Why the Black Death omitted Poland?

Some time last year I wrote a reply to this question to Quora. There were two or three angry commentators. They were on the crusade to protect the always innocent against the ever lasting unfair accusations. I tried to defend my answer, but finally I deleted my account from Quora. It may be much better to write correct answers in my blog where very few read them rather than commenting to these popular pages. Go for the quality, even with zero quantity.

By the way, there is media control and readers are being cheated.

You do not believe it? I noticed it just yesterday when I tried to give my answer to how to fix the Internal Server Error to those, who have a similar problem.

As you can see, I now can log to my blog easily, earlier I could not and got in only very occasionally when the some other condition of the “if” statement in we-login.php was fulfilled.

So, being a kind and helpful person, I, noticing that other people had the same problem in WP’s beginner’s help page addressing this Internal Server Error, put my comment there explaining how to fix the problem.

The moderator deleted my first comment. I put a second one. The moderator thanked me but deleted the comment saying that my comment had a link to my page and they do not allow links to other pages, which by the way is not true. So I put a third comment where I did not link to my page and explained in a very short way how to remove the problem.

This time another moderator stepped in and did not allow my comment since I proposed hardcoding an url and it is not according to their best practices. I answered, that it is a working and easy hot fix and the developers should later come up with a better done fix, but the moderator did not allow my comment.

So, I was not allowed to help these other people, who have the same problem as I did. Maybe the WP team makes money by selling fixing service and they intentionally have a bug in wp-login.php so that people have to buy the service, as quite few know how to debug php scripts.

It really is a world where many people do not want the truth to be told, even of such a mundane issue as a software bug.

Let’s go to the Black Death. It spread to almost whole of Europe. Everybody knows from the school that the Black Death was spread by black rats. Rats have fleas and fleas spread the disease. We also know that in the Middle Ages people blamed the Jews for spreading the disease, but that was wrong since the disease was spread by rats.

How did the teacher know all this?

It is an explanation, which came to be accepted as a fact, but it may not be a fact. The explanation was developed from observations how the plague spread in our time. The third plague pandemic started in the 19th century and it still continues. In this pandemic plague is spread by fleas of black rats. The disease spread word wide from Hong Kong by rats. The actual mechanism was carefully studied: not all fleas spread the plague. The black rats have fleas which react to the plague bacteria Yersinia pestis in a special way. When a flea drinks blood from an infected rat, the bacteria creates a blockade in the guts of the flea. Then the flea vomits infected blood to the next victim that it sucks. Other flea species do not have this reaction and therefore fleas of gray rats do not spread the plague. When the gray rat largely replaced the black rat in Europe, plague epidemics disappeared.

This was a good and reasonable explanation, but starting around 2000 some researchers started questioning it. At that time it was already possible to get DNA snippets from remains of people, who died of the plague in the past. The problem with the above given explanation is that it takes 30 days from the time that the flea drinks infected blood to the formation of the blockade when the flea starts to infect others. Comparison of the speed how fast the third pandemic spreads and how fast the Black Death, the second pandemic, spread, shows clearly that the Black Death spread very fast and much faster that what the formation of the blockade required.

Later it has been found that fleas may also infect directly before the blockade forms, but this alternative method of infection does not change the conclusion that the Black Death probably did not spread because of rats. This is so since the alternative way of infection is as possible today as it was in the Middle Ages. Today rats spread the disease slowly and mainly by the blockade method if infection. The same must have been true in the 14th century, unless the method of transmission of the disease was different or the disease was different. There were proposals that the disease causing the Black Death was not plague, but since 2010 it is known for sure that it was Yersinia pestis and there were two different clones of the bacteria [1]. Additionally, it is known that the Justinian plague was also Yersinia pestis and the different clones. A clone tree has been constructed in [1]. The two clones that caused the Black Death were ancestors of modern strains of plague. They are on the paths to the two main strains of modern plague. Neither one of the two main strains of plague differs in the way rats and fleas spread the disease, thus the transmission mechanism via rats and fleas was the same for the plague clones of the Black Death as they are today. This implies that if the Black Death was caused by rats and fleas, it would have spread with the same speed as the third pandemic spreads today. The conclusion is that it was not spread by rats and fleas.

The plague can spread by air, but medieval descriptions of the symptoms do not support this possibility. Symptoms fit to plague carried by fleas. The fleas had to be fleas of rats since human fleas do not develop the blockade. Now comes the puzzle: how can humans get rat fleas without being close to infected rats? It is not a very difficult puzzle. One documented way is that a merchant sends a pile of textile to a town and in the pile are live fleas, which infect the town. Fleas stay alive in textile for a long time. They get very hungry and jump on people, who touch the textile. This case happened in England in the time of the Black Death. Practically all town people died. The pile of textile was sent from Continental Europe. Clearly, in this case the plague was not carried by rats.

