Following the conclusion of the war, the Jews became scapegoats for every problem imaginable.

The Russians played off the Poles against the Jews, the Germans played off the Poles against the Jews, and the Poles played off the Russians against the Jews. The Russian military authorities attributed their military disasters to the Jews, accusing them of being spies, poisoning wells, and all sorts of crimes.

The Yiddish speech and press were suppressed, and telephone conversations in Yiddish were prohibited. The Jewish refugees who fled before the advance of the Russian army into Bukowina and sought refuge in Rumania were treated with savage brutality by the Rumanians.  In July, 1915, the Rumanian government expelled all Jews from the Austrian border, and they were forced to leave without their belongings.

The signing of the armistice and the treaty of peace did not put an end to the anti-Semetic outbreaks. In the Ukraine in 1919 and 1920 approximately one hundred and twenty thousand men, women, and children were killed, whole villages were wiped out, and the entire Jewish population of southern Russia was reduced to the brink of starvation.

With the end of the War, the dream of a revived Polish state was realized, and again the Jews found themselves subjects of Polish sovereignty. One provision of the Polish treaty aroused indignation among the Poles, namely, that “in view of the historical development of the Jewish question and the great animosity aroused by it, special protection is necessary for the Jews of Poland.” Poles, after a century’s striving for a national state, resented this guaranty from the outside of protection to racial, linguistic, and religious minorities.

In view of the disorders and tense situation in Poland, commissions were appointed under the authority of the American and British governments to investigate Jewish matters in that state in 1919. In the belief that the Jewish inhabitants were politically hostile to the Polish state, Jewish merchants were boycotted; Jews were stopped by soldiers and had their beards torn out or cut off; homes were raided; Yiddish newspapers were suppressed; murders were committed.

In the words of Captain Wright, a member of the British mission investigating the hostile treatment:

“But the situation of the Jews will hardly be a happier one. Every morning an ordinary Jewish gentleman- in Warsaw very like what he is in London- reads papers that cover his race with contumely. The Jewish women never deal with Poles except to be treated with insolence, and the children come back from school with their ears ringing with abuse. Every independent Polish institution is as determined to oust the Jews, the national enemy, as in England, we, during the war, were to oust the Germans. Jewish professors, however able, have been turned out of universities; Jewish doctors, however famous, from hospitals. Every university, by some means or other, exerts itself to keep down its Jewish undergraduates to a minimum. Tramway companies will not have Jewish employees, and so on throughout the whole range of Jewish life.”