Antisemitism in Galicia by Tim Buchen

Author:Tim Buchen [Buchen, Tim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Europe, Poland, Modern, 19th Century, Social Science, Jewish Studies
ISBN: 9781789207712
Google: GRHxDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Published: 2020-08-01T22:16:25+00:00

Relations at a Nadir: Lootings in Stary Sącz

Two thousand peasants, including women and children, allegedly took part in the lootings in Stary Sącz. In addition, residents of the town itself, of all income and age groups, seized the opportunity to plunder their Jewish neighbors. Thirty-one houses around the market square, where Jews lived or ran businesses, were looted in a mass raid that lasted several hours. The material damage caused was estimated at a terrific 80,000 guilders. The conservative Czas newspaper commented on this first visible instance of middle-class townspeople participating in collective robbery with obvious disgust: “The world has surely never seen such a shameful night. The wives of wealthy citizens and aldermen, ladies in hats, overloaded with stolen goods hidden under their coats and jackets, spent the entire night prowling around the market square amongst the animalistic crowd. They piled laundry starch, soap, coffee powder, sugar, tea and other items into their skirts to carry them home.”184 The sun rose the next morning on a devastated market square. Window panes were smashed, and store interiors demolished. The floors of the looted buildings and the market square itself were covered in broken glass and trampled items of food, sodden with water that the fire brigade had hosed on to the many lit matches people had strewn.185

This unprecedented collaboration between townspeople and rampaging peasants in a veritable frenzy of looting and destruction was prompted by several factors. For the past month there had been almost daily riots; lootings had virtually become normal. Jewish traders had been marked out as victims, and few Christians wanted to miss the opportunity to join in taking some booty. All the soldiers billeted in Stary Sącz had set off in the direction of Gorlice to deal with the disturbances in neighboring Limanowa and other raids in the area. Only a few gendarmes were left in the town. At least three agitators had passed through the surrounding villages in the morning on their way to Stary Sącz, where they had earmarked the Jewish stores as their next target. They were joined by a huge crowd of people who came into the town equipped with carts, baskets, and cloths to transport their booty home. The disturbances mutated into acts of collective robbery, and open season was called on Jewish property.186 However, the Christian burghers left the ransacking to the peasants and participated only in the robbery. And Christians who lived on or near the market square placed candles and pictures of saints in the windows so that rampaging peasants did not throw stones at them.

Another factor peculiar to Stary Sącz and the surrounding area was the deep impact of the conservative peasant party on relations with Jews, similar only to those in Żywiec. The party’s extreme anti-Jewish newspaper, Związek Chłopski, had a large and enthusiastic readership in the Sącz area. Representing the more prosperous farmers, the party press organ disseminated Jewish-hostile fantasies of violence and conspiracy theories in explicitly brutal language. Its commentaries no doubt played a part in mobilizing the rural population in the surrounding area.

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