On July 4 , 1946 , the local Jewish gathering of some 200 Holocaust survivors from the Planty 7 Street refugee centre of the Zionist Union became the target of the Kielce pogrom in which 37 ( 40 ) Polish Jews ( 17 – 21 of whom remain unidentified ) and 2 ethnic Poles were killed , including 11 fatally shot with military assault rifles and 11 more stabbed with bayonets , indicating direct involvement of Polish troops . During Cold War , many Jewish historians theorized that the pogrom became the cause of outward Jewish emigration from Poland immediately following the opening of the borders in 1947 . Nevertheless , the true reasons behind the dramatic increase of the Jewish emigration from Poland were far more complex . The new government of the Communist Poland signed a repatriation agreement with the Soviet Union helping over 150,000 Holocaust survivors leave the Gulag camps legally . Poland was the only Eastern Bloc country to allow free and unrestricted Jewish aliyah to the nascent State of Israel , upon the conclusion of World War II . After the Kielce pogrom Gen. Spychalski of PWP signed a legislative decree allowing the remaining survivors to leave Poland without visas or exit permits . Poland was the only Eastern Bloc country to do so , at war 's end . Britain demanded from Poland ( among others ) to halt the Jewish exodus , but their pressure was largely unsuccessful
Kielce pogrom
Kielce pogrom
Kielce