POLAND
In Poland the Jews appear in the thirteenth century as a small community without any intellectual life. In 1264 they obtained their first charter, this being confirmed by Casimir the Great (1333-1370). It is also a reproduction of the Austrian law of 1244. When Capistrano appeared (1450) in Poland the Jews suffered from mob attacks but fared not as badly as those of Bohemia. The persecution of the Jews in Western Europe, beginning with the crusades, drove many of them to emigrate to the large and thinly settled kingdom of Poland. Hence toward the close of the fifteenth century, Poland was the center of Rabbinic learning and has to-day proportionately the largest Jewish population in the world.