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Title: Within the Pale
Author: Davitt, Michael
Language: English
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WITHIN THE PALE
WITHIN
THE PALE
_The True Story of Anti-Semitic
Persecution in Russia_
BY
MICHAEL DAVITT
AUTHOR OF “LEAVES FROM A PRISON DIARY,”
“LIFE AND PROGRESS IN AUSTRALASIA,”
“THE BOER FIGHT FOR
FREEDOM,” ETC.
_SPECIAL EDITION_
Philadelphia
THE JEWISH PUBLICATION
SOCIETY OF AMERICA
NEW YORK
A. S. BARNES & CO.
1903
COPYRIGHT, 1903,
BY A. S. BARNES & CO.,
_Published, October._
PREFACE
It is deemed necessary, for the twofold aim of this book,--to arouse
public feeling against a murder-making legend, and to put forward a plea
for the objects of the Zionist movement,--to tell the story of the
Russian Jew, apropos of recent massacres. This task could only be
partially done in my despatches from Kishineff to Mr. William R.
Hearst’s American papers. Moreover, all the despatches were not
published, for reasons which govern the exigencies of journals that are
concerned much more with a record of daily events in the United States
than with history.
While in Russia I tried to find both sides of the anti-Semitic Question,
so as to give expression to all views which could throw light upon
crimes that had shocked the public mind in America and in Europe no
more than they had pained and scandalised all right-thinking Russians.
To several of the minor representatives of the Tsar’s Government I owe
an acknowledgment for uniform courtesies, and for valuable assistance in
my investigations, and I endeavour, in the chapter on “Russia’s
Attitude,” to let the voice of such exponents of official Russian ideas
and purposes be heard alongside of counter Jewish accusations.
The unwarranted attempts that have been made in some quarters to use the
Kishineff crimes as means of creating an unfriendly feeling between the
two greatest powers in the world to-day--the United States Republic and
the Empire of Russia--are reprehensible. There are very unworthy motives
behind this mischievous endeavour that are not calculated to serve the
cause of the Russian Jew. The writer of these pages can have no sympathy
with nor lend encouragement of any kind to these sinister efforts.
Russia cannot, for her own sake, allow the present state of things to
continue within the Pale of Settlement. Reform or revolution must deal
with an absolutely impossible condition of social and economic life.
I follow Russian, and not Jewish, guidance in the brief sketch I give of
the history of the Russian Jew and of his long and persistent
persecution. The clear and unbiassed opinions, and statement of historic
facts, so courageously and clearly expressed in Prince Demidoff San
Donato’s book, have been the chief source of information from which the
materials for that sketch have been derived.
The Jew, as he is ruled and oppressed by Russian officials, is a far
greater danger to Russian autocracy than anti-Semitism is to the
Israelites of the Pale. The danger was candidly avowed by all
representative Russians from whom I solicited light and information. The
average Russian, however, errs most seriously in believing that measures
of repression, like those of 1882 and 1891, can ever cure the Empire of
its “Semitic malady,” as one high official harshly expressed it. Had
far more drastic and more barbarous methods of coercion than those of
General Ignatieff possessed the power to cure a similar “malady,” or
kill the same race, no Jew would be alive on earth to-day to trouble the
domestic cares of the Tsar’s Government. There can be no stronger
argument against the policy of continued repression found in the
literature or history of liberty than the existence and the marvellous
influence to-day of this, the most persecuted of all peoples among the
civilised races.
Contempt for human rights, even if they be Jewish rights, is an unwise
attitude for an autocratic government. It can only lead to more outrage,
through the example and encouragement it offers to the lowest aims of
anti-Semitism; to more poverty, through the steady increase within the
existing Pale of men and women of the most intellectual of races, who
grow up conscious of the fact that they are made poor by the working of
special laws, because they are Hebrews. Such contempt and neglect are
the best recruiting forces for disloyalty and Socialism among 4,000,000
subjects, having powerful racial friends and political allies in
countries where Russia’s strongest enemies are to be found; and are far
more dangerous to Russia’s internal peace and progress than any measure
of Jewish emancipation could possibly be.
This book is neither inspired by feeling, political or otherwise,
against Russia, nor by any pro-Jewish purpose outside the questions
immediately touched upon by the writer. Where anti-Semitism stands, in
fair political combat, in opposition to the foes of nationality, or
against the engineers of a sordid war in South Africa, or as the
assailant of the economic evils of unscrupulous capitalism anywhere, I
am resolutely in line with its spirit and programme. Where, however, it
only speaks and acts in a cowardly racial warfare, which descends to the
use of an atrocious fabrication responsible for odious and unspeakable
crimes like those that are to its credit in the massacres of Kishineff,
it becomes a thing deserving of no more toleration from right-minded men
than do the germs of some malady laden with the poison of a malignant
disease.
The inquiries made by me in Kishineff convince me that the peculiar
atrocity of most of the crimes perpetrated against the Jews of the city
at Easter were directly attributable to the horrible influence of the
ritual-murder propaganda upon untutored minds possessed of an ignorant
and fanatical conception of religion.
Should these pages succeed, even to a little extent, in influencing
public feeling in America and Europe, in favour of the suggestions they
contain for the redress of the indefensible wrongs of a long-suffering
people, the writer will be amply rewarded for his small share in the
performance of so worthy and necessary a task.
“The public moral sense of all nations,” wrote Cardinal Manning, on the
same topic, a dozen years ago, “is created and sustained by
participation in a universal common law; when this is anywhere broken,
or wounded, it is not only sympathy, but civilisation, that has the
privilege of respectful remonstrance.”
M. D.
ST. JUSTINS, DALKEY, IRELAND,
_4th July, 1903_.
CONTENTS
PART I
THE STORY OF THE RUSSIAN JEW
CHAPTER PAGE
I. FROM ANCIENT TIMES TO 1804, 1
II. THE PALE OF SETTLEMENT (1804-1882), 12
III. FROM THE IGNATIEFF LAWS TO THE KISHINEFF MASSACRES, 33
IV. A MURDER-MAKING LEGEND, 52
V. RUSSIA’S ATTITUDE, 64
VI. THE ZIONIST SOLUTION, 82
PART II
THE KISHINEFF MASSACRES
VII. I. ORIGIN AND AGENCY, 91
VIII. II. LETTERS FROM KISHINEFF, 101
IX. III. M. DE PLEHVE’S VERSION, 182
X. IV. AN IMPARTIAL ACCOUNT, 189
XI. V. DOCUMENTS:
(I) PETITION TO THE DIRECTOR-GENERAL OF POLICE, 207
(II) LIST OF KILLED, 217
(III) EXTRACTS FROM A REPORT BY TWO CHRISTIAN LADIES, 222
XII. NOTES AND COMMENTS, 231
APPENDICES
PAGE
I. PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT ON THE KISHINEFF CRIME AND THE JEWS, 256
II. LETTER FROM TOLSTOY, 268
III. LETTER FROM MAXIME GORKY, 272
IV. FATHER JOHN OF KRONSTADT RECANTS, 276
V. THE STORY OF SIMON OF TRENT, 278
VI. ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF PAPAL BULLS, 291
WITHIN THE PALE
PART I
_THE STORY OF THE RUSSIAN JEW_
CHAPTER I
FROM ANCIENT TIMES TO 1804
The time when Jews first settled in Russia is a subject of mere
historical conjecture. Some accounts assert that colonies of the race
were founded in the country bordering on the Black Sea several centuries
before the Christian era. All the probabilities favour this view. Both
before and after their dispersion by the Romans, a people so intelligent
and resourceful as the Hebrews would learn of the fruitful regions
watered by the four great rivers which flow into the southern
sea-boundaries of the vast territory now under the sway of the Tsar.
They would have a choice of land and sea routes for the voyages of
emigration, trade, or adventure.
The distance from Jerusalem to the mouth of the Volga, through Asia
Minor and the Caucasus, is not much more than from Astrakhan to St.
Petersburg, while the journey by sea from Joppa to where the city of
Odessa stands to-day for Russia’s richest seaport, is much less than
that from Athens to Marseilles. The Caucasus, Taurida (Crimea), Cherson,
and Bessarabia, known in the days of King Solomon by other names, would
be within the zone of trading intercourse with the Kingdom of Israel,
while these rich and interesting parts of Southern Russia would
naturally attract the footsteps of the scattered race after Titus had
destroyed their nation and dispersed its people, as well as during the
existence of the Byzantine Empire.
Whether the race known as the Khazars, who governed the territory
stretching north from Astrakhan over the eastern watershed of the Volga
as far as Kazan, were civilised by Semitic colonists, as alleged by some
writers, is now only an interesting speculation. One fact offered in
support of this theory is that the Israelites were driven out of this
country by its rulers in the eleventh century, at a time when Jews in
Christian Europe began to be objects of race persecution.
The period of the Crusades may be taken as that in which the systematic
oppression of the Jews began. The source of this persecution was the
religious influence upon uneducated minds of the gospel of the
Crucifixion, coupled with legends about ritual murders, and fables
recording the sacrifice of the blood of Christian children and maidens
during the sacred rites of Paschal time.
It is on record that, in the year 1298, a fanatic in a city of Franconia
circulated a story that the Sacred Host in a church had been polluted by
a Jew, and that the Almighty had chosen an avenger of this crime in the
person of the narrator of the act of sacrilege. The populace rose _en
masse_ and burned all the Jews in the city. The massacre extended to the
country, and, before the murderous fury unchained by this fanatic and
his falsehood could be stilled, over 100,000 victims were slaughtered in
Germany, Bavaria, and Austria.
It was following these and similar ferocities that the first great
movement of the Semitic race into Poland occurred. They were encouraged
to move into this country by the toleration extended to smaller colonies
of their race who had settled in Polish dominions in earlier times. All
accounts agree in crediting to this ancient Kingdom a far more
enlightened rule of the proscribed Israelites than to any other
Christian nation during the Middle Ages. Casimir the Great protected
them in both their religious and civil liberties, in return for which
freedom they helped to organise and develop the commerce and crafts of
the country. They flourished and multiplied under such rule, and became
the trading link between producer and consumer, in the economic life of
Poland, as well as tillers of the soil and expert artisans.
It is an error to assume that the Jews have not thriven anywhere in
agricultural industry. Wherever they were sure of protection against
spoliation, they took to land labour as readily as to other pursuits,
and succeeded. This was so in Poland during the two centuries in which
they shared in the general rights guaranteed by the state. Accounts of
Jewish agricultural colonies in various parts of Russia, in later days,
also support the same testimony. In fact there was no better foundation
for this charge in times anterior to our own than the circumstance that
a people who were not permitted to own land anywhere, or even to
cultivate it in some countries, were, in consequence, subjected to the
imputation of having a racial prejudice against this means of obtaining
a livelihood.
The halcyon period of Jewish freedom in Poland came to an end in the
middle of the seventeenth century. That proud and ancient nation was
itself the victim of invasion and oppression, and its Semitic population
lost over 200,000 men, women, and children in the ferocious campaigns
waged by the conquering Cossack Hetman, and his Tartar and Russian
allies, against Poles and Jews alike.
The Jews of Poland survived this calamity, and grew numerous again, as
persecuted civilised races somehow do, in their own, or in some other,
land. They, however, lent assistance to the designs of the ambitious
nobles when the landed aristocracy invaded the recognised prerogatives
of the kingly power, and took to themselves all the responsibilities and
advantages of government. They became their agents and instruments in
the sordid work of harassing the peasant cultivators, who found
themselves ground down more remorselessly by class rule than under a
semi-republican monarchy. Popular feeling was thus turned against the
Jews, and they began to experience, in Poland, as elsewhere, that social
and economic antipathy which their greater money-making capacity has
always nourished in the commercial minds of the less successful
Christians.
As a friend of Polish freedom remarked to the writer in Warsaw in the
spring of 1903, “the nobles cultivated their pride, rack-rented their
tenants, and lost their independence.” And, with this fall of the one
Christian nation in Europe, which had fairly ruled and humanely treated
the hunted Hebrew up to the eighteenth century, the era of systematic
persecution began for the Polish Jew when a cruel fate compelled him to
become a Russian subject.
The early oppression of the Jews in Russia was entirely due to religious
feeling. Their exceptional treatment in recent years arises from
political and economic more than from sectarian causes. M. Varadinoff,
in his history of Russian administration, says: “The history of all the
cases since 1649, involving Jewish religious matters, bears on it the
stamp of mistrust to the followers of the law of Moses, because the
Jews, by their false doctrines, convert to their faith not only
Christians, but persons belonging to other religious persuasions; in
consequence of this the civil rights of the Jews were more or less
restricted, and their settlement in Russia was prohibited. They were
also on several occasions entirely expelled across the Russian
frontiers. The code of Alexis Mikailovitch provides punishment of death
for the perversion of a Christian to the Hebrew faith. In 1676 Jews were
prohibited from coming to Moscow from Smolensk, and in 1727 an order was
promulgated to the effect that ‘All Jews found to be residing in the
Ukraine and in Russian towns shall be immediately expelled beyond the
frontier, and not be allowed under any circumstances to enter Russia.’”
Prince Demidoff San Donato, in quoting this expert in his excellent
book, says that a proviso to this ukase stipulated that before leaving
Russia all the Jews were to be made to exchange their gold and silver
for copper money!
It was found practically impossible, however, to carry out decrees of
complete expulsion, while, on the other hand, it had to be recognised
that the interest of the state and the development of trade required the
trained experience of Hebrew craftsmen, merchants, and bankers. They
were tolerated for the utilitarian ends of commercial necessity, while
being subject to all the possible penalties of an outlawed community.
Nearing the end of the eighteenth century the trend of Russian conquest
westwards annexed the Polish regions known as White Russia, and the
Lithuanian country, in which Jews had hitherto found shelter when driven
out from Russia proper. Catherine II. governed the Empire at this
period, and her somewhat liberal views gave her Hebrew subjects a brief
respite from persistent injustice. It was necessary to take account of
the recognised status of the Jews in what had been a portion of the
Kingdom of Poland, and a ukase was promulgated in 1786, decreeing that
“Everyone, irrespective of creed, shall enjoy under the laws all the
advantages and privileges of his rank and condition.” This enlightened
law only extended to the territories acquired from Poland, and even
within these the tolerant intention of the ukase was frustrated by the
bias of Russian officials. The right to enrol themselves in burgher
guilds was curtailed, while double taxes were levied upon the very
people whom the law of 1786 had, in words, freed from exceptional
burdens.
Other special penalties followed, to be again mitigated as when, in
1804, a ukase declared that “a spirit of moderation and a sincere wish
for the amelioration of the condition of the Jews,” should be shown as
being in the best interest of the population among whom the Hebrews were
allowed to live. This temporary return to reason and justice was also
due to the desire to give Russian workers and peasants the advantages of
superior Jewish workmanship in arts, and the example of trading
competency. Jewish children were to be admitted to Russian schools.
Manufacturing industry and the occupation of land were to be thrown open
to Jews hitherto denied access to these employments, except in specified
places.
These, however, were but Russian good intentions. They lacked the value
of application.
CHAPTER II
THE PALE OF SETTLEMENT (1804-1882)
Gradually the provinces along the western frontier, stretching south
from Riga to the territories bordering on the Black Sea, became marked
off as a Pale of Settlement. Within these regions all the Jews of the
Empire were to be domiciled; saving merchants, bankers, scientists, and
eminent Hebrews whose wealth or accomplishments would outweigh in the
selfish plans of domestic government the anti-Semitic feeling which
appealed to the despotic expediency of exceptional laws. Inside this
economic Siberia, the poorer Jews would have their chances of employment
greatly diminished, while the struggle for existence must become by
degrees a contest between a growing population and a narrower area of
industrial opportunity.
Unnatural social and economic conditions necessarily engender
correlative abuses and evils. Poverty, illegal pursuits, the smuggling
and sale of liquor, evasion of coercive laws, bribery and corruption,
protested against the causes which begot them, until finally an Imperial
Commission had to be appointed to inquire into and report upon the
measures necessary to remedy this state of things. This Commission
issued its report in 1812. The report is so tersely summarised in Prince
Demidoff’s book, and the matters dealt with are so intimately connected
with the inherited injustices of the Russian Jew, that I cannot forbear
adding the following extract to this brief historic sketch of
anti-Semitic legislation and its results:
“Firstly, the Commission was of opinion that the impossibility of
carrying out the provisions of paragraph 34 of the Law of 1804 ‘did not
arise from the obstinacy of the Jews and remissness of the authorities,
but from the natural and political condition of those provinces to
which residence of the Jews is restricted.’ The report then states that
while the Jews retained their political independence and lived in their
own country, they were an agricultural people. Subsequently, when they
were dispersed over the whole world and everywhere subjected to the
bitterest persecution, unrecognised as regular citizens of the countries
in which they were domiciled, agriculture became to them an inaccessible
pursuit. They were thus necessarily obliged to have recourse to trade as
the sole means of occupation according with their new condition of life.
