A Jewish King In Poland

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Title:     A Jewish King In Poland
Author: Gustav Karpeles [More Titles by Karpeles]

There is a legend that a Jewish king once reigned in Poland. It never occurs to my mind without at the same time conjuring before me two figures. The one is that charming creation of Ghetto fancy, old Malkoh "with the stout heart," in Aaron Bernstein's Mendel Gibbor, who introduces herself with the proud boast: Wir sennen von königlichein Geblüt ("We are of royal descent"). The other is a less ideal, less attractive Jew, whom I overheard in the Casimir, the Jewish quarter at Cracow, in altercation with another Jew. The matter seemed of vital interest to the disputants. The one affirmed, the other denied as vigorously, and finally silenced his opponent with the contemptuous argument: "Well, and if it comes about, it will last just as long as Saul Wahl's Malchus (reign)."

Legend has always been the companion of history. For each age it creates a typical figure, in which are fixed, for the information of future times, the fleeting, subtle emotions as well as the permanent effects produced by historical events, and this constitutes the value of legendary lore in tracing the development and characteristics of a people. At the same time its magic charms connect the links in the chain of generations.

The legend about Saul Wahl to be known and appreciated must first be told as it exists, then traced through its successive stages, its historical kernel disentangled from the accretions of legend-makers, Saul, the man of flesh and blood discovered, and the ethical lessons it has to teach derived.

In 1734, more than a century after Saul's supposed reign, his great-grandson, Rabbi Pinchas, resident successively in Leitnik, Boskowitz, Wallerstein, Schwarzburg, Marktbreit, and Anspach, related the story of his ancestor: "Rabbi Samuel Judah's son was the great Saul Wahl of blessed memory. All learned in such matters well know that his surname Wahl (choice) was given him, because he was chosen king in Poland by the unanimous vote of the noble electors of the land. I was told by my father and teacher, of blessed memory, that the choice fell upon him in this wise: Saul Wahl was a favorite with Polish noblemen, and highly esteemed for his shrewdness and ability. The king of Poland had died. Now it was customary for the great nobles of Poland to assemble for the election of a new king on a given day, on which it was imperative that a valid decision be reached. When the day came, many opinions were found to prevail among the electors, which could not be reconciled. Evening fell, and they realized the impossibility of electing a king on the legally appointed day. Loth to transgress their own rule, the nobles agreed to make Saul Wahl king for the rest of that day and the following night, and thus conform with the letter of the law. And so it was. Forthwith all paid him homage, crying out in their own language: 'Long live our lord and king!' Saul, loaded with royal honors, reigned that night. I heard from my father that they gave into his keeping all the documents in the royal archives, to which every king may add what commands he lists, and Wahl inscribed many laws and decrees of import favorable to Jews. My father knew some of them; one was that the murderer of a Jew, like the murderer of a nobleman, was to suffer the death penalty. Life was to be taken for life, and no ransom allowed--a law which, in Poland, had applied only to the case of Christians of the nobility. The next day the electors came to an agreement, and chose a ruler for Poland.--That this matter may be remembered, I will not fail to set forth the reasons why Saul Wahl enjoyed such respect with the noblemen of Poland, which is the more remarkable as his father, Rabbi Samuel Judah, was rabbi first at Padua and then at Venice, and so lived in Italy. My father told me how it came about. In his youth, during his father's lifetime, Saul Wahl conceived a desire to travel in foreign parts. He left his paternal home in Padua, and journeying from town to town, from land to land, he at last reached Brzesc in Lithuania. There he married the daughter of David Drucker, and his pittance being small, he led but a wretched life.

