Problematyka żydowska w karykaturach polskich czasopism satyrycznych Drugiej Rzeczypospolitej

The author examines the iconographic presentations of the Jewish question in seven satirical and humour magazines that appeared in Poland in the years 1918-1939. The Jewish topics were present particularly often in two periodicals with the most pronounced political profile (the leftist/liberal „Szpilki” and the nationalist „Pokrzywy”) and the number of such cartoons skyrocketed in the late 1930s. As for the subjects raised by the cartoonists, seven groups could be identified: 1. acts of aggression against the Jewish population, especially in the first years of the evolution of the Second Republic and the fighting over its borders; 2. the question of economic activity of the Jewish minority in Poland; 3. the attitude of the Polish government to the Jews; 4. the attitude of the nationalist milieux to the Jews; 5. and of the students following the former; 6. international Jewish emigration projects; 7. from 1933, the situation of German Jews under Adolf Hitler’s rule. Jewish topics were presented in the cartoons in particularly many contexts. Treating the Jews as a certain coherent ethnic and religious community, their authors presented them in the cartoons both in a positive and a negative light. In most of these iconographic messages, there was probably more kindness, and quite often also sympathy, toward them than there was hostility or even hate.