“In Poland the Jews were so numerous that the pursuit of trade alone was
insufficient for their subsistence. On the one hand, the Polish
landlords, owing to constant wars and internal strife, were not able to
manage their own estates in a proper manner. They were, therefore,
obliged to seek special means for increasing the revenue of their
properties, for instance, by distilling brandy, lease of farms, etc.
The correlation of these two causes led to the utilisation of the Jews
by the landed proprietors in their domestic concerns. The Jews became
indispensable to the landed proprietors, and as they did not possess the
right to acquire land and engage in agriculture, they were obliged,
while residing in villages, to confine themselves to a retail sale of
spirits as a main pursuit.
“When White Russia was annexed to Russia, the Russian Government
recognised all the previously existing rights of the Jews. The ukase of
the Senate of 1786 confirmed their right of residence in provincial
districts, and their faculty of holding estates on lease. The immediate
object of this law was the suppression of drunkenness among the rural
population. The distillation of brandy, however, is a privilege of all
landed proprietors, and forms a necessary adjunct to the process of
agriculture. With the departure [expulsion from villages] of the Jews
the retail sale of spirits would be carried on by tapsters of the
native rural class, so that drunkenness would not diminish, but only a
decrease would take place in the number of agriculturists. A peasant had
previously been in the habit of selling his corn on the spot to a Jew,
but now he was obliged to proceed to the nearest town, at a loss in time
and labour, to sell his produce to a Jew, and the money realised he
would still spend on brandy, bought from the same Jew. The same result
would ensue in the purchase by the peasant of articles required by him,
such as iron, salt, etc.
“The Commission also found it unadvisable to allow the Jews to reside in
villages under the prohibition of their not engaging in the retail sale
of brandy; this opinion being founded on the following consideration:
The Jews who inhabit the villages belong to the poorest class, and if
not allowed to sell spirits they would be deprived of all means of
subsistence. The poverty of the peasantry of White Russia is not caused
by the Jews, and this is proved by the fact that there are also many
Jews in the southwestern provinces, yet the peasantry there are in a
more prosperous condition than those populating White Russia. So long as
the landlords of this latter region continue to adhere to their present
system of working their estates, which encourages drunkenness, the evil
will spread, be the village tapster who he may, either Jew or peasant.
This is confirmed by the example of the provinces of Petersburg,
Livonia, and Esthonia, where there are no Jews and yet drunkenness is
very prevalent.
“Should the Government adopt the proper measures for making the sale of
brandy less lucrative, the Jews would be obliged to turn to other
pursuits, perhaps to those of husbandry, especially if they are accorded
the right of purchasing land. If the Jews be interdicted to sell brandy
such sale would be carried on by the peasants, who, in order to increase
their landlord’s revenue, will be obliged to do the same as the Jews.
It should also be borne in mind that the Jews, with all their aptitude
and experience in matters relating to the sale of spirits, never
enriched themselves by this calling, but only earned enough for their
subsistence. It would also be impossible to convert all Jews into
traders and artisans; firstly, because they would not find sufficient
occupation in the towns and hamlets, where there is no demand for a
great supply of services of this kind; and secondly, because great
injury would be inflicted on those Jews who are unable to find
alternative sources of livelihood. As a matter of fact the retail sale
of spirits in the western provinces is only carried on by those Jews who
are unable to find any other means of existence. The Jews adhere to
their present occupations because, owing to the want of means, the
Government is unable to effect any radical change in their condition.
Lastly, the Commission arrived at the conclusion that it was necessary
to rescind entirely paragraph 34 of the Law of 1804.”
This paragraph of the law thus cited ordered the removal of all Jews
from villages and hamlets into the towns.
The recommendation of the Commission was not acted upon. On the
contrary, the law of 1804 was continued. Though not vigorously enforced
it remained as a potential agency for rendering residence of employment
outside the Pale a source of insecurity to the Jews, and a means by
which police, business rivals, and others could at any time put the
ukase of expulsion in operation against them. Trading communities were
most active in appealing for the application of this law. Petitions
calling for expulsion from cities and towns in which Jews were rival
workers and dealers are constantly recurring features of the tyranny,
official and commercial, to which they were subjected during the next
half-century.
General Levashoff, Governor of Kiev, reporting to the Government in
1833 upon a petition asking for the banishment of all the Jews from that
important city, laid bare the motives and condemned the selfish purpose
of the petitioners, in honestly saying:
“It is desirable on the ground of public utility to allow the Jews to
remain in Kiev, where, by the simplicity and moderation of their mode of
life, they are able to sell commodities at a cheap rate. It may
positively be asserted that their expulsion would not only lead to an
enhancement of prices of many products and articles, but that it will
not be possible to obtain these at all. Under these circumstances the
interests of the mass of the inhabitants must be preferred to the
personal advantages which the Christian trading class would derive by
the ejection of the Jews.”[1]
Opposed in cities and towns in this manner, after being turned out of
country districts in obedience to a similar spirit, the authors of
these coercion laws began to find it a serious administrative problem
what to do with subjects for whose systematic oppression they were alone
responsible. Agricultural colonies were planned in Cherson (Southwestern
Russia) and even in Siberia, to which Jews were induced to go in order
to escape from the intolerable hardships of incessant wrong. Failure
followed these benevolent designs of the Government; not from the
reluctance or incapacity of the migrating Jews to work the land, but
owing to the corruption and incompetence of officials who were charged
with the superintendence of these colonies. Money advanced for the
building of dwellings and purchase of stock was disbursed in the
erection of unsuitable houses, in most unsanitary places, and in other
wasteful and ignorant directions. Great hardships were thus entailed
upon the unfortunate victims of this crass official stupidity; a cruelty
of deliberate neglect adding, in the instances of the migrations to
Siberia, its penalties of suffering and death to the bitter
disappointments and the blasting of hopes caused by the callous
miscarriage of the well-meant enterprise of the Government by its
blundering officials.
One unexpected good result followed both to Russia and to large numbers
of Jews by the failure of these contemplated agricultural settlements in
the Governments of Cherson and Ekaterinoslav; where, at a later time,
similar colonies grew and flourished. Odessa, to-day the richest and
busiest maritime city of the Empire, owes its prosperity and progress
largely to Jewish enterprise. Both the forced and voluntary migration
from the north to the south of the Pale brought this resourceful race
near where they were to find an outlet in a young and rising commercial
centre for qualities essential to its rapid development which Russians
do not themselves possess in any marked degree,--commercial genius. The
city and its varied opportunities attracted both those who succeeded and
those who had obtained no fair chance of thriving as agriculturists,
and to-day over two hundred thousand of the Jewish population of Odessa
embrace the wealthiest and most enterprising bankers, merchants,
brokers, contractors, and business men of the Empire.
From the codification of the ukases and laws relating to Jews in 1835,
down to the Ignatieff or “May Laws” of 1882, the treatment of the Jews,
as regulated by these measures, is consistent with their experience as
already briefly described. In some of these laws, Jews would appear from
the text to be on a footing of theoretic equality with other citizens,
while again special provisions are made to limit the application of
these general rights to residence within the selected sphere of
domicile, and to be further curtailed within this area, in the light and
meaning of the law of 1804. There is a bewildering mass and maze of
contradictory purpose in this code of special laws which no summary can
hope intelligently to disentangle. It is obvious, however, that the
vigour of direct persecution is meant to be modified to the extent of
promoting the utilities of the State by Jewish abilities, while
reserving all the powers necessary to dispense with the objectionable
artisan, trader, or mechanic when his services or example are no longer
needed in hamlet or village. This is one of the most objectionable
features of indefensible laws. It wears a character of state meanness
which can well compare in odious rivalry with the methods and morals of
Jewish usury. The spirit of fair play is totally absent from regulations
which give the state, by virtue of permissive coercion, the benefits of
subjects’ services which are ultimately repaid in penalties and
expulsion.
In 1843 the Pale of Settlement was further contracted by a law
forbidding Jews to reside within a distance of fifty versts (about
thirty-three miles) of the Austrian or German frontiers. The necessity
for this regulation was said to be the smuggling operations of the Jews.
They probably excelled in this as in other illegal practices, to which
they were driven on being denied the chances of living by more reputable
means. The injustice of punishing thousands of families who had resided
in these frontier districts for generations, for the wrongdoing of a few
people, would not be calculated to lessen the feeling of settled
disloyalty which persistent oppression must inevitably create in the
minds of an intellectual race. And, these accumulating measures of an
insensate injustice are now responsible for the existence of four
millions of disaffected subjects adjacent to the frontiers of Russia’s
two most formidable rival powers, Germany and Austro-Hungary. The Pale
of Settlement has thus become, by the _lex talionis_ of a poetic
justice, the most vulnerable part of the Russian Empire. It is not alone
the seed-bed and centre of Socialism, born of persecution, it is a
military weakness well measured and noted in the army bureaus of Berlin
and Vienna.
Under the Emperor Alexander II., the emancipator of the serfs, the Jews
obtained a respite from many of the most oppressive and vexatious of the
penal ukases. Schools hitherto closed to Hebrew children were thrown
open to their admission. Restrictions upon attendance at fairs in the
interior were removed, while in many other respects the original plan
and purpose of the Pale were forgotten, and the dawn of happier days
began to rise above the troubled and darkened horizon of the Russian
Jew. The freedom of the peasants gave rise to the hope that the same
liberal-minded Tsar would break the bonds of his Semitic subjects, when
there fell upon all this promise of brighter times the bolt of Nihilist
vengeance, in the assassination of the best of Russia’s rulers. The
abominable deed, which shocked the world by its terrible character and
results, shattered the hopes of Hebrew emancipation, and led to the
savage onslaught which was made upon the objects of peasant fury in 1881
and 1882, in many parts of the Empire.
Beyond doubt there were some Jews concerned in Nihilist plots. The man
who attempted to kill General Loris Melikoff was of Jewish blood. The
women Lewinsohn and Helfman, who were sent to Siberia for complicity in
murder conspiracies, were Jewesses, while several prominent Nihilists
were believed to be half Hebrew in parentage. But the history of human
oppression always explains, even where it may not justify, deeds of
savage political vengeance. No race can be denied the ordinary
franchises of personal freedom--the right to live secure from the insult
and intrusion of a tyrannical law, and the unfair infliction of
exceptional burdens--without rousing into dangerous activity passions
which appeal to the wild impulse of revenge. The assassination of
Alexander II. had nothing to do with the coercion of the Jews. He was
not their enemy; he was their friend. But the revolutionary spirit
which germinates under despotic rule is generally blind in selecting the
objects of its unreasoning fury; just as many Governments are deaf to
the pleadings of an enlightened justice in the rule of a country until
the shock of some desperate deed compels them to think of that which, if
listened to in time, would protect both subjects and monarchs from the
fear and consequences of criminal acts. If some Jews were guilty
accomplices in the murder of a humane Emperor, so were Russians. And it
would have been no greater wrong to punish guiltless peasants for the
acts of the Nihilists than to wreak vengeance upon equally innocent
Jews.
In Warsaw, Kiev, Rostov, and elsewhere Jews were killed, their houses
wrecked, and their shops looted. Outrages occurred throughout the whole
Pale of Settlement, and thousands of terrified people fled across the
frontiers into Germany, Bohemia, and Roumania. These outbreaks occurred
near the end of 1881 and early in the following year and, like the
recent massacres in Bessarabia, aroused a widespread expression of
sympathy in Europe and America for the hapless objects of Russian
popular fury. Manifestations of international feeling greatly impressed
the Tsar’s Government, and earnest efforts appeared to have been made to
curb the lawless conduct of the mobs. This action, however, instead of
being a promise of better things, turned out to be but a prelude to
sterner measures than ever against the victims of exceptional laws.
On the 3d of May, 1882, General Ignatieff obtained the Emperor’s
sanction and signature to what have since been known as the “May Laws”;
the purpose of these being to add more rigorous provisions, as a
supplement to the law of 1804. This latter law ordered all the Jews of
the Empire to retire within the Pale of Settlement, excepting those who
possessed special permits, passports, or privileges to live outside.
The May Laws ordered Jews living inside the Pale to remove from the
villages into the towns within that area. In a word, General Ignatieff
created a Pale within a Pale, and contracted the territory of life and
livelihood for upwards of four millions of people within the boundaries
of the cities and towns inside the already limited domain of legal
domicile. These measures read as follows:
“The Committee of Ministers, having heard the report of the Minister of
the Interior on the execution of the temporary orders concerning the
Jews, resolved:
“1. As a temporary measure, and until a general revision has been made
in a proper manner of the laws concerning the Jews, to forbid the Jews
henceforth to settle outside the towns and townlets, the only exceptions
admitted being in those Jewish colonies that have existed before and
whose inhabitants are agriculturists.
“2. To suspend temporarily the completion of instruments of purchase of
real property mortgages in the name of Jews; as also the registration
of Jews as lessees of landed estates, situated outside the precincts of
towns and townlets, and the issue of powers of attorney to enable them
to manage and dispose of such property.
“3. To forbid Jews to carry on business on Sundays and on Christian
holidays, and that the same laws in force, about the closing on such
days of places of business belonging to Christians, shall, in the same
way, apply to places of business owned by Jews.
“4. That the measures laid down in paragraphs 1, 2, and 3, apply only to
the Governments within the Pale of Jewish Settlement. His Majesty the
Emperor was graciously pleased to give his assent to the above
resolutions of the Committee of Ministers, on the 3d of May, 1882.”
These Laws did not apply to the Jews of Poland.
These “temporary measures” remain to-day the potential law of Russia
regarding Jews. They were not immediately enforced. Russia is never in
a hurry in matters of this kind. She waits and notes the material
results of such enactments at home, and the moral effects upon opinion
abroad. In the case of the May Laws, there was a universal chorus of
condemnation in Western Europe. It was felt everywhere that any attempt
to put such savage measures into operation must either lead to the
flight of hundreds of thousands of wretched Jews over the borders, or to
their death within the crowded towns of the Pale, from starvation
induced by an overwhelming congestion of labour without means of
employment. The laws were, therefore, left inoperative, but _in
terrorem_; General Ignatieff being conveniently superseded, while a
Commission presided over by Count Pahlen was appointed by the Emperor to
prepare a report upon the whole Jewish question.
CHAPTER III
FROM THE IGNATIEFF LAWS TO THE KISHINEFF MASSACRES
Prince Demidoff San Donato was a member of the Pahlen Commission, and in
his admirable work “_La Question Juive en Russie_” (published at
Bruxelles, 1884,) he gives, in his own proposed solution of the problem
of the Russian Jew, the broad and liberal measures which forced
themselves upon the Commission as an essential basis for a settlement of
the question on just and rational lines. He recommended the three
following proposals:
“(1) For the re-establishment of more healthy relations between the Jews
and the other inhabitants and counteracting Jewish industrial and other
exploitation in the western region [the Pale of Settlement], it is
necessary to grant the Jews complete civil equality and freedom of
choice of residence. This would lead to a greater dissemination of the
Jewish population, which is now crowded together in particular
districts; to the alleviation of the poverty and hopeless condition of
the Jewish masses, and would relieve the part of the country they now
occupy from excessive industrial and other competition.
“(2) In order to destroy Jewish exclusiveness and to facilitate the
fusion of the Jews with the rest of the population it is necessary to
incorporate the Jews with the local rural and urban communities, and to
subject them completely in fiscal, administrative, and other respects to
the rules and regulations established for these communities. Those Jews
who would wish to settle in the interior provinces should be allowed to
enjoy the right of joining peasant and burgher communities in the places
of their domicile in the ordinary way.
“(3) It is at the same time necessary that serious attention should be
directed towards the organisation of elementary schools for the juvenile
Jewish population, inasmuch as the school must always be one of the
principal instruments for the moral training and Russification of the
Jewish masses.”
These were the common-sense recommendations of an enlightened mind for
the cure of a growing social and political malady in Russian life. They
would have effected that cure, had there been a statesmanship in the
Government of the Empire capable of rising above anti-Semitic prejudice
in the rendering of a great service to the country. In fact, there are
but three Russian remedies for this growing danger to Russia, and two of
them are impossible; the third being the rational one outlined by Prince
Demidoff San Donato. Extermination cannot be thought of. Emigration is
out of the question, where poverty is almost the normal condition of two
or three millions of people who have inherited the evils associated
with social wretchedness, religious intolerance, and race persecution.