It happened at this time that the famous, wealthy prince, Radziwill, the favorite of the king, undertook a great journey to see divers lands, as is the custom of noblemen. They travel far and wide to become acquainted with different fashions and governments. So this prince journeyed in great state from land to land, until his purse was empty. He knew not what to do, for he would not discover his plight to the nobles of the land in which he happened to be; indeed, he did not care to let them know who he was. Now, he chanced to be in Padua, and he resolved to unbosom himself to the rabbi, tell him that he was a great noble of the Polish land, and borrow somewhat to relieve his pressing need. Such is the manner of Polish noblemen. They permit shrewd and sensible Jews to become intimate with them that they may borrow from them, rabbis being held in particularly high esteem and favor by the princes and lords of Poland. So it came about that the aforesaid Prince Radziwill sought out Rabbi Samuel Judah, and revealed his identity, at the same time discovering to him his urgent need of money. The rabbi lent him the sum asked for, and the prince said, 'How can I recompense you, returning good for good?' The rabbi answered, 'First I beg that you deal kindly with the Jews under your power, and then that you do the good you would show me to my son Saul, who lives in Brzesc.' The prince took down the name and place of abode of the rabbi's son, and having arrived at his home, sent for him. He appeared before the prince, who found him so wise and clever that he in every possible way attached the Jew to his own person, gave him many proofs of his favor, sounded his praises in the ears of all the nobles, and raised him to a high position. He was so great a favorite with all the lords that on the day when a king was to be elected, and the peers could not agree, rather than have the day pass without the appointment of a ruler, they unanimously resolved to invest Saul with royal power, calling him Saul Wahl to indicate that he had been chosen king.--All this my father told me, and such new matter as I gathered from another source, I will not fail to set down in another chapter."--

"This furthermore I heard from my pious father, when, in 1734, he lay sick in Fürth, where there are many physicians. I went from Marktbreit to Fürth, and stayed with him for three weeks. When I was alone with him, he dictated his will to me, and then said in a low voice: 'This I will tell you that you may know what happened to our ancestor Saul Wahl: After the nobles had elected a king for Poland, and our ancestor had become great in the eyes of the Jews, he unfortunately grew haughty. He had a beautiful daughter, Händele, famed throughout Poland for her wit as well as her beauty. Many sought her in marriage, and among her suitors was a young Talmudist, the son of one of the most celebrated rabbis. (My father did not mention the name, either because he did not know, or because he did not wish to say it, or mayhap he had forgotten it.) The great rabbi himself came to Brzesc with his learned son to urge the suit. They both lodged with the chief elder of the congregation. But the pride of our ancestor was overweening. In his heart he considered himself the greatest, and his daughter the best, in the land, and he said that his daughter must marry one more exalted than this suitor. Thus he showed his scorn for a sage revered in Israel and for his son, and these two were sore offended at the discourtesy. The Jewish community had long been murmuring against our ancestor Saul Wahl, and it was resolved to make amends for his unkindness. One of the most respected men in the town gave his daughter to the young Talmudist for wife, and from that day our ancestor had enemies among his people, who constantly sought to do him harm. It happened at that time that the wife of the king whom the nobles had chosen died, and several Jews of Brzesc, in favor with the powerful of the land, in order to administer punishment to Saul Wahl, went about among the nobles praising his daughter for her exceeding beauty and cleverness, and calling her the worthiest to wear the queenly crown. One of the princes being kindly disposed to Saul Wahl betrayed their evil plot, and it was frustrated.'"[72]

Rabbi Pinchas' ingenuous narrative, charming in its simple directness, closes wistfully: "He who has not seen that whole generation, Saul Wahl amid his sons, sons-in-law, and grandsons, has failed to see the union of the Law with mundane glory, of wealth with honor and princely rectitude. May the Lord God bless us by permitting us to rejoice thus in our children and children's children!"

Other rabbis of that time have left us versions of the Saul Wahl legend. They report that he founded a Beth ha-Midrash (college for Jewish studies) and a little synagogue, leaving them, together with numerous bequests, to the community in which he had lived, with the condition that the presidency of the college be made hereditary in his family. Some add that they had seen in Brzesc a gold chain belonging to him, his coat of arms emblazoned with the lion of Judah, and a stone tablet on which an account of his meritorious deeds was graven. Chain, escutcheon, and stone have disappeared, and been forgotten, the legend alone survives.

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Now, what has history to say?

Unquestionably, an historical kernel lies hidden in the legend. Neither the Polish chronicles of those days nor Jewish works mention a Jewish king of Poland; but from certain occurrences, hints can be gleaned sufficient to enable us to establish the underlying truth. When Stephen Báthori died, Poland was hard pressed. On all sides arose pretenders to the throne. The most powerful aspirant was Archduke Maximilian of Austria, who depended on his gold and Poland's well-known sympathy for Austria to gain him the throne. Next came the Duke of Ferrara backed by a great army and the favor of the Czar, and then, headed by the crown-prince of Sweden, a crowd of less powerful claimants, so motley that a Polish nobleman justly exclaimed: "If you think any one will do to wear Poland's crown upon his pate, I'll set up my coachman as king!" Great Poland espoused the cause of Sweden, Little Poland supported Austria, and the Lithuanians furthered the wishes of the Czar. In reality, however, the election of the king was the occasion for bringing to a crisis the conflict between the two dominant families of Zamoiski and Zborowski.

