All their small boys from the age of 6 years were sent to
Archangel in Cossack custody to be trained as sailors. They died in
multitudes on the way.
The evils which befell all the inhabitants of Poland regardless of their
creed for some time suppressed the hatred of the Jews which is always
lurking in the masses. The great men of Poland checked its development.
Adam Mickiewicz, Poland's greatest author, went so far that in his chief
work, Poland's national epic, "Pan Tadeusz" (1834) he makes a Jewish
innkeeper one of the most sympathetic leading characters. He is
introduced in the fourth canto as a genius in music, the great master of
the national instrument, the cymbal; and Mickiewicz makes the
culmination of his poem the moment when Jankiel before Dombrowski
himself plays the Dombrowski marche, symbolical of the whole history of
Poland from 1791-1812, the year in which the poem takes place, the
Napoleon year.
In the year 1860 the equalization of the Jews with the Catholics was a
reality in Warsaw, and when, in February, 1861, at two large public
places in Warsaw, the Russians had shot on the kneeling masses singing
the national anthem, ("Zdymem pozarow,") the Jews felt impelled to show
their national feeling through an unmistakable manifestation.
In masses they accompanied their rabbis into the Catholic churches just
as the Christians in crowds entered the synagogues to sing the same
hymn.
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