Wilno school massacre

It was one of the first school shooting which happened in Europe. Two teenagers fired several shots at their teachers and threw grenades during a final exam. They also had a bomb which happily didn't go off. True reasons why they did what they did are unknown.
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That's pretty interesting. An attack like that with 8th graders using military-grade weapons in 1925...crazy. Of course, Wikipedia may not be 100% accurate but I thought it was odd that accounts alternatively listed 2 or 3 perpetrators.

Wideawake wrote:

That's pretty interesting. An attack like that with 8th graders using military-grade weapons in 1925...crazy. Of course, Wikipedia may not be 100% accurate but I thought it was odd that accounts alternatively listed 2 or 3 perpetrators.

Its not 8 graders, its more like 12th graders in your terms. These people would have ben 18-19 years old. They were having a "matura exam". In polish education terms, this is a post-high school exam that defines your whole future. It decides if you can get to university (college for all you US people) and back in the 20s and 30s a passed matura or a failed matura would often define your future work opportunities and career. Many fialed the matura and this would likley relegate them to manual labor jobs. Officers in the army for example had to have a passed matura etc.

Its also worth noting that while Wilno in the 20s and 30s was mostly inhabited by Polish speakers and people of Polish descent, it had a minority of Belorussians and Lithuanians. The surnames of both shooters indicate that both were likley Belorussian (Obrabalski is an ambiguous surname, it might be polish, but its unlikely).

Moreover, the year is 1925. This is just 4 years after the huge Polish-Bolshevik war has ended. There are still a huge number of weapons in civilian hands at the time, leftover of the war and also from ww1.

Thank you for the info, [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]. Obviously I didn't know any of that, so it puts quite a different spin on things.

Wideawake wrote:

Thank you for the info, [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]. Obviously I didn't know any of that, so it puts quite a different spin on things.

No problem, Poland and our education system is something I know a bit about.

In generla the people who outright had no interest in education would end their education at 6th or 8th grade (which would still be "primary school in Polihs terms). Those who had any ambition would enter the Liceum (highschool 9th-12th grade to speak). At the end of highschool you had the matura exam.

the matura exam was (and for the most part is still is today) the most stressfull exam in one's life. I do not know the details of the lives of these two people, but I think the facts we have are as follows:

1) They were ambitious enough to enter liceum and try to pass a matura, so they were most likely not happy about just having menial jobs.
2) They were likley of the Belorussian minority
3) They faled the matura exam.

So, my best guess is taht they came to the exam knowing they have a realistic chance to fail it and decided to go out in a bang rather than fade into insignicicance after a failed exam.

Very interesting! Shows such things are really nothing new.I guess you live in Poland Sabratha?

PaintItBlack wrote:

Very interesting!  Shows such things are really nothing new.I guess you live in Poland Sabratha?

Location: Mazowsze

Pretty underrated shooting. Almost nobody knows about this. Very forgotten shooting in my opinion