Polish Jews. Jewish roots
By the 16th century, a separate Jewish subethnic group was emerging in central and eastern Europe - the Ashkenazis, a significant part of which lived on the territory of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Here, unlike neighboring Germany, Jews were not constrained by a large number of laws that limited the scope of their professional activities, which ensured a constant influx of representatives of the Jewish faith into the Polish and Lithuanian lands. In the 16th century, out of the 11 million population of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, approximately 800 thousand were Jews.
The freedom that the Jews found themselves in worried many Poles. In particular, in 1485, Krakow Catholics tried to prohibit Jews from any activity other than “mortgaging for overdue debts.” However, they failed to turn Jews solely into moneylenders. In 1521, already the heads of the Lviv magistrate complained to Poznan:
“The infidel Jews deprived us and our fellow citizens engaged in merchants of almost all sources of food. They took over all trade, penetrated into towns and villages, and left nothing for the Christians.” However, in this case there was no reaction either. The king did not want to lose, in the person of Polish Jewry, a powerful trade and economic layer, which also ensured the financial stability of the state.
However, the Jews gradually concentrated their activities in a niche in which they could not be disturbed by representatives of other nationalities and religions - these were mediatory functions between townspeople and peasants. The essence of the activity is this: first, the Jewish intermediary bought raw materials from the peasants and resold them to the city, then bought finished products from the townspeople and resold them again to the village.
It was difficult for non-Jews to occupy such a niche: they had to work a lot and persistently, maneuver and adapt in order to become useful to both the city dweller and the peasant. The “profit” from such activities was small: if the tariff were slightly higher, the peasant and the city dweller would begin to negotiate directly.
Towards the end of the 16th century, Jews gradually emerged from the influence of the king and fell into the sphere of interests of the magnates. Jews are turning into, albeit dependent, but completely separate feudal class. They build taverns and taverns, roads and hotels, workshops and factories, thereby participating in the creation of the transport and economic infrastructure of the Kingdom. Jews in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth are respected, but most importantly, they are needed.
For a long time, the history of the Polish state and Jews developed in a single direction, one might even say inextricably. The most ancient legends speak of the coexistence of these peoples, starting from the 9th century. According to one of them, a certain Jewish honey merchant Abraham Prokhovnik even played a certain role in the founding of the royal Piast dynasty. Since then, Jews have become so firmly established in the Kingdom of Poland that their numbers relative to the indigenous population were for several centuries the largest in Europe. And only the tragic events of World War II were able to change this ratio. What led to the fact that Jews in Poland were able to develop so freely, creating the largest diaspora in Europe?
Historical facts point precisely to the 9th century. Then Jewish traders from different countries, and primarily from German lands, began to penetrate into the territory of Poland in large numbers. This is not surprising, because at that time the most important trade routes passed through Polish territories: the “fur” route leading to Rus' and Khazaria, and the “amber” route heading to the Baltic Sea. To conduct business normally, they needed to have the opportunity to live on Polish lands. It is believed that one of the Polish princes, Leshko, was impressed by the story of the Jews about their history, and gave them privileges that opened up wide opportunities.
Thus, starting from 905 (the moment of the emergence of privileges), Jewish merchants could easily settle throughout Poland, settling at key points of strategic trade routes. This situation was accelerated by the fact that one of the subsequent Polish rulers, Prince Mieczyslaw I, converted to Catholicism in 966, simultaneously becoming a vassal of the German emperor. From that moment on, representatives of the German merchants, a significant part of whom were Jews, began to freely cross the western borders of Poland.
The resettlement of Jews throughout the Polish state was quite active, which is confirmed by the first document directly related to them. This is a bill of sale for a plot of land that Count Peter Vlast acquired in the village of Maly Tynets from a certain Jew, which dates back to the mid-12th century. During the same period in Krakow, representatives of the local Jewish diaspora even ran a mint, which is confirmed by the presence of coins with inscriptions minted on them in Hebrew: “Mieszko the King”, “Mieszko the King of Poland”. Moreover, on some of the coins there are even Jewish names: “Yosef Kalish”, “Abraham Yosef” and some others. Modern researchers suggest that they are stamped with the names of craftsmen or Jews who took over the coinage business.
A serious Jewish community existed in the city of Wroclaw at the border of the 12th-13th centuries. It was from there that the first names of the Jews living in Poland now came. These are Yosef and Khatskel, owners of land plots in the village of Sokolniki, as well as Cantor David, who died in 1203, whose tombstone was found in the Wroclaw cemetery.
The 13th century brought Europe many trials. They began with the Mongol-Tatar invasion. Within a few years, a huge army of nomads almost completely managed to suppress the resistance of the ancient Russian state and poured into Central Europe. The main blow fell on Poland. Unaccustomed to the original battle tactics of the Tatar cavalry, the Polish knights suffered constant defeats and lost territories. The settlements captured by the nomads were plundered and destroyed, and the surviving people were taken captive. After the passage of the foreign army, only the ruins of cities and uncultivated fields remained.
To revive the country, people were needed, and the Polish princes began to invite Germans for this purpose, with whom many Jews began to arrive in Poland. From the new settlers in Poland, another class began to form, complementing the two previously existing ones, consisting of landowners and peasants. With their help, the country's economy began to gradually recover, and cities began to revive. Seeing significant benefits from Jewish migrants arriving in the country, Polish rulers tried to make their living in the new conditions as easy as possible. Thus, the ruling prince in Kalisz, Bolesław the Pious, in 1264 passed a law called the Kalisz Statute, which guaranteed broad powers to Jews and encouraged their activities.
The prince's general charter guaranteed the Jews living in his fiefs a wide range of privileges. They were guaranteed complete freedom of movement and trade. Disputes between Jews were the jurisdiction of the prince alone. Illegal actions against representatives of this nation were severely punished, ranging from a rather impressive fine to confiscation of property that went to the princely treasury. Any accusations against the Jews had to be confirmed by an equal number of Poles and Jews, which almost completely excluded them from punishment. In turn, when criminals attacked a Jew, the Poles were obliged to come to his aid, otherwise they would face a hefty fine.
When developing this status, Prince Boleslav used as a basis the list of privileges of Prince Leshko, published in 905. To prevent his own law from being repealed by his descendants, Boleslav the Pious approved his charter with the note “For Eternity” and forced all his vassals to sign it. Subsequently, during the reign of King Casimir the Great, the provisions of the Kalisz status were extended to the territory of all of Poland, although the church tried with all its might to resist such a movement. But, despite the serious opposition of the church, the secular leadership of the state saw prospects from the cooperation of the Poles with the Jews and in every possible way contributed to the Jewish colonization of the state. In this case, the interests of the Polish princes and the state almost completely coincided, because the Jews were directly subordinate first to them, and then to the kings, bringing substantial income to the treasury.
100 years after the barbaric Tatar invasion, a new attack struck Europe. March 1348 was marked by the appearance of the “Black Death” - a plague epidemic. It began in Genoa, where the disease was brought by sailors. The terrible disease swept through most of Western Europe in a matter of weeks, after which it spread to Scandinavia and the British Isles. In all places where the plague appeared, people began to die en masse, with the number of victims in large centers amounting to tens and hundreds of thousands.
Paradoxically, the measures taken to counter the Jewish colonization of European countries by the Catholic Church largely contributed to the fact that the percentage of Jews who died from the disease was much lower than among Europeans. According to the demands of the clergy, Jews had to live in separate quarters, not attend events organized by representatives of the titular nations, and not eat at the same table. In addition, the level of personal hygiene, preserved in the Jewish environment since their time in Israel, was significantly higher.
