Background
A native of Kretinga in western Lithuania, he originally worked in commerce and entered the service of Vilna’s prince-bishop.
A native of Kretinga in western Lithuania, he originally worked in commerce and entered the service of Vilna’s prince-bishop.
While on a business trip to Paris in 1789, Joselewicz was drawn to the new ideals of the French Revolution; these made him a natural ally of the Polish liberals, who favored Jewish emancipation, and of their leader. General Tadeusz Kosciuszko. Under the menace of a third and final partition of their country, the Poles decided to take up arms against their chief oppressors, Catherine the Great of Russia and Frederick William II of Prussia. Some Jews, aware of Kosciuszko’s libertarianism, joined the insurrection that he launched in March 1794.
Following the expulsion of Warsaw’s Russian garrison, Kosciuszko took the momentous step of granting Joselewicz permission to organize a separate Jewish cavalry regiment. Not only did the Polish commander welcome this proposal, but he also made a contribution toward the costs involved and appointed Joselewicz colonel of the “Jewish Legion.” In an appeal for volunteers, printed in Yiddish (October 1, 1794).
Joselewicz urged his fellow Jews to "be like lions and leopards so that, with God’s help, we may drive the enemy from our land.” Mostly poor youths with no military expe¬rience, the five hundred idealistic Jews who answered his call brought their own horses and had the rest of their equipment supplied by Warsaw’s Jewish community. Ordered to defend the largely Jewish suburb of Praga, Joselewicz and his men held their ground when seasoned Russian troops under the redoubtable Count Alexander Suvorov began attacking this forward position on November 4.
A local rabbi permitted fighting to continue on the Sabbath and, when kosher food no longer reached them, the pious Jews fought on with empty stomachs. Only Joselewicz himself and twenty other legionaries survived the battle, hewing their way through the Russian lines. Praga’s civilian population was then massacred by Suvorov’s infuriated Cossacks.
Despite its failure, the Polish uprising headed by Kosciuszko saved revolutionary France by diverting Prussian troops eastward. Joselewicz later joined Napoleon’s Polish Legion, became a French dragoon officer, and then commanded two of Prince Jozef Poniatowski’s cavalry squadrons during the 1809 Austrian campaign. He received both French and Polish decorationsforvalor.
Berkowicz. emigrated to France but finally settled in Liverpool, England, where his novel, Stanislaus, or the Polish Lancer in the Suite of Napoleon (1846), was completed shortly before he died.
His death in action, while leading a charge against Austrian hussars at the battle of Kotsk (May 5, 1809), made him a national hero and one of the legendary figures of Polish Jewry.