No other country will consent to receive them. The third remedy is,
therefore, that alone which the nature and extent of the evil demand,
and which, if wisely and courageously adopted, would make Russia the
stronger through the only effective remedy applicable to a growing,
deadly danger.
The facts of the economic and social conditions within the Pale of
Settlement are so objective that the warning they give of a coming
catastrophe cannot be ignored. It would be like leaving an epidemic of
smallpox to cure itself by neglect. This condition of things is fully
explained and expressed by the term, unnatural. It is analogous to a
situation which would result from a Federal law compelling every
European-born artisan and labourer within the whole United States to
reside inside of Pennsylvania, and to be forbidden to seek employment
outside the cities and towns of that state. The murderous competition
for employment, the deadly rivalry for existence, the bad blood between
opposing races, the poverty and social wretchedness which such a
condition of things would create--apart from the operation of coercive
laws--can readily be imagined by the American reader. But this is no
overdrawn picture of the economic anarchy prevailing within the Russian
Pale of Jewish Settlement.
The present estimated population of the Tsar’s dominions in Europe and
Asia is 145,000,000. The territory of legal domicile for the Russian Jew
is embraced in the fifteen “governments,” or provinces, of Kovno,
Vitebsk, Vilna, Mohilev, Minsk, Grodno, Volhynia, Chernigov,
Poltava, Kiev, Podolia, Bessarabia, Cherson, Ekaterinoslav, and
Taurida--extending south from near the Gulf of Riga, on the Baltic, to
the Crimea and the Sea of Azov, and forming the western provinces of the
Empire; having Germany, Austro-Hungary, and Roumania as frontier
barriers. Poland is not included in the Pale. The Jews have more
freedom of movement there, and are not subject to some of the coercive
restrictions imposed within the above provinces.
The Pale itself is again narrowed by the law which forbids a Jew to
reside within thirty-three miles of the western frontier. It has a total
area about equal to that of France.
The population of the fifteen provinces of the Pale, including Poland,
will be about 26,000,000. There are some 4,000,000 Jews comprised in
this population, but these, excepting 1,000,000 in Poland, are compelled
under the “May Laws” to reside within the “cities, towns, and townlets”
of the Pale. The united population of these urban centres will probably
not exceed a total of 5,000,000; so that the Jews number three out of
every five of the inhabitants of the urban centres within the fifteen
provinces.
The percentage of Jews to non-Jews in the towns and townships of the
province of Mohilev, is estimated at 94; for those of Volhynia, 71 per
cent.; Minsk, 69; Kovno, 68; Podolia, 62; Vitebsk, 61; Grodno, 60;
Vilna, 56; Kiev, 49; Poltava, 43; Bessarabia, 38; Chernigov, 29;
Cherson, 28; The Taurida, 19; and Ekaterinoslav, 15 per cent.
In the provinces of Russia in which Jews are not permitted to reside the
town inhabitants average 59 persons to every 1000 of the rural
population. In the population of the Pale the urban inhabitants average
222 for every 1000 of the rural residents and workers. Within the
industrial centres of the Jewish Pale to which they are confined there
are about 2730 Jews to every square mile of residential area.
These facts and figures show how impossible it is, under such economic
conditions, for any healthy or hopeful prospect of industrial life to
exist. The towns are crowded with artisans and traders, and as these are
out of all proportion to the producers and consumers of an agricultural
country they necessarily become more destitute and wretched as their
numbers increase. They are too poor to emigrate. They are prohibited
from migrating. They cannot seek work on land. They are not permitted to
engage in several occupations. Municipal and Government posts are
practically closed to them. They have to compete with Russian workers
for such means of existence as can be found; and in face of these facts
they are reproached for their poverty and made subject to special
taxation.
It is also a charge against these people that they are exploiters of
labour and not producers. The taunt comes from the apologists for the
Ignatieff laws. The charge is not true. In proportion to population,
there are relatively more artisans among Jews in Russia than among
non-Jews. According to statistics obtained by the Pahlen Commission, the
artisans and labourers averaged 15 per cent. of the total Jewish
population of the Pale. In England the proportion of labourers and
artisans is over 20 per cent.; about 12 per cent. in Belgium; 10 per
cent. in France, and 9 in Prussia.
In Kishineff, where the Jews number 50,000 of the city population, the
Hebrew artisans, and wage-earners generally, would number fully 10,000
before the recent anti-Semitic outrages.
Nor can the injustice of the “May Laws” be defended or explained by the
equally unfounded assertion that the Jew will not work the land. He
refuses to do so in Russia only where he is prohibited. Whenever he has
obtained access to the land, on fair terms, he has readily embraced the
chance, and invariably improved his condition. This has been proved by
the records of the Jewish agricultural colonies in the provinces of
Vilna, Minsk, Grodno, Kovno, Volhynia, Cherson, and in Ekaterinoslav.
There are colonies of more than 50,000 land-workers among the Jews of
the southwestern provinces who have more than held their own in every
branch of agricultural industry with their Russian or Moldavian
neighbours. This taunt is, consequently, no explanation of the Ignatieff
laws.
The evils--both to Russia and to the Jews of the Pale--arising out of
the economic conditions which these laws must stereotype, would have
been swept away or modified in the ten years following the killing and
despoiling of the Jews in 1882, had the proposals of the Pahlen
Commission been acted upon. The recommendations of provincial governors
were preferred instead. Biassed officialism prevailed over the
courageously wise counsels of Count Pahlen, Prince Demidoff San Donato,
Count Strogonoff, and their colleagues, with the result that M.
Pobédonostsev became the virtual administrator of the Ignatieff laws,
and the murders, crimes, and expulsions of 1891 followed, in decadal
sequence, the outrages of 1882; not, by any means, as a desired or
necessary measure of the policy adopted by the famed Procurator of the
Holy Synod. M. Pobédonostsev would be as averse to the killing of Jews
as General Ignatieff. Both are far above suspicion in this respect. The
instigator of the “May Laws” probably believed, as a soldier and
diplomat, that such measures were needed the better to subdue a
suspected revolutionary tendency among a non-Russian race, and thought
they might be enforced according to his plans, without any serious
explosion of anti-Semitic feeling. What followed, however, ought to have
been a warning to the keeper of the Tsar’s conscience on combined
religious and national concerns. The Procurator’s plans would be as
religious in their ultimate object as Ignatieff’s policy was the
reverse; but both sought the accomplishment of a tyrannical purpose by
means which led to such suffering, injustice, and bloodshed as will ever
be associated with their records and names.
The Russian Jew was a domestic menace to the mind of Ignatieff; to M.
Pobédonostsev he was tainted with the unforgivable sins of heterodoxy,
and a religious persecutor is always relentless in proportion to his
fanatical sincerity. No one can justly question the honesty of the
Procurator’s zeal for Church and State in Russia, and this is why the
infidel Israelites have found in him the most implacable of their
powerful foes.
The measures resorted to in 1891, at the instance of the influence
exerted by the Procurator of the Holy Synod, had for their end the
carrying into effect of the provisions of the “May Laws.” Thousands of
Jews were still scattered throughout the provinces beyond the Pale;
tolerated in centres of trade and enterprise for utilitarian reasons.
Most of these were artisans who had by residence, and membership of
trade guilds, acquired the privilege of living and working in various
provinces of the Empire. Large numbers of these had been specially
encouraged in previous years to settle in cities and towns where their
proficiency in crafts was necessary to the development of local
industries or manufacture. Suddenly in 1891 an Imperial decree was
issued, and all these sober, industrious, skilled, and, in many
instances, respected citizens were ordered to quit their homes,
property, or employment, within a given time, and take themselves within
the Pale of Settlement or outside of the Russian Empire.
The orders issued by the Chief of Police of Moscow to his subordinates,
contained the following instructions:
“You must personally verify in all the shops and factories kept by Jews
the number of the assistant artisans; also, what category the Jews
belong to, and the time of their arrival in Moscow for residence; and
then take their signature to a notice of voluntary [!] departure from
the Capital; warning them that the computation of their terms of stay
will begin on the 14th of July next. Also, take a registry of names, in
alphabetical order, of Jewish artisans and, second, of Jews living in
Moscow under the right of Circular No. 30 issued by the Minister of the
Interior in 1880, specifying in separate columns the time of arrival in
Moscow, number of assistant artisans, number in family, and the
expiration of the term of departure. In reference to Jews residing
according to Circular of 1880, specify their occupations, also the names
of commercial houses where they were employed, and present them to me
within two weeks.”
The penalty for refusing to sign the paper suggested by General
Yourkoffsky, was immediate expulsion. The “voluntary” alternative gained
only a little time for preparation. It offered, however, some chances to
wealthy Jews to come to an arrangement with lower police officials,
whereby the general order of expulsion might be evaded, for a
consideration.
The attack by Government and people upon the Jews in 1891 was a
deliberate proceeding. Prince Dolgorouki was an able and a fair-minded
Governor-General of Moscow. Neither Russian nor Jewish complaint had
been lodged against him during his tenure of office. His duties had
been performed with care and competency, and his administration of the
ancient capital and province left no room for official faultfinding at
St. Petersburg.
Coincidently with a notification to all Governors of Provinces in the
Emperor’s name, that all permits to allow Jews to reside outside of the
Pale should be withdrawn on a certain date, an order for the removal of
the Governor-General of Moscow was also made, and the Tsar’s brother,
the Grand Duke Sergius, was nominated to supersede General Dolgorouki.
General Kostanda was to act as Deputy Governor; pending the arrival of
Duke Sergius, and to this officer, along with the equally zealous
anti-Semite, Yourkoffsky, Chief of the Moscow Police, was left the
congenial task of “clearing-out” the Jews. Never was an odious work more
brutally performed. The quarter in which the poorest Jews resided was
surrounded in the night time by the police and fire-brigade forces, and
the unhappy creatures were routed from their dwellings as if they were
so many noxious animals. Some who had been warned a few hours beforehand
fled to the _Cemetaires_ of the city for protection, while it has been
placed on record that several fathers of families took their daughters
to houses of ill-fame for the night, presumably to find protection where
they would be least suspected of seeking refuge.
All this being done in the name of the Tsar, the populace were
encouraged to co-operate in executing what they were led to believe to
be the Emperor’s wish. Massacres, raping, and looting became once more
the direct results of barbarous decrees. Some 3000 Jews were driven from
Moscow after many had been killed. Hundreds of business men were ruined,
being compelled to close their establishments, and to dispose of
valuable stock at prices which could not realise enough to discharge
their obligations. Those who were able to purchase transport to America
emigrated, but the mass of the expelled victims wended their way toward
the Pale, there to add still more to the congestion of life and labour
which had already rendered the vast Ghetto of the Empire the home of
poverty, suffering, and despair.
The example set in Moscow was followed in Kiev and other cities, and
encouraged police and mobs elsewhere to emulate the inhuman work of
hunting the hated race from villages and towns. Throughout the year 1891
outrages were perpetrated in various provinces, despite some apparently
earnest efforts on the part of the Government to stop the more violent
outbreaks which had been provoked by its own orders. Several villages
where Jews resided were burned down. Fully 70,000 Jews emigrated during
the year; this fact confirming, in part only, a saying attributed to a
conspicuous personality in the Tsar’s confidence, that the Russian
Jewish question would be ultimately solved by the action of the “May
Laws” as these would force one-third of the Jews to emigrate; one-third
more would become converted to the Orthodox Church; while the other
third would perish of hunger!
Whatever may be the desire of the more violent anti-Semitic Russians to
see such an unparalleled programme realised in results, there can be no
doubt as to the efficiency of the anti-Jewish code of Russian laws to
work out such a solution, if it were a task legally possible of
accomplishment.
Allusion has already been briefly made to the tangle of contradictory
laws which the ukases, decrees, promulgations, and provisions relating
to the Russian Jew have created. Many of these measures appear to have
been adopted under the pressure of unreflecting prejudice or
apprehension. Some bear the impress of wise and humane intentions, born,
however, in the minds of Ministers or Monarchs too weak to carry out the
enlightened impulse which gave them birth. But the vast proportion of
these repressive and oppressive laws are frankly tyrannical in
inspiration and purpose, and the spirit that could suggest measures
which are a deliberate violation of the fundamental principles and
rights of civilised existence would be a feeling worthy to animate the
task of carrying the above programme into execution.
CHAPTER IV
A MURDER-MAKING LEGEND
M. De Plehve and the Tsar can accomplish one good and blessed work, if
so minded, without altering a single anti-Semitic Russian law. The
Emperor can destroy, in Russia, the atrocious legend about the annual
killing of Christian children by Jews as an alleged part of the Blood
Atonement in Hebrew Paschal rites. In this humane and Christian task he
is entitled to the co-operation of the Emperor of Austria, the King of
Roumania, and the heads of other Balkan States, where this story of
ritual murder is constantly circulated, and not infrequently as a part
of political propaganda. There ought to be a truly Christian crusade
waged against this infamous product of ancient, insensate, sectarian
hate. It was the inspiration of the most horrible of the Kishineff
murders; the driving of nails through the eyes of a woman, the cutting
out of the tongue of a two-year-old child, and of nameless sexual
mutilations. Thousands of innocent people have been done to death in the
centuries through which these crimes have been the bloody fruit of a
monstrous invention, born of a spirit of superstitious savagery, which
no age has yet made any honest civilised endeavour to exorcise out of
ignorant and fanatical Christian minds.
The Jews of Kishineff believe with all right-minded people everywhere
that no one deplores these shocking crimes more than the Emperor. His
humanity is beyond question in popular belief, and, should a suitable
opportunity be given, or be forthcoming, while the recollection of this
great stain on his country’s reputation remains in the public memory, he
may be counted upon, it is to be hoped, to place on record his honest
condemnation of such abominable deeds.
Let His Majesty the Tsar add this task to other noble duties with which
his name is associated. A special ukase, reciting his own disbelief in
the ritual-murder legend, and forbidding under severe penalties its
circulation anywhere, and, by any means, in Russia; ordering that this
ukase shall be read, in the Emperor’s name, in every church in the
Empire, a fortnight before Easter each year for the next five years; let
this be done, and the good work is virtually accomplished for
Christianity, for civilisation, and for Russia, too.
A similar obligation lies upon the governments of Austria and of the
Balkan States. Roumania is at present the worst of sinners in this
matter. This legend is in constant circulation through the anti-Semitic
press there, being used, in fact, as an argument in political campaigns
for driving the Jews out of the country.
A few months ago, a Roumanian paper, the _Vocea Tutovei_ of Berlad,
openly incited the populace to kill the Jews. In a series of articles,
subsequently reprinted in pamphlet form, popular ignorance and passion
were appealed to by stories of alleged Hebrew murders of Christian
children. One extract from this organ of Roumanian opinion will
illustrate at once the savage sentiments of the writer and the culpable
conduct of a government which could permit such appeals to assassination
to be openly made in a civilised land:
“The recent ritual murders committed by Jews in Austria, Bohemia,
Hungary, Germany, and Russia must still be fresh in everyone’s
mind. And how many children have disappeared in our own country!
How many mutilated bodies have been found, while the criminals have
remained undiscovered! Who are these criminals--these bloodthirsty
murderers of our prattling babes? They are the fanatical Jews that
infest our land. These monsters are the slayers of our Christian
children. They are the criminals--the Jews who have invaded our
country like locusts.
“The time for peaceful and legal restrictions is passing away. Let
all good Roumanians raise their heavy sticks and kill these
parasites of their country.”
Roumania is the western boundary of Bessarabia. Before the Berlin Treaty
of 1878, a portion of this now Russian province belonged to Roumania.
Moldavians live on each side of the frontier. The pamphlets circulated
by the anti-Semites of Berlad, containing the above and other murderous
appeals to fanaticism, would inevitably find their way into the
Moldavian community of Kishineff, where Pavolachi Kroushevan, himself a
Moldavian, was carrying on a similar bloodthirsty propaganda in the
_Bessarabetz_ against the Jews of Bessarabia. The Governments which
continue to permit this kind of press savagery are themselves morally
responsible for the crimes which find their instigation in such
writings. Nor can diplomatic denunciation, after the occurrence of deeds
of infamy such as those of Kishineff, atone in any way to the outraged
sense of civilised human feeling for what Leo Tolstoy rightly terms the
“permitted assassinations” of innocent people. For the law or Government
which encourages by indifference the circulation of these atrocious,
fabricated tales of the slaughtering of Christian children by Hebrews,
is either the indifferent guardian of citizens’ lives or the cowardly
accomplice of a fanatical ruffianism which it is unable or unwilling to
grapple with and put down.