The election was to take place on August 18, 1587. The electors, armed to the teeth, appeared on the place designated for the election, a fortified camp on the Vistula, on the other side of which stood the deputies of the claimants. Night was approaching, and the possibility of reconciling the parties seemed as remote as ever. Christopher Radziwill, the "castellan" of the realm, endeavoring to make peace between the factions, stealthily crept from camp to camp, but evening deepened into night, and still the famous election cry, "Zgoda!" (Agreed!), was not heard.

According to the legend, this is the night of Saul Wahl's brief royalty. It is said that he was an agent employed by Prince Radziwill, and when the electors could not be induced to come to an agreement, it occurred to the prince to propose Saul as a compromise-king. With shouts of "Long live King Saul!" the proposal was greeted by both factions, and this is the nucleus of the legend, which with remarkable tenacity has perpetuated itself down to our generation. For the historical truth of the episode we have three witnesses. The chief is Prince Nicholas Christopher of Radziwill, duke of Olyka and Nieswiesz, the son of the founder of this still flourishing line of princes. His father had left the Catholic church, and joined the Protestants, but he himself returned to Catholicism, and won fame by his pilgrimage to Jerusalem, described in both Polish and Latin in the work Peregrinatio Hierosolymitana. Besides, he offered 5000 ducats for the purchase of extant copies of the Protestant "Radziwill Bible," published by his father, intending to have them destroyed. On his return journey from the Holy Land he was attacked at Pescara by robbers, and at Ancona on a Palm Sunday, according to his own account, he found himself destitute of means. He applied to the papal governor, but his story met with incredulity. Then he appealed to a Jewish merchant, offering him, as a pawn, a gold box made of a piece of the holy cross obtained in Palestine, encircled with diamonds, and bearing on its top the Agnus dei. The Jew advanced one hundred crowns, which sufficed exactly to pay his lodging and attendants. Needy as before, he again turned to the Jew, who gave him another hundred crowns, this time without exacting a pledge, a glance at his papal passport having convinced him of the prince's identity.[73]

This is Radziwill's account in his itinerary. As far as it goes, it bears striking similarity to the narrative of Rabbi Pinchas of Anspach, and leads to the certain conclusion that the legend rests upon an historical substratum. A critic has justly remarked that the most vivid fancy could not, one hundred and thirty-one years after their occurrence, invent, in Anspach, the tale of a Polish magnate's adventures in Italy. Again, it is highly improbable that Saul Wahl's great-grandson read Prince Radziwill's Latin book, detailing his experiences to his contemporaries.

There are other witnesses to plead for the essential truth of our legend. The rabbis mentioned before have given accounts of Saul's position, of his power, and the splendor of his life. Negative signs, it is true, exist, arguing against the historical value of the legend. Polish history has not a word to say about the ephemeral king. In fact, there was no day fixed for the session of the electoral diet. Moreover, critics might adduce against the probability of its correctness the humble station of the Jews, and the low esteem in which the Radziwills were then held by the Polish nobility. But it is questionable whether these arguments are sufficiently convincing to strip the Saul Wahl legend of all semblance of truth. Polish historians are hardly fair in ignoring the story. Though it turn out to have been a wild prank, it has some historical justification. Such practical jokes are not unusual in Polish history. Readers of that history will recall the Respublika Babinska, that society of practical jokers which drew up royal charters, and issued patents of nobility. A Polish nobleman had founded the society in the sixteenth century, its membership being open only to those distinguished as wits. It perpetrated the oddest political jokes, appointing spendthrifts as overseers of estates, and the most quarrelsome as justices of the peace. With such proclivities, Polish factions, at loggerheads with each other, can easily be imagined uniting to crown a Jew, the most harmless available substitute for a real king.

