| Len's uncle
The pseudo-Chasid
Now, there is one very sad incident, something that I have to tell. It seems to have escorted [sic] me for years and years. I was very hurt. I knew my Jewish people to be honest and fine and refined, and especially when I saw an Orthodox Jew with a long beard and with side curls, with a long garment wearing, and those round caps that they wore, I knew he was a Chasidic man, and he was a learned man, and a pious man, and a very kind man, maybe having a lot of compassion for people, and so forth.
I saw something terrible when we moved from Brest-Litovsk towards Warsaw. As I was sitting, I saw a man came in with a long beard and payes, running through our car, as I was saying, running through the door and running out. Then I saw the conductor run after him, yelling, “Catch him, catch him.” And I don’t know what became of it. I didn’t understand.
So, I asked a person sitting right, parallel to me, a non-Jew, looked very nice, I asked, “What seems to be the trouble?” He said, “That’s a thief, a pickpocket.” He pickpocketed a person, and he noticed, and that’s why that man and the conductor were running after him.
This is something that struck me terrible, terribly. Those were some types of the Polish Jews with long beards and so forth, and I am not, God forbid, denouncing Polish Jews, but they were more frequent there than elsewhere, because the Polish Jewry was a very grand Jewry, a very fine, and a very rich section of our people in the world. Great scholars and great men, and learned and educated.
But this element was very frequent there. And I think they did it purposely, growing beards, imitating the very learned so no one would suspect them. In other places, maybe, they acted naturally and normally and they appeared in the form and the appearance that they actually were or had.
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