There is another and a higher authority that can deal with the
propagation of this crime-stained legend, especially in Catholic
countries like Austria and Poland. This is the authority of the Holy
See.
A few years ago a parish priest of Vienna revived the old story of the
alleged murder of the boy Simon of Trent, for ritual purposes, by Jews
in the fifteenth century. He republished particulars of what purported
to be the crime so named, but unfairly suppressed the facts associated
with the accusation, which would explain the whole charge away. The Jews
who had confessed to the murder of the boy did so under the application
of torture; a pretty common method of extorting desired “information” of
trumped-up charges by the various authorities in the Middle Ages. The
confession thus wrung from the accused by the application of the rack
led to their execution, but it is on record that Pope Sixtus IV.
denounced their conviction and death as a murder.
The reverend anti-Semite tried his hand again, in the same line, in
conjunction with a renegade Jew, and came to grief. One Paul Meyer
“revealed” how a Christian boy, to his (Meyer’s) own knowledge, was
kidnapped and slaughtered for the purposes of Paschal rites by the hated
Hebrews. The sensational story was published in an anti-Semitic Vienna
newspaper. This was a deliberate challenge to inquiry and refutation.
The challenge was accepted by the Jews of the city, in a prosecution of
the _Vaterland_, when Meyer confessed in open court that the whole story
was an invention of his own, palmed off on both the priest and the
public.
An ex-professor of Hebrew in the University of Prague, an enthusiastic
student of Eastern cabalistic writings, has contributed very materially
to the revival in Poland, Bohemia, and Austria of these miserable
inventions. He has written a work in Latin on the subject, and he gives
the impression of an honest fanatic who is in the grip of a mysterious
investigation. He also falls back upon a converted Jew as a guide, and
is led to believe in the authenticity of certain cabalistic writings
shown to him by this man, Brimamo. He quotes from one of these books,
the “Ha-likkutim,” a passage which the credulous _padre_ is convinced
proves the employment of the blood of Christian maidens in these
unhallowed Hebrew ceremonies. This quotation is found, on critical
examination, to refer to a passage in the Bible dealing with the
supernatural world, in which the colour of the blood of a virgin is
taken as emblematical of the Day of Judgment. There is nothing whatever
beyond this in Brimamo’s work to justify the inference that Christian
maidens’ blood is sometimes used in Jewish sacrifices.
In the same book Canon Röhling draws upon other cabalistic documents for
suggestions and innuendoes tending to uphold his case, but in every
instance in which he quotes passages to support his propositions, they
are found, on close inspection, to convey no such meaning as he attempts
to attach to them. There is not, in fact, a solitary authenticated
instance of this sanguinary sacrifice given in his two works, “My
Replies to the Rabbis,” and “The Controversy and the Human Sacrifices of
Rabbinism,” both published in 1883. Still, these writings have been
widely read, and have done much harm in misleading minds that look for
truth and Christian guidance from clerical authors.
Can nothing effective be done to kill this legend? I quote in an
appendix, some pronouncements from Bulls issued by Popes Innocent IV.,
Gregory X., Martin V., Nicholas V., and Paul III., all reprobating this
blood accusation as being a groundless and monstrous invention, and a
general pretext for the plundering of Jews. These enlightened words of
denunciation were addressed to the rulers, prelates, and people of the
Middle Ages, some of them so far back as six hundred years ago. Can this
example not be followed now when the reputable press of all civilised
countries would willingly co-operate in a just crusade against this
hoary-headed, crime-stained infamy?
It has been urged that as anti-Semitism in France, Austria, and Germany
is a political movement, a denunciation of the use of the murder-legend
calumny would probably be misconstrued. This is a highly sensitive but
very inconsistent position. Surely, when Socialism--which is a far
greater and nobler political movement in each of these countries--can
be vigorously condemned, on assumed moral and Catholic grounds; an
agitation relying upon literature and legends, convicted of forgery and
lies, and condemned again and again by the Holy See itself; and which
has the killing or torture of fellow beings as its _ultima ratio_,
should claim some measure of earnest repudiation and moral censure at
the hands of Catholic Powers, temporal and spiritual.
His Holiness Pope Pius, the Emperor of Austria, and the Tsar could
easily draw the fangs of this murder legend. To no other minds in
Christendom could the consequences of this horrible calumny of long and
infamous vitality be more odious or hateful. It is a reproach and
disgrace to Christianity that certain notorious clerical organs in
France and Austria persistently circulate these incitations to fanatical
outrage, and a stain upon the political life of Austria, Roumania, and
Russia, whose governments tolerate this poisonous propaganda. It is a
pestiferous evil that could be readily stamped out if the wish and will
to rid Europe of its baleful influence could overcome the opportunist
counsels of a spiritless _entourage_, which prevent the three best and
greatest potentates in Europe from realising all the evils, religious,
moral, and political, that spring from this perennial source of
shameless sectarian rancour, bloodshed, and crime.
CHAPTER V
RUSSIA’S ATTITUDE
The absolute truth about the plan and purpose of the massacres at
Kishineff in April may be difficult to determine amidst the conflicting
accounts of Russian officials, and of Jewish witnesses of what actually
occurred. The wronged and the wrongers seldom or ever agree as to
disputed facts. But there can be no doubt upon any mind conversant with
the state of Russian feeling, and the trend of Russia’s domestic policy,
as to the intolerable position of the Hebrew subjects of the Tsar. No
facts are concealed in this connection. They are as objective and
undisguised as the Russian policeman, and as patent to every inquirer
from Odessa to Warsaw as the rivers Dniester and Vistula. I brought away
with me after a journey through the Jewish Pale, the conviction that
there is no horizon of hope for the Russian Jew in any prospective era
of future emancipation. He is and will remain an alien until the
politically impossible comes to be a reality--until the Empire of the
Tsar elects to adopt a government of constitutional liberty.
He is under no personal or political restraint, it is true, in the
matter of emigration. The Jews are free to leave Russia to-morrow. Such
freedom of action, however, is like the tempting waters which only
aggravated the thirst of Tantalus by the mockery of a nearness made
impossible to reach. The poverty of the vast mass of these unfortunate
people renders the thought of finding refuge in America or the Argentine
a hopeless dream. And, as an educated Russian official said, in
discussing this question with the writer, “What can we do with them?
They are the racial antithesis of our nation. A fusion with us is
impossible, owing to religious and other disturbing causes. They will
always be a potential source of sectarian and economic disorder in our
country. We cannot admit them to equal rights of citizenship for these
reasons and, let me add, because their intellectual superiority would
enable them in a few years’ time to gain possession of most of the posts
of our civil administration. They are a growing danger of a most serious
nature to our Empire in two of its most vulnerable points,--their
discontent is a menace to us along the Austrian and German frontiers,
while they are the active propagandists of the Socialism of Western
Europe within our borders. The only solution of the problem of the
Russian Jew is his departure from Russia.”
This is the conclusion to which one is irresistibly driven by a full
survey of the cruelly anomalous position occupied by the Jew in relation
to all the dominant factors of Russian life and government. He is under
the obligations of citizenship, military and otherwise, without its
privileges or full protection. Special taxes are imposed upon him. He
is confined by law within a kind of economic concentration camp. The
legal difficulties put in the way of the full exercise of his industrial
capacities are both the source of his poverty and of his oppression. He
cannot own land, within the Pale, or work it; but he must live.
Therefore, he is compelled to exploit those who will hate him all the
more on account of a resourcefulness which conquers some of the
obstacles purposely placed in the way of his livelihood. His faith is
assailed by almost every form of human temptation, including the
terrorism of such periodical crimes as those perpetrated a few weeks
ago. And the very fidelity which enables him to resist both the powers
of proselytism and of persecution, only adds one more prejudiced ground
to the many which appeal against him to the religious side of an
autocratic regime which decrees that an invulnerable heterodoxy is one
of the worst of crimes in Russia.
The Jew has no friend outside his own race in Russia, while not
infrequently those of his own household are the worst paymasters of his
talent and industry. The peasant dislikes him for his race, his
religion, and his exploiting propensities. The artisan and labourer in
urban centres of the crowded Pale look upon him as an economic
black-leg, because he is compelled to work at anything for the wages of
bare subsistence, in order to live. He is, by the cruel decree of his
fate, and not by choice, the cause of low wages. This is one reason why
a great number of the sanguinary rioters at Kishineff were Russian and
Moldavian workingmen.
The shop-keeper and petty dealer see in their Hebrew rival a competitor
who outclasses them in all the dexterous tricks of trade, and who can
succeed where the business capacity of the Slavonic gentile is wanting
in perseverance and resource. Here hatred is born of a sordid jealousy.
As rich merchant and banker he is tolerated. The wealthy Russian Jew
is, at present, a Russian necessity. Odessa, one of the richest cities
of the Empire, is “run” by the superior abilities of the proscribed
race. Its commercial prosperity would collapse to-morrow if they were
expelled; just as the business and progress of Kishineff have been all
but paralysed by the outbreak against them at Easter.
Anti-Semitic prejudices grow as we proceed from the rivalries of
economic pursuits to the classes and interests associated with the
administration of the Empire. The policeman knows the Jew is made an
alien by law, and that the necessity he is under to evade the legal
disabilities to which he is subject renders him a profitable source of
blackmail. Where his poverty repels the exercise of this corruption, the
guardian of the peace looks upon the Jew with all the mixed
antipathy--racial, religious, and economic--of the superstitious,
uniformed Mujik.
In the lower and middle grades of the civil service the Jew is feared
as well as disliked. He is known to be far more intellectual, more
industrious, and more capable than the average Russian, and there is a
dread lest employment in the innumerable posts of a vast administration
should, at some future period, be thrown open to a race so versatile, so
sober, and so ambitious to succeed. In every Royal School or Gymnasium
to which a Jewish youth is admitted--the number must never exceed 10 per
cent. of the whole attendance, in some schools not 5 per cent.--the son
of Abraham is certain to eclipse his rivals, and to walk off with
whatever honours are to be won.
I have already indicated the feeling, candidly expressed, of the higher
branches of the public service on the subject of the Jew as a possible
rival in that department of the state. An equality of opportunity would
mean a monopoly of posts by sheer force of mental and general equipment.
The Russian officer is not averse to the Jew as a soldier, but he must
never be--a Russian officer.
Finally, the Government of Russia looks upon the Jew as the most
dangerous of disturbing factors in the rapid development of the
industrial life of the Empire, and as a political enemy within the ambit
of its most vulnerable western frontier. He is believed to be the active
propagandist of Socialism, and he is known to have powerful political
and financial allies among the pressmen and financiers of France,
England, and Germany--allies who can strike at Russia’s financial
credit, external policies, and moral prestige, in retaliation for the
legal outlawry of their race within the dominions of the Tsar.
Against these governmental, religious, industrial, social, and national
forces of a huge empire combined, what chance has a proscribed race,
alienised by law, of obtaining redress? It is a hopeless struggle, look
at it how we may. The duties and obligations of civilised rule may be
put before the Russian Government, and the pleas of an enlightened
jurisprudence advanced in behalf of the Russian Jew, but with what
result? Russia makes answer, “These people are not of us, any more than
the Chinese of San Francisco, or the ten millions of emancipated
Negroes, are free citizens of the United States Republic. They are a
danger to the Empire from within, more so than the existence of the Boer
Republics of South Africa ever was a menace to the prestige of the
British Empire, the removal of which, nevertheless, required a great and
costly war. We claim the right to resort to our own measures, as other
Powers have done, as France is doing to-day, to safeguard the peace of
the realm, and to minimise the risks involved in having an unfriendly
element, composed of five or six millions of an unpopular race, located
where a German or an Austrian attack might some day be made upon our
Western frontier. We cannot expect, or induce, other countries to open
the gates of emigration to these undesirables, but we will not permit
any Power or people to coerce us to admit this race to the common rights
of Russian citizenship or nationality.”
This may be despotic, irrational, and all the rest, but it is the answer
which every external attempt to nationalise the Semitic alien will
obtain from the Russian Empire. The voices of Maxime Gorky, and of
Tolstoy, and of a few other noble spirits to the contrary are but moral
foils which exhibit by contrast the omnipotent strength of the resisting
and resistless ruling influences behind the Tsar; military, religious,
social, and industrial; which stand remorseless and irremovable between
the Russian Jew and justice and equality.
Russia’s point of view must be understood if she is to be rightly judged
in this matter, and if the friends of a persecuted people are to be
persuaded to concentrate their sympathetic energies upon some feasible
remedy for an intolerable wrong. Socialism has, as yet, about as much of
a hold and of a hope in Russia, as Protestantism has in Spain, or
Catholicity in Turkey. The soil is not congenial; but the propaganda is
a most serious danger which the Russian powers that be fear more as a
potential future element of industrial and political agitation than as a
present trouble to the forces of law and order. Socialism is like the
Jew, an unwelcome intruder, and both are inseparably associated in the
ruling and official mind of the Empire.
Russia’s industrial development, like the extension of her power and
prestige, must be along lines selected by herself. She wants no external
tutelage, and will have no outside meddling in her domestic affairs.
Nor, is she taking this stand out of any unwillingness to see labour
rightly rewarded, or from any desire that a favoured class or protected
interest shall sweat or treat unjustly the growing industrial population
of her manufacturing centres. Any such imputation would be untrue and
unfair. There is scarcely a practicable reform in the social and
industrial programme of Trades-Unionism which some department of Russian
administration is not trying its best, at the present time, to put into
operation, in some tentative way, for the benefit of the mill, and
foundry, and general workshop hands of Russia’s manufacturing
activities;--old-age pensions, profit-sharing, sanitation of mills and
mines, healthy housing of workers, even to the copying of the
_Arbeiterstadt_ of Mülhausen, in the _Cité ouvrière_ of Dago-Kertell.
But there shall be no Trades-Unionist combination in Russia except what
emanates from and is sanctioned by a paternal government.
In many respects and ways Russian autocracy is ahead of constitutional
countries in enlightened efforts to solve the complex labour problem of
our day. The manifold evils of overcrowded urban centres are recognised
and guarded against in the encouragement of rural manufacturing
villages. Plans for enabling artisans to acquire the ownership of their
homes are the work of Commissions and Societies subsidised by the
Government for this special task. There are apprenticeship schools for
the children of mechanics, “public workshops” for the unemployed in
times of distress, and other progressive schemes having the social and
moral betterment of the worker in view. These and kindred reforms are
engaging the serious and earnest attention of the Tsar’s ministerial
advisers.
In one other most important respect the Russian Government is setting an
example in beneficent industrial enterprise which more progressive
countries might follow with marked advantage to their labouring classes.
This is the national encouragement offered to the “Koustari,” or rural,
industries. These play an essential part in the national economy of the
Russian people. They help to keep families together, and to minimise
migratory labour. These cottage industries give remunerative employment
during slack seasons and winter months to several million people, and
yield an addition to the general wage fund of the country averaging
five hundred million roubles a year. All these industries have direct
economic relation to the greatest of all Russian industries, that of
agriculture. They, therefore, play a doubly profitable part in the
social welfare of the people, in helping to maintain a due economic
balance between rural and urban labour, and in upholding the primary
importance of land industries to the physical and moral health of the
nation.
Russia, unlike England, recognises the national danger of physical
degeneracy through overcrowded manufacturing cities. Knowing how the
prospect of better wages in these centres attracts the workers of the
soil to the employment of mills and foundries, she sets herself the task
of encouraging the growth of such counter-industries as will tend to
minimise the extent of this movement. Not alone does she want to remove
mills from the unhealthy environment of crowded towns by placing them
amidst rural surroundings, she also wisely tries to add to the
necessarily scant money earnings of farmers’ families the profits of the
Koustari occupations, the better to preserve the home influence and the
healthy atmosphere of village industrial life for the general benefit of
the people’s physique and to the great moral advantage of the Russian
masses.
All this is necessary to be understood in order to comprehend the
antipathy, economic and political, which the Russian Jew excites in the
official and the general Russian mind.
And, above all, this one additional fact must, in like manner, be
grasped in any useful discussion of the problem of the Russian Jew.