However, illiterate European inhabitants were far from understanding this fact. They saw something else: far fewer Jews die than Europeans, so there is some malicious intent involved. The first rumors that Jews were to blame for the mass deaths appeared 3 months after the outbreak of the epidemic. This happened in Spain, in Barcelona. Fueled by rumors, the crowd rushed into the Jewish quarters, destroying the houses of the Jews and killing their owners. Several dozen people died then. After this incident, Pope Clement VI was forced to issue a decree rejecting the version of Jewish involvement in the mass death of people. However, it had no effect on ordinary people.
Soon in Savoy, the local duke ordered that a group of Jews be taken into custody and subjected to torture. One of those arrested, the doctor Balavigny, unable to withstand the torture, incriminated himself and several of his “brothers,” saying that they had plotted against the European population. Their group developed a recipe for a special mixture that kills exclusively Europeans, and then they began to send the resulting poison to their fellow tribesmen. They began to scatter it into Christian wells, which is why people began to die en masse. Messengers with alarming news were immediately sent to all corners, and the extermination of Jews immediately began everywhere.
In almost all countries of Western Europe, a wave of anti-Jewish actions arose. They were killed, their houses were destroyed, and their businesses were taken away. The most gentle actions were simple expulsions of the Jews from their places of permanent residence. Among all this orgy of violence, the only bright spot seemed to be Poland, in which the Kalisz status was in effect, so the pogroms were local in nature. Jews who survived epidemics and pogroms flocked to Poland. In those years, the country was ruled by Casimir the Great, who treated the forced migrants very favorably. Refugees from European countries could freely settle in Poland, receiving a peaceful refuge there for several more centuries.
There is even a belief among Jews that the very name of Poland signifies a place for asylum. In Hebrew, the name of this country sounds like “Polin”. At the same time, the Hebrew phrase “po lin” is literally translated as “live here.” Legend even says that during the resettlement of Jews fleeing pogroms, a note with this inscription fell from the sky, as if the Almighty himself had shown them the way to salvation. Thus, Jews settled in Poland.
Today it is very difficult to write about the history of our people in Poland: the once thriving community of Israel no longer exists in this country
At the end of the Middle Ages, tens of thousands of persecuted Jews came from Germany to another country of dispersion - Poland. They understood the name of the country, "Polin", as a combination of two Hebrew words - By -"here and lin- “spend the night”, deciding that “here” there will be rest and peace for the rest of the night of exile... until the Guardian proclaims that “morning” has come. They hoped to live to see the morning light, but darkness came and swallowed them all. May their blood be avenged!
We had hard times in Poland, and we also had bright ones. The country's leaders did not accept us out of good feelings, but in anticipation of the benefits that the Jews could bring to it with their talents and money. And when they believed that there was nothing to get from us, they coldly handed us over to our enemies. “Under three the earth trembles: ... and under the feet of a slave who became a king...”. After a hundred years of oppression, the Polish people finally gained freedom and began to rule their land, but trouble came, and he became an assistant to the executioners.
Mourning the Jews who, having died, were not even honored with a grave, we ask again and again: why does our people suffer more than all other peoples? It’s time to despair, but “there is no place for despair in the world.” One cannot dare to blame the dead righteous, but it is also impossible to challenge the justice of the Creator. “The sin of Judah is written with an iron pen. We sinned and were angry - You did not forgive.” Having received permission, the destroyer does not bother, and the righteous are the first to pay the bill. Were Jews sinless in other periods of history? Of course not. But there are eras when sin increased many times over. We sinned the same sins because of which the Temple was destroyed, those because of which we were expelled from our Land. We remember the tragedies that our people have experienced throughout our history. It’s hard to believe that this is a chain of coincidences, so we can only believe that the Almighty is right! Following the prophet, we repeat: “Return us to Yourself, and we will return. Restore to us the former days” (Eicha 5:21).
Shelter for generations
We do not know the time of the beginning of Jewish settlement in Poland. Divine Providence chose this country as our refuge for many generations, and here the spiritual flowering of the Jewish people took place. The socio-political structure of Poland eased the problems of emigration. The noble minority owned almost all the land of the agricultural country. The bulk of the population was the serf peasantry. The country's small middle class was mainly represented by Germans - potential allies of Germany, which was constantly striving to the East and dreamed of seizing Polish lands. The Polish authorities gladly accepted Jewish merchants and artisans who had fled persecution in Germany, whose loyalty to the country that gave them shelter was beyond doubt.
In Poland, Jews founded their own community and lived according to the laws of the Torah. They saw work as a means of earning food. The purpose of life was considered to be the study of the Torah and observance of its commandments. Many spent their youth in teaching houses and yeshivas.
In 5024 (1264) Count Bolesław of Kalisz granted special status to Jews. Now the Jews reported directly to the count and did not depend on the city government and local nobles. Under pain of corporal punishment, it was forbidden to harm Jews and their property. It was strictly forbidden to charge Jews with ritual murder. The gentry and the Catholic clergy were dissatisfied with this decree and tried to evade its implementation. Under weak rulers, they repeatedly set the mob against the Jews. Still, the situation in Poland was much better than in Germany.
After the pogroms that swept across Germany during the smallpox epidemic (5108/1348), the Polish king Casimir III (5093–5130/1333–1370) received thousands of Jews in Poland. The epidemic did not reach Poland, but even in this country there were instigators who called for revenge on the Jews for allegedly poisoning the wells. King Casimir III managed to protect the Jews by approving Boleslav's charter. And although pogroms occurred during his reign, his reign was still a period of heyday for the Polish community. Under the next rulers, the situation of the community worsened, in particular, under the influence of Catholic traders who were eager to destroy their competitors.
The situation of Jews in Lithuania was much better. The idolatrous Lithuanians have not yet learned anti-Semitism from Catholic priests. However, when the Lithuanian prince Jagielo was baptized and, having married the Polish princess Jadwiga, united both countries, the position of the Lithuanian community did not worsen.
Jewish autonomy in Poland
A quiet time for Polish Jews was the period when the Lithuanian prince Casimir IV (5207/1447) ascended the Polish throne. He removed the Jews from the jurisdiction of the Catholic court and granted them internal autonomy. From now on, a dispute between a Jew and a Christian was subject only to the direct judgment of the king. To stop the bloody accusations, Casimir IV decided to accept such cases for consideration only on the testimony of four witnesses. And when the fanatical monk Capistrano demanded that King Casimir abolish the rights of the Jews, the king refused him this.
Anti-Semites could not calmly look at the happy Jewish life and tried to use any excuse to worsen the situation of the Jews. When in 5214 (1454) the king was defeated in a war with the German knights, the priests immediately began to incite the people, claiming that the defeat in the war was a punishment for the king: in violation of the laws of the church, he treated the Jews too well. Small nobles saw this as an opportunity not to repay debts and demanded that the rights granted to Jews be abolished or limited. The king had to give in. But after his victory in the war and the signing of the peace in Torino (5226/1466), the situation of the Jews improved again.
During the reign of Casimir IV, thousands of refugees from Germany poured into the country. Thanks to their activities, the country's economy has greatly strengthened. The benefits of the Jewish presence were obvious to everyone. The king handed over to the Jews the collection of taxes, which annually replenished the treasury with enormous sums. The position of royal tax collectors in a number of cases gave Jews an advantage over Christians, but on the other hand, in the eyes of the people, Jews turned into hated plunderers. After the Pope declared a crusade against the Turks, a crowd of would-be crusaders attacked the community of Krakow and killed thirty Jews. The king was indignant. He imposed a fine on the city and demanded guarantees that this would not happen again. After the death of King Casimir (5252/1492), one of his sons, Jan, inherited the Polish crown, and the other, Alexander, the Lithuanian one. In Poland, the right to try Jews was transferred from the royal court to the church court. In 5255 (1495) the Jews were expelled from Lithuania. Yet, when the Polish king died and Prince Alexander reunited the two countries, he allowed Jews to settle in Lithuania and returned their property to them. In Poland, the rights of Jews were also practically restored.