Our last and strongest witness--one compelling the respectful attention of the severest court and the most incisive attorney general--is the Russian professor Berschadzky, the author of an invaluable work on the history of the Jews in Lithuania. He vouches, not indeed for the authenticity of the events related by Rabbi Pinchas, but for the reality of Saul Wahl himself. From out of the Russian archives he has been resurrected by Professor Berschadzky, the first to establish that Saul was a man of flesh and blood.[74] He reproduces documents of incontestable authority, which report that Stephen Báthori, in the year 1578, the third of his reign, awarded the salt monopoly for the whole of Poland to Saul Juditsch, that is, Saul the Jew. Later, upon the payment of a high security, the same Saul the Jew became farmer of the imposts. In 1580, his name, together with the names of the heads of the Jewish community of Brzesc, figures in a lawsuit instituted to establish the claim of the Jews upon the fourth part of all municipal revenues. He rests the claim on a statute of Grandduke Withold, and the verdict was favorable to his side. This was the time of the election of Báthori's successor, Sigismund III., and after his accession to the throne, Saul Juditsch again appears on the scene. On February 11, 1588, the king issued the following notice: "Some of our councillors have recommended to our attention the punctilious business management of Saul Juditsch, of the town of Brzesc, who, on many occasions during the reigns of our predecessors, served the crown by his wide experience in matters pertaining to duties, taxes, and divers revenues, and advanced the financial prosperity of the realm by his conscientious efforts." Saul was now entrusted, for a period of ten years, with the collection of taxes on bridges, flour, and brandies, paying 150,000 gold florins for the privilege. A year later he was honored with the title sluga królewski, "royal official," a high rank in the Poland of the day, as can be learned from the royal decree conferring it: "We, King of Poland, having convinced ourself of the rare zeal and distinguished ability of Saul Juditsch, do herewith grant him a place among our royal officials, and that he may be assured of our favor for him we exempt him and his lands for the rest of his life from subordination to the jurisdiction of any 'castellan,' or any municipal court, or of any court in our land, of whatever kind or rank it may be; so that if he be summoned before the court of any judge or district, in any matter whatsoever, be it great or small, criminal or civil, he is not obliged to appear and defend himself. His goods may not be distrained, his estates not used as security, and he himself can neither be arrested, nor kept a prisoner. His refusal to appear before a judge or to give bail shall in no wise be punishable; he is amenable to no law covering such cases. If a charge be brought against him, his accusers, be they our subjects or aliens, of any rank or calling whatsoever, must appeal to ourself, the king, and Saul Juditsch shall be in honor bound to appear before us and defend himself."

This royal patent was communicated to all the princes, lords, voivodes, marshals, "castellans," starosts, and lower officials, in town and country, and to the governors and courts of Poland. Saul Juditsch's name continues to appear in the state documents. In 1593, he pleads for the Jews of Brzesc, who desire to have their own jurisdiction. In consequence of his intercession, Sigismund III. forbids the voivodes (mayors) and their proxies to interfere in the quarrels of the Jews, of whatever kind they may be. The last mention of Saul Juditsch's name occurs in the records of 1596, when, in conjunction with his Christian townsmen, he pleads for the renewal of an old franchise, granted by Grandduke Withold, exempting imported goods from duty.

Saul Wahl probably lived to the age of eighty, dying in the year 1622. The research of the historian has established his existence beyond a peradventure. He has proved that there was an individual by the name of Saul Wahl, and that is a noteworthy fact in the history of Poland and in that of the Jews in the middle ages.

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After history, criticism has a word to say. A legend, as a rule, rests on analogy, on remarkable deeds, on notable events, on extraordinary historical phenomena. In the case of the legend under consideration, all these originating causes are combined. Since the time of Sigismund I., the position of the Jews in Lithuania and Poland had been favorable. It is regarded as their golden period in Poland. In general, Polish Jews had always been more favorably situated than their brethren in faith in other countries. At the very beginning of Polish history, a legend, similar to that attached to Saul Wahl's name, sprang up. After the death of Popiel, an assembly met at Kruszwica to fill the vacant throne. No agreement could be reached, and the resolution was adopted to hail as king the first person to enter the town the next morning. The guard stationed at the gate accordingly brought before the assembly the poor Jew Abraham, with the surname Powdermaker (Prochownik), which he had received from his business, the importing of powder. He was welcomed with loud rejoicing, and appointed king. But he refused the crown, and pressed to accept it, finally asked for a night's delay to consider the proposal. Two days and two nights passed, still the Jew did not come forth from his room. The Poles were very much excited, and a peasant, Piast by name, raising his voice, cried out: "No, no, this will not do! The land cannot be without a head, and as Abraham does not come out, I will bring him out." Swinging his axe, he rushed into the house, and led the trembling Jew before the crowd. With ready wit, Abraham said, "Poles, here you see the peasant Piast, he is the one to be your king. He is sensible, for he recognized that a land may not be without a king. Besides, he is courageous; he disregarded my command not to enter my house. Crown him, and you will have reason to be grateful to God and His servant Abraham!" So Piast was proclaimed king, and he became the ancestor of a great dynasty.

