This last feature, the processions of the two creeds into each other's
churches singing the same song, made such an impression on Henrik Ibsen,
the great Scandinavian poet, that again and again he returned in his
conversations to this as one of the greatest and most beautiful
experiences he had ever had.
And now under the whirlstorm of madness which nationalism has driven
across Europe, all this is lost; nay, from a religious reconciliation it
has been turned into flaming hatred between the races.
II.
In 1912 the election of a Deputy to the Duma was to take place in
Warsaw. The population of the town consists of between seven and eight
hundred thousand. As among them there are 300,000 Jews, the majority of
the electors, it was in the power of that majority to elect a Jewish
Deputy. Because of their Polish national feeling, however, they gave up
this right, as they wanted Warsaw, as the capital of the Kingdom of
Poland, to be represented by a man who not only in spirit, but also by
race, was a Pole. Of the Polish committee they only demanded that the
party concerned be no enemy to the Jews. It proved, however, that the
committee in its arrogance would not deal with them at all and proposed
Kucharschewski, a pronounced anti-Semitic candidate and a man who
publicly declared that he desired the election to the Duma only to work
for the extermination of the Jews of Poland.
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