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The article concerns the Jewish community living in Bialystok, northeastern Poland’s largest city, who, in the post-war period, lived through processes which led to its complete disappearance. As a consequence of World War II, the population of the community decreased from over 40,000 to a maximum of 1,500. The research revealed further changes, mainly caused by migratory movements and the process of acculturation. Further subjects of study were the structure of the sex and age of this population, very much altered due to the Holocaust, and the professional structure, shaped by attempts to return to pre-war occupations, but undergoing changes due to political reforms in Poland. The condition of the Białystok Jews is a clear example of the situation in which this minority found itself in post-war Poland. For this reason, this issue may be interesting not only for local and regional researchers, but also for those interested in the fate of Jews in Central and Eastern Europe, the demographic consequences of World War II as well the nationalist policy of communist governments and the effects of the forced socio-economic changes resulting from them.

The political system of the Polish People’s Republic was modelled on the Soviet one. Polish youth organizations had the ambitions of being counterparts of Komsomol: they adopted similar work methods and tried to play a similar role in the country. The obvious differences resulted from the specificity of each country and the differences in the societies. The most deeply rooted in the memory of Poles is the Socialist Youth Union, which, being the most stable, existed for almost 20 years with nearly 1.3 million members in the early 1970s. The Union was closely connected with the Polish United Workers’ Party and it had to accomplish two main kinds of political task: to select and prepare future members of the Party, both ordinary and those in the managerial positions, and to educate the whole young generation. The Party indeed treated the organization as its agency, an office dealing with the affairs of youths. However, non-political activity of the Union (culture, entertainment, tourism, etc.) was much more effective and evaluated more positively. Actually, there was much more falsehood in the Union: many members were almost completely passive and the work was often only simulated.