Persecutors and patrons
King Sigismund 1 (5266-5308/1506-1548), highly appreciating the benefits brought by Jews, encouraged the immigration of Jews into the country from Germany and the Czech Republic and protected them from priests and petty gentry. Large landowners shared the king's views on the Jewish question, and when the gentry limited the rights of Jews, they, led by the king, invited refugees to settle on their lands.
Sigismund II (5308-5332/1548-1572) officially restored the charter of King Casimir IV. His personal physician was a Jew, R. Yehuda Ashkenazi, the same one who then, having moved to Turkey, became a prominent diplomat. So that Jews could take part in fairs, the king moved the market day in his domain from Saturday to another day of the week. Sigismund II expanded the rights of communities and allowed them to independently collect a special Jewish tax, which Jews paid instead of serving in the army. He also commanded that one of the judges in a case between a Christian and a Jew should be the head of the Jewish community. But when the struggle began between the Lutheran and Catholic churches for the religious future of Poland, the first to suffer, of course, were the Jews. Since the king refused to persecute both Lutherans and Jews, Catholics resorted to a classic accusation that has always inflamed the mob at all times: the Jews were accused of desecration of the holy gifts (this time in the fact that Jews allegedly take consecrated bread out of the church and pierce his). Four Jews and a Christian girl were arrested on this charge in the city of Holem. Under torture, the unfortunates confessed to the truth of the accusation and were condemned to death. The king refused to approve the sentence, but the mayor quickly carried out the sentence, regardless of the opinion of the monarch. One of the convicts managed to escape, the rest, before execution, refused the confessions extracted from them under torture and died the death of the righteous. To prevent this from happening again, the king ordered henceforth all cases on charges of ritual murder and desecration of holy gifts to be heard only in the royal presence. King Stefan Batory, who ruled after Sigismund II, continued to protect the Jews. He ordered execution for false denunciation with the same execution that was intended for the accused.
New troubles
The Polish throne was not inherited. After the death of the king, a noble diet met and elected the head of the country. This gave a certain advantage to the petty gentry and the princes of the church, to whom candidates for the throne curried favor. After the election, the king's dependence on the gentry continued. After the death of Stefan Batory, weak kings succeeded one after another on the Polish throne. The period of the gentry freemen began.
It was an era of religious hostility and intolerance, when two Christian churches fought for the possession of Europe. Religious intolerance between Christians only fueled hatred of Jews. City councils restricted their trading rights and, together with the priests, incited the crowd to organize pogroms: Jews were killed and their property was plundered. The blood libel, the accusation of desecration of the holy gifts - everything was put into action. The weak kings could not do anything - they needed the protection of the Catholic Church too much. Only large landowners understood that Jews could be useful and did not give them offense. As a result, communities located in the royal domains disintegrated, and Jews moved from them to the lands of large counts. Many, having fled to Ukraine, which at that time belonged to Poland, became managers of the estates of Polish lords and prospered until the terrible crisis that broke out in 5408 (1648).
Published with permission from Shvut Ami Publishing House
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POLAND AND THE JEWS
The oldest ancestor known to me, Abram Zelikman, was born in Belarusian Polesie in 1730. 512 of my six times great-grandparents lived in the same generation as him. And during the four hundred years before the birth of Abram, while Jews from central Europe were moving east, the remains of tens of thousands Jews who are my direct ancestors. Maybe that’s why, at the level of genetic memory, Polish fields, forests, rivers and lakes seem familiar and dear to me.
Poland is the cradle of Russian Jewry; the ancestors of almost all Jews living today within our Fatherland became subjects of the Russian Empire as a result of the three partitions of Poland in the 18th century.
Almost 250 years have passed since then, of which Russia, for a century and a half, had within its borders the largest part of the current Polish lands. In 1918, the Polish state reappeared on the world map. Twenty years later, at the outbreak of World War II, Poland's population was 35 million, but only 65% of Polish citizens were ethnic Poles, and Polish Jews were the second largest ethnic group, numbering 3.3 million. At that time, Polish Jews were the largest Jewish community in Europe.
During the Second World War, Jews were subjected to mass extermination. During the war, 2.8 million Jews died in Poland, almost half of the total number of Polish citizens killed.
These figures are well known. Much less known is what happened to Jews in Poland in the post-war period.
In 1946, 23.8 million people lived in post-war Poland. There were still half a million Polish Jews who escaped the Holocaust, but the Jews were still a large national group. By comparison, France, which now has the largest Jewish community in Europe, had only 180,000 Jews after the war.
However, within several post-war years, the vast majority of Jews left Poland. At the end of the sixties, there was a new surge in immigration, and almost all the Jews remaining in the country left Poland.
According to the 2002 Polish census, there were 1,133 Jews living in the country.
In the four hundred old Jewish cemeteries that have survived today in Poland and hundreds of others that have not survived, lie the ancestors of millions of citizens of Russia, Israel, the USA, Argentina, Germany, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and other countries.
But Poland today is a country without Jews.
In the post-war period alone, the number of Jews in Poland decreased by more than three thousand times.
How could this happen?
“Live here!”
Jews began to settle in Poland in the 14th century. There is a legend that a note with two words in Hebrew fell from the sky on settlers who fled to Poland during the plague epidemic: “po lin,” which means “live here.” “Polin” is what the Jews called Poland.
In the 11th-13th centuries, in the countries of Northern and Central Europe, Jews lived in relative prosperity, successfully engaging in trade and providing a variety of services. The banking system was born through the ingenuity of Jewish financiers. Jews were considered indispensable in the process of settling lands and developing cities.
Many rulers guaranteed Jews freedom of trade and the right to exchange money, while guaranteeing the right to preserve the traditional Jewish religious, communal and cultural way of life. Until the end of the 11th century, oppression of Jews by the authorities was an exceptional phenomenon.
Jewish pogroms in Europe began in 1096, when crowds of knights, townspeople and peasants went on the first crusade. The wild and uneducated inhabitants of medieval Europe saw the Jews as the perpetrators of the crucifixion of Christ. When the Crusaders moved southeast in the summer of 1096, they left behind a bloody trail of slaughtered Jewish communities and a handful of desperate neophytes forced into Christianity along the banks of the Rhine. Having captured Jerusalem in 1099, the crusaders drove the Jewish inhabitants of the city into the synagogue and burned them alive.
We can say that from that time on the Jews lost their sense of security. It became obvious that neither the sovereign nor the church authorities were able to provide the security promised to the Jews in the letters of safe conduct. Although violence against Jews occurred much less frequently in subsequent years, throughout the 12th century Jews lived in constant fear, and their safety depended almost entirely on the protection of the authorities.
In 1171, in the French city of Blois, Jews were first accused of ritual murder and thirty-four Jews were burned at the stake. Then, over the next seven hundred-plus years, Jews were repeatedly accused of ritual murder. And although not a single accusation was proven, the “blood libels” turned out to be surprisingly tenacious.
So in 1235 a blood libel was raised against the Jews of the city of Fulda. The bodies of the Christian children they allegedly killed were shown to Emperor Frederick II as proof of the guilt of all Jews in Germany. However, this emperor, a patron of science and an opponent of the papacy, was convinced of the innocence of the Jews. He convened scientists from among baptized Jews throughout Western Europe, and they confirmed that the covenants of the Jewish religion categorically prohibit any murder and that even the consumption of animal blood is contrary to Jewish laws and rituals. The discussions and decisions of the congress were published by Frederick II in a special message. But even this acquittal did not stop the wave of blood libels.
