3-053-806 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Polish Jews in the Ghetto at Vienna, 1873. Sketch in the Jewish quarter showing '...a group of Polish Jews, remarkable not only for their decided physiognomical type, but also for their long "talars,"...The two curls, on each side of the head, and always worn before the ear, are called "pejes," and are, in a certain way, a symbol of Jewish orthodoxy. These are the gentlemen, whose unceasing cry of "Old Clo!" or as they say here "Handeln," sung with a fierce nasal twang, is a terror and a nuisance to all those who want quiet...by opening an old curiosity shop, or clothes shop, they manage, through strenuously acting upon the principle of the largest possible profits and the quickest returns, to gain such wealth as must excite the envy of the less energetic and less cunning, if not more scrupulous, Christian brethren. The poorer sort of Jews, indeed, live in a quarter of the city which may well be called a "Ghetto,"...But the newly-created barons of the Hebrew race are sure to remove from the quarter of their early infancy...and revenge themselves by an ostentatious display of riches for the many humiliations they endured in the days of their wandering youth'. From "Illustrated London News", 1873.