The Passion According to the Polish Community of Pruchnik

Good Friday at Pruchnik, in Poland, is the setting for a curious ritual. Although, as elsewhere, all draws ceremoniously to a close with mass, the traditional ritual of the Stations of the Cross was replaced a century ago by a simulated lynching of a blatantly anti-Semitic nature. During the morning ritual, much to the children’s amusement, a straw and hemp Judas, is dragged through the town, beaten, decapitated, burnt and thrown in the river.