In France in 1320-21, Jews were accused of poisoning wells with the help of lepers they hired for this purpose. The result of this monstrous accusation was a new wave of persecution in France and in neighboring countries.
In 1348-1349, a plague epidemic called the “Black Death” raged in Europe, claiming about 25 million lives. Jewish law requires Jews to maintain personal hygiene, so illnesses occurred less frequently among Jews. As a result, the Jews were accused of deliberately spreading the plague and the Jews began to be mercilessly slaughtered, burned and drowned.
As a result, the Jews of Germany rose en masse from their homes and went east to Poland.
At that time, Poland was ruled by King Casimir the Great, who treated Jews favorably. Refugees from Germany found shelter and a peaceful refuge there for several centuries. From the 14th century until the mid-16th century, the emigration of Jews from German cities to Poland, Lithuania and Belarus was truly massive. Entire Jewish communities moved, transferring their capital, as well as their tradition of trading, to their new country of residence.
In the 15th century, Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania became the center of Jewish cultural, economic and social life. In Poland alone, 45 new Jewish communities were founded; in total, more than 20 thousand Jews lived in Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania by that time.
By the end of the 15th - beginning of the 16th centuries, the nature and composition of Jewish emigration to Poland, Lithuania and Belarus changed significantly. Not only wealthy Jews emigrated here from the west and from the center of Europe, who were looking for favorable conditions for increasing their capital, but the middle and poor Jewish masses, forced out of their old homes by fierce trade competition and the associated national and religious intolerance. The privileges granted to the Jews ensured their peaceful life together with the indigenous population, the unhindered expansion of economic activity and internal self-government.
Despite a certain hostility on the part of the lower Catholic clergy, in economic activity Jews enjoyed the right to unhindered credit transactions and free trade in all goods on an equal basis with Christians, with equal taxes for all merchants.
How the Jews left Poland
During World War II, at least 2.8 million Polish Jews died at the hands of the Nazis.
It was in Poland that the Nazis created factories for the extermination of Jews: Treblinka-2, Auschwitz-Birkenau (Auschwitz-2), Sobibor, Belzec. These enterprises are usually called camps, but in fact they were not camps, since only a few hundred prisoners permanently lived in them, ensuring the functioning of the death factories. People doomed to death arrived at the place of extermination, were destroyed within a short time, after which the factory was ready to receive the next batch of doomed Jews. In the most “productive” death factory, Treblinka, located 80 kilometers northeast of Warsaw, 800 thousand Jews were exterminated. There is no place on earth where more people have been killed.
In camps such as Auschwitz 1 there was a permanent contingent of prisoners, they did at least some kind of work. In the death camps they only killed, and the prisoners provided this conveyor belt in order to eventually become its victims themselves.
After almost all Polish Jews were killed in the death camps, trains from other countries captured by the Nazis began to arrive there.
However, Polish Jews during the war died not only from the external enemy, but also from their Polish neighbors.
During World War II, Poles committed war crimes against Jews in at least 24 regions of the country. This conclusion was reached by a government commission that investigated events in Poland dating back to the beginning of World War II.
The commission's report occupies 1,500 pages and is called “Around Jedwabno.” Jedwabno is a small Polish town that became a symbol of the extermination of Jews by the Poles even before the start of the mass extermination of Jews by the Nazi regime in Germany. For a long time, the killing of Jews during the war in Poland was considered to be the work of the Nazis alone, but a government investigation carried out over two years proved that it was the Poles who were behind the ethnic massacre. According to an investigation by the Institute of National Memory, the number of Jews killed by Poles in Jedwabno alone is at least 1 thousand people. The exact number of Jews killed by Poles during the war is impossible to determine, but it is known that 60 investigations resulted in 93 Poles being charged with crimes against Jews in 23 regions of the country. As a result of trials held in Poland in the early post-war years, 17 people were sentenced to prison, and one was executed. They prefer not to talk about this in Poland after the end of the war.
At the same time, during the war, many Poles were ready to sacrifice their lives to save Jews. During the war, the Nazis in Poland executed over 2 thousand people who saved or helped Jews. In Jerusalem, in the park of the Yad Vashem Museum, there is an “alley of the righteous”, on which the names of people who risked their lives to save Jews during the war are immortalized. Most of all on this alley, 3558 names, are the righteous from Poland. Among those who saved Jews during the war was the family of Pope John Paul II.
But there were many more people in Poland who hated Jews. In the autumn of 1941, after the first acts of mass extermination of Jews by the Poles, General Grot-Rowecki, head of the underground Home Army, wrote to the Polish government in exile in London: “The pro-Jewish sympathies expressed in the statements of members of the London government make a very unfavorable impression in the country and greatly contribute to the success of Nazi propaganda. Please take into account that the overwhelming majority of the population is anti-Semitic. Even socialists are no exception to this, the only difference is in tactics. The need for emigration as a way to solve the Jewish question is as obvious to everyone as the need to expel the Germans. Anti-Semitism has become widespread."
In 1944, London government commissioner Kelt reported in his report on a trip to Poland: “According to local opinion, the London government is going overboard in expressing its sympathy for the Jews. Considering that Jews are not liked in the country, the statements of government members are perceived as too philo-Semitic.”
In all corners and metropolises
Hostage to the destinies of the world,
Jew, living in other people's stories,
I got into them all the time.
Even the terrible secrets of the Holocaust, which either happened or didn’t happen... Even the fascinating prospects of a Jewish state in the center of Europe are not as interesting, not as incomprehensible, as the mystery of the so-called Eastern Jews - that is, the Yiddish-speaking inhabitants of Poland, Western Rus', Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria. The fact is that this branch of world Jewry, numbering two-thirds of all Jews in the world, is still completely mysterious. It is unknown who they are or where they came from. An impenetrable mystery lies over the history of this people. These Jews quite definitely exist... But who are they?! Secrets, secrets, secrets...
From overseas from the forest,
Where is real hell,
Where are the evil demons?
They almost eat each other...
SIMPLICITY AND CLEARANCE
At first glance, everything is very simple and clear: “The Mongol invasion in the 13th century left Poland without an organized and recognized system of centralized power. Only in the second half of the 13th century did the situation in Poland begin to stabilize, and local princes gradually began to gain power. To strengthen the economy of the state, the Polish kings began to invite immigrants from more developed countries, mainly from Germany. They were very interested in the growth of cities, the development of crafts and trade, since the population of Poland was mainly peasant. Therefore, especially favorable conditions were provided to merchants and artisans. Thousands and thousands of Germans began to move to the east, and with them many Jews, who were promised special privileges.
At first, Jews lived in large cities and in areas adjacent to the German principalities from which they came. Gradually, having settled into the country and due to the influx of new Jewish settlers, they began to move to other areas.
At the end of the 14th century, many Jews settled in Lithuania...”
“After the Germans, they were the second most important migratory element that restored the Polish cities destroyed by the Tatar hordes.”
And it turns out that “the Jewish population of Eastern Europe was basically just an offshoot of Western European Jewry.”
In general, a very logical picture. And it is not changed in any way by the fact that “the Jewish community of Poland began to form even before the expulsion of Jews from Western Europe. Already in 1264, twenty years before their expulsion from England, privileges were given to Jews throughout the western part of the country in Poland.”
After all, “German Jews, fleeing the robberies of the Crusaders, settled in Poland by 1100. Here they flourished. More and more Jews fled Germany and Austria to Poland, where they were welcomed with open arms. King Bolesław V granted the Jews the liberal privilege of self-government."
