Tag #108525 - Interview #88474 (Jakub Bromberg)

There was no anti-Semitism at my school. All that was there, was that when they let us, boys, out for the break, into the schoolyard, we’d knock each other down, fight and call each other names. So sometimes one peasant child, when some Jew made him mad, would shout: ‘You beilis!’ And Beilis [10] was, under tsarist rule, a Jew who lived in a small town, somewhere in the east, close to Romania, I don’t remember exactly, who was accused of a ritual murder. At that time it was believed that Jews catch children for blood, to make matzah. This case took a very long time, but he was finally acquitted. At the same time in Poland, at Jasna Gora [a monastery] in Czestochowa, there was this Pole, his name was Macoch, who took care of the monastery. And different things got lost there, offerings and gold. Nobody knew who was stealing. And this Macoch was caught. It was at the same time: this case with Beilis for the ritual murder and Macoch being caught stealing. So when the boys were fighting with each other, then all you could hear was: ‘You beilis!” and ‘You macoch!’ And that was all the quarreling.