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Poland 17th c. - Jewish child during Cossack massacre

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tanguerra

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Reading Ailish's thread about being in a Dublin Orphans Workhouse me thinking. Little children are so vulnerable, even today, if orphaned and sometimes if not. It is so sad. I have a story of my own and I thought I should start a new thread for it. Also, we were talking elsewhere about shocking and gruesome stories, so brace yourself...

I have a memory of being a little girl, maybe age 10 or so, in a group of little children rounded up and hanged in Poland several hundred years ago during some purge or pogrom or something. This memory came up some years ago when I was trying to work out why I am very intolerant of having things around my neck - like tight collars, scarves, etc. It makes me anxious to have anything even touching my neck at all tightly. I have been hanged more than once, but this one is pretty vivid.

I got the feeling we were Jewish and orphaned, possibly by the ongoing war, and in general too much of a nuisance to look after any other way so there were these mass hangings of children. This was some sort of 'mopping up' operation after the soldiers had been through and the fighting was mostly over. Nasty business. Quite horrible of course. I remember a terrible feeling of helplessness and terror and bewilderment. I deliberately use techniques to tone down the emotional volume on my memories sometimes (!), but I think I was also probably in a state of shock during the actual experience. There is a certain sense of dazedness in it. Also, being very young I probably did not fully apprehend everything as a grown up might.

I don't know exactly when all this occured, but my feeling is 17th century. This sort of thing was, unfortunately, all too common. I found an article about the whole period, which feels right to me. But I have found no mention of a particular massacre such as I remember - but these things don't usually get into the history books, even if they were known about at all in the larger world.

It would probably have been somewhere around this time of upheaval when all this was going on. It took place in some small town. I remember wooden buildings, mud streets, a very cold grey day and going up these stairs where they had set up a temporary gallows over the side of a balcony type structure. I was one of a group of a dozen or so children, some younger than me. They (soldiers) just tossed the kids over the side with ropes around their necks. They hated us, and called us 'little rats' which is why I think we may have been Jewish - it was unfortunately often like that in Poland. (Fortunately I have self-censored what happened after being on the stairs waiting for my 'turn'.) Just one of many gruesome memories I'm afraid.

The next life after that one I was a man and went on a wild rampage with the Polish cavalry or cossacks or similar. When I was having this memory I had the sense that this was pay back of some kind against the people who had done this terrible thing. Red hot revenge!


This post and discussion is continued in the thread Poland
 
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