania in 1954) demonstrated the institutionalised anti-Semitism of the final years of Joseph Stalin’s rule. Typically, Jewish communal and religious institutions were either abolished or placed under the supervision of secular representative bodies (Jewish cultural associations) that were closely controlled by the state authorities. These associations also served as negotiating partners for international aid organisations (such as the Joint Distribution Committee), which endeavoured to provide a minimal level of support to a Jewish community that was shrinking due to emigration, disengagement and an ageing population. In Poland, the last comprehensive, anti-Jewish political mobilisation took place in 1968. Under the pretext of seeking to bring political agitation amongst students – amongst whom the children of leading Jewish party officials played a prominent role – under control, thousands of Jewish Poles lost their public offices, jobs and – as a result of their forced emigration – their citizenship. Around 15,000 Jews left Poland in 1968 and settled in Western Europe, the USA or Israel.

Owing to the sustained decline of Jewish communities in the German states, the centre of Jewish scholarship shifted to Eastern Central Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries. The foundations of this scholarship were laid in the schools known as yeshivot , which built upon the basic knowledge of Hebrew, liturgical texts and the Talmud imparted by parents, private tutors and primary schools (Hebrew: cheder). Young girls were taught in the cheder only in exceptional cases, and yeshivot were reserved exclusively for male students. They could be led by both community rabbis and independent scholars, a role which contributed to their international reputation. Alongside them , community- or privately-run houses of study (Hebrew: bet midrash) played a prominent role in the deepening and reflection upon religious knowledge. In the lament *Yaven Mezulah* (*Abyss of Despair*) by Natan Hanover (d. 1683) on the devastation wrought by the Khmelnytsky Uprising, there is an idealised depiction of Jewish scholarship which expresses pride in the educational ethos unfolding in Eastern Europe.

Hasidism too, which came to exert great influence from the turn of the 19th century onwards (Hebrew: chasid – pious, orthodox) – which had gained considerable influence since the turn of the 19th century – is scarcely conceivable without the hope of salvation offered by Sabbateanism , given the extreme devotion of the various Hasidic communities to their respective leaders – the tzaddik ( Hebrew for ‘the righteous one’) or rebbe. Founded by Israel ben Eliezer (c. 1699–1760), known as a healer (Hebrew: ba’al shem) and scholar – Israel ben Eliezer (c. 1699–1760), Hasidic communities reshaped everyday religious life and distanced themselves from the traditional, rabbinical-Talmudic local congregation. They placed communal prayer at the forefront, whilst the study of Scripture took a back seat. Physical proximity to the residence of the leader of individual Hasidic communities was accorded great spiritual significance; their members would make pilgrimages, particularly during the major festivals, from their homes to the court of the tzaddik. In many cases, the tzaddik was revered as a miracle-worker. From the late 18th century onwards, the adherents of the rabbinical-Talmudic tradition and those of Hasidism found themselves in direct competition with one another. In 1772, the new movement was excommunicated by Elijah ben Solomon Salman (1720–1797), the Gaon (Sage) of Vilna, which significantly slowed the spread of Hasidic communities in the Lithuanian provinces. However, Chaim ben Isaac of Voloshin (1749–1821), his pupil and successor as the region’s leading religious authority, lifted this ban in 1802 and endeavoured to strengthen Rabbinic-Talmudic Judaism – whose adherents were now defined as ‘opponents’ (Hebrew: misnagdim) in their opposition to Hasidism – by revising teaching methods in the yeshivot.

The Prussian-Jewish Enlightenment (or Haskalah) was closely followed by Eastern European Jewish scholars, but it was largely dismissed as deviant heresy and ‘Epicureanism’, despite the fact that its adherents included a number of Jews from Eastern Europe. For these scholars, who came from Eastern European Jewish backgrounds, periods spent in Western countries and in the centres of the European and German-Jewish Enlightenment were of great significance – for example, in Königsberg/Kaliningrad, Berlin, Breslau, Amsterdam and Paris. Notable examples include Salomon Dubno (1738–1813), who came from what is now Belarus and, together with Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786), undertook a translation of the Hebrew Bible into German and a new biblical commentary (Hebrew: bi’ur), Zalkind Hourwitz (1751–1812), who hailed from Lublin, who served as royal librarian in Paris, called for legal gender equality for Jews in a widely read treatise and was heavily involved in the revolutionary events of 1789; and Salomon Majmon (c. 1753–1800), a philosopher from the circle of Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) and author of an influential autobiography of a Jewish Enlightenment thinker. The Jewish Theological Seminary founded in 1854 by Zacharias Frankel (1817–1875) in Breslau in 1854 served as a centre of Jewish scholarship for Eastern Europe and boasted a considerable number of East Central European Jewish students and lecturers. Since its foundation in 1877, the Rabbinical Seminary in Budapest – which was able to continue its teaching activities, albeit on a significantly reduced scale, even under Communist rule – played an important role in rabbinical training across Eastern and Central Europe.