Indeed, very logical. German Jews penetrate into Poland - simply spreading across the face of the Earth, without any special intention. “It is believed that already from the time of Charlemagne, Jewish merchants from Germany came to Poland on business, and many remained there permanently.”
The assumption is logical, but only as an unproven hypothesis. Because, frankly, I have no idea which serious scientist “believes” this. I haven’t come across any books on this issue where anyone seriously argued something like that. And if Solomon Mikhailovich is able to tell me the names of these “believers,” then it would be interesting to find out what documents they rely on. Because there are no documents. Absolutely not. There is folklore, that is, legends.
And if everything is so simple and clear, then why then the most authoritative book available to me on these topics says: “There is no consensus about how and when Jews appeared in Poland - this event is shrouded in legends, myths and fiction.”
J. D. Klier is among the most reliable Jewish historians. He is less careless than others in everything that concerns the history of non-Jews, he is the least ideological. And it is he who refuses to give an unambiguous explanation for the appearance of Jews in the Kingdom of Poland, as well as to offer any definite dates once and for all.
What is the mystery?
RESETTLEMENT OF NON-RESETTED
The first part of the puzzle is that in general there is no one to move to the east. Because in all the cities of Germany, England, France, Switzerland we are talking about very small Jewish communities. And it’s not the pogroms or the fact that so many Jews died during the plague pandemic in the 14th century. There were never many of them north of the Pyrenees Mountains and the Mediterranean coast.
By the time of the fall of the Roman Empire, there were many Jews in the Mediterranean regions: the countries of Italy, Spain, North Africa, and the Near East; there the climate is more familiar, and long-standing and relatively stable relations have been established with the non-Jewish population, although not always peaceful.
In Gaul, there were many Jews in the south, where the climate was Mediterranean. This southern part of Gaul was called Narbonne - after its main city, Narbonne. The Loire River divides Gaul almost exactly into two halves; there were far fewer Jews north of the Loire than to the south.
It is difficult to give specific figures for the early Middle Ages, but it is known that when the Visigoth kings ordered the Jews to be baptized or leave, there were 90 thousand who were baptized. And there were much more people who were not baptized and given into slavery to Christians or expelled.
It is difficult to say how many Jews there were in Spain in the 14th century; They name different numbers: from 600 thousand to one and a half or even two million. In Castile alone there were up to 80 communities, uniting up to a million Jews. If we remember that only 8 or 10 million people lived in Spain - Christians, Muslims and Jews - then in any case the percentage is very high. There were as many Jews in Spain as there would be in Poland a century later.
In 1391, attacks on Jews and civil unrest provoked by fanatical monks began in Spain. They were organized by a certain monk Fernando Martinez; if the authorities even stopped and punished the rioters, for some reason Martinez himself was not touched. True, he did not kill or torture with his own hands, but it was he who provided the ideological basis: all Jews must be immediately baptized so that the enemies of Christ would disappear from Spain and would not desecrate its land. Where this priest was during the battles, where Jews shed blood along with Christians, I have no information.
It began in Seville, where street fighting continued intermittently for three months. It swept throughout Castile and spread to Aragon. The fanatics who led the maddened crowd destroyed, if not all communities in Spain, then at least large communities - in Cordoba, Toledo, Valencia. The rioters burst into the “yuderia” shouting: “Here comes Martinez, he will now cross you all!” In Barcelona, the Jews locked themselves in a fortress, enlisting the support of the authorities. The authorities did not extradite him, but the soldiers of the garrison ran away and themselves took part in the siege of the fortress. The fortress was set on fire, the Jews were killed or baptized: except for those who committed suicide (the majority) or managed to escape (a few).
This is where the statistics come in! It is known, albeit approximately, the number of those killed and baptized. “Only” about ten thousand were killed, and about half a million people were baptized. It is difficult to say for sure how many fled to Morocco and Portugal. At least the count was in the hundreds of thousands. It is known that in Portugal at least 20 thousand baptized Jews returned to the faith of their fathers. They were threatened with punishment for this, but the chief rabbi and physician of the king of Portugal, Moses Navarro, presented the king with authentic letters from the Pope, prohibiting the baptism of Jews by force. The king allowed Jews to return to Judaism and forbade them to be persecuted for this.
Apparently, there were still a lot of Jews in Spain even after 1391. It is known that monks broke into synagogues many times, demanding immediate baptism. Often the synagogue was immediately converted into a temple, and the Jews were baptized by the entire community.
These outrages were organized by Bishop Paul of Burgos, the tutor of the Castilian prince and a personal friend of the Pope. In a past life, this was the Talmudist Solomon Halevi... Such baptized Jews, who often did not fundamentally change their social circle and lifestyle, were called “anusim” - that is, “slaves” by the Jews, and the Spaniards - “marranos”, that is, “outcasts” . Each nation expressed itself in its own spirit, and indeed the difference is in favor of the Jews.
The total number of Marranos and “people of mixed blood” in Spain is determined approximately from six hundred thousand to one and a half million (out of 8 or at most 10 million of the total population). This was a unique group of people - neither Jews nor Spaniards. Many of the Marranos did merge with the Spaniards, but most tried to secretly adhere to Judaism. They settled separately, tried to maintain acquaintances mainly among “their own”... Even a special Marrano pogrom is known, when in 1473 the mob went on a rampage for three days in Cordoba, in the Marrano quarter. Then a rumor spread that during a procession of the cross, a certain Marrancan maiden poured a chamber pot out of the window - directly onto the statue of the Mother of God. Whether it’s true or not can no longer be established, but there was a pogrom; more than a thousand people were killed, including infants - the main, presumably, enemies of the Mother of God. Was there any point in killing so many people because of one fool (who, again, would not be killed, but would be flogged, and that’s all) - this is also a question that is too late to ask.
Apparently, there were more Marranos in Spain than Jews, because the number of those expelled in 1492 is said to be about three hundred thousand. Already from a united Spain: the marriage of Ferdinand of Castile and Isabella of Aragon united the two largest kingdoms and created one large country. In 1492, the most Christian crown-bearers Ferdinand and Isabella decided that Gentiles should no longer desecrate Spain. A gloomily famous figure helped a lot in making this decision: the creator of the Spanish Inquisition, the confessor of kings, the monk Thomas Torquemada. There is a legend that the Jews offered Ferdinand and Isabella so much money for the right to stay that the king and queen hesitated. Unfortunately, Thomas Torquemada was eavesdropping and at the decisive moment burst into the room and put him to shame: how can they receive bribes from the enemies of Christ! Although it is true: having expelled the Jews, Ferdinand and Isabella appropriated their property. Why take part if you can “Aryanize” everything?
Before leaving their homeland forever, the Jews spent three days painfully saying goodbye to their family graves and weeping in their cemeteries. As always, as during any regular exile, they did not want to leave.
“And three hundred thousand walked, exhausted, on foot, among them was I, and all the people - youths and elders, women and children; in one day, from all regions of the kingdom... Where the wind of exile drove them... and behold - trouble, darkness and darkness... and many disasters befell them: robberies and misfortunes, famine and pestilence... they were sold into slavery in different countries, men and women, and many drowned in the sea... They sank like lead. Fire and water fell on others, for the ships were burning... And their history horrified all the kingdoms of the earth... and only a few of their many remained (alive).
This is how Don Isaac Abravanel, one of the outstanding leaders of Spanish Jewry, described this monstrous “campaign”. But, fortunately, Isaac Abravanel still exaggerated the scale of mass death. The majority of these people did not die, and we know very well where they ended up: Turkey accepted about 100,000 exiles, and the same number settled in North Africa.
