Demographics of Poland
According to the 2011 census by the Polish Central Statistical Office (GUS), at the end of 2011 Poland had a population of 38,538,447, which translates into an average population density of 123 people/km (urban 1105 per 1 km², rural 50 per 1 km²). 61.5% of the Polish population lives in urban areas, a number which is slowly diminishing. Poland is the 33rd most populous country in the world (9th in Europe, with 5.4% of the European population). Total population of Poland is almost stagnant (population growth was 0.08%). Average life expectancy was 70.5 for men and 78.9 for women. In 2009, it was expected to be 73.1 for men and 79.5 for women. Population distribution is uneven. Ethnically, Poland is a very homogeneous country, with 96.7% of population being Polish.
History of the Jews in 20th-century Poland
Following the re-emergence of sovereign Poland after World War I and during the interwar period the number of Jews in the country grew rapidly. According to the Polish national census of 1921, there were 2,845,364 Jews living in the Second Polish Republic; by late 1938 that number had grown by over 16 percent, to approximately 3,310,000, mainly through migration from Ukraine and the Soviet Russia. The average rate of permanent settlement was about 30,000 per annum. At the same time, every year around 100,000 Jews were passing through Poland in unofficial emigration overseas. Between the end of the Polish–Soviet War of 1919 and late 1938, the Jewish population of the Republic grew by nearly half a million, or over 464,000 persons. Jews preferred to live in relatively tolerant Poland rather than in the USSR, and continued to integrate, to marry into Polish Gentile families, to bring them into their community through marriage, to feel Polish and to form an important part of Polish society. Between 1933 and 1938, around 25,000 German Jews fled Nazi Germany to sanctuary in Poland.