The Polish military was involved in the founding and shaping of the Second Polish Republic like few other institutions. Whether and to what extent citizens who did not belong to the Polish majority society should have access to the armed forces was a contentious issue. The tension between universal conscription and the army's nationalization claim was particularly evident in the Polish-Jewish relationship. It was characterized by a simultaneous mix of rejection and cooperation, exclusion and incorporation. This was reflected in both military everyday life and in the culture of remembrance. Christhardt Henschel makes this multifaceted and contradictory relationship visible. At the same time, he shows that the Polish military's treatment of its Jewish conscripts is representative of the minority policy of the Republic that emerged after the collapse of the imperial pre-war order. The strong influence of national memory narratives and normative ideas from the 19th century is evident, which accompanied the negotiation processes regarding issues of emancipation, equality, and national belonging of the Jewish population until the onset of World War II. In this way, a nuanced picture of the Polish-Jewish relationship between 1918 and 1939 emerges.