The enormous development of the industrial resources and energies of
Russia is too frequently ignored in an unfriendly foreign press, which
finds space and speculation only for the external policy and generally
exaggerated plans of the Tsar’s Government. What Russia is accused of
coveting in Manchuria, or of devising in Persia, and not what she is
strenuously and rapidly achieving in the sphere of her vast domestic
activities, exercises the critical attention of West-European and
American journalism. And yet, the wide and sure and extraordinary
progress that is being made in the economic development of a great
empire, as self-contained in its measureless natural resources as the
United States, and with an assured domestic market for most of her
manufactured products in a population of fully 140,000,000--growing at a
rate of upwards of 2,000,000 annually out of a natural increase--ought
to be a subject of infinitely greater concern to the public thought of
commercial rivals like Great Britain and the United States--as it
undoubtedly is to the keener sense of German competition--than what
Russian policy may or may not mean in its diplomatic trend in the Far
East.
Russia is at the beginning of an enormous manufacturing career. Her
surplus urban population will be drawn upon for the needs of her mills
and factories. An artisan class, in a comparatively new sphere of
industrial energy, is rapidly growing, made up of young men who must
inevitably gather new ideas of social life among the influences of
associated labour; a class to be recruited from an uneducated peasantry,
susceptible to new impressions of capital and labour, of wages and
economic rights, of citizenship and political teachings, and of the
contending human rivalries of class interests for wealth and influence
and power in the rule of the state.
In a word, the government of a country in which freedom of the press is
limited, and the right of public meeting denied; where no Parliament, or
Congress, exists for the ventilation of theories, the discussion of
reforms, or the chances of legislative redress, finds itself confronted
with the problem of a huge working class, soon to number millions, and
to be emancipated from peasant ignorance; a class, too, which must
contribute its quota of strength to Russia’s enormous army. And this
autocratic guardian of an Empire’s destinies says: “The enemy of my
household is the Jew. I have treated him badly, and he naturally resents
it. He retaliates by preaching Socialism in my industrial centres. He is
in alliance with the avowed enemies of the Empire in Western Europe. For
all these reasons, out he must go! Let him be off to any country whose
Constitution may admit him to equal citizenship with people who are
ruled by other systems and laws than ours. In Russia the Jew is both a
domestic and an Imperial danger, and it is our duty to rid ourselves of
its cause.”
CHAPTER VI
THE ZIONIST SOLUTION
No truer general statement of the case of the Russian Jew, or nobler
appeal to enlightened humanity in his behalf, has been made in our time
than by Cardinal Manning, in a letter addressed to a London meeting in
December, 1890. Every word of this superbly Christian epistle is as true
and as applicable to-day as it was thirteen years ago, and I quote the
concluding sentences of it here as being both a powerful argument in
behalf of an oppressed people, and as a testimony to the liberty-loving
spirit of a Cardinal of the Catholic Church:
“Six millions of men in Russia are so hemmed in and hedged about by
penal laws as to residence, and food, and education, and property, and
trade, and military service, and domiciliary visits, and police
inspection as to justify the words, that ‘no Jew can earn a
livelihood,’ and that ‘they are watched as criminals.’ The narratives
before us may be highly coloured, they may be overcharged; but, all
deductions made, they show both a violent and a refined injustice, which
is perpetually as ‘iron entering the soul.’
“And, further, when the cry of such a multitude of suffering is wafted
through the commonwealth of Europe, it is surely a part of the comity of
nations that we should, with all due respect, make known what we have
heard, in the confidence that, if things be so, the first to seek out
and to treat such evils would be the supreme authority of the Realm from
whence those wailing voices came.
“We show no disrespect in believing that what reaches our ears may not
have reached the ears of those who are most highly exalted. Knowledge
travels more readily on lower levels, and often does not ascend to the
highest regions; the highest are, as a rule, the last to know the
excesses and malpractices of their local authorities. We, therefore,
with all due reverence, petition the Imperial Ruler of all the Russias
to take account of all the Governors of the Jewish Pale; and even this
we should not venture to do, if the sufferings alleged were not of such
a kind and of such an extent as to violate the great and primary laws of
human society. On this broad and solid base of natural law the
jurisprudence of European civilisation rests. The public moral sense of
all nations is created and sustained by participation in this universal
common law; when this is anywhere broken, or wounded, it is not only
sympathy but civilisation that has the privilege of respectful
remonstrance.
“I am well aware of the counter allegations, not only of the
anti-Semitic press, but of guarded and responsible adversaries;
nevertheless, it is certain that races are as they are treated. How can
citizens who are denied the rights of naturalisation be patriotic? How
can men, who are only allowed to breathe the air, but not to own the
soil under their feet, to eat only a food that is doubly taxed, to be
slain in war, but never to command--how shall such a homeless, an exiled
race live the life of the people among whom they are despised, or love
the land which disowns them?
“It would seem to me that if such were the sufferings of any nation,
even in Central Africa, we should be not only justified, but called on,
to intervene. How much more, then, in behalf of a race who, in their
past and their present and their future, demand of us an exceptional
reverence; a race with a sacred history of nearly four thousand years; a
present without parallel;, dispersed in all lands, with an imperishable
personal identity, isolated and changeless, greatly afflicted, without
home or fatherland; visibly reserved for a future of signal mercy.
“Into this I will not enter further than to say that any man who does
not believe in their future must be a careless reader, not only of the
old Jewish Scriptures, but even of our own. It is not our duty to add to
their afflictions, nor to look on unmoved, and to keep the garments when
others stone them.
“If we know the mind of our Master who prayed for them in His last hour,
we owe to them both the justice of the Old Law and the charity of the
New.”
I have come from a journey through the Jewish Pale, a convinced believer
in the remedy of Zionism. I failed to see any other that can offer an
equal hope of success. It is a necessity of the actual situation, and
faces the growing perils of the position of the Russian Jew with a
courageous plan of repatriation. Hope for partial or ultimate
emancipation in Russia there is none. Other countries cannot be expected
to relieve Russia of the unhappy victims of oppression and poverty.
Where, then, are they to go?
Russia has a direct responsibility in their impoverishment and
discontent, and this fact demands at her hands every help which the
Zionist plan requires in its execution, financial co-operation with the
wealthy Jews of Christendom in providing the cost of emigration, the
purchase of suitable land in Palestine, and in obtaining the necessary
rights of settlement and guarantee of protection from the Turkish
Government. This latter provision is generally believed to be an affair
of money, to be arranged with the Sultan; but, in any case, the moral
help of other great Powers would not be refused in such a chivalrous,
humane enterprise when once the influential Jews of Europe and America
made it, as they easily could do, an appeal for assistance to the sense
of justice and of reparation of the nations of Christendom.
It is some eighteen years since I rode from Mount Carmel to Nazareth,
thence to Tiberias, and back through the beautiful plain of Jezreel,
down to Nablus in Samaria on the way to Jerusalem. Jericho, the wilds
of Judea, the country to the west, across the pastoral lands of Sharon,
were also visited. I found the German Templer colonies at Haifa, Nablus,
and Sarona wearing all the appearance of comfortable clusters of garden
and farming homesteads. The Jews of Bessarabia are as sober and as
industrious and, at least, as intelligent as these German emigrants.
They have progressed in South Russia when permitted to cultivate the
land. Why should they not be able to grow grain in Galilee, fruit and
olives in Samaria, meat in the mountains of Judea, and wine and other
products congenial to the soil and climate in the vale of Sharon, and
elsewhere, in a land which once flowed rich with milk and honey?
Christendom is prejudiced against this race because its sons are
generally non-producers of wealth, and mere exploiters of the fruits and
necessities of direct industry. This is largely, but by no means wholly,
true, while the taunt bears with it the spirit of Pharisaical virtue
unconscious of self-accusation. Twenty per cent. of the Jews of
Bessarabia are artisans and labourers working for wages. But, if the
race generally are exploiters and extortioners, who made them so? Are
not historical conditions and centuries of deliberate oppression in
every Christian land (Ireland honourably excepted) answerable for the
Hebrew predilection to profit-seeking by other than the methods of
immediate production? And are the Gentiles of the lofty moral school of
critics so much above the doctrine and practice of the commercial greed
of buying in the cheapest, and selling in the dearest, market?
“Expedients of every kind and shade,” writes Herbert Spencer
(“Philosophical Essays,” vol. ii., on “Commercial Morality”), “from
innocent deception to anything you please, excepting open robbery,
prevail even in the higher grades of the commercial world. Innumerable
frauds, untruth, both in words and in principles of business, and
carefully devised subterfuges are generally in vogue, while many of
these have become established as commercial usages.”
It is on record somewhere that no Jew has ever become a millionaire in
Scotland or in the United States. His powers of dextrous money-mongering
are blunted in some pronounced Christian lands by methods as expert and
morals as accommodating as his own. But, whatever ground there may be
for the somewhat general feeling prevailing against the Hebrew race for
its financial unscrupulousness ought to make for and not against the
Zionist movement, which seeks to find a place of refuge and of safety
for those whose present sufferings and unhappy prospects appeal to the
best side of our common humanity.
Cardinal Manning’s noble words, quoted in support of this humble
advocacy of the cause of an oppressed people, will surely find a direct
response in every kindly heart and head which may reflect upon the story
and the sufferings of the Russian Jew.
PART II
_THE KISHINEFF MASSACRES_
CHAPTER VII
I. ORIGIN AND AGENCY
Kishineff is the capital of Bessarabia, the seat of its government, and
the chief centre of its trading industry. It has a present population of
130,000, of a mixed ethnological community. The Russians number about
8000; the Moldavians, 50,000; the Jews, 50,000, with Bulgarians, Serbs,
Greeks, Macedonians, and Germans accounting for the balance.
In the time of the Romans, Bessarabia formed part of the Imperial colony
known as Dacia, and the Moldavian peasantry, who form the greater part
of its present population, are said to be descendants of Roman
“undesirables” who were forcibly exiled to the Balkan regions. From
thence they emigrated, in time, to the rich lands lying west of the
Dniester. The succession of conquering and colonising peoples who fought
for the possession of this most fruitful region is historically
bewildering. Cymri and Scythians, Greeks and Getæ, Romans and Goths,
Huns and Avars, Bulgars and Slavonians; until, in the seventh century,
the Bessi arrived, and gave the country its name of “Bessarabia.” Then
came, in due course, Ugrians, Kumans, Polovtzians, and Mongolians. In
the Middle Ages the Republic of Genoa founded colonies along the
Dniester, which in turn gave way to an invasion of Turks. During the
eighteenth century Russian power asserted itself in the land, and
portions of the southern provinces which belonged to Turkey were, in our
own time, ceded to the great Empire, thus completing Russian possession
of the most fought-for country embraced within the wide dominions of the
Tsars.
Thirty years ago Kishineff was on a level with an average Turkish town.
According to its present Mayor, M. Karl Schmidt, the city owes its rapid
rise and prosperity, and its present flourishing trade, solely to the
Jews. They built up its commerce, organised its banks, developed its
general business, and made it the handsome, thriving city it is to-day.
The country around the city is a great wine-growing region, and the
Moldavian peasants are the chief producers of this most marketable
commodity. They are not an intelligent race, and are even more
superstitious, if possible, than the average Russian Mujik. They do not
migrate from their villages in search of labour, like Russian workers in
the central provinces. Their spare time is spent in eating sunflower
seeds, and in drinking vodka during the winter months.
The economic relations between these Moldavian wine-growers and the Jews
of Kishineff are most intimate. They have no business capacity whatever,
and they dispose of their produce to the Jew brokers and dealers, who
make, at least, a ten per cent. profit on such transactions.
These intimate trading connections have not led, as recently alleged, to
any marked ill-feeling against the intermediaries; though it is only
natural to assume that the profits of the skilled exploiter are not
always a source of satisfaction to the mind of the peasant producer.
What I was assured of, in this connection, from all sources of
information sought by me in Kishineff, was that the origin of the
outbreak at Easter was not, in any sense, traceable to these dealings
between the Jew merchants and brokers of the city and the surrounding
Moldavian farmers.
The genesis of the recent massacres is to be found in the special
legislation which gives the Jew the mockery of civil rights within a
pale of legal domicile. There are, at least, a hundred laws, ordinances,
and special regulations having for object the coercing of him in all
his religious, social, and industrial rights; even within this Pale of
Settlement.[2] He is crowded into urban centres and denied, under
penalties, access to where conditions of work and location might relieve
him of his poverty and wretched home. Fines are levied upon him for
infringements of these coercive regulations, and this fact induces him
to circumvent such restrictive measures, while it appeals also to the
police to help him to do so--for a consideration.
The first serious trouble experienced by the Jews of Bessarabia began
about eight years ago. A _sous-prefect_ of police, named Von Oglio,
appointed in the Beltzy district by the present Vice-Governor,
Ostrogoff, harassed the Jews by exactions and blackmail until they
“struck” against being further bled in this manner. He retaliated as
follows:
On the Hebrew festival of Yom Kippur, one of the most solemn ceremonies
of the year, Von Oglio entered the local synagogue, seized the Torah,
or sacred writing, flung it on the floor, ordered a policeman to pick it
up, to seal it, and then had it conveyed to--the local prison! He next
expelled the small congregation, and placed his seal upon the lock of
the place of worship.
He then applied the “May Laws” in all their rigour, and forced all who
had not special permits to leave the town, even men who had lived there
in peace for thirty years; taking proceedings against them under
circumstances which led to the death or injury of their cattle and the
ruin of their crops. This conduct on the part of the local head of the
police excited a corresponding feeling of hostility among the local
peasants. They saw the guardians of the law ill-treating those whom they
were supposed to protect, and they followed the example thus set them.
Suits for reparation and damages were brought by some of the wealthier
victims of this police tyranny, but no redress was obtained. Von Oglio
was removed, without degradation or punishment, to another district, and
no further steps were taken by the authorities.
The chief instigator of the recent massacres now appeared on the scene.
Up to 1894 the only paper in the province of Bessarabia was the
_Bessarabsky Viestnik_, a journal of a moribund existence. In this year
one Pavolachi Kroushevan, of Moldavian origin, acquired the dying sheet,
and amalgamated it with a new daily paper, the _Bessarabetz_. The
Vice-Governor, Ostrogoff, was press censor, in virtue of his higher
post, and he extended his patronage to Kishinev’s only daily organ in
the most marked manner.
Kroushevan commenced at once a vicious anti-Semitic campaign. He singled
out for special attack municipal offices in which Jews were employed as
clerks and in other capacities, and demanded that the hated Hebrews
should be driven out to make room for Christians. This was done.
Popular feeling was worked up in this manner to such a heat that the
paper became the dominating force in the public life of the city. It was
the only paper read in Kishineff. Its circulation reached 20,000, and
its articles against the Jews were directly addressed to the police,
soldiers, workingmen, Seminarists (Kishineff possesses half-a-dozen
Royal and Ecclesiastical Colleges, Gymnasiums, and High Schools), and to
all the lower employés of the Governor’s, Post Office, Telegraph, and
other public departments.
From fiery denunciation the Editor progressed to deliberate incitations
to violence. Articles headed “Death to the Jews!”--“Crusade against the
Hated Race!”--“Down with the Disseminators of Socialism!” followed each
other, while Kroushevan organised a society under the patronage of his
paper, in which the most rabid of his pupils in the anti-Semitic war
were enrolled.
All this was ostentatiously tolerated by the present Vice-Governor,
Ostrogoff.
Kroushevan got into financial difficulties a few months ago, and removed
to St. Petersburg, leaving the paper in charge of the deputy-editor, but
continuing himself as directing head of the staff. Its ferocious
anti-Jewish spirit and propaganda were in no way abated by this
arrangement.
This brings us down, in the matter of time, to a few weeks before the
recent massacres.
There next happened two events that gave the _Bessarabetz_ a match with
which to explode the mine of popular fury it had been building in the
popular mind for four years. One was a murder of a boy at a village
south of Kishineff, called Doubossar; and the other the suicide of a
girl within the city itself. These were at once seized upon by the
Kroushevan organ as “proofs” that they were instances of Semitic ritual
murder! They were deliberately declared to be cases of the sacrifice of
Christian blood in the performance of Hebrew rites at Passover! Steps
were taken at once to put the true facts before the people, in public
inquests and declarations; but the match had already ignited the end of
the _Bessarabetz_ fuse, and those who were resolved to strike terror
into the “Socialist Jews” of Bessarabia and Southwestern Russia paid no
heed to the documents and evidence which told the truth about the
Doubossar boy’s death and the girl who took poison and who passed away
in the Jewish Hospital in Kishineff. The plot was ripe for execution,
and the Paschal time, associated by the atrocious legend with the
kidnapping and killing of Christian children, was fixed upon for
action.