In an act of grim justice, these Jews willingly became pirates, plundering the coasts of France and Spain. They turned out to be quite good sailors and warriors, and besides, they knew well the psychology and behavioral characteristics of Christians. They introduced an element of completely irrational hatred and malice into the merciless war between Muslims and Christians. On the island of Djerba, at the beginning of the 19th century, a pyramid of Christian skulls stood until it was removed in 1830 at the request of the French consul.
In Italy there were already incomparably fewer Jews than in Spain: according to various estimates, in the 14th–15th centuries - from 30 to 80 thousand. Fortunately, no one expelled them anywhere, and even Spanish exiles were added to them.
The number of people expelled from England varies, but all estimates range between 12 and 16 thousand people. This is a lot from the point of view of organizing such a procession, especially since it was not young armed men or even childless youth who were moving, moving to new lands. People were walking, and this number - 12 or 16 thousand people - included infants, very old people, women in the last stages of pregnancy, and nursing mothers. But this is very little compared even to the Italian colony, not to mention the Spanish Jews and the Jews of the Muslim world.
Slightly more Jews were expelled from France - the numbers range from 80 to 100 thousand people. However, where the Jews from France went is also known - they went either to Italy or to the southern principalities - Languedoc and Burgundy, which were vassal principalities of France, but to which the decrees on the expulsion of Jews did not apply. Only a very few French Jews headed to distant, too cold Germany for them.
SOMETHING IMPORTANT ABOUT THE JEWS OF GERMANY
What is characteristic is that the arrival of these Jews in Germany did not pass without a trace, and to be sure, the city archives in this country were always kept in order (which makes life very easy for historians). We know very well which Jews, in what numbers, arrived in which German cities, how many of them were there and where they moved. It is known that the community in Frankfurt am Main was founded by Rabbi Eliazar ben Nathan, who came to this city with his family from Mainz in 1150, and the same accuracy reigns in all other cases.
Sometimes Jews were counted not by heads, but by families: the chronicles noted how many families arrived in such and such a city or moved from Mainz to Frankfurt or from Zwickau to Berlin. There is not the slightest disdain for the Jews in this - the number of Christians was very often estimated in exactly the same way. For both chroniclers and royal officials, adult men were important, the heads of families - those who would pay taxes, work, and be responsible for maintaining order. They were simply not interested in women and children, and the chroniclers did not seem to notice them.
So: the numbers are absolutely insignificant. There were very few Jews in Germany even before the Crusades and the Black Death. After all, Germany for the Jews, even more than Britain, was only the extreme northern periphery of their habitat: a cold and wild country where they settled not because of a good life. Let me emphasize once again: the further you are from the Mediterranean coast, the fewer Jews there are. It is characteristic that the majority of fugitives from France settled not even in the Rhine regions, but in Alsace and Lorraine, that is, in the territory disputed between Germany and France.
In this sparse population, pogroms of the 11th–13th centuries produced a huge release, and during the plague pandemic, Jews not only died like everyone else, but they were also exterminated by Christians. Of course, those expelled from France and England somehow increased the total number of German Jews, but by how much? At most, by 20-30 thousand people, and this figure is taken from the air. A very approximate figure.
In Frankfurt, the recognized capital of German Jews, in 1241 there were only 1811 of them. In 1499 there were even fewer - only 1543. I will only emphasize that these figures include all Jews, including newborn babies. However, even in later times there were few Jews in Frankfurt. In 1709 - only 3019 people with a total urban population of 17–18 thousand. In 1811 - about 2–3 thousand, with a total number of citizens of 40,500 people.
We have to admit that very few Jews lived in Germany in the 14th and 15th centuries.
In modern times, Jews were allowed to return to England and the Netherlands, and this process is also well documented.
In the Netherlands, after liberation from Spanish rule in 1593, Protestants established widespread religious tolerance. In fact, it all started with the fact that the Marranos were given full opportunity to return to the faith of their fathers, and more often, even to the faith of their grandfathers and great-grandfathers. Communities arose... a year passed, then another... and no one was pursuing! Rumors about this also penetrated into Spain itself... Naturally, from there the Marrano ran after the Marrano, and soon “on the streets of the Jewish quarter in Amsterdam in the 17th century one could meet a man who had been a Catholic confessor at the Spanish royal court, and had now become a Jewish scientist or merchant, or a former Spanish minister or military leader who became the head of the Jewish community and a member of a shipping company sending its ships to the New World."
There are also immigrants from Germany to the Netherlands - there are several hundred of them; There are also immigrants from Poland and Rus'. But the Jewish community in the Netherlands is largely Sephardic.
In England, back in 1649, a group of revolutionary officers decided on broad religious tolerance, “not excluding Turks, and papists, and Jews.” On November 12, 1655, Oliver Cromwell raised before the National Assembly the question of admitting Jews to England, without any restrictions on their rights. Those who are furiously resisting are the English merchants, but the matter is clearly moving towards a positive solution.
As often happens, a complete accident intervened: regular hostilities began between England and Spain. The British government arrested Spanish merchants and their goods, and the “Spaniards” declared that they were not Catholics at all, but forcibly baptized Jews, and they were not enemies at all, but just the very best friends of England... By the way, Edward’s decree I on the expulsion of the Jews and prohibiting them from living in England was never canceled, and has not been canceled to this day. But Jews gain the actual right to live in Britain when the government willingly grants political asylum to “Spanish merchants”; and after the war a never-ending stream of Sephardic Marranos flows into England. In England they convert back to Jewry and freely settle in the country. There are tens of thousands of them. To these are added German Jews, mainly from Hanover: several hundred people.
Since 1648, after the annexation of Alsace to it by the Peace of Westphalia at the end of the Thirty Years' War, local German Jews have found themselves in France. There are about 20 or 30 thousand of them, and very soon after this the government, again without repealing the medieval decree, allows Italian and Spanish Jews to enter the country. By 1700, as many of them entered as there were “trophy” Jews from Alsace received by happy France in 1648. There are good reasons to believe that these are descendants of fugitives from 14th-century France.
The moral of this story is simple: there are many Jews in Mediterranean countries; There are very few Jews in Germany. Moving to the same country, German Jews are literally drowning in the mass of Sephardim.
German scientists, however, have no doubt at all that it was from the territory of Germany that the Jewish settlement of Poland came. But here’s an interesting detail: all the authors I’ve ever read very confidently report: “Jews settled in Poland and Holland in the 16th–18th centuries.” But the resettlement to Holland is documented with German scrupulousness, almost every settler is listed, and if necessary, it is possible to look up archives and even establish the names of many settlers. But the resettlement to Poland is not documented in any way. There is no specific information about which families, which Jews and when they moved to this or that Polish city.
Maybe this has something to do with the tense relations between Germany and Poland? But Germany as a single state emerged only in the 19th century. Before this, each principality pursued its own policy, and this policy was not always hostile to the Kingdom of Poland. In addition, many cities had self-government rights (the famous Magdeburg Law), and these cities kept their own archives. The town hall of such cities would never allow city citizens or even residents who did not have the rights of citizens to disappear from the city and their departure would not be taken into account. And there was no reason not to note that, say, “twenty families of Jews moved from Magdeburg to Krakow in 1240.” However, there are no such documents, and we have to conclude that for several centuries some incomprehensible “factor X” was at work, which prevented the emigration of Jews from all the principalities and cities of Germany to Poland from being taken into account. I have no idea what this mysterious “factor X” is, which acted for several centuries in all German cities and states, under any political system and regardless of the turns of international politics.