Drawing on the principles of the Haskalah, scholars in Eastern Europe, too, recognised the need for reform of ritual, the community, education and the rabbinate; however, support for such demands remained limited within a community strongly characterised by observance and cultural isolation. Owing to the marginal status of such views, Jews who favoured reform and integration mostly formed private congregations. Reform-minded religious scholars entered the service of governments pursuing an agenda aimed at integration and acculturation. In 1787, the Austrian government commissioned Herz Homberg (1749–1841), an advocate of an accelerated Enlightenment amongst the Jews, to establish a network of German-speaking Jewish schools in Galicia, with the aim of promoting Germanisation and integration amongst the Jews in the province. However, these schools were closed again in 1806 due to their lack of success. Also on behalf of the authorities, Homberg wrote the catechism *Bne Zion*, based on Enlightenment principles, on which Jewish couples were required to take an examination before their wedding. The author Josef Perl (1773–1839), a native of Tarnopol/Ternopil, combined his advisory work for the Austrian and Russian governments with running a school and publishing a large number of anti-Hasidic polemics. The Munich rabbi Max Lilienthal (1815–1882) also advised the Russian government from 1841 onwards on its plans to establish a Russian-language school system for Jewish children. Numerous ‘learned Jews’ (Russian: učënye evrei) served in similar capacities in the establishment of rabbinical seminaries and as censors of Jewish literature for the Russian administration.

In response to the greater visibility and growing influence of reform- and integration-oriented movements within the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe, there was a cultural and political mobilisation amongst leading representatives of both the rabbinical and Hasidic traditions. The scholar Moses Schreiber (1762–1839), who was active in Pressburg/Bratislava/Pozsony, also known as Hatam Sofer, who coined the principle that any innovation in Jewish custom constituted a forbidden alteration (‘Any innovation is forbidden by the Law/the Bible’, Hebrew: he-hadash asur min ha-torah). This stance was reflected in an increasingly militant form of observant politics, which drew upon non-Jewish political authorities to achieve its own objectives, just as reform-oriented forces did. Examples of such politicised Orthodoxy include Elchanan Spektor (1817–1896) and Samuel Mohilever (1824–1898) in the Russian Empire, Akiva Schlesinger (1837–1922) in Hungary, and the weekly journal *Machsike ha-dat* ( Hebrew: ‘Those Who Strengthen the Law’), founded in Lemberg in 1878. Following the Hungarian schism of 1869, this politically mobilised Orthodoxy also formed international networks, bringing together both Hasidic leaders, representatives of German-speaking Neo-Orthodoxy (such as Ezriel Hildesheimer, 1820–1899) and representatives of Hungarian ultra-Orthodoxy into a political alliance, from which Agudas Israel – which still exists today – emerged in 1912. Among its founders was Me’ir Shapira (1887–1933), a Hasidic scholar born in Galicia, who in 1924 laid the foundation stone for the Yeshiva Chochmei Lublin, which opened in Lublin in 1930.

In Russia, the Bolsheviks’ seizure of power was followed by a systematic and comprehensive crackdown on religious observance, including a ban on Jewish religious institutions, offices and movements. This repression led, in around 1927, to the arrest of Joseph Isaac Schneersohn (1880–1950), the leader of the Lubavitcher Hasidim (Chabad), who, following his release secured through international protests, initially emigrated to Riga/Rīga and, in 1931, to Warsaw.

The YIVO (Yiddish: Idisches Wisnschaftleches Institute, Jewish Scientific Institute), founded in Berlin and Vilnius in 1925, also gained great significance; it was equally committed to an ethos of public education and territorialism. Its staff across Eastern Europe and North America devoted themselves to historical-philological, social scientific, ethnographic and economic-statistical research, focusing specifically on the history and culture of Eastern European Jewry and the Yiddish language. Following the outbreak of the Second World War, the YIVO branch in New York became the headquarters of this international research network in 1940 and is now part of the Centre for Jewish History. Part of the historical collections of the Vilnius Institute—which was destroyed under German occupation—survived the war and the Soviet period whilst in hiding and is now being made accessible again through digitisation.

