We've all heard from our parents that we shouldn't take sweets from strangers. We keep this in mind, although the cases when perverts bribe children with candy are almost never the case. The thing is, however, that in the past the situation was quite different. As if she was taken out of a horror movie.
A warning that is common today, though more and more abstract, was born in the interwar period. Then, teaching a child this rule could save his health and life. Evidence is not lacking.
"I wanted to make love with you only after licking your pussy" - wrote Józef D. from Alwernia, who will give girls less than ten years old. At the turn of the 1920s and 1930s, the man was the manager of a railway station in this small town near Krakow. He was charged with a crime under Article 213 - molesting underage girls. The man did not live to see the trial. When he felt his case was hopeless, he committed suicide. However, his disgusting letters have been preserved, sent to various students of the elementary school.
Thanks to them, it is known that the pervert almost always linked expectations with rewards. On one of the handwritten scraps of paper he wrote in a blue pencil:"Today I will give you (...) figs." He further emphasized that he had already given some friend the money needed to buy sweet, southern fruit. And he immediately made the condition:"But you have to give me some money for it."
There are more as disgusting declarations in the file of his case. Usually, however, the gifts turned out to be much simpler. As the commander of the police station in Alwernia explained:
In summer 1931, D. constantly persuaded Julia K. to harass Julia K. pussies will love it ", giving her chocolate and candies and offering her PLN 20 for intercourse .
View of Alvernia. Photograph from the beginning of the 20th century
Why should you not take sweets from strangers?
There were hundreds of similar degenerates in pre-war Poland. "There is a pervert around the girls' schools," warned Nowiny Codzienne in February 1934. Despite the frosty weather, in Warsaw's elementary schools, a man was regularly seen harassing girls not more than 10 years old. An unidentified pervert offered the children money and chocolates. At least once, he tried to drag a Jewish school student into the basement of a shopping arcade and rape him for sweets.
Two years later, not one degenerate was reported, but a gang. According to "Express Mazowiecki", three individuals tried to lure young schoolgirls to secluded places by offering them sweets. "When girls, instinctively afraid, run away from the villains, they chase them and even threaten them," the journal explained. Such stories are hard to count. They happened in big cities and small towns. And in virtually every voivodship.
In 1933, a shopkeeper from Tarnów, for example, was brought to trial. His name was Franciszek Wodzień and he had a special weakness for pretty little girls. If a first-grade student came to his commercial warehouse, he was ready to give her the goods, even for free. He lured children with "chocolate or caramel", and then dragged them to "a cell adjacent to the store, which was a warehouse for goods." He raped them there.
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"Come to me, get candy!"
The chieftain had at least a dozen or so girls on his conscience. Only one rape was found to a certain Kopczyński from Inowrocław. However, the procedure was identical. A 32-year-old worker lured a 9-year-old child "with the help of sweets to a secluded place" and then committed "immoral acts". The crime broke up because her parents began to ask where the girl got the candies. The victim then "confessed with tears," what followed.
The degenerates attacked the streets, parks and playgrounds. The latter places were particularly liked by 19-year-old Maks Kunig from Łódź. He approached the playing children, holding candies in his hand, of course. One of the girls turned out to be careless enough to listen to his persuasion. She was 9 years old and in the summer of 1925 she went with a stranger several times to the attic of the tenement house. There, Kunig committed "lewd acts" on it. After a few weeks, he felt so unpunished and safe that he also raped him.
Similar tragedies took place in the villages. In 1930, in Czyże near Łódź, 18-year-old Antoni Górecki battered his own 9-year-old niece. All family members were in the field, while the girl was grazing her cattle alone in a nearby meadow. Górecki called to her:"Come to me, get some candy!".
Józef D. had no inhibitions. He wrote directly to one
of the girls that he would get some bras
for her, as long as she "let him put on" in return. Photograph of prosecution files.
Genia rushed to his call. As soon as she was in the apartment, Górecki locked the front door and attacked his terrified niece. The girl began to cry and desperately cry for help. However, no one heard her screams (…). Górecki harassed the girl for a long time, committing lewd acts. When he finally got bored, he threw her out of the apartment, declaring that if she spoke a word to anyone, he would kill her .
"You will be bored alone at home"
Children were exposed to attack even in their own homes, especially if they lived in crowded tenement houses. In 1938, 71-year-old Ferdinand Krumpf was sentenced to prison in Łódź. He would ask the daughters of his neighbors to his apartment "under the pretext of treating them with sweets", and then "commit lewd acts with them".
A similar story took place in the same city in 1930. Eight-year-old Henrieta S. returned from school, but was unable to get into the apartment. The parents left and the door was locked. The girl knocked on the nearest neighbor, Teodor M., to ask if the keys had been left with him. It was a 74-year-old old man. He replied that he did indeed have the keys. However, he asked Henrietta to keep him company.
Letters and their copies preserved in the case files of the railwayman from Alwernia.
"I'll give you money, buy yourself some candy" - he argued. - "You will be bored alone at home." The vision of extra pocket money, let alone the thought of sweets that her parents would not allow her, worked. Henrieta stayed.
The old man sat the girl on the table, trying to take off her dress. At that moment there was a knock on the door. His wife appeared there. The woman immediately saw that her husband was trying to hide his confusion from her. When she began to question him if something had happened, he didn't even answer her. Mrs. M. then turned to the girl and she told her about everything.
In the evening, Henrieta repeated the same to her parents who immediately turned to the police .
Journalists argued that the investigative service immediately launched a "vigorous investigation". Perhaps it was so, but it is difficult to pinpoint any tangible results. The man was sentenced to a symbolic two weeks of arrest, despite the fact that he had been punished earlier for pedophilia. One could count on a similar harshness of the authorities after a common drunken brawl, or because the caretaker of the tenement house was pushed. But because of the negligent supervision of the workers in the factory, the foreman sometimes went to stay for a whole month.