A typical map of the settlement of Jews in Germany from the Jewish Museum in Frankfurt. It shows with German precision: who moved, when and where. Small neat arrows show the movement of people between small red dots - resettlement points. But a huge red arrow leads towards Poland, and it rests on a huge red spot across the entire territory of Poland. No specifics. Not a single definite fact.
And we have to conclude: either there was no emigration of Jews from Germany to Poland at all (which is completely incredible), or the notorious “factor X” still exists.
And most importantly, the number of Jews in indigenous Poland itself, without Rus', already by 1400 amounted to at least 100 thousand people. By the beginning of the 16th century there were hundreds of thousands of them, that is, the number of Polish-Lithuanian-Russian Jews was approaching the number of Spanish Sephardim and exceeded the number of Italian Jews. How could tiny German communities bring this huge community into existence? The number of Polish Jews (settlers) is significantly greater than in the country from which the resettlement is taking place! In full accordance with the saying about the hen who gave birth to a bull.
In general, John Doyle Klier is deeply right - there are too many legends, myths and fictions here.
WHO ARE ASHKENAZIMS?
Actually, Ashkenaz is Germany in Hebrew. Ashkenazim are German Jews. If we consider all the Jews who have ever lived in Germany as such, then one of the authors of Lechaim will be right: “The history of the Ashkenazis... is no less than one and a half millennia.”
True, V. Fomenko clearly does not mean all German Jews, but Jews who speak Yiddish, and this puts his words into very great doubt. After all, it is quite certain that Eliazar ben Nathan, who came to Frankfurt from Mainz, did not speak Yiddish (at that time the German language did not yet exist), but explained himself in Latin and Hebrew.
But the fact of the matter is that a completely authoritative book on the history of Jews understands the word “Ashkenazi” even more broadly! In the chapter “Community self-government and spiritual creativity of Ashkenazi Jews in the 10th–15th centuries,” the following is literally written: “When Palestine again fell under Muslim rule in 1211, about 300 rabbis from France and England moved there, led by one of the most prominent Tosafists, Shimshon from Sans. Even before that, there were many teachers of the law in Acre, immigrants from France... The attraction of Ashkenazi Jews to Palestine never stopped.”
They are not the only ones who think so. In the textbook, which I have already quoted many times, there is a strange map on page 156. It clearly shows with arrows of different configurations: Sephardim come from Spain to North Africa, France and England. In Africa they remain Sephardim, but Ashkenazis are moving from France and England to Germany...
That is, the authors of the textbook seriously assume that the Sephardim, moving to England in the 11th–12th centuries, somehow mysteriously became Ashkenazi and in 1290 left this country in a new capacity. For any historian or ethnographer this is somehow not very reliable.
If we use the most reliable sign of a people - language, it turns out that at least until the 17th century there were Sephardim - the Jewish people that emerged in Spain in the 7th-8th centuries. They populate the Christian countries of Europe and change quite a lot in them. The connection with Spain and Portugal, even in the 17th century, among the Jews of the Netherlands is very strong, but in the Netherlands there is a very important circumstance... Jews from Spain and other Mediterranean countries, Jews from Germany and Jews “from the east” enter this country from different directions. After the pogrom in Ukraine, many Jews flock west to Holland, and this is what comes of it:
“Where possible, the Sephardim preserved the originality of their customs and way of life. They remained faithful to their traditions as Spanish communities and were proud of the virtues of their former centers. In some places, distinct Sephardic communities existed for a long time alongside local communities that had been present in those countries for many centuries before the expulsion of the Jews from Spain. This led to fundamental changes in the life of Jewish communities. Until now, a community, such as that of Worms, Krakow or Zaragoza, united all the Jews of a given city. After the expulsion, the coexistence of several communities in the same city became common. A separate synagogue, special prayer rituals, and the common origin of the members of a particular community were more important than cohabitation in a given place. This led, on the one hand, to the enrichment of Jewish culture in the Middle East and, in Italy, and, on the other, to some tension between different groups of the Jewish population. The friction continued for quite a long time: until the Sephardic community achieved dominance and united the entire local population around itself, or until the Sephardim dissolved in the local community, or until the whole society came to terms with the fact of the coexistence of different synagogues, communities and rituals in the same city.
After the persecutions of 1648, refugees from Poland and Lithuania helped to intensify this process. Numerous Jewish captives ended up in Turkey and were ransomed. Some of them settled there permanently, and some headed to Western Europe. The newly arrived Ashkenazi Jews now insisted, like the Sephardim in their time, on their right to found their own synagogues, introduce their own prayer rituals and appoint their own rabbis.”
So it turns out: Sephardim are not at all identical to Ashkenazim. Moreover, they are not identical to the Jews of Germany! Jews who settled in Germany from ancient times or fled there from England and France turned, if not into another people, then into another ethnographic group. From the 11th–12th centuries they separated from other Sephardim, and from the 13th–14th centuries they lived in Germany. They spoke German and behaved, dressed, and even prayed differently from the Sephardim.
And Ashkenazi is the self-name of Polish-Lithuanian Jews, which German Jews never used. Ashkenazis spoke Yiddish, not German - although these are related, they are completely different languages. And they not only spoke, but also behaved, dressed and prayed differently from German Jews and Sephardim.
Modern Jewish scientists do not even deny the existence of different Jewish ethnic groups - they simply do not notice them, as they say, without going into polemics. For them, Jews are a single people, and not a super-ethnic group. It is convenient for Jewish scholars to use the word "Ashkenazi" to refer to all Jews who lived in Christian countries of Europe.
But this use of the term creates incredible confusion: very serious differences between different Jewish peoples disappear. Are Ashkenazi German Jews? All European Jews? But the Italians are completely different... So, Ashkenazis are all Europeans, except the Italians? Or are Ashkenazis all European Jews, German Jews and Polish-Lithuanian Jews? Is this all one group? No way! Several very different groups clearly stand out.
After all, Sephardim are not identical to other ethnic groups of Jews. And Ashkenazim are not all European Jews.
In the most general form, one can construct approximately the following scheme: ancient Jews, subjects of the Roman Empire, settled in Gaul and Britain back in the 2nd–3rd centuries AD. The new wave of settlement was a wave of Sephardim - immigrants from Muslim countries who spoke the Spaniol language (that is, direct descendants of ancient Jews).
This wave only in Italy encountered a large Jewish population, which either already had its own Ladino language, or it was Spagnol that changed in Italy under the influence and among local Jews.
In all other countries of Christian Europe, Sephardim, without breaking with their historical homeland, began to lose their identity as Sephardim and Ladino of the Mediterranean. They had been exploring Germany for a long time, and after they were expelled from France and England, this country finally became a kind of container for all the Jews of Christian Europe. In Germany, Jews spoke German, continuing to use Hebrew as a cult, sacred language.
In modern times, a “return to the West” began, to England and the Netherlands. And this is where it turns out that there is no unity between Jews. In the Netherlands, at least three different groups, and most likely three different Jewish peoples, are facing each other.
All this, of course, is just a rough outline, but no matter how it is refined or improved, this is all the history of the descendants of those who came from the shores of the Mediterranean Sea, through Italy or Spain. We know nothing about Jewish immigrants to Europe from the Byzantine Empire or from Persia.
And in the same way we are forced to say: Jews from Germany could not create a Jewish community in Poland. Some completely different Jews obviously lived there. Moreover, in Poland, long before the Crusades, there was already a Jewish population...
