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THE NATIONAL, GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



Whenever bitterness or prejudice or 

 private motive prompted hostility to the 

 Jews, a common form of accusation was 

 that of murder, and offering of a sacri- 

 fice of a Gentile child in their religious 

 ceremonies was charged. A trial was 

 had and, whether conviction followed or 

 not, persecutions ran riot. 



This method of attack has, as we know, 

 continued down to the present genera- 

 tion in some countries. Lecky, in his 

 "History of Morals in Europe," points 

 out that this form of charge was made 

 against a great many different sects in 

 pagan Rome — against the Christians as 

 well as others. It has survived only 

 against the Jews. 



POLAND ONCE A LAND OE REFUGE 



The effect of the crusades, the black 

 plague, the Inquisition in Spain, the Huss 

 persecutions in Bohemia, and the annual 

 massacres in Austria in the time of Ru- 

 dolph of Hapsburg, was to drive the 

 Jews to seek refuge in a country where 

 life was possible. The country toward 

 which they turned their eyes was Poland. 



Poland was consolidated under Casi- 

 mir III, the Great, in the fourteenth cen- 

 tury, and was made still greater by the 

 marriage of his grand-niece and heiress 

 to Yaguello, the Grand Duke of Lithu- 

 ania, who thereupon became the King of 

 Poland and the founder of a dynasty 

 which ruled from the latter part of the 

 fourteenth to the latter part of the six- 

 teenth century. 



At the height of its expansion the Pol- 

 ish monarchy reached from the Baltic to 

 the Black Sea and covered an area which 

 down to this day harbors the great bulk 

 of the Jewish population of Europe. If 

 we leave out Prussian Poland and Aus- 

 trian Galicia, the Russian present Jewish 

 pale of settlement nearly coincides with 

 the boundaries of this ancient Poland. 



A "JEWISH JUDGE" APPOINTED 



In 1334 Cassimir the Great of Poland 

 confirmed a charter of general privileges 

 to the Jews which had originally been 

 given by a predecessor in 1264. The 

 charter insured the economic progress of 

 the Jews and gave guaranties of their 

 personal and religious security. 



They were exempted from the juris- 



diction of the ecclesiastical as well as 

 the municipal law courts and a '^Jewish 

 judge," so called, was appointed to act 

 in their cases, significant of the abuses to 

 which they had been subjected. 



Cassimir's liberality attracted Jews 

 from every quarter of Europe and greatly 

 increased their number in Poland. 



After the Yaguello dynasty the power 

 passed from the kings to the Polish no- 

 bility, or Shlakta, and the protection to 

 the Jews grew less and less. The burgh- 

 ers were hostile to them because of their 

 competition, and the nobility, while using 

 them as agents to conduct their estates, 

 were arbitrary, cruel, and tyrannical. 



Chaos ensued and the condition of the 

 Jews grew worse. They were forbidden 

 to hold land. The nobility manufactured 

 the liquor, and they were willing and 

 anxious to have the Jews sell it, who 

 thus, for lack of other occupation, be- 

 came the innkeepers, the purveyors in 

 the demoralizing liquor business. 



The reduction and elimination of the 

 Polish Kingdom during the seventeenth 

 and eighteenth centuries transferred the 

 bulk of the Jews of the world to the ju- 

 risdiction of Russia, Germany, and Aus- 

 tria. Poland lost many of its provinces 

 to Russia before the three formal parti- 

 tions in the eighteenth century. 



Except in the part of her Empire which 

 Russia acquired from Poland, Russia 

 never had and has not now but a very 

 few Jews. Her eager acquisition of her 

 large share of Poland, however, placed 

 nearly half of the Jews of the world 

 within her jurisdiction. They had not 

 sought it. 



the Flight to Holland 



The adoption of the Inquisition by 

 Spain in the fourteenth and fifteenth 

 centuries led many of the Spanish Jews 

 to become baptized into the Catholic 

 Church and to go through the form of 

 Christian worship, retaining secret alle- 

 giance to Judaism and observing its law 

 as far as possible. They were called 

 Maranos. This was a notable exception 

 to the usual tenacity of the Jews in not 

 only retaining their 'faith, but in avowing 

 it under the most terrible ordeals. 

 i The Maranos did not escape persecu- 

 tion by the Inquisition, however, and 



