I do not think this account is very accurate. To be sure, there was a lot of anti-semitic prejudice in Poland before WWII, as well as structural anti-semitism (i.e. barriers to enter certain occupations, which forced Jews to the so-called "free professions" - mainly law and medicine - and trade), but Poland was not any different in that respect from other European countries.
It is interesting to note that despite that attitudinal and structural anti-semitism in pre-WWII Poland tendencies toward assimilation among Polish Jews were quite strong. It is the Polish nationalist associated with the so-called Radical Nationalist Camp, a vocal and virulently antisemitic right wing outfit, but clearly a minority, who opposed assimilation and advocated Jewish emigration to Palestine. At that time, most Jews, especially those on the left (cf. the Bund which opposed Zionism) did not favor the idea of a separate Jewish state.
That changed quite radically during and after WWII. While Poland did not assist the Nazis in the holocaust, the Polish attitudes toward varied considerably. The number of those who helped hiding Jews was quite considerable, even though Poland was perhaps the only Nazi occupied country where helping Jews was automatically punished by death. On the other hand, there were those who turned the Jews in - these were either the so-called "Volksdeutsch" Poles who applied for German quasi -citizenship status on the grounds of their German ancestry, or the so-called "greasers" ("grease" is the slang word for money) who would either blackmail hiding Jews or turn them in for a bounty paid by the Nazis. There were also those who would hide Jews for money. The majority, however, was indifferent, or perhaps too afraid to do anything. I cannot city numbers to show the relative prevalence of any of these behaviors, except perhaps the number of the 'Righteous Among the Nations" titles granted by the Yad Vashem to those who helped saving Jews during WWII. Poles received the highest numbers of such titles, 5,733 of the 19,704 awarded (the next high are the Dutch - 4,513), see: http://www.yad-vashem.org.il/righteous/index_righteous.html
Of the 3 million Polish Jews, only about a quarter (according to post-war registration stats) of a million survived - most of them in the x-USSR, who returned to Poland after WWII (between 1945 and 1947). Although the socialist government of Poland removed all institutional aspects of anti-semitism (e.g. Jews could for the first time take government jobs, which earned the socialist government the scornful label "judeo-communism") the negative attitudes of the surviving Jews toward Poland intensified in that time period. The idea that the Nazi death camp were somehow connected to Polish aniti-semitism originated in that time.
A study of Jewish attitudes between 1947 and 1950 by Irena Hurwic-Nowakowska (perhaps the only one of this kind) suggest the following reasons for such attitudes: - the Holocaus experience (obviously) - the anti-semitic prejudice, especially prevalent in the lower classes of the Polish population, manifested by hostility toward returning Jews, and culminating in the Kielce pogrom of 1946 in which 40 Jews were killed by a Polish mob; - deep sense of alienation caused by the disappearance of Jewish communities; before WWII, Jews lived in tightly knit urban communities, mainly in Warsaw and Lodz (where Jews were about a third of the population) and smaller towns of central and eastern Poland (some of which had up to 90% of Jewish population) - which all disappeared in WWII. The loss of community was one of the most frequently voiced concerns in the cited survey.
As a result, many Jews embraced Zionism as the only viable solution to the "Jewish question" - even those who previously opposed the idea of independent Jewish state. Interestingly, however, not everyone who supported that idea expressed willingness to emigrate. The cited study shows that about 74% of the interviewed Jews considered their nationality to be Jewish, 22% Polish, and the remaining 4% declared no nationality. However, 48% of them considered Poland to be their homeland and 38% declared Palestine to be their homeland - 6% named both countries and 1% - a "land of social justice" (without naming what that land is). 45% declared their willingness to stay in Poland, while 49% wanted to emigrate to Palestine.
One of the most frequently cited reasons for support of a separate Jewish state (regardless of willingness to emigrate) was the avoidance of future holocausts. One of the most frequently cited reasons for emigration was the 1946 Kielce pogrom, and Polish anti-semitism in general.
The bottom line is that "virulent Polish anti-semitism" is the post WWII creation, resulting from the emotional trauma of the holocaust, augmented by alienation caused by the loss of Jewish community, the Kielce pogrom, and anti-semitic atiitudes of the parts of the Polish population. Interestingly, the removal of structural-institutional aspects of pre-war anti-semitism by the socialist government was insufficient to counter the Jewish perceptions of virulent Polish anti-semitism (a frequently cited opinion held that thegovernemtn is doing the right thing, but the nation remains anti-semitic, so a regime change may exacerbate anti-semitism).
I would also like to add that the Polish-Jewish relations are very complex, full of contradictions. Yes, there were pogroms, but Jews came to Poland escaping persecution in Western Europe and survived there for centuries preserving their national culture. A great deal of Polish intelligentsia is of Jewish origins (I could be a Jew if I wanted to play the identity game, as there are Jews on both sides of my family, as well as Poles and Czechs). There would be no modern Poland without Jews, and the Jewish culture would suffer a great deal without Poland. That is why find the myth of "virulent Polish/Eastern European ant-semitism" spread by the Westerners an example of crass propaganda for political expediency and attempts to wash one's own dirty hands.
With that in mind, let me reply to the email I received from Michael Pugliese advising me to rent "Shoah" and read Jan Gross of NYU - I am thoroughly familiar with the cited material, but in all honestly, I do not give a shit what Western intellectuals (even those with leftist credentials) think of Eastern Europe. I lived there, I am a product of its peoples and their struggles.
Wojtek