The WJC has evinced a great interest in Poland, both before the war, when the country was home to some 3.25 million Jews (10 percent of that country's total population, forming the largest Jewish community in Europe); and in the post-war period, when the Jewish community was reconstituted. In second half of the 1930s, in the face of a marked rise in antisemitism, the WJC attempted to intervene on behalf of Polish Jewry. In December 1936, for example, Nahum Goldmann visited Poland and conferred with the Minister of Foreign Affairs Jozef Beck, but this "demarche" did little to abate the situation. In order to counter the drastic effects of the ban on kosher slaughter (Shechita), the WJC Economic Department prepared a study on the legislation and proposed various relief measures that could be instituted. The WJC also intervened to ensure that Polish Jews deported from Germany at the end of October 1938 and stranded in Zbaszyn would be allowed to resettle elsewhere in Poland.