Jews had been encouraged by East Central European rulers to settle in the region in order to fulfil specific economic functions (see above). Across the board, Jewish privileges included generous provisions for Jewish economic activity, which was subject to only a few restrictions. It was expected that Jewish merchants would stimulate trade in goods, increase tax revenue for the treasury and, as lenders, expand the economic and political scope of the rulers’ authority. A close economic co-operation soon developed between Jewish merchants on the one hand and the nobility and aristocracy on the other, in which, alongside trade and lending, the leasing of monopolies became a prominent field of activity for Jewish entrepreneurs. In return for lump-sum payments, usually due annually, they leased sovereign monopolies such as the production of alcoholic beverages, the trade in salt or tobacco, and the collection of customs duties, levies and taxes.

The production and sale of alcohol (propination) was also linked to the leasing of taverns and inns, which were mostly in Jewish hands – in the 18th century, around half of Jewish families in rural areas made their living from this trade. Jewish merchants and traders shaped the markets and small-scale and itinerant trade throughout Eastern Central Europe. Jewish women also played a very visible role here as businesswomen; in the leasing sector and as entrepreneurs, however, they were represented only as widows of deceased Jewish entrepreneurs. In wholesale and international trade, Jews were represented to varying degrees of prominence depending on the sector. Compared with Central or Western Europe, their proportion among craftspeople – as well as the proportion of craft trades within Jewish employment – was considerably higher, with only a small part consisting of specifically Jewish activities (such as ritual slaughter).

Following the Partitions of Poland and the associated loss of status suffered by the nobility, landowners sought to displace Jewish tenants from their traditional role as intermediaries in estate management. In Galicia, the Kingdom of Poland and the Russian Empire, aristocratic landowners sought to appropriate the profits from the liquor licence. This was also linked to an attempt to hold Jewish tenants responsible for the negative consequences of excessive alcohol sales and consumption. Outside the towns, trade and crafts offered only very limited alternative sources of income. The resulting migration to the towns and economically more dynamic regions quickly led to a surplus of labour in the destinations.

Similar consequences resulted from the restructuring processes triggered by industrialisation and mechanisation, and from the comparatively slower pace of economic development in Eastern Europe. The loss of traditional sources of livelihood led to oversupply in a few craft trades requiring few qualifications and little investment – such as tailors or cobblers – as well as in retail and the service sector. In the textile and heavy industries, which developed sporadically in the partitioned territories, Jews played a role in isolated cases as entrepreneurs and investors, but not – with only a few exceptions – as workers. Although a proletarianised Jewish craft sector did emerge, which primarily supplied the textile industry, above all, however, a large number of unskilled day labourers and small traders emerged, who were only able to earn a living with the greatest of difficulty and were stereotypically referred to as ‘airheads’. In 1903, the economist Sarah Rabinowitsch coined the term ‘entrepreneurial proletariat’ to describe them.^[8] More and more Jews found themselves in an extremely precarious economic situation and became ‘classless’ (Eli Lederhendler), which was to become a decisive factor in their decision to emigrate to Western Europe and, above all, overseas (see above).

Jan Tomasz Gross’s study *Sąsiedzi* ( *Neighbours*) , published in Polish in 2000 and in English in 2001, which dealt with a massacre of the Jewish population in the village of Jedwabne, was of paradigmatic significance for the historical controversies surrounding the Holocaust. Whilst the author concluded that responsibility for this crime lay primarily with the local non-Jewish population, Polish historians in particular were reluctant to rule out the – as yet unproven – leading role played by the advancing Wehrmacht and SS units at the time of the massacre. Similar disputes arose concerning the handing over and murder of Jews who had evaded capture by the German occupiers by hiding. The debate surrounding this so-called third wave (Polish: trzecia fala) of persecution continues to this day. As an alternative narrative, the Instytut Pamięci Narodowej (IPN) in particular has championed the concept of ‘good neighbourliness’ (Polish: dobre sąsiedztwo), within which non-Jewish fellow citizens endeavoured, as far as possible, to protect the persecuted Jewish population, and in which – indisputable – cases of violence or co-operation with the German occupiers were the exception. A directly comparable debate centres on the prominent role played by Lithuanian nationalist militias and individuals in the persecution and murder of the Lithuanian Jewish population following Nazi Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. Further controversies concern the extent to which the recruitment of the local non-Jewish population into the Waffen-SS was voluntary, and their role in the persecution of the Jews, for example in Ukraine. The debate over the assessment of regimes that cooperated with or were allied to Hitler (Stalin 1939–1941,Horthy/Hungary,Antonescu/Romania,Tiso/Slovakia) follows a similar pattern. Particularly intense in this regard is the controversy surrounding the extent of the Horthy regime’s co-operation withNazi Germany and the carrying out of the genocide against Hungarian Jews following the occupation of Hungary (18 March 1944).