My Warning: Learn From History

During the Black Death, most cities in Europe were depopulated. Entire villages vanished without a trace and were reconquered by nature, only to be rediscovered from the air when we invented airplanes.

But one place was spared. Whereas the majority of the English population died, Poland mysteriously did not suffer from the black death, the impact was very limited. And historians don’t really have an explanation for this, you see various competing theories. Some have speculated some genetic resistance in the Polish population, others think they were too isolated to catch it.

Pope Clement VI tried warning people not to torture the Jews. He explained to people that Jews themselves died from the plague and that the plague struck both people who lived around Jews and races of men who had no Jews living among them. Pope Clement claimed that those who blamed the Jews for the plague had been seduced by the liar, the Devil.

But whereas most of Europe responded with pogroms against the Jews, who were tortured in various ways, many being burned alive and suffering other cruelties, the Polish king Casimir III the Great allowed the Jews to flee to Poland and protected them from persecution.

There was a death penalty for conversion of Jewish children and desecration of cemeteries. Many Jews fled into Poland to escape the pogroms against them. They apparently did not bring the plague with them. Poland was spared.

People speculate about mountain ranges somehow protecting Poland from the plague, about genetic resistance, about the King prohibiting migrants (even though he let the Jews in). But there is no good satisfying explanation. Even if they kept people out, they can’t keep the rats out. And if the plague arrives a year or two later, you would just expect it to cause mass death a year or two later. But Poland was spared and they still have no proper explanation.

Medieval people were as mystified by who died from the plague as anyone else. They held long parades, wandering naked from town to town, flaggalating themselves to ask forgiveness from God, but it did not help, they just spread the plague wherever they went. So what does help?

I’ll make it very simple for you. When you see people open machine gun fire at a festival full of young Jews, when you see people firing at closets in which Jewish children are hiding, when you see them murdering grandmothers who survived the Holocaust, when you see them dragging children off to serve as human shields in dark tunnels in Gaza, when you see them gathering together to punch and kick the naked corpses of old Jewish men in cities.

When you see people in your own cities cheer this on. When you see people dress up with parachutes on their clothing, when you see people endorse Hamas.

Think carefully about whose side you’re going to choose.

I warned you.