EXILES
(14th – 15th centuries)
The end of the medieval Jewish community in Wrocław was not the result of a single event. It was the result of many factors that were the same for almost all expulsions and pogroms in contemporary Europe. Suspicion, bigotry combined with the myth of ritual murder, the debt of monarchs and the church, and all this in the face of raging diseases and wars. In Silesia, the community disappeared and was reborn many times, but the Black Death epidemic, the greed of the Czech kings, and finally the zeal of an Italian monk put an end to it for three centuries.
The expulsion of Jews from Silesia.
The Dark Shadow of Kapistran
Świdnica is one of the oldest cities in Lower Silesia, and it served as a refuge for Jews as early as the Middle Ages. The first cemetery was established here in the 14th century. The privileges granted by Duke Henry IV the Just and Bolko I of Świdnica contributed to the creation of the second largest and most important Jewish community in the region, after Wrocław, which had autonomy and its own yeshiva. Anti-Semitic sermons by the Dominican monk Jan Kapistran led, in 1454, to accusations against the Jews of Świdnica of desecrating the Eucharist. Forced confessions obtained through torture resulted in severe punishments for members of the community. Seventeen people were burned at the stake, the rest were expelled, their property and cemetery were confiscated, and the synagogue was taken over and converted into a church. In 1457, King Władysław of Bohemia granted the city a privilege prohibiting Jews from settling there, which remained in effect until the end of the 18th century.
The change occurred during Prussian rule, following the famous edict of Frederick William III. As early as 1815, a cemetery was established, and by the end of the 19th century, it included a mortuary. After the Nazis came to power, the cemetery was destroyed, and in 1942, the tombstones were used to pave the streets. After the war, the Polish Jewish community buried their deceased on this cemetery for some time. In 1963, a monument was erected to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the outbreak of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Unfortunately, this did not protect the cemetery from further acts of vandalism.
Black Death
It was a cruel and terrible thing. […]Indeed, those who have not witnessed such horror can be called blessed; […]the victims died almost immediately. […]Swollen under the arms and in the groin, they fell dead. […]Fathers abandoned children, wives abandoned husbands, brothers abandoned brothers; […]they died by the hundreds, day and night. Day and night, they were all thrown into these trenches and covered with earth; [1]so many died, and everyone believed that the end of the world had come.
Thus, the chronicler from the Italian city of Siena, Agnolo di Tura del Grasso, wrote about the medieval plague epidemic. The disease, known as the Black Death or the bubonic plague, caused a real hysteria that gripped all social classes. [2]At this time, unfounded and often long-standing fears and prejudices against the Jewish population also emerged. These quickly turned into pogroms, even in those parts of Europe where the plague had not yet arrived. Pope Clement VI, in a bull issued in 1348, called for an end to the killings and forced conversions of Jews, even threatening an interdict for clerics who supported the crimes.
Unfortunately, a wave of persecution, mainly due to fervent groups of flagellants, swept across Europe, reaching Lower Silesia as well. In Wrocław, Jewish homes were set on fire, and most of the men were killed. The direct perpetrators of the incidents were the Wrocław residents themselves, who, due to old financial disputes, used the circumstances to settle their personal scores. The Jewish community lost property and land belonging to the community. The city sold or leased it, and the royal treasury of Charles IV benefited from it. A similar fate befell two synagogues and a cemetery, which were occasionally used by a small group of surviving Wrocław Jews. A significant portion of the persecuted found refuge with the Duke of Jawor and Świdnica, Bolko II the Small.
The citizens of Wrocław quickly felt the economic impact of the absence of Jews. After the events of 1349, Charles IV himself ordered the perpetrators of the violence to be severely punished, but these measures had little effect. The wave of the Black Death, combined with famine and crop failure, reached Silesia in 1362, becoming another pretext for persecution. The next pogrom was triggered by rumors that Jews had poisoned wells and allegedly committed ritual murders. The pogrom weakened the Jewish community in Wrocław. It only began to revive again in the 15th century, shortly before John of Capistrano arrived in the city.
[1] Based on excerpts from the chronicle published in:http://www.u.arizona.edu/~afutrell/w%20civ%2002/plaguereadings.html – accessed on March 28, 2023; own translation.
[2] R. Sidorski, Not Only Ritual Murders. https://ciekawostkihistoryczne.pl/2016/11/23/nie-tylko-mordy-rytualne-najbardziej-absurdalne-oskarzenia-pod-adresem-zydow/The Most Absurd Accusations Against Jews in: – accessed June 20, 2023.
Entele pentele
“Entliczek pentliczek, czerwony stoliczek,”
Mr. Jan Kapistran
“Whoever gets it[1], will lose a hand.”
