Abraham ben Abraham

Abraham ben Abraham, also known as Count Valentine (Walentyn) Potocki, was a Polish nobleman of the szlachta, of the Potocki family, who converted to Judaism and was burned at the stake by the Roman Catholic Church at Vilna on 23 May 1749 — the second day of Shavuot. Jewish communities in Lithuania, Poland and Russia have called him ever since the Ger Tzedek, the righteous proselyte, of Vilna, and tradition holds that his ashes were interred in the grave of the Vilna Gaon.

The oldest written account is that of Rabbi Yaakov Emden in 1755, which reports that the prince was imprisoned for many days, that the priests came to argue with him every day, that his mother the countess pleaded with him, and that he refused to recant and died sanctifying the Name. Honesty requires the other half of the record: Orthodox tradition accepts the story, while secular historians have so far judged it apocryphal for want of contemporary documents — the Potocki family, a Catholic house, had every reason to leave no trace of it.