A crowd of ferocious demonstrators in front of the Presidential Palace? This is a bet in comparison with the great crowd of demonstrators who on June 25, 1920 stormed the gate of ... a maternity clinic in Krakow. They had quite a reason for this:the news came that a young Jewish woman gave birth to a real devil with horns and hooves there.
The case was described the next day by the socialist "Forward", rather not inclined to entrust gossip. How nothing is the collective paranoia!
For several days now, sensational news has been circulating around the city that a ten-year-old Israeli girl gave birth to a devil with horns, hooves and a tail in a gynecological clinic.
Yesterday, in the morning, crowds of people began to gather in front of the maternity clinic on Kopernika Street, demanding that they be allowed inside to watch the devil. Among the crowds, one could notice elegant ladies who loudly claimed that they had seen the devil with their own eyes. He is tied to chains in the ground floor clinic room. He and he will ride, whoever accesses it.
Or maybe the devil from Krakow was similar to those in the painting by Michelangelo?
It was also said that people wanted to baptize him on Tuesday (...) but at the same time the lightning bolt tore the clouds (...) and the priest who was supposed to baptize the devil fell out of his hand. Doctors decided to poison the devil and gave him the harshest poisons, but to no avail, because after taking them, the devil showed only greater dissatisfaction and threw sparks with his hooves.
(...) A growing crowd (...) having an excited imagination, launched a storm on the gates of the clinic. Despite the persuasion of the crowds by the hospital staff and doctors, the women (...) began to insist that they be allowed inside.
When they were denied and argued that this was not true, word spread in the crowd that the hospital director had taken a bribe from the devil's mother's family to cover up a family scandal. In the afternoon the crowds increased to several thousand. (…)
The porter began to curse that there was no devil in the maternity clinic; crowds rushed to St. Lazarus and St. Ludwik in search of the devil. After a long search, the crowd returned to the gynecology clinic and demanded to be admitted to hell.
A clinic at 23 Kopernika Street. The birthplace of the devil (photo SKOZK, www.skozk.krakow.pl/).
It has long been told to women, men and children that in the 20th century devils are not born in the form they imagine, but it was impossible to convince the audience, among whom The news broke that the devil would be transported by ambulance to the railroad, from where he was to be sent by passenger train to one of the anthropological facilities in Berlin in order to keep the devil in a spirit. Despite the fact that the crowd was dispersed by the police, crowds waited on the street until late at night to see, at least in passing, the longed devil.
This unusual or even improbable story was found in the archives of the interwar press by Michał Rożek - the author of a free-form and pleasant to read collection of curiosities entitled "The Mythology of Krakow".
Source:
Trivia is the essence of our website. Short materials devoted to interesting anecdotes, surprising details from the past, strange news from the old press. Reading that will take you no more than 3 minutes, based on single sources. This particular material is based on:
- Michał Rożek, The Mythology of Krakow, Salwator Publishing House, Kraków 2008, pp. 204-206 (see publisher's website).