CHAPTER VIII
II. LETTERS FROM KISHINEFF[3]
To arrive at definite conclusions as to the immediate and the
contributory causes of the sanguinary outrages perpetrated upon the Jews
of Kishineff on the 19th and 20th of April, was a tedious and painful
process, beset with innumerable difficulties. To try to find the truth
amidst a mass of conflicting testimony, where murder and rape and rapine
are charged against one side, and where the actual perpetrators of these
deeds are supposed to be all in prison awaiting some form of trial,
would be a formidable task even where the law and popular feeling were
on the side of justice. But in a city where the injured class are placed
almost beyond the protection of the law of the land, and where public
passion is alike the author of outrage and the apologist of partisan
officials, it is necessarily much more difficult for the searcher after
unbiassed evidence to secure the object of his quest.
Disregarding entirely the accounts which have been published in the
Russian and foreign press, I adopted the following means of reaching
something approximating to the real facts as to the outrages; their
instigators, cause, and extent, and the measure of representative
Russian feeling in relation thereto:
On arriving at Odessa I interviewed Count Schouvaloff, the retiring
Civil Governor of South Russia, and I reproduce from memory (not having
taken notes of the conversation) what he was courteous enough to say. I
also obtained expressions of opinion from Russian and other merchants
in Odessa upon anti-Jewish feeling in South Russia; and these views,
frankly biassed as they were, will speak for a very large class of
Russian and of resident foreign Christian opinion about the Jews and
their racial and commercial character, as developed in this country.
Immediately upon reaching Kishineff, I called upon the responsible
leaders of the Jews to whom I carried letters of introduction from
London, Paris, and New York. They are prominent citizens, and are
largely of the medical profession. I obtained from them and others,
including the three Rabbis of the city, a very copious statement of all
that occurred there on the 19th and 20th of last month.
Resolved to compare this _ex parte_ testimony with such Russian evidence
as might be least tainted with anti-Semitic prejudice in this now
somewhat demoralised place, I solicited and secured interviews with two
Christian doctors of Russian blood; also with one of the highest civil
functionaries in the district, who is a noble of great wealth, of unique
local influence, whose name I am not permitted to use, but for whose
_bona fides_ I can absolutely vouch; and, in addition, I was privileged
to hold fully an hour’s conversation on the subject of the riots and
outrages with M. Karl Schmidt, who has been Mayor of the city for the
last twenty-five years without interruption; the strongest possible
evidence to his popularity with all classes of his fellow-citizens, and
to his worth and capacity as a Russian municipal ruler.
I then met by appointment in the Jewish Hospital all the medical men,
Jews, who had professionally attended to the persons brought there
during and after the riots, who could speak as to the number of killed
and wounded, and the extent of the injuries inflicted upon the
unfortunate victims of the mob’s fury. The statements made to me by
these doctors I repeated to the two Russian doctors I have already
referred to, and I have noted down their comments upon the accounts
given me by their Hebrew medical _confrères_.
My next step was to visit the scenes of outrage in the city, and in the
Skulanska Rogatka district, where the most atrocious of the crimes were
committed, and to obtain from the living witnesses of the outrages an
account of what they saw and experienced, some of them from women and
girls who went through the saturnalia of ruffianism as victims of
outrage and of rape.
From these tales of revolting deeds I proceeded to the Jewish Cemetery,
where I saw and counted the forty-four newly made graves of the
massacred men, women, and children, whose freshly turned mounds stand
there to-day with their simple Hebrew wooden marks of identity, as an
appeal to the God alike of Christian and of Jew against deeds done in
the pretended name of religion which might even shame devils to
perpetrate.
I have taken pictures of these graves, of the shed in which the young
girl of thirteen was assaulted, and killed with four men, of groups of
little girls and women who passed through the two nights of horror in
the quarter where the Moldavian fiends committed the worst deeds, and of
houses in which numerous murders were committed.
Knowing how unlikely it would be for me, or for any man, to obtain from
modest maidens and respectable married women any account, or even
admission, of their having been violated, I sought the Rabbis of the
city, and got from them and from some of the victims whom I met there
particulars of the outrages to which they and others were subjected.
These will, as far as the subject can permit it, be dealt with in
subsequent letters.
Let me to this extent forestall what I shall have to say about the
violation of women. All the worst of these crimes were the work of
Moldavians, and not of Russians. This, I am convinced, is absolutely
true. Many of these Moldavians are descended from the colony of convicts
and criminals founded by Pagan Rome in the country now known as
Roumania; and the several centuries’ experience by the race of Turkish
rule, before being inflicted as subjects upon more civilised
governments, has not morally improved the original taint in the blood of
their present-day representatives.
Two letters,[4] one signed by Count Tolstoy and the other from Maxime
Gorky, addressed to the committee in charge of the labour of relief in
Kishineff, express the hateful feeling of indignation and of abhorrence
with which the cultured Russian mind looks upon these revolting deeds of
mediæval savagery in our day.
_Letter I_
KISHINEFF, May 21st.
The first survey of the situation here satisfies me there is no
likelihood of any further serious outbreak for the present. The
military precautions seem fully adequate to the task of dealing with any
emergency.
The Jews, however, are still terror-stricken, and in fear of renewed
violence. Wealthy families have fled the city, but the vast mass of the
Hebrew community, numbering fully fifty thousand souls, are too poor to
purchase the means of seeking protection in flight.
All the Russians I have met, from Odessa to this city, condemn the
abominable acts of the anti-Semitic mobs as strongly as other people.
The true origin of the massacres will need patient and careful inquiry,
but it can in a general way be put down to combined racial, economic,
and other factors, inflamed by violent incitations of the local
anti-Jewish press.
The latest list of the killed and wounded, and accounts of looting and
destruction, gives these figures: Killed, 44; badly wounded, 83;
injured, 500. Houses wrecked, 700; shops and small stores looted and
damaged, 600; 2000 families are said to be ruined in their business and
employment, and 10,000 people require relief.
The wealthy Jews of the City and Pale have subscribed about forty-five
thousand dollars, while donations from Germany, France, England, and the
United States amount, so far, to some thirty thousand dollars more.
All the vengeance of the mobs seems to have been directed against the
very poorest of the Jews. Shops were only looted, but artisans were
killed.
Much greater help than that already received will be required to prevent
starvation.
_Letter II_
KISHINEFF, May 25th.
During a brief halt in the South Russian capital, Odessa, I availed
myself of an opportunity of visiting the retiring Civil Governor,
Lieutenant General Count P. P. Schouvaloff, elder son of Count Paul
Schouvaloff, formerly Russian Ambassador at Berlin, and subsequently the
most popular Viceroy of Poland who reigned in Warsaw since the stormy
days of 1863. The Count received me with courtesy and affability at his
private palace, on the Nicolai Boulevard. His Excellency had, he
informed me, been abroad during the last two months, and had only just
returned to take adieux of the local officials and citizens of Odessa
before assuming the functions of his new post in the Ministry of the
Interior. Had he been in Odessa during the terrible events in Kishineff
he would, _ex-officio_, have been in possession of intimate knowledge of
the tragic occurrences, upon which he should have had no hesitation, he
was good enough to say, to have given me the frank expression of his
views. As it was, the Count regretted he could say very little indeed.
Like the rest of his countrymen who had a jealous regard for the good
repute of Russia abroad, his Excellency sincerely deplored the
frightful popular _émeute_ in the Bessarabian capital. But there were
one or two things to be borne in mind by a foreign observer and
commentator, he was anxious to point out. He need not, perhaps, he
remarked, dwell upon the unsophisticated condition of the Russian
peasant or artisan; his simplicity, ignorance, and the practically
unlimited credence he gave to sinister and plausibly mischievous
counsellors. Against these qualities in the simple Russian, there was to
be set, he insisted, the vastly superior intelligence of the Jew, of all
grades and conditions. It was, unfortunately, an indisputable fact, in
his opinion, that the Jews, more especially where they were numerically
equal to their orthodox neighbours--and in South Russian centres they
formed the predominant elements--exploited the Christians in a hundred
unscrupulous ways, to their own aggrandisement. The Jew not only knew
the law better than his Christian neighbour, but he was an adept in
circumventing it. Consequently the exploited Russian failed to obtain
legal redress, and occasionally the ignorant people, instigated by the
worst class of criminals, whose only object was plunder, took the
law--according to their own primitive conception of it--into their own
hands, with such frightful results as were lately seen in Bessarabia.
In his Excellency’s opinion the limitations placed upon the Jews in this
country should be made somewhat more stringent, in the protective
interests of the Jews themselves. That was to say, he remarked, they
should be deprived of much of the immunity under which they now
exploited the uneducated Christians. On the other hand, improvement
might be effected by a more careful choice being made in the appointment
of Governors in Jewish centres. Younger and more active men are
required, who will keep themselves fully and exactly _au courant_ with
every latent movement among the people under their jurisdiction. They
should be just, intelligent, and alert Governors, his Excellency said,
upon whom it would be practically impossible to spring any sudden
outbreak, and they should be prepared to apply instantly repressive
measures at all time.
Count Schouvaloff would not enter into any discussion of the Jewish
question in Russia, but he might be permitted to observe that it was, in
his opinion, one for Jews themselves, in the main, to solve. Generally
speaking, he had little hope in any change for the better in the
inimical feeling between Jew and Christian in Russia, so long as there
existed no standard of commercial rectitude among Jews. There was no
question of religious intolerance, although, unfortunately, it was no
difficult thing for _agents provocateurs_, whose object, as already
said, was plunder, to arouse the fanaticism of simple people on
occasions like Easter festivals.
Such is the view, briefly expressed, of a Russian Governor whom I
believe to be, from the evidence of my own countrymen in Odessa, as well
as from common repute, a singularly honest and high-minded member of the
gubernatorial class in this country.
Count Schouvaloff, on parting, cordially expressed his great admiration
for “the most progressive and enlightened nation in the world,” and
fervently trusted the United States and Russia, as the two great Pacific
powers, would ever remain the firmest of good friends and neighbours.
Interviews with three prominent Russian merchants--all men of good
social standing and repute--failed almost entirely to elicit any more
friendly expression towards the Jews. They denounced as inhuman the
iniquities of the ignorant, savage mob at Kishineff, but could not shut
their eyes to “the trade trickeries and treacheries,” to use their own
words, which, at the hands of grossly ignorant, lower-class Russians,
brought such terribly retributive punishment upon the Jews. None of
these gentlemen could, or would, admit that religious hatred or Paschal
rancour were the incentive motives of the terrible outbreaks against the
Hebrews. There were exceptions, of course, they were careful to remark,
but, generally speaking, the Russian Jew was very largely the author of
his own persecution.
It is alike disappointing and depressing to find with what remarkable
unanimity this unfavourable view is taken by an otherwise fair-minded
class of Russians, in the South Russian capital. Considering that nearly
the whole of the trade and commerce of the city and port of Odessa is in
the hands of Jews, it is only natural that the Christian merchant’s
opinion of his Hebrew rival and neighbour should be strongly tinctured
by competitive prejudice and jealousy. Much allowance must, therefore,
be made for that; but, on the other hand, ’tis no less remarkable that
among, for example, the resident foreign Consular corps and other
independent and impartial observers in the same city, it is almost
equally difficult to elicit a favourable opinion of the Jews, although
the majority of these authorities were solicitous to qualify their
opinions by pointing out to me that it is not against the Jews
themselves, but against Jewish methods and their shady commercial
_morale_ generally, that public feeling and sentiment run so strongly.
There is a comparatively large English colony in Odessa, and the
shipping is almost entirely in the hands of British ship-brokers, and,
as the exporters are all Jews, these agents have intimate knowledge of
the latter. Here, again, one hears the same condemnatory opinions of the
Jew’s want of commercial morality. This is not, I regret very much to
say, a pleasing picture of the Jewish element in this great Russian
centre, but my duty and resolve is to give a faithfully accurate record
of the opinion and views I am seeking from authentic sources and
representative people of all classes. Among educated and enlightened
Russians one finds anti-Semites who are not one whit less rancorous
than the ignorant and benighted Mujik. But the former would never dream
of murdering his Jewish neighbour.
The only other comment that suggests itself in connection with this
matter, especially in reference to Count Schouvaloff’s implied
suggestion that the Kishineff massacres are mainly due to Jewish
exploitation of artisans and peasants, and to their customary commercial
trickery, is this: The rioters of April last were not peasants, nor were
the victims of their licensed brutality usurers or profit-mongers. The
murderers and looters were chiefly labourers and artisans, led by
Seminarists; and the victims were, almost in all instances, Hebrew
workingmen and their families. The sinister influence of the local
anti-Jewish press is also a factor in the origin of the riots which his
Excellency overlooked, and which others in Odessa did not refer to when
expressing their views upon the Kishineff reign of terror at
Eastertide.
_Letter III_
KISHINEFF, May 27, 10 P. M.
An attempt to renew disorder near the market place this afternoon was
promptly dealt with and suppressed by the military. A large crowd
gathered about five o’clock, near the scene of the first outbreak on
Easter Sunday, when, as on that occasion, some boys were made use of to
test the disposition of the police and military by throwing stones at
some Jewish residences. In this instance there was no hesitation on the
part of the authorities. The military rode round the crowd at once, and
hemmed them in, when forty of the leaders and instigators were
immediately arrested and taken to the prison.
Hundreds of families fled from the city last night, owing to threats
that the deeds of Easter would be repeated to-day. The trains to Odessa
were packed with fugitives, while all the hotels in Kishineff were
crowded by Jews whose wives and daughters could not leave the city, and
dare not remain in their homes.
The more I make myself acquainted with the measures which seem to be
imperatively ordered by the central Government, the more I am convinced
that the authorities here will not hesitate for a moment to employ the
sternest methods to preserve order. Fifty ball cartridges have been
served out to each soldier. At every dangerous point in the Jewish
quarters soldiers are posted with fixed bayonets, while cavalry patrols
are constantly moving from one quarter to another, day and night, in
vigilant surveillance of the situation.
I visited the Jewish districts in the city and suburbs twice to-day, and
found everything quiet.
The city is still paying dearly, in the virtual suspension of all work,
for the riots in April. Business is completely disorganised through the
injuries done to shops and warehouses, and the flight of Jewish dealers
and employers.
I desire to appeal most urgently for assistance for the future of the
girls and married women who were savagely violated during the riots at
Easter. These girls have now no hope of marriage where the facts of
their dishonour are publicly known. Under the rigorous moral law of
Moses married women who are outraged must be divorced from their
husbands. There are several such cases among the victims of the mob’s
brutality, and their misfortunes, along with those of the young girls
referred to, make a peculiarly pathetic appeal to the sympathy of those
who may be blessed with the means by which the future of these unhappy
creatures might be made less miserable and hopeless.
There are also from fifty to one hundred orphans, children of murdered
fathers and mothers, who are to be provided for. Some of the money
subscribed from abroad ought to be specially ear-marked for alleviating
these three classes of exceptional suffering and wrong.
_Letter IV_
BERLIN, June 3d.
Finding it impossible, on account of the Russian censorship of all
telegraphic messages relating to the Kishineff outrages, to forward this
despatch from that city, I do so from this point.
I have completed an investigation as to the origin, authors, and extent
of the recent massacres and looting, while I have also traversed almost
the whole of the Jewish Pale of Settlement, from Odessa to Warsaw,
inquiring into the present state of anti-Semitic feeling arising out of
the outbreak at Easter.
The origin of the sanguinary riots at Kishineff, on the 19th and 20th of
April, was not, as reported in the Russian official press,[5] an assault
by a Jew proprietor of a merry-go-round upon a Christian woman, whereby
a mob of peasants were incited to attack the Jews. There is no truth in
this account.
The real origin of the outbreak was this:
The only daily paper in Kishineff is the _Bessarabetz_. It is a
violently anti-Semitic organ. Its chief editor is Pavolachi Kroushevan,
of Moldavian origin. He has systematically inflamed the popular feeling
against the Jews, as the foes of Russia, as the propagandists of
Socialism, and as the enemies of the Christian religion. These attacks
have been continuous for the last six years. Merchants and employers
giving work to Jews were held up to public odium, and the expulsion or
extermination of the race was openly urged. The _Bessarabetz_ has a
circulation of 20,000, chiefly among the police, municipal employés, and
workmen generally.
Two events occurring shortly before Easter were seized upon by
Kroushevan to incite the mob to murderous violence. One was the murder
of a boy belonging to the village of Doubossar, situated between
Kishineff and Odessa, by his relatives for gain. The other was the
suicide of a girl and her death at the Jewish Hospital of Kishineff.
The _Bessarabetz_ declared them to be both ritual murders by the Jews,
and summoned the Russian Christians to punish the authors of the alleged
crimes.