It is difficult to discover how much of truth is contained in this legend of the tenth century. That it in some remote way rests upon historical facts is attested by the existence of Polish coins bearing the inscriptions: "Abraham Dux" and "Zevach Abraham" ("Abraham the Prince" and "Abraham's Sacrifice"). Casimir the Great, whose liaison with the Jewess Esterka has been shown by modern historians to be a pure fabrication, confirmed the charter of liberties (privilegium libertatis) held by the Jews of Poland from early times, and under Sigismund I. they prospered, materially and intellectually, as never before. Learning flourished among them, especially the study of the Talmud being promoted by three great men, Solomon Shachna, Solomon Luria, and Moses Isserles.

Henry of Anjou, the first king elected by the Diet (1573), owed his election to Solomon Ashkenazi, a Jewish physician and diplomat, who ventured to remind the king of his services: "To me more than to any one else does your Majesty owe your election. Whatever was done here at the Porte, I did, although, I believe, M. d'Acqs takes all credit unto himself." This same diplomat, together with the Jewish prince Joseph Nasi of Naxos, was chiefly instrumental in bringing about the election of Stephen Báthori. Simon Günsburg, the head of the Jewish community of Posen, had a voice in the king's council, and Bona Sforza, the Italian princess on the Polish throne, was in the habit of consulting with clever Jews. The papal legate Commendoni speaks in a vexed tone, yet admiringly, of the brilliant position of Polish Jews, of their extensive cattle-breeding and agricultural interests, of their superiority to Christians as artisans, of their commercial enterprise, leading them as far as Dantzic in the north and Constantinople in the south, and of their possession of that sovereign means which overcomes ruler, starost, and legate alike.[75]

These are the circumstances to be borne in mind in examining the authenticity of the legend about the king of a night. As early as the beginning of his century, recent historians inform us, three Jews, Abraham, Michael, and Isaac Josefowicz, rose to high positions in Lithuania. Abraham was made chief rabbi of Lithuania, his residence being fixed at Ostrog; Isaac became starost of the cities of Smolensk and Minsk (1506), and four years later, he was invested with the governorship of Lithuania. He always kept up his connection with his brothers, protected his co-religionists, and appointed Michael chief elder of the Lithuanian Jews. On taking the oath of allegiance to Albert of Prussia, he was raised to the rank of a nobleman. A Jew of the sixteenth century a nobleman! Surely, this fact is sufficiently startling to serve as the background of a legend. We have every circumstance necessary: An analogous legend in the early history of Poland, the favored condition of the Jews, the well-attested reality of Saul Juditsch, and an extraordinary event, the ennobling of a Jew. Saul Wahl probably did not reign--not even for a single night--but he certainly was attached to the person of the king, and later, ignorant of grades of officials, the Jews were prone to magnify his position. Indeed, the abject misery of their condition in the seventeenth century seems better calculated to explain the legend than their prosperity in the fifteenth and the sixteenth century. Bogdan Chmielnicki's campaign against the rebellious Cossacks wrought havoc among the Jews. From the southern part of the Ukraine to Lemberg, the road was strewn with the corpses of a hundred thousand Jews. The sad memory of a happy past is the fertile soil in which legends thrive. It is altogether likely that at this time of degradation the memory of Saul Wahl, redeemer and hero, was first celebrated, and the report of his coat of arms emblazoned with a lion clutching a scroll of the Law, and crowning an eagle, of his golden chain, of his privileges, and all his memorials, spread from house to house.

