crises in Stalinist Poland. After the death of Polish United Workers' Party leader Bolesław Bierut in 1956, a de-Stalinization and a subsequent battle among rival factions looked to lay blame for the excesses of the Stalin era. According to Gluchowski, "Poland's Communists had grown accustomed to placing the burden of their own failures to gain sufficient legitimacy among the Polish population during the entire Communist period on the shoulders of Jews in the party." As described in one historical account, the party hardline Natolin faction "used anti-Semitism as a political weapon and found an echo both in the party apparatus and in society at large, where traditional stereotypes of an insidious Jewish cobweb of political influence and economic gain resurfaced, but now in the context of 'Judeo-Communism,' the Żydokomuna." "Natolin" leader Zenon Nowak entered the concept of "Judeo-Stalinization" and placed the blame for the party's failures, errors and repression on "the Jewish apparatchiks". Documents from this period chronicle antisemitic attitudes within Polish society, including beatings of Jews, loss of employment, and persecution. These outbursts of antisemitic sentiment from both Polish society and within the rank and file of the ruling party spurred the exodus of some 40,000 Polish Jews between 1956 and 1958. 1968 expulsionsŻydokomuna sentiment was reignited by Polish Communist state propaganda as part of the 1968 Polish political crisis. The political turmoil of the late 1960s—exemplified in the West by increasingly violent protests against the Vietnam War—was closely associated in Poland with the events of the Prague Spring which began on 5 January 1968, raising hopes of democratic reforms among the intelligentsia. The crisis culminated in the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia on 20 August 1968. The repressive government of Władysław Gomułka responded to student protests and strike actions across Poland (Warsaw, Kraków) with mass arrests, and by launching an anti-Zionist campaign within the Communist party on the initiative of Interior Minister Mieczysław Moczar, also known as Mikołaj Diomko and best known for his xenophobic and antisemitic attitude. The officials of Jewish descent were blamed "for a major part, if not all, of the crimes and horrors of the Stalinist period." The campaign, which began in 1967, was a well-guided response to the Six-Day War and the subsequent break-off by the Soviets of all diplomatic relations with Israel. Polish factory workers were forced to publicly denounce Zionism. As the interior minister Mieczysław Moczar's nationalist "Partisan" faction became increasingly