Przemoc antyżydowska i zatrute cukierki . Plotka elementem napięcia pogromowego na ziemiach polskich na początku XX w.

The article describes rumour as part of cultural artifact contributing to the many-faceted pogrom-related panic spread in Galicia and the Kingdom of Poland after the 1903 Jewish pogrom in Kishinev. We first hear about it in Galicia in 1857. However, only in the beginning of the 20th century did it appear as a great force, mobilizing Russian and Austrian police forces. The author draws from the police sources and Polish and Jewish press to show relations between rumour about the alleged distribution of poisoned candies by the Christians to Jewish children and social tensions surrounding the threat of a pogrom of Jews in the Kingdom of Poland and Galicia in the summer of 1903. The article, basing on Donald Horowitz’s theoretical concept about the symbolic reversal of the violence mechanism, shows the schematic thinking of the Jewish community which — in fear of incoming pogrom — uses paranoid thinking and accuses non-Jews of trying to harm Jewish children. The dominant aspect here is an attempt to find how the topos of poisoning food — known already from Medieval times — transferred from the Christian culture into the Jewish community imagination in the beginning of the 20th century. Finally, the Author emphasizes the strong emotions resulting from the fear of the pogrom and its destructive function that led to violence of the potential victims. The analysis of social behaviour around the spreading gossip supports the thesis of the social origins of anti-Semitic violence.