The text of this counting rhyme was probably translated from Yiddish (the “entliczek pentliczek” was a distorted version of the German “die Ente” – a duck). Jan Kapistran was an Italian inquisitor general, a Franciscan, and a brilliant preacher whose sermons were attended by large crowds. He fought against heretics and was a supporter of crusades against the Ottoman Turks. He was also responsible for the suffering of hundreds of Jews, residents of the towns and villages he visited. He ordered that Jews be burned at the stake, torn with iron tongs, and tortured in the most ingenious ways. The Catholic saint was canonized three centuries after his death. The saint’s figure was full of contradictions, and he inspired fear and dread. When he visited Wrocław on February 13, 1453, the representatives of the Jewish community, terrified by this fact, brought him gifts. Of course, the monk did not accept them and, according to his biographer, Varisus, he laughed. The appearance of the preacher and the anti-Semitic sermon of the local priest inflamed the hatred of the crowd. Jan Kapistran, convinced of the threat to Christianity, called for the rejection of earthly goods and a life of poverty. Many townspeople eagerly threw valuable items into the fire. Later, the preacher called for a fight against the Turks and Hussites. However, the former were too far away, and the latter were not in Silesia, so he directed his fiery sermons against the Jews. In “De persecutione Judaeorum Vratislaviensium,” his role in the accusations and trials in which he actively participated is described in detail.
He ordered four cauldrons filled with red-hot coals to be brought. [tzn. Żydów]Then he instructed them to be disassembled, and each one was tightly tied to a board, face up. Then, at his command, four executioners cruelly tore pieces of their bodies with iron spikes and threw them into the cauldrons to burn. […]In this way, all their flesh was torn from them until the bones were exposed. Then, the councilors ordered the bodies to be quartered, as was the custom, and the quarters were hung at crossroads as a warning to the cursed Jews and Christians. Then, when all those who had committed the sacrilege had been executed – there were fourteen of them – he ordered others, who were unaware of the desecration of the host, to be brought. When they were brought, he ordered a terrifying pyre of wood to be quickly erected and set on fire. […]If they wish to be baptized, here is the source of true faith; let them live in this true faith. If, however, they do not wish to be baptized, let them go into the fire. [2]After the sentence was announced, only twenty young men allowed themselves to be baptized out of fear of death in the fire, and all the others, young and old, went to the stake without fear.
Peter Escheloer[3], a Wrocław city official and writer from 1455, and the author of the Wrocław Chronicle, wrote about the persecution of Jews, which was the result of sermons delivered by John of Capistrano, who came from Italy. Despite the existing sources, it cannot be definitively stated that the preacher directly supervised the torture. However, as a result of his sermons, the Jewish community in Wrocław disappeared for almost 300 years.
[1]CHIDUSZ 10-11/2013, M. Kirchenbaum, Jan Kapistran: (not) a saint, the patron of a street in Wrocław.
K. Pisarkowa, Polish Counting Rhymes, Wrocław 1988, p. 38.
[2]J. Tokarska-Bakir, Legends of Blood. An Anthropology of Superstition, Warsaw 2008, pp. 331-332.
[3]P. Eschenloer, History of the City of Breslau. Edited and with an introduction by Gunhild Roth, Part I: Chronicle up to 1466, Münster 2003, pp. 167-169.
Cemeteries
The cemetery, known as the house of light, the house of eternity, the house of graves, or, in German, the kirkut, is an extremely important place for the Jewish community. It was meant to be inviolable, and bodies were not to be exhumed or moved to other places.
There were many Jewish burial sites in Lower Silesia, although they were not always located where the community functioned. This depended on legal provisions or other privileges and prohibitions. The oldest cemetery in Wrocław probably originated in the 12th century, [1]as evidenced by the discovery of the tombstone of David, son of Sar Shalom, dated 1203. The necropolis was located in front of the Oława Gate, and its existence was confirmed by the privilege of Henry IV the Just and the guarantees of the city council from 1315, concerning the inviolability of the cemetery.
However, these lands were attractive to the medieval city administrators, which is why as early as 1345, John of Luxembourg authorized the desecration of the cemetery, and the tombstones were used to reinforce the city’s fortifications. The city council employed over 50 workers to demolish the cemetery, which indicates its considerable size (it covered approximately 5 morgs, or 1.5 to 2.5 hectares).
In 1349, another Jewish cemetery ceased to function as a result of a pogrom. In 1350, after the partial return of the Jews, it began to operate again, but it was only leased by the community. After another pogrom in 1360, the land passed into the ownership of the Bohemian Crown, which in 1395, gave it back to the Jews. After the sermons of John of Capistrano in 1453 and the pogrom, the Jewish community ceased to exist, and therefore the cemetery was also no longer needed and was liquidated in 1455. At that time, the Bohemian King Władysław II forbade the permanent settlement of Jewish people in Wrocław.
[1]Professor Leszek Ziątkowski suggests that there may have been an even older settlement, which, due to the city’s location and the construction of new defensive walls, could have been dismantled.
