A growing Polish embrace of the antisemitic stereotype of Jews as communist traitors erupted into mass murder when Nazi Germany invaded Soviet eastern Poland in July 1941. The stereotype endured into postwar Poland because Polish anti-communists saw Poland's Soviet-controlled communist government as the fruition of prewar communist anti-Polish agitation and associated it with the Soviets' appointment of Jews to positions of responsibility in the Polish government. It was also reinforced by the prominent role of a small number of Jews in Poland's Stalinist regime. Michael C. Steinlauf noted that Jewish communists, despite their small number, have gained a notorious reputation in Poland, "believed to have masterminded the enslavement that country" and became "demonized" as part of the "Żydokomuna" canard.