The chief Rabbi of Kishineff, fearing from past experiences the results
of these ferocious appeals, hastened to the Greek bishop, and implored
him to calm the popular mind by giving an episcopal assurance that no
such ritual was practised, and no such crimes committed, by the Jews.
The bishop’s reply was that he feared there was some Semitic sect which
really did indulge in the use of Christian blood in the Paschal
ceremonies, and he refused to intervene.
Ten days before the riots broke out a body of representative Jews
visited the Governor and warned him that Kroushevan’s incitations would
lead to murder, unless restrained. General Von Raaben assured the
deputation that all necessary precautions would be taken, but no attempt
was made by him to stop the appeals of the _Bessarabetz_ to the popular
anti-Semitic hatred.
Chief of Police Tchemzenkov was also requested to act in the interest of
peace, and curb the diatribes of the _Bessarabetz_. He replied that it
would “serve the Jews right if they were driven from the city for
encouraging the propaganda of Socialism.”
Having by the blood accusation articles, and through the circulation of
a Roumanian anti-Semitic pamphlet purporting to give instances of
numerous murders of Christian children by Jews, roused the Kishineff
populace to a state of savage fury, Kroushevan’s local accomplices
planned an attack for the Easter holidays. Kishineff Jews declare that
Kroushevan came to the city, in disguise, from St. Petersburg, on the
eve of the outbreak, to plan the riots. This statement I could not get
verified. A meeting was held and a plan of attack decided on. A few days
previously a band of strangers arrived at Kishineff, comprising thirty
Albanians and some Macedonians, believed to be brigands brought
especially for an attack on the Jews.
The chief instigators of the riots were Kroushevan and the staff of the
_Bessarabetz_; a doctor who is of Greek origin; a Moldavian doctor; a
Moldavian engineer; a notary; two sons of a prominent merchant; two
students, sons of prominent citizens; two Odessa students; two minor
officers, and several well-known citizens.
The actual leaders of the riots were students and Seminarists from the
Royal School and the city religious colleges.
All the statements made to me agree that the Seminarists directed the
movements of the mob on both days, disguised as labourers and strangers.
The rioters comprised thirty bands, averaging fifty each, with a
Seminarist on a bicycle directing the attack. Some of the bands were
composed of the lower employés of the various departments of the
municipality--the telegraph, post office, and other municipal offices,
but artisans and labourers, and Moldavians from the suburbs, formed the
greater body of the rioters, with the Albanian strangers above
mentioned.
These bands, with sticks and stones, but no firearms, attacked the
Jewish quarters at thirty different points simultaneously, thus proving
a deliberate plan of operation.
All the evidence that I have gathered during eight days of searching
inquiry in Kishineff convinces me that the riots were not a casual or
accidental uprising of a mob against the Jews, but formed a carefully
planned attack by the local anti-Semitic leaders, with the passive
connivance of the Chief of Police and the active encouragement of some
of his officers. Von Raaben’s deplorable weakness in not employing his
military force to quell the riots during the first day is responsible
for the horrors of that and the massacres and the violations of women
and girls of the second day.
The majority of the rioters were of Moldavian origin. These Moldavians
are as numerous as the Jews in Kishineff and constitute the most
ignorant and brutal element of the populace.
The rioting began with the looting of the Jewish shops and the
demolition of houses. The mob, finding the military not employed against
them and the police witnessing the attacks sympathetically--many of the
police taking part and participating in the looting--passed from murder
and massacre to the violation of Jewish women and girls.
I have two detailed statements, carefully prepared by eye-witnesses of
the scenes. One is a copy of the indictment of the authors of the
massacres, which has been lodged with the Procureur; the other is a
specially prepared statement by two Christian ladies, one Russian and
one Russo-French, who investigated a certain class of outrages for my
information. Here are a few instances of the worst crimes:
The Feldstein family is one of the most respectable in Kishineff. The
mob attacked their saloon on the corner of Armenia Street at noon on the
first day, Sunday, April 9. The police barracks are some forty paces
away. The soldiers and police patrolled the street during the five hours
occupied by the mob in demolishing the saloon and destroying fifteen
thousand roubles’ worth of wines. A safe containing a large sum of money
was also broken open and robbed. While that section of the mob was thus
employed, the leader of the gang found in the kitchen of the family
residence the meat for the family’s dinner. He put it on a stick,
mounted to the roof of the saloon, which is of one story, and,
addressing the mob, the police, and the military in the street,
declared, “Here are the remains of a Christian child found in the house
of the wealthy Jew, Feldstein.”
The members of the household were saved by a Russian employé of
Feldstein and a humane gendarme, from the fury of the mob. On completing
the destruction of the place, the leader drank to the health of Editor
Kroushevan from the roof of the looted premises.
At No. 13 Asia Street in the Bender Rogatka quarter some of the worst
outrages were perpetrated. Twelve families, all Jewish artisans, lived
in the yard. A mob of Moldavians, some Russian workingmen, and a few
Albanians attacked the occupants of the yard. The majority of the Jewish
men escaped, while the women and girls, numbering sixteen, concealed
themselves in a loft under the roof of a one-story house. Four Jewish
men tried to defend the place, and were murdered. Their wives and
daughters, with a dozen women and children, had taken refuge in a loft
under the roof of No. 13. It was from some of these I obtained the facts
here recorded.
One Mottel Greenspoon, a glazier, was stunned by a blow from a bludgeon,
and the Albanians mutilated him while still alive. They then choked a
child, two years old, and cut out its tongue, while alive.
The other three men were killed and then had feathers put on their
faces. As an act of desecration of the dead, two drunken women, one
Moldavian and one Bulgarian, trampled on the body of Greenspoon as it
lay mutilated in the yard. The mob then found its way to the loft where
the women were concealed, and remained several hours. All the women and
girls were violated.
All this time the police and soldiers were patrolling the open space in
front of the house where these fiendish crimes were committed. I saw
blood spattered on the walls of the rooms and yard, and picked up a
child’s schoolbook on which some murderer had wiped his hands.
At the household Foudyn, No. 33 Gostinna Street, four men and one woman
were killed. Sixteen families lived in this yard, all those of artisans.
The mob came the first day and demolished the windows and doors. It
returned the next day for massacre. Sixteen women and eight children
were concealed in the loft. The first killed was a boy of sixteen, who
begged piteously for life, saying he had done no wrong, was a scholar
of the state school, and wanted to live. His father, at the other end of
the yard, heard the boy’s cries, but could not save his life. They
killed him while the father lay stunned, unable to make an effort to
save the boy’s life. It was Mr. Baranovitch, the father of the boy, a
most intelligent and respectable man, who told me the story of his son’s
murder. As at the house in Asia Street, the women and girls who had
concealed themselves in the loft were discovered and violated by the
mob. One married woman escaped through the roof, leaped to the ground,
ran to the nearest police station, and implored help, but she was driven
out by the officer, who said the Jews were only receiving what they
deserved. Another married woman named Feya Katzap was bludgeoned to
death in the yard of this house.
The scene of the most diabolical crimes and violations committed by the
mob was the Skulanska Rogatka suburb, eighty per cent. of the population
of which are Moldavians, the Jews forming the remainder. This is the
residence of the poorer class of the workers of both races. The mob
broke into the yard on the evening of the second day, Monday, April 20.
Twenty-five persons, mostly women and children, hid themselves in a
carpenter’s shed owned by one Grillspoon. The houses in the yard were
demolished, and the mob was going away when the cry of a child in the
shed indicated the place of concealment of the women. The shed was
instantly attacked by Moldavians, led by a father and son, who were
neighbours of the Jews. Grillspoon, the owner of the shed, was killed,
together with four other artisans, who were defending the place, and one
woman, the wife of the owner, was murdered after violation. The mob also
found a pretty girl, named Feya Wouller, aged thirteen, and her fate is
so awful that I can only state that after having been violated by more
than a dozen of these Moldavians they fought for her body like famished
wolves after life was extinct. When found the next morning by her
relatives the body was seen to be literally torn in two.
The sister of Feya Wouller, whose brother died trying to defend the
women and children, assured me that the Moldavian leader and his son,
who led the mob in his district, are walking about free at this moment.
Three brothers, well-known in the city, are implicated in several of the
murders. A car-driver and his two sons took part in four murders and
general looting, but none of these men are now in prison. The Jews
killed by the car-driver and his son are Eydel Drochman, one Galantor,
one Kantor, and the boy Baranovitch.
During the worst stages of the riot the chief police officer,
Tchemzenkov, drove through the city smoking cigarettes. At one period of
the disturbance, on the morning of the second day, the Jews of the New
Bazaar organised a body of about 150 to defend themselves, but Police
Officer Dobroselsky, on finding them able to drive the mob away,
arrested several of the defenders and broke up the body.
Among the prominent looters of the Jews’ shops was the soldier servant
of a military surgeon; and a son of a murdered woman, Keyla Konza,
declares that among those who violated and killed his mother were four
common soldiers.
Joseph Newman testifies that his father was killed in the presence of
Policeman Stepanovitch.
A Christian Russian says that he heard the students from Odessa shout to
the mob, “Kill the Jews!”
A prominent employé in the municipal office in the city was declared to
be an active director of the mob, showing where the Jews lived, and
shouting, “Kill the Jews!”
Several police officers did their duty and saved many lives in the
Jewish districts. Among these was Officer Sloutschevsky, of Bender
Rogatka, who, with twelve men, drove the mob away. They went from this
to the Asia Street district, where another police officer was
patrolling, and he allowed them to commit the murders described. Some
artillery officers, who were off duty, manfully saved several Jewish
women.
On the morning of the first day’s outbreak large crosses were chalked on
the houses of the Christians living in streets inhabited by the Jews,
and none of these dwellings or shops were injured. Ikons (images) were
shown in the windows of other houses, and thus indicated places not to
be attacked. During the progress of the first day’s outrages the Bishop
of Kishineff, while on his way to dinner with a rich noble, passed in
his carriage through the mob, giving his blessing to the crowd. Upon
hearing of this incident, I refused to believe it possible, and resolved
to interview the nobleman, who is Michael Nicolavitch Kroupensky. He
received me courteously, and said:
“Bishops in Russia always give blessings to people when passing through
the streets. This was purely an accidental coincidence. The Bishop is a
humane man.”
So that the fact remains that the Bishop did pass through the mob on his
way to dinner, and uttered no word to persuade the mob to stop its
murder and pillage.
The Jews are convinced from every evidence that the outbreak was a plan
of the local anti-Semitic leaders to punish and terrorise the Jews for
their supposed propaganda of Socialism in conjunction with the leaders
of the Socialists of Western Europe. The fanaticism and superstition of
the Moldavian and Russian mob were then excited by the fabricated
stories of Jewish ritualistic murders of Christian children, to cover
the organised political plot against the local Socialist movement. I was
informed by Nobleman Kroupensky that on the day following the riots
thirty young Jews were arrested, and that five of them were found to be
in possession of pamphlets appealing to the workingmen of Russia to
demand a constitutional government like that of England. Some officials
of the municipal department, some police officers, and others connived
at the attack in order to crush the alleged Jewish Socialist
propaganda. The artisans and labourers had been appealed to by the
_Bessarabetz_ to drive out the Jew workers, who labour for low wages,
and thus do much injury to Christian families. No evidence was adduced
for me to implicate the Government at St. Petersburg in a responsibility
for the outbreak which had covered Russia’s name with shame, but
Minister de Plehve must have known that some kind of manifestation was
contemplated. Thinking, probably, the affair would not culminate in
massacres, but might assume the character of an anti-Socialist
demonstration, he took no steps to meet the emergency which actually
arose until too late. The present Vice-Governor of Bessarabia,
Councillor of State Ostrogoff, is a notorious anti-Semite. This fact,
coupled with threats of the police and the murderers at large that the
next attack will be a St. Bartholomew for the Jews of Kishineff,
explains the flight of nearly all the Jewish leaders and wealthy members
of the race from the city, leaving only the poor members of the Hebrew
community apprehending a renewed attack.
The military measures to preserve order were adequate when I left
Kishineff on Friday morning, but if these are relaxed in any way, no
protection remains for the terrorised men, women, and children against
further violence, The journal edited by Kroushevan is still circulating
in the city, and, while more restrained in its language than before the
massacres, it is keeping alive the racial animosity against the
defenceless Jews. I would urge the following measures to afford some
immediate protection for the Jews of Bessarabia and the Pale:
First, that the Government at St. Petersburg issue a ukase declaring
there is no truth in the horrible fiction of Jewish ritual murders of
Christian children; second, that the bishops and clergymen of all
cities, towns, and villages be compelled to read the same from their
pulpits, thereby stopping the circulation of these atrocious legends
within the borders of Russia; third, that a conference of the leading
Jews of Western Europe be held without delay, to consider the best means
to solve the problem of the Russian Jew, and how best to help the Jews
of the Pale to protect themselves under the existing Russian laws.
Unless some action of this nature is taken soon, more outrages will
follow. I found the feeling in the larger cities, where the Jews are
strong, very excited and apprehensive. In one city the Jews have
purchased 9000 revolvers to protect themselves. There is a constant
panic in Kiev, from which most of the wealthy Jews have fled to Cracow,
while Jewish refugees from Kishineff were refused shelter on their
arrival at Kiev by the terrified Jews of that city.
In Warsaw I found more confidence than elsewhere, as, in this large
city, with its quarter of a million of Jews, the Polish Socialists, who
are a strong organisation, have promised to aid the Jews if any attack
should be made on them by the anti-Semites. The Governor, General
Tchetverikoff, is a capable officer, free from anti-Semite prejudices,
and he has made it plain, in the measures already taken, and in some
straight talk, that he will deal promptly and sternly with any attempt
to repeat the Kishineff ruffianism in the city under his control.
Throughout the whole Pale the police and peasants are told by the
anti-Semites that the Tsar has issued an order to kill all the Jews or
drive them from Russia.
_Letter V_
LONDON, June 6th.
The situation at Kishineff at the present time is this: The military
measures in force are fully adequate for an instant repression of any
attempted renewal of outrages. Owing, however, to the notorious
anti-Semitic leanings and record of the Vice-Governor, Ostrogoff, the
Jews who have fled the city, and the poorer class who suffered most and
who cannot leave for lack of means, dread another outbreak.
They likewise note the indulgent punishments inflicted upon the
directors of the riots, while several men known to have committed murder
and to have been implicated in the tortures of women were actually
liberated from prison after a few days’ detention, on the ground of
alleged lack of sufficient evidence of their guilt. The feeling in
Kishineff is general that the rank and file of the rioting bands were
retained in custody, while the instigators and ringleaders were
permitted to go free.
I do not credit the statement going the round of the press which alleges
that Governor Von Raaben telegraphed to St. Petersburg for permission to
use the military in Kishineff in dealing with the mob, and that he
waited vainly for an authoritative reply. No such permission was needed
from either Minister de Plehve or the head of any other department. The
criminal code armed the local Governor with the fullest power and
discretion for the employment of soldiers within his government or
province as a supplementary force to the police to preserve order. There
were 8000 military and 350 police at Von Raaben’s command during the
first day’s riot, and he was as much in absolute control of those forces
in the task of dealing with the outbreak against the Jews as the
Governor of New York State would be of the State militia in a similar
emergency.
As to the question of remedy: What can be done to safeguard the men,
women, and children within the Jewish Pale, from Odessa to the Baltic,
from periodic outrage; and free the name of a great empire from the
reproach of such organised Christian barbarism as that of Kishineff?
This question cannot be dismissed on the plea that American and European
opinion is concerned only with the humane task of relief. The best
possible measure of relief that could be offered to the victims of
anti-Semitic oppression in Russia, at this crisis, would assume the
character and form of a friendly mediating influence exercised with the
Tsar in behalf of the Jews of his Empire.
I have discussed this idea with a high Russian official during my tour,
and I briefly summarise our conversation.
In reply to my question as to what could be done by the friends of
Russia in the United States to procure some better protection for the
Russian Jew, this official, who is thoroughly conversant with both
American and British politics, said:
“It is no use appealing to Russia through the medium of indignation
meetings. This is not how to exercise a friendly influence such as is
desired. We resent attempts to meddle in our domestic affairs through
the agency of political demonstration. It is an unwarranted interference
by other countries in our internal concerns. How, may I ask, would your
Government and press consider our action if we organised great
gatherings and delivered violent speeches in protest against, say, the
burning alive of American citizens, not alone without trial, but
independent even of the form of legal indictment? You must look at the
position of our Government in relation to the hateful crimes of
Kishineff from many points of view. Our system of administration differs
radically from yours, while the civil position of the Jews here has no
parallel in civil and political conditions in America except, perhaps,
in your treatment of the Negro and the Chinaman. Whatever faults our
system may possess in your eyes, we consider it as being adapted to the
domestic requirements of Russia, and to the social temperament of our
people. We are not in any sense a cruel or a persecuting nation, nor do
we hate the Jews on any religious ground. But we never will admit a
people so foreign in every respect to the Russians in racial traits and
character, in faith and in general reputation, to an equality of
citizenship. You might as well ask the American people to permit
Chinamen to become Mayors of San Francisco or members of Congress.
