It had to be said: the Polish people had a good deal of backbone. Even though Poland had fallen and had been ruled by the Russians for many years, far fewer of its people had become "converts" than one might have expected.
On the one hand, perhaps Poland's national culture and heritage had preserved a little of its former pride. On the other, perhaps the Russians really were inhuman. As for which mattered more, that was a matter of opinion.
But there was a reason certain kinds of people could appear so widely across different eras and countries.
And so the Polish Jews took the place of the "Polish traitor" in the ecosystem.
Poland had been one of Europe's earliest countries to adopt a policy of religious tolerance. Add to that the series of religious reforms and wars in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
and it was only natural that Poland had gathered large numbers of Jews and other ethnic minorities, as well as heretics. Poland had indeed sheltered them at the time.
But times changed. Once mighty and arrogant, Poland had been successfully carved up by Russia, Prussia, and Austria under the blessing of absolute democracy.
As everyone knew, a certain people had a fine tradition: since they'd been caught in the rain, they were always eager to steal someone else's umbrella and then pour a kettle of boiling water over them.
And so the Polish Jews became Russian Jews. Having lived in Poland for a long time, they knew the local situation very well, and they were every bit as good at being lackeys as the genuine "Polish traitors."
In truth, the Russians didn't like Jews either. They were simply rather useful.
In the eyes of the Jews, this might have been business, or a job, so they