Page 44 (Hebrew)

Petri Politzai (Petri the Policeman)

by Dov Becker (Ramat Yochanan, Israel)

Translated by Claire Rosenson

The Kaiser Franz Joseph was not content with only policemen to keep order in his kingdom; he had policeman and gendarmes. There were a number of policemen, and I do not know why that of all the town's policemen, it was Petri who escorted the gendarmes or the tax collectors to the Jewish homes. Maybe it was divine intervention so Petri could be the Jews' advocate.

Every Jew had to bring his share of the taxes to the finance ministry, and if anyone was late (and who wasn't?), the tax collector immediately showed up with Petri. Petri would go into the Jewish house first, look around, stretch out his hands in despair as if to say: don't you see, what's in this house? Have pity! He would stand dumbstruck before the tax collector, speechless, his face full of sadness and his eyes near tears, -- Petri was bleary-eyed and when he begged for the Jew's life it looked as if he was crying -- and it was enough to fill the tax collector with pity and postpone collection of the debt.

On Sunday, when by civil law all the stores and businesses had to be closed, the Jews would bring customers in through the back way, or through a narrow opening in the front door. If a Jew was caught doing business on a Sunday, he was brought to court and fined in goods and property, payable to the Kingdom. Our Petri always wanted to do well by the Jews. When he saw approaching danger, he would run to warn about it: "Hey! The fellow whose name is not worth mentioning is in the area. Watch out for God's sake, watch out!"

Fear of the gendarmes was tremendous, and every Hassid would pray that G-d would save him from harm that day and every day, not to meet and not even to see this scourge! If a gendarme happened to stop by for even the most trivial matter, he would make it his business, if he'd already come all that way, to find some misdemeanor. He would suddenly discover that the sign above the store was faded; and just by the way he would check the cleanliness of the shop; and here the scales and weights don't look right -- they're old and dented, nothing is right, and go have an argument with a gendarme!

Most of all they feared being told to report to the "Commisia", the board that checked the fitness of the young men who had reached conscription age. Whatever the discussion, the subject always seemed to come back to this important matter. "And where's Leibele?" the gendarmes of the "Commisia" would ask and begin to investigate and check old records. For there were always young men, some of them family members, who had been smart enough to have left for America years before. And when they would run into a stranger whose family name happened to be exactly the same as someone who had "disappeared", the representative of His Majesty the Kaiser would stiffen up in the discharge of his duty and act as if he were interrogating a deserter, a rebel against His Majesty.

Kingdoms came and went one after the other. The Austrians left and the Russians came; the Russians left and the Austrians came back; the Austrians collapsed and the Ukrainians came, and after them came the Poles. One kingdom after another came and went, but Petri Politzai always remained in his place as the good Gentile. It was joked at the time that he was not a Gentile at all, but a reincarnation of the prophet Elijah himself in the image of Petri sent to protect us.

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