Boleslaus the Pious

The basic "general charters" of Jews in Poland have their origin in the writ issued by Prince Boleslav v the Pious of Kalisz in 1264.

Subsequently, the princes of Poland eagerly sought immigrants from the west, mainly from Germany, and gave them energetic assistance to settle in the villages and towns.

This "statute of Kalisz" (Pol. Statut kaliski) – as it is called in literature – was also an "immigrant" from the countries which Jews left to come to Poland, being based on the statute of Duke Frederick ii of Austria and on derivative statutes issued in Bohemia and Hungary.

The Jews are seen, accepted, and defended as a group whose main business is moneylending against pledges.

Throughout the 14th and 15th centuries Jews were occupied to a growing degree in almost every branch of trade pursued at that time.

Thus, by the very dynamics of its economic and social development, Polish Jewry constitutes a flat existential denial and factual contradiction of the antisemitic myth of "the Jewish spirit of usury."