The Jewish Historical Institute (Żydowski Instytut Historyczny, JHI) in Warsaw was founded in 1947 as a documentation and research center dedicated to the history of the Polish Jews. Until the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, it was the only institution in the entire Eastern Bloc that continuously applied itself to the study of the Holocaust. From the very beginning, its work was strongly impacted by the political changes in Poland, especially by antisemitic tendencies within state and society.

The Jewish Historical Institute (JHI) developed out of the Central Jewish Historical Commi…