After centuries of relative ethnic diversity, the population of modern Poland has become nearly completely ethnically homogeneous Polish as a result of altered borders and the Nazi German and Soviet or Polish Communist population transfers, expulsions and deportations (from or to Poland) during and after World War II. Ethnic minorities remain in Poland, however, including some newly arrived or increased in number. Ethnic groups include Germans, Ukrainians and Belarusians.
See main article: Demographic history of Poland.
Although the concept of an ethnic minority is mostly used about a modern period, Poland has historically been a multi-ethnic country. The early influx of Czechs, Hungarians, Slovaks, and Germans was particularly notable, and they formed significant minorities (or majorities) in urban centers. After the mid-14th-century Polish–Lithuanian union and the Union of Lublin, which established the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1569, Lithuanians and Ruthenians became part of the population.
A 1493 estimate listed the combined population of Poland and Lithuania at 7.5 million, broken down by ethnicity:
In 1618, after the Truce of Deulino, the Commonwealth's territory increased and its population reached 12 million. Its inhabitants could be roughly divided into:
At that time, the szlachta (nobility) were 10 percent of the population and the burghers 15 percent.
With the population and territorial losses of the mid- and late 17th century, the 1717 population of the Commonwealth had declined to nine million in the following ethnic groups:
See main article: Second Polish Republic. According to the 1921 Polish census, 30.8 percent of the population were ethnic minorities. This was exacerbated by the Polish victory in the Polish-Soviet War and the large territorial gains in the east as a consequence. According to the 1931 Polish census (as cited by Norman Davies), 68.9 percent of the population was Polish, 13.9 percent were Ukrainians, about 10 percent Jewish, 3.1 percent Belarusians, 2.3 percent Germans and 2.8 percent other groups (including Lithuanians, Czechs and Armenians). There were also smaller communities of Russians and Romani people. The minority situation was complex and fluid during the period.
Poland was also a nation of many religions. In 1921, 16,057,229 Poles (about 62.5 percent) were Roman Catholics, 3,031,057 (about 11.8 percent) were Eastern Rite Catholics (primarily Ukrainian Greek and Armenian Rite Catholics), 2,815,817 (about 10.95 percent) were Greek Orthodox, 2,771,949 (about 10.8 percent) were Jewish, and 940,232 (about 3.7 percent) were Protestants (mostly Lutherans). Poland had the world's second-largest Jewish population by 1931: one-fifth, about 3,136,000.
Before World War II, one-third of Poland's population belonged to ethnic minority groups. Poland's minorities were mostly gone after the war, however, due to the 1945 revision of borders and the Holocaust. Under the National Repatriation Office (Państwowy Urząd Repatriacyjny), millions of Poles were forced to leave their homes in the eastern Kresy region and settle in former German territories in the west. About five million remaining Germans (about eight million had already fled or been expelled, and about one million had been killed between 1944 and 1946) were similarly expelled from those territories into the Allied occupation zones. Ukrainian and Belarusian minorities found themselves now mostly within the borders of the Soviet Union; those who opposed this new policy (like the Ukrainian Insurgent Army in the Bieszczady Mountains region) were suppressed by the end of 1947 in Operation Vistula.
The Jewish population of Poland, the largest Jewish community in pre-war Europe at about 3.3 million people, was almost completely destroyed by 1945. Approximately three million Jews died of starvation in ghettos and labor camps, or were slaughtered in Nazi extermination camps or by Einsatzgruppen death squads. Between 40,000 and 100,000 Polish Jews survived the Holocaust in Poland, another 50,000 to 170,000 were repatriated from the Soviet Union, and 20,000 to 40,000 came from Germany and other countries. There were 180,000 to 240,000 Jews in Poland at the country's postwar peak, settled mainly in Warsaw, Łódź, Kraków and Wrocław.
The rights of ethnic minorities in Poland are guaranteed in article 35 of the 1997 Constitution:
The Act on Ethnic and National Minorities and on the Regional Language of 6 January 2005 (Polish: Ustawa o mniejszościach narodowych i etnicznych oraz o języku regionalnym)[1] stipulates that to be recognized as an ethnic or national minority, a group must reside in Poland for at least 100 years; this excludes minorities recognized by the Communist regime, such as the Greeks. There are three categories of recognized minorities in Poland: nine national minorities (Belarusians, Czechs, Lithuanians, Germans, Armenians, Russians, Slovaks, Ukrainians and Jews), four ethnic minorities (Karaites, Lemkos, Roma and Tatars), and the regional Kashubian linguistic minority.[1]
Poland ratified the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages on 12 February 2009:
Minorities have a number of rights, including street signs and education in their native language, cultural development and non-assimilation. In municipalities (gminy) where they constitute more than 20 percent of the population, they have the right to official communications in their native language. Such municipalities must be included on the official register of municipalities where an additional language is used, and incentives exist for officials of these municipalities to learn the regional language.[1]
In the Polish census of 2002, 96.7 percent claimed Polish nationality and 97.8 percent said that they speak Polish at home. In the 2011 census, 1.44 percent of Poland's 39 million inhabitants said that they had an ancestry other than Polish. That figure included 418,000 who identified as Silesian (362,000 as a single ethnicity and 391,000 as a second ethnicity) and 17,000 Kashubians (16,000 as a single ethnicity). Recognized minorities were 0.3 percent of the population: 49,000 Germans (26,000 a single ethnicity), 36,000 Ukrainians (26,000 single-ethnicity), 7,000 Lemkos (5,000 single-ethnicity), 37,000 Belarusians (31,000 single-ethnicity), 12,000 Roma people (9,000 single-ethnicity), and 8,000 Russians (5,000 single-ethnicity); 0.2 percent of the population were foreign citizens.
2002 census: