Gdynia i Żydzi w antysemickich rysunkach z prasy II Rzeczypospolitej

Abstrakt

The issue of the defence of Polish interests on the Baltic against the threat that could be seen in the sudden inflow of Jewish business people and merchants to the coast, seeking new space and new opportunities for their activities, emerged in the anti-Semitic discourse of the Second Polish Republic already in the year in which the independent Polish state was born. However, it was only in the 1930s that the question of the ‘Jewish invasion’ of the ‘Polish coast’ in the anti-Semitic campaigning by means of a word and a cartoon (often the combination of both) was fully displayed. Then Gdynia also became the leading motif. In the paper analysis of selected press cartoons, most frequently published in such nationalistic magazines as ‘Samoobrona Narodu’, ‘Pod Pręgierz’, ‘Orędownik’, or ‘Kurier Poznański’ has been presented; their task was to convince the public that it was necessary to ‘de-Jewishize’ Gdynia and bestow a ‘Polish national character’ on it. The cartoons have to be treated as a very effective tool of nationalistic campaigning in press, since they referred to the perception of Gdynia shared by all the Polish people as one of the most important elements within the symbolic universe of the Second Polish Republic.