Parallel cases of legend-construction readily suggest themselves. In our own time, in the glare of nineteenth century civilization, legends originate in the same way. Here is a case in point: In 1875, the Anthropological Society of Western Prussia instituted a series of investigations, in the course of which the complexion and the color of the hair and eyes of the children at the public schools were to be noted, in order to determine the prevalence of certain racial traits. The most extravagant rumors circulated in the districts of Dantzic, Thorn, Kulm, all the way to Posen. Parents, seized by unreasoning terror, sent their children, in great numbers, to Russia. One rumor said that the king of Prussia had lost one thousand blonde children to the sultan over a game of cards; another, that the Russian government had sold sixty thousand pretty girls to an Arab prince, and to save them from the sad fate conjectured to be in store for them, all the pretty girls at Dubna were straightway married off.--Similarly, primitive man, to satisfy his intellectual cravings, explained the phenomena of the heavens, the earth, and the waters by legends and myths, the germs of polytheistic nature religions. In our case, the tissue of facts is different, the process the same.

But legends express the idealism of the masses; they are the highest manifestations of spiritual life. The thinker's flights beyond the confines of reality, the inventor's gift to join old materials in new combinations, the artist's creative impulse, the poet's inspiration, the seer's prophetic vision--every emanation from man's ideal nature clothes itself with sinews, flesh, and skin, and lives in a people's legends, the repositories of its art, poetry, science, and ethics.

Legends moreover are characteristic of a people's culture. As a child delights in iridescent soap-bubbles, so a nation revels in reminiscences. Though poetry lend words, painting her tints, architecture a rule, sculpture a chisel, music her tones, the legend itself is dead, and only a thorough understanding of national traits enables one to recognize its ethical bearings. From this point of view, the legend of the Polish king of a night is an important historical argument, testifying to the satisfactory condition of the Jews of Poland in the fifteenth and the sixteenth century. The simile that compares nations, on the eve of a great revolution, to a seething crater, is true despite its triteness, and if to any nation, is applicable to the Poland of before and after that momentous session of the Diet. Egotism, greed, ambition, vindictiveness, and envy added fuel to fire, and hastened destruction. Jealousy had planted discord between two families, dividing the state into hostile, embittered factions. Morality was undermined, law trodden under foot, duty neglected, justice violated, the promptings of good sense disregarded. So it came about that the land was flooded by ruin as by a mighty stream, which, a tiny spring at first, gathers strength and volume from its tributaries, and overflowing its bounds, rushes over blooming meadows, fields, and pastures, drawing into its destructive depths the peasant's every joy and hope. That is the soil from which a legend like ours sprouts and grows.

This legend distinctly conveys an ethical lesson. The persecutions of the Jews, their ceaseless wanderings from town to town, from country to country, from continent to continent, have lasted two thousand years, and how many dropped by the wayside! Yet they never parted with the triple crown placed upon their heads by an ancient sage: the crown of royalty, the crown of the Law, and the crown of a good name. Learning and fair fame were indisputably theirs: therefore, the first, the royal crown, never seemed more resplendent than when worn in exile. The glory of a Jewish king of the exile seemed to herald the realization of the Messianic ideal. So it happens that many a family in Poland, England, and Germany, still cherishes the memory of Rabbi Saul the king, and that "Malkohs" everywhere still boast of royal ancestry. Rabbis, learned in the Law, were his descendants, and men of secular fame, Gabriel Riesser among them, proudly mention their connection, however distant, with Saul Wahl. The memory of his deeds perpetuates itself in respectable Jewish homes, where grandams, on quiet Sabbath afternoons, tell of them, as they show in confirmation the seal on coins to an awe-struck progeny.

Three crowns Israel bore upon his head. If the crown of royalty is legendary, then the more emphatically have the other two an historical and ethical value. The crown of royalty has slipped from us, but the crown of a good name and especially the crown of the Law are ours to keep and bequeath to our children and our children's children unto the latest generation.

 

FOOTNOTES:

[72] Cmp. Edelmann, Gedulath Shaul, Introduction.

[73] Cmp. H. Goldbaum, Entlegene Culturen, p. 299 ff.

[74] Woschod, 1889, No. 10 ff.

[75] Graetz, Geschichte der Juden, IX., p. 480.

[The end]
Gustav Karpeles's essay: Jewish King In Poland

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