THE ANCIENT JEWISH POPULATION OF POLAND
There is an old legend that the Polish prince Popel died around 842. At the assembly in Kruszewitz, the Poles argued for a long time about who to elect as the new prince, and agreed to resolve the matter in a kind of divine court: let the prince be the one who first comes to the city in the morning. This first one, quite by chance, turned out to be the old Jew Abram Porokhuvnik. He, however, did not agree to become a prince and gave his lot to the village charioteer Piast: they say, Piast is also an intelligent man, and he is more worthy. Such an act did not contradict the morality of the pagans and was quite understandable to them. The Judaist Porokhuvnik acted in full accordance with the laws and morals of pagan society, it makes sense to note this.
I want to draw the reader’s attention to another very important circumstance: this Abram is a Jew with a Slavic nickname or even with a family name Porokhuvnik, that is, Porokhovnik. Apparently, if he is an alien, then he is an old one, familiar, with an established and clearly good reputation. Or maybe a descendant of immigrants in several generations.
Judging by the attitude of the Poles, he is not at all an impudent alien. Consequently, Porohuvnik personally, and, most likely, Jews in general, are among those who are familiar and do not cause irritation. That is, both Jews and Poles behave the same way as representatives of two indigenous tribes who have studied each other for a long time behave.
There is another legend that at the end of the 9th century, around 894, Jews came from Germany to the Polish prince Leszek and asked to be allowed into Poland. Leszek asked them about the Jewish religion and gave his consent. Then, they say, many Jews moved to Poland.
Retelling these frankly legendary stories, S. M. Dubnov suddenly switches to a tone that is fitting to narrate real historical events that are well documented: “The movement of Jews to Poland intensified from the end of the 10th century, when the Polish people adopted Christianity and thereby connected themselves with the Western the Catholic Church and Western nations, among whom Jews lived in significant numbers."
Everything in these confident words is surprising, especially two provisions: firstly, there is no reason to assert anything like that. There is no more information about the resettlement of Jews to Poland in the 10th or 11th centuries than about the biography and deeds of Abram Porokhuvnik.
There is a legend confirming an even more ancient appearance of Jews in Eastern Europe. It is connected with the construction of Prague.
Of course, there is nothing strange in the fact that already in the early Middle Ages Jews could find themselves in Eastern Europe. Were they still there? But this is still not China; after all, a land inhabited by some kind of Caucasians.
The fact that there was this ancient Jewish population in Poland does not even contradict the later wolf settlement from Germany. Well, there was some very ancient settlement, most likely from Byzantium. They lived among semi-wild Slavic tribes, bringing them the light of civilization, as far as they could and as far as the locals perceived it. And then the Crusades began, and the Jews fled to Poland. A wave of expulsions from England and France in the 12th and 14th centuries - and a new wave of resettlement in Poland.
Everything is very logical, but I just can’t accept this scheme - at least four important circumstances interfere:
1. Judging by all the ancient legends, Jews in Eastern Europe were treated somehow strangely... Not as unwanted aliens, but rather as another local, indigenous people. Maybe, of course, this is due to the fact that the Slavs are still pagans? That they have not yet been enlightened about who crucified Christ and drank all the blood from Christian babies? Maybe, but, in any case, there is some strangeness in these legends.
2. And at a much later time, throughout their entire documented history (that is, from the 12th to 14th centuries), the Jews of Eastern Europe behave differently than Western Jews. They live in rural areas and are engaged in a kind of urban occupation in rural areas: crafts, trade, and especially trade and intermediary activities. That is, simply put, they become a kind of layer between the peasantry and the wholesale merchants and industrialists of the city.
3. The Jews of Eastern Europe have their own special language, the origin of which is also very mysterious. Nowhere in the West did they speak Yiddish.
4. The Jews of Western Europe are much smaller in number than those of the East. It is difficult to imagine a demographic explosion that, in a matter of decades, would transform immigrants from Germany, these thousands of families, into a huge nation, tens and hundreds of thousands of Jews of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
However, it’s time to consider oddities that we have not touched on yet: the Yiddish language and the behavior of Eastern Jews.
MYSTERIOUS YIDDISH
The language spoken by Polish Jews is very close to German. Just as Spagnol came from Spanish, and Ladino from Latin or Italian, so Yiddish came from German. The authoritative reference book believes that Yiddish “began to take shape in the 12th–13th centuries. in Germany, where there were large settlements of Jews who used German speech in everyday life using Hebrew words and phrases to denote religious, cult, judicial, moral and other concepts.
With the resettlement of masses of Jews to Poland and other Slavic countries (XV-XVI centuries), Slavic words and morphemes began to penetrate into Yiddish.
Spoken Yiddish is divided into three dialects: Polish, Ukrainian and Lithuanian-Belarusian (these names are arbitrary, since they do not coincide with the boundaries of these territories).
It would probably be a good idea to study the earliest Yiddish texts, written in Germany, before the onset of Slavic influence: much would immediately become clear. But such texts do not exist, that’s the point. It is surprising that no one has seen texts written in Yiddish in Germany without later Slavic admixtures. So to speak, the early versions, born in Germany in the 12th–13th centuries, when it “began to take shape,” or at least in the 14th century.
All Yiddish texts are known only from the territory of Poland, all of them are much later, not earlier than the 16th century. All known early texts already reflect borrowings from Slavic languages, primarily from Polish. And thus the origin of Yiddish does not indicate in any way the migration of Jews from Germany.
Moreover, Yiddish is widespread throughout the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth - both in native Poland and in Western Rus', but it could only arise in Poland, and only in a very limited period - from the 14th to the beginning of the 16th century. The fact is that Polish cities, including Krakow, were formed as German ones, which, however, has already been mentioned. Only during this period did the townspeople in Poland speak German or a mixture of German and Polish; later the city assimilated and became almost completely Polish, except for the Jewish quarters, of course. Moreover, the cities of the north of present-day Poland, Pomerania, spoke only German - this was the territory of the Livonian Order. There was no mixing of German with Polish; there was no assimilation of Germans by Poles. The Poles could call Danzig Gdansk as much as they wanted, but it remained a purely German city in language, management style, population, connections, and political orientation.
In Western Rus', the city spoke Polish and Yiddish. The German Quarter existed only in Vilna, and it did not determine the face of the city. It is unknown what language the Jews of Western Rus' spoke before the formation of Yiddish.
Yiddish quite definitely originated in southern Poland and from there spread to Western Rus'. Does this talk about the movement of Jews from Poland to Western Rus'? Or the language was borrowed, but the population remained unchanged?
A very mysterious language.
WHAT ARE THE DIFFERENCES?
There are differences between Western and Eastern Jews even in appearance. No, no, let's not shake Goebbels' unclean bones again! But in Western and Central Europe, Jews are much less different from the local population than in Eastern Europe. This is already a characteristic feature that is thought-provoking.
There are even more differences in the economy.
“In the 15th century in Southern Germany, Moravia, and Bohemia, Jews began to engage in wine trading in rural areas. That is, some of them began to settle in small towns and villages. There they were engaged in mediation, in wholesale trade... Jews bought flax, wool and other raw materials and resold them to city wholesalers.
Thus began a new stage in the economic activity of Jews in Germany, the forms of which subsequently became most characteristic of the economies of Poland and Lithuania, where German Jews flocked from the 15th century.”
That is, only a small part of Western Jews conducted the same type of economy that Eastern Jews conducted throughout their history.
Finally, as already mentioned, there are significant differences in both local versions of Judaism and customs.
These are differences at the ethnic level!
So, we have to admit that Polish-Lithuanian Jews constitute some kind of special group, a community separate from others. This community could not have arisen as a result of resettlement from Western Europe or Germany.
Perhaps the Jews of Southwestern Rus' took part in the formation of Polish Jews? After all, Jews lived in the southwest of Rus' long before the Poles began to mention them.