Another way to get these fleas is that people put on clothes of those, who had died in plague. This is also based on a document, but the event happened somewhere around 1750, it still belonged to the second pandemic of plague. This is told in the Words of the Lord by Jacob Frank [2]. It is a collection of saying and stories of the Jewish messiah Jacob Frank.

“47. Traveling with Jakubowski from Salonika to Poland, there prevailed at that time a pestilence in Podolia. We came to one township where the plague was felling the people, and we lacked food, wine, bread, cheese etc. Then remembering that from those contaminated with plague one does not take money, I told him the opposite, You go there, purchase everything but don’t give them money. He did just that. He came to the baker, bargained for bread, put it in his sack, but when he had to pay the baker fell down and died. He went to the shopkeeper where he bargained for cheese. He put the cheese away and the shopkeeper died. He went on to the store to buy vodka. The same happened with the owner. In a word, just wherever he went he bought everything without money, because the plague was sweeping the sellers away. Coming [back] then to me, where I was waiting for him, a rider on horseback knocked him down with his horse. What are you doing? shouted Jakubowski? Are you going to ride right over me! He didn’t even finish saying it when the rider toppled over and fell to the ground. This is how it is. I did all this because it was promised to me that no plague, nothing at all, could get at me. Therefore all my orders were carried out successfully by the hand of the one whom I assigned, and so should you be.”

This is quite clear. Frank told his men to rob everything from people, who have plague, and to sell it further consciously spreading the plague. This way of transmission would have spread the Black Death as fast as is documented. Of course now you present objections. Maybe Frank was just inventing a story. Why would Frank not have done what he tells? He was a Jewish king messiah and the task of the king messiah is to lead the people to the homeland and to kill and enslave their enemies, meaning Christians for cabbalists such as Frank. To propose that Frank would not have intentionally spread the plague is the same as to propose that guerillas are not intentionally killing people and destroying bridges. That is exactly what they try to do. In his youth Jacob Frank was the leader of a band of robbers. Then he invented that he is the messiah. His sect was excommunicated from Judaism because of rumors that Frankists practiced the night of turned of lights rite, where you change wives and have sex. It is extremely likely that they did so. Frankists converted to the Catholic fait but were found insincere and plotting.

The case of the first division of Poland is interesting and I suspect Frank had a role in it. Frank predicts the division in [2]. One of the three planners of this division was Frederic the Great of Prussia. He was the head of German Freemasonry. Frankists had close connections to Freemasons. When Jacob Frank and a large number of Frankists converted to Christianity, they got noble ranks and the right to vote because of a Lithuanian rule that if a Jew converts to Christianity he immediately gets a noble rank (because they were treated as rich half-nobles even before conversion). In the Polish voting system no decision could be made without a unanimous support from nobles. This means that Jacob Frank could disable Polish military decisions if he so desired. The term Baalakaben in [2] apparently means Freemasons. According to [2], Frank got orders from Baalakaben and did nothing without their order. Frederic the Great could have ordered Frank to disable Poland. Maybe he did not do so, but why not?

Jacob Frank thought he was the biblical Jacob. It is fitting, since Jacob is the crook and so was Frank. In the same way Jesus was Messiah ben Joseph. That means, he was like Joseph, who is thrown to a well and thought to have died, but raises to be the second man next to the living god, the Pharaoh. Any person thinking he is Messiah ben David, the king messiah, is also like Moses. That means that he should cast ten curses against the enemies. Practical cabbalists, like Jacob Frank, were no Talmud scholars. They knew biblical stories of patriarchs and exodus and applied these stories to themselves. Frank lived much after the Black Death, but there were earlier practical cabbalists who had messiah aspirations. Could any one of them had done the same as Frank, consciously spreading plague? Of course they could have, but are there proofs of it?

So far I have mentioned only one proof: the speed of the spreading of the Black Death implies that it was not spread by rats. I gave a very possible explanation how it could have been spread.

The second proof is that according to [1] there were two different clones of plague in the Black Death. One of them can be tracked from Crimea through Italy to France and to England. This clone derives from the bodies that Turks threw over city walls in Crimea. Notice, the disease transmission was by catapults and not by rats. Rats are not always guilty. The second clone is mysterious. It appears in the Netherlands. It might have got there from Norway or from Hansa towns, only how did it get to Norway or to Hansa towns? Plague is not endemic in higher latitudes. Even if the second clone did come from Norway or Hansa towns, how did it happen to come at the same time as the other unrelated plague clone? In reality, what [1] is saying is that there were two pandemics of plague at the same time. That stretches imagination: two unrelated rare events happened at the same time. The natural conclusion is that one or both of the clones were introduced to Europe on purpose by humans.

