Historical Evidence
Many secondary sources – encyclopaedias of Jewish culture, history and religion – include an entry on Potocki, a Polish magnate and member of the powerful Potocki family, who converted to Orthodox Judaism in 18th-century Netherlands and who, after his return to Vilna, was tried by an Inquisition court which sentenced him to burning at the stake. Polish (ex. Janusz Tazbir and Jacek Moskwa), Lithuanian (Rimantas Miknys) and Western (Magda Teter) historians who have studied the story of Potocki, however, believe it to be invented, although it is unknown when or by whom (Moskwa points to a possibility that the author was Kraszewski himself, who is known to have invented some tales he claimed were true). Teter mentioned that the story ("a carefully crafted tale of conversion") was likely created and developed as a "response to a number of challenges that the Polish Jewish community faced from the mid-eighteenth century".
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