THE JEWS AND THE POLISH INSURRECTION OF 1863 While the official world of St.Petersburg was obsessed with the idea of the Russification of Jewry, in Warsaw the tendency of Polonization, as applied to the Jews of the Western region, cropped up in the wake of the revolutionary Polish movement in the beginning of the sixties.

At the inception of Alexander's reign the Russian Government set out to equalize the legal status of the Jews in the Kingdom of Poland with that of the Empire, and to abolish the surviving special restrictions, such as the prohibition of residing in certain towns, or in certain parts of towns, disabilities in acquiring property, and others.

But the highest Polish administration in Warsaw was obstructing in every possible way the liberal attempts of the Russian Government.

Prior to the insurrection of 1863, the attitude of Polish society towards the Jews was one of habitual animosity, and this notwithstanding the fact that by that time Warsaw harbored already a group of Jewish intellectuals who were eager to assimilate with the Poles and were imbued with Polish patriotism.

When, in 1859, the _Warsaw Gazette_ published an anti-Semitic article in which the Jews were branded as foreigners, the Polish-Jewish patriots, including the banker Kronenberg, a convert, were stung to the quick, and they came forward with violent protests.