The third proof has finally something to do with the topic of this post. Why the Black Death did not spread to Poland? There were three areas where the disease did not spread: one was in the Basque land in the Pyrenees between Spain and France, the second one was around Milan in Italy, and the third one was almost whole of Poland.

Milan was protected by strict guarantee rules: people with symptoms were not allowed to enter the city gates and infected people, who were found from the city, were immured in their homes. Plague devastated Milan just ten years later, so the city did not have any natural protection and guarantee rules do not help very long.

The Basque country actually has protection from the mountains and from population, which may be quite hostile to outsiders. This area even managed to keep the old language. If any area in Europe avoided the Black Death, it is not strange that it would be this area.

Then there is Poland. The plague went around Poland and affected Russia. There are no natural barriers that can stop the plague from spreading to Poland and later epidemics reached Poland. The king of Poland imposed rules on the borders, but if the plague was spread by rate it could not be stopped by rules: rats ignore the rules. If the plague was not spread by rats, then we have to ask how it was spread and why it did not spread to Poland. When the Black Death started in 1346 Jews had been expelled from Wales (1290), England (1290). In France Jews were expelled in 1306 and 1321 but they returned and only 1396 they were completely expelled. The expulsion affected Jews of northern and central France. Jews of Provence were expelled later, in 1430. In Germany Jews were accused of spreading the Black Death, there were local persecutions and expulsion in 1348. Expelled German Ashkenazi Jews resettled to Poland. Hungarian Jews were expelled in 1349 and they also resettled in Poland. Crimean Jews were expelled in 1350. They resettled to Lithuania. The Sephardic Jewish communities in Spain, Portugal, Provence, Sardinia and Sicily were expelled only in the end of the next century. Italian Jews were expelled in the 16th century

Jews were accused of spreading the Black Death first in Toulon, France (1348), then in Barcelona (1348), then in Erfurt, Germany (1349), Basel, Switzerland (1349), Freiburg, Aragon, Flanders and Strasbourg. The reasons for these persecutions seem to have been that Jews were less affected by the plague.

One explanation given for lower Jewish infection rate is that Jews were cleaner. They were obliged to wash hands and many washed their body weekly. The Black Death was bubonic plague and spread by fleas. Fleas are not so removed by washing hands or body weekly. The best protection at that time was from flea saunas, but plague spread even to areas where people went to saunas. The Jewish custom of washing a dead body before burial would have exposed them to fleas. These kinds of explanations are not correct. The different infection ratio of Jews and non-Jews must reflect different exposure to the bacteria. Jews and Christians had different wells. A natural conclusion at that time was that Christians got the plague from their wells. Consequently, Jews were accused of having poisoned the wells. Now we know that cholera is spread by water but plague is spread by fleas. Wells were not the source of plague. As the source of fleas was not rats, it must have been goods, like clothes, that were obtained from people, who had plague. What Jacob Frank tells in his sayings sounds very probable.

Jews of Toulon in Provence and Barcelona in Aragon would usually have been Sephardic, while in German speaking areas (Erfurt, Basel, Freiburg, Strasbourg) and in Dutch speaking Belgium (Flanders) the Jewish communities would have been Ashkenazi. The distinction between Sephardic and Ashkenazi does not seem important. What seems more relevant is that all these areas there were cabbalistic Jews. Early cabbalism has two roots: German practical cabbalism and Spanish theoretical cabbalism, meaning roughly curses and spells versus Zohar. This division is not of the type that is would separate cabbalists to two groups. There was only one group: Messianic cabbalism. Jacob Frank was a perfect representative of this group. Jews, who moved from Germany to Poland, included cabbalists. In the later centuries these German Jews expanded to the large Eastern European Ashkenazi community, and among them the cabbalistic tradition continued, and it still continues in Hasidism.

Jews in the above mentioned towns were accused of spreading the Black Death. Were they accused as believers in the established religion of Judaism, which at that time was based on the teachings in the Torah, the Prophets, the Talmud and the Tosafot, or were they accused as members of a new sect: cabbalists or zoharists, Zohar not being older than 62 years when the Black Death started. A new Messianic and occult sect is not above suspicions.

So, what is the answer to the question in the topic? King of Poland welcomed Jews when they were expelled in many countries. The Black Death omitted Poland. There may not be any connection between these two facts. As always, there is no way to prove anything in history in the same sense as what is understood as a proof in exact fields. History is a story and it is propaganda. Somebody decides that let us blame the Black Death on rats. And so it will be and questioning it is forbidden.

References:

[1] S. Haensh et al., Distinct Clones of Yersinia pestis Caused the Black Death, 2010, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2951374/

[2] Full text of Collection of the Words of the Lord by Jacob Frank.
https://archive.org/stream/TheCollectionOfTheWordsOfTheLordJacobFrank/TheCollectionOfTheWordsOfTheLordJacobFrank_djvu.txt