There is something more to be said in relation to Kishineff; not in any
sense by way of palliating the horrible outrages which I condemn as
strongly as you do, but in the way of, say, such an explanation as a
Governor of Alabama or Carolina would try to account to civilised
opinion for some act of a mob of Christian citizens in burning a
fellow-citizen at the stake. The Jew in Russia is the disciple and
propagandist of Socialism. He has introduced this menace to our
Government and system from abroad. He is believed by the tens of
thousands of our people who are employed in our departments to be their
racial enemy, and the foreign plotter inside our gates against the Tsar,
who is the head of the system which gives them their means of livelihood
and some prospect of future positions for their sons.
“These are the class of Russians who hate the Jews most, and the hatred
is begotten of the same human selfishness which stirs up strife between
rival classes in other countries.
“It is necessary to know all this in order to understand the fact that
many persons above the rank of artisans and labourers took part in the
shameful outrages at Kishineff.
“Allow me now to reply direct to your question:
“I can only make a suggestion, which is this: Let some prominent
statesman or highly respected citizen of the United States visit St.
Petersburg and seek an interview with the Emperor. This would be
welcomed as an act of friendship, and could not be considered as an
intrusion even by our Government officials. The Tsar would be sure to
receive such a visitor as the spokesman of friendly American feeling.
“No kinder-hearted man lives to-day than the Emperor. No one in your
country deplores the outrages of April more than he does. Moreover, like
all Russians, he holds the great American nation in high esteem, and
cherishes the friendly relations which have so long subsisted between
the two countries. If, then, some one of your leading men, commanding
wide respect, would undertake such a mission, he would accomplish a
thousand times more to guarantee the Jews against further outrage than
10,000 public meetings organised by the Jews of your cities or on the
suggestion of Russia’s kind friends on the London press.”
I most urgently beg your advocacy, and that of the American press
generally, of this proposal. It would be a mission worthy of a
statesman, and its certain fruits would be the Tsar’s protection for the
Jews from Odessa to Warsaw against further organised outrage during his
lifetime.
The public man in the States eminently qualified for this humane mission
is ex-President Cleveland. Such an ambassador on a friendly visit to St.
Petersburg would attract the world’s attention, and success would be
sure to crown his undertaking.
I attended several meetings of the Central Relief Committee while in
Kishineff. The last one was on the eve of my departure, last Friday. The
committee meets daily to examine applications and distribute assistance
in money, food, and clothing. Kishineff is divided, for relief purposes,
into twenty-two districts. Each has its local committee, who report to
the Central Executive Committee of Fifteen, whose chairman, Dr. J. S.
Mutznik, is a leading physician and one of Kishineff’s wealthy
residents. Assisting him are several equally representative Jews, like
Dr. Kohan-Bernstein, Rabbi Ettlinger, S. M. Grossman, E. Galperin, S.
Perelmutter, I. Kipperwasser, E. Reidel, M. Kligman, Z. Rosenfeld,
Israel Pappervasses, and several other well-known citizens.
A Ladies’ Committee gives valuable co-operation, attending to and
reporting upon the women, girls, and orphans requiring aid. These ladies
showed me over the food, clothing, and general assistance departments
of the Central Committee Headquarters. I found everything well
organised and efficiently executed. The Rabbis and leading members of
the Ladies’ Committee have founded an asylum for the orphans of
massacred parents.
I visited this temporary asylum and photographed the orphans and their
guardians. Up to the date of my departure the Central Relief Committee
had expended a total of 130,000 roubles; one-fourth of which was used in
the purchase and distribution of food for the people whose homes had
been destroyed, and for others made workless by the riots. Small sums of
money had been advanced to the owners of shops and little stores to
enable them to renew business; 1000 roubles were given in several
instances.
This action of the Committee was severely criticised by the friends and
representatives of the Jews who were killed. These complained that the
money contributed from abroad ought to be apportioned according to
relative loss, and that the subscribers would not estimate the injury
done to a tailor’s or shoemaker’s store at three or four times the value
of a murdered father, mother, or brother.
In this connection, I pointed out to Dr. Mutznik that, as those whose
stores were looted could, under Russian law, claim adequate compensation
from the city or the government, it would be more equitable to devote
the major portion of the funds received to the present and future
assistance of those who have suffered the greater wrong and injury in
the loss of parents, of employment, and in other ways. To this view he
agreed, though he was very doubtful if the claims for compensation
already lodged in behalf of the store-owners will be fairly dealt with,
or even considered, by the authorities.
Under the law as it stands, three independent witnesses must depose, not
alone to the injury done to a particular store or business, but to the
person or persons accused of being guilty of the looting or
destruction. And no blood or marriage relative of the person seeking
redress is permitted to testify! Under such conditions, and in view of
the fact that most of the male Jews fled and hid themselves when the
outbreak occurred, many of the claims for compensation will fall to the
ground for want of sufficient evidence as to the names and complicity of
the actual perpetrators of the destruction.
Dr. Mutznik believes that the relief work must be continued during the
coming winter, to the larger number of artisans and labour applicants.
Most of the Jewish merchants and employers have fled to Odessa, Cracow,
and other cities. They will not return until they are assured of safety,
and in their absence those whom they employed will, in all probability,
remain without work.
My appeal through the press in behalf of the violated women and girls,
and for the orphans, was warmly endorsed by the Ladies’ Committee and
the Rabbis. Mesdames Mutznik and Hornstein, leading members of this
committee, with true matronly feeling, pleaded the exceptionally hard
cases of the young girls and of the violated married women. The case of
the orphans speaks for itself, and needs no advocacy apart from the
cruel facts which plead so forcibly for their utter helplessness.
When visiting these little ones in their temporary shelter, and while
learning from the girls and women, whom the Rabbi assembled in his house
to meet me, the stories of the irreparable wrongs done them, and their
fears of the future now before them, I could not help indulging in the
hope that some wealthy Jewish merchant or banker in New York, London, or
Paris might have the heart and head to bring himself a life’s happiness
in the humane task of aiding these orphans and terribly wronged girls
and women which all the wealth of all the Jews in any one of these
cities could not purchase in palaces, banks, or pleasures.
A Warsaw paper having published an account of the appeal in behalf of
the Kishineff sufferers, my hotel soon became a centre of attention and
of supplication. Hundreds of poor creatures of both sexes came to beg to
be enabled to emigrate. They had heard that the _American_ was proposing
to devote some of the money subscribed in New York and elsewhere to the
task of taking a few thousand families away from the city of blood to
the United States or to the Argentine. No matter what was the proposed
destination, they were willing to go, if it were only to some country
where Christians did not kill Jews. One petition, signed in behalf of
122 families, was presented to me to be forwarded to the _American_ in
the hope of having an early consideration of their claims.
No explanation by my most capable dragoman would disabuse the minds of
these poor people of the forlorn belief that escape from a dreaded
recurrence of the horrors of April might lie in such a petition.
Among my most persistent callers were two matronly-looking ladies, who
also begged to be sent to America. On the first occasion they did not
disclose the nature of their calling, or the extent of their losses. I
pressed them on these points when they came again. One of them replied,
“Our business has fallen off entirely since the riots.”
And what was the business, inquired my dragoman.
“We are midwives,” was the answer. The petition had, of course, to be
refused.
_Letter VI_
LONDON, June 6th.
A few facts concerning Kishineff will be essential to the right
comprehension of the causes which led to the perpetration of the black
deeds of April, and to a proper understanding of a story of
deliberately plotted political crime.
The last census, that of 1897, gave to Kishineff a population of 108,296
souls. Of these over 50,000 were males. The present estimated population
may be put down at or about 130,000. These are divided racially as
follows: Jews, 50,000; Moldavians (Christians), 50,000; Russians, 8000,
with the residue comprising Bulgarians, Serbs, Greeks, Macedonians,
Albanians, and Germans. These figures and estimates are given me by Dr.
Kohan-Bernstein, a leading physician of the city, and are confirmed by
one of the Rabbis, who holds some kind of a government position in
connection with the special taxes levied on the Jews.
The Jews are thus numerically in excess of the Russians and of all other
Christian sects combined, excepting the Moldavians, who are equally
strong in numbers, and even more bitter in their anti-Semitic feeling
than those of Russian blood.
Fully fifty per cent. of the Jews of Kishineff are artisans and
labourers, and in the great majority of cases they are wretchedly poor.
The stern needs of daily life, the want of bread and the shelter of a
home, compel them to work for any pay that may be offered to them.
The Jewish artisan is far and away more intelligent and skilled than his
Moldavian or Russian neighbour of like occupation. He is more expert in
technical details, and more ambitious to do better and to perform more
work for his employer. Poor as he may be he reads more newspapers, and
is an all-round formidable rival to workers who dislike him for his
race, and who dread him as an increasing and competing factor in the
industrial world of Kishineff.
These facts will account to some extent for the part which Christian
workers took in the organised riots of April.
One fact more in this connection has an important bearing upon another
feature of the outbreak--the pillaging of shops and saloons. Kishineff
is the capital of Bessarabia, and is its largest trading and commercial
centre. There are rival Christian and Jewish interests at work in
catering for the needs of so large a place, and these interests collide
in competitive activity in almost every branch of business life.
There are shops, warehouses, and saloons where Christian and Jewish
rivalry conflicts, and in such a combat the Gentile is nowhere, in trade
competition, with the fertile and adroit Jew. Hence, there is as strong
a commercial antipathy toward the unpopular Hebrew in fairly educated
Russian and Moldavian circles as is found on other grounds among the
anti-Semitic artisans and labourers.
These circumstances account for the complacency--to put it no
stronger--with which merchants and leaders of the Christian community
looked on at the pillaging of shops and the destruction of saloons which
belonged to their Jewish rivals. And they also explain why saloons and
stores of Jewish ownership were alone the objects of the mob’s
attention; for the riot was not an affair of blind, popular fury, bent
upon indiscriminate lawlessness. Nothing of the kind. It was
deliberately organised and intelligently directed from start to finish
by leaders who knew what they were about, and how to discriminate
between Russian and Moldavian property and Semitic belongings, in the
matter of looting, and between Jewish and Christian women in another and
more infernal business.
Kishineff, in its central and chief business parts, is a handsome town.
Its leading boulevard, Alexandra Street, would do credit to any American
city. It is more than twice the width of Broadway, New York; is planted
on both sides with acacia trees, and can boast of imposing public
buildings, substantial shops, banks, and jewellers’ stores.
The municipal headquarters, built, like most of the prominent structures
of the city, with a whitish stone, is situated near the middle of the
leading thoroughfare and wears a stately and striking appearance. The
streets are all wide and run as in American cities, at right angles to
each other in uniform arrangement. They are nearly all planted; a
feature which adds greatly to the beauty of the city, in combining the
light green foliage of the acacia trees with the bright, clean look of
the houses and public buildings.
The Royal Gardens and People’s Park are in the centre of the city.
Military bands play each evening in the former, and attract large crowds
of well-dressed citizens, officers of the garrison, youth, and
particularly ladies.
The city, in its chief business and fashionable districts, has the look
of a comfortable, fairly wealthy, up-to-date bourgeois centre, and a
well-governed municipal community; a most unlikely place, in the eyes of
a visitor, to offer itself as a theatre for one of the most abominable
tragedies in modern times.
Kishineff owes its success and prosperity almost exclusively to the
Jews. Thirty years ago it was little more than a rough Bessarabian
village. To-day it ranks, in South Russia, next to Odessa--where there
are over 200,000 of the same race--in population, commercial standing,
and wealth, and all this is freely admitted by educated Russians.
Jews in Russia are compelled by law to reside inside a Pale of
Settlement, or territory comprising some fifteen governments, or
provinces, of western and southern Russia, extending south from the
coast of the southern Baltic to the Crimea, and westward from Charkov
and Smolensk to the borders of Roumania, Galicia, and Prussian Poland.
The area thus embraced in the Jewish Pale is about equal to that of
France, and the number of people of this section of Russia is upward of
27,000,000.
Under the ukase of 1882, which compelled Jews to leave the villages and
live within the towns, these centres became crowded inside of what thus
became virtual economic concentration camps.
Within these limits of legal domicile the density of Hebrew population
is at the rate of some 2800 per square mile. In the non-Jewish towns of
Russia the average is about 60 of urban to 1000 of rural population.
Within the fifteen provinces included in the Jewish Pale, the average is
close upon 230 of urban to every 1000 of country population.
The effects of this crowding of Jews into the towns of the Pale are as
obvious as they are inevitable. There is a dense population, restricted
by necessity and disposition to certain pursuits and occupations, in
places where the economic conditions do not provide opportunities for
the healthy exercise of one-fourth of the industry or abilities which
could under normal conditions find opportunities for profitable
employment.
There are towns in which Jewish tradesmen and artisans are 50 per cent.
of the total population. They are literally penned in within these
places.
This is the economic side of the problem of the Russian Jew. The
political side is even more serious to the Russian administration, and
here we are approaching the consideration of what was the real
underlying cause of the outbreak of a month ago.
All the Jews of the Pale are not poor. Quite the contrary. Despite the
restricted area allowed them, large numbers of them are wealthy through
successful trading. Another and larger section exploit inferior Russian
intelligence and capacity, and earn money in legally forbidden ways by
making it fairly profitable for the obliging Christian to act as a
shield or deputy for the legally boycotted Jew.
Saloons are owned in this way by Jews, and are worked for them by
Christians.
The Jew must not own land. But he can organise a company, place a
Russian in nominal headship of the concern, and in this manner make a
profit out of Russian agriculture.
In many other ways the keen intelligence, the inherited racial capacity
for financial undertakings, the greater natural ability and better
education of the business Jew, and also of the higher artisan Hebrew
section, enable them, even in the face of all the obstacles put in their
way, to give their sons and daughters an education which is gradually
evolving out of an oppressed and degraded race a people of progressive
thought and of political aspirations, who are deemed to be a most
dangerous menace to the government and administration of an
autocratically ruled country.
The educated Jew in Russia is more than an accidental ally of what may
be termed Russian liberal tendencies. He occupies within this huge
empire a semi-penalised political and racial status.
None of the higher state schools must admit more than 5 per cent. of Jew
pupils, even where, as in Kishineff, the Jews are five times more
numerous than the Russians proper.
The Jew cannot buy land.
He is debarred from administrative positions, except in lower grades of
employment, and while he is compelled to serve in the army, he cannot
claim the usual rewards or aspire to the ordinary ambition of men who
make no greater sacrifice than he in the common military service of the
empire.
All these facts, disabilities, and oppressive and depressing conditions,
acting upon the thoughts and ideals of a brainy people, are producing a
powerful anti-Russian political force along the southwestern portion of
the Tsar’s most vulnerable frontier--that bordering upon the Austrian
and Germanic empires. In other words, the Jewish Pale is becoming the
nursery of revolutionary Socialist ideas and the active centre of an
anti-autocratic propaganda.
The riots and terrorism of April, with their attendant horrors, were
deliberately planned, not by robbers or murderers, not on account of
religious bigotry, but for the reasons I have just given--namely, the
feeling of hostility in the minds of administrative employés to a race
believed to be plotting against the Empire, combined with the jealousy
of local artisans and proletarians of the cheaper, better, and pushing
Hebrew workingmen, compelled by absolute necessity to earn a living
within a legally circumscribed sphere of industrial activity.
Hence, on the direct incitation of the local anti-Semite _Bessarabetz_
newspaper, edited by a Russian, who is really a Moldavian, and which is
the only paper published here and read by administrative employés,
Seminarists, and other enemies of Jews, it was resolved, in an organised
riot, to strike terror into the Jewish community of Kishineff, with the
double object of punishing what is believed to be a hostile element
conspiring against the Government, and of forcing the Jews to leave the
city.
_Letter VII_
DALKEY, June 9th, 1903.
The hideous realities of the actual outrages committed during the two
days’ inferno of murder and outrage surpass in the naked horror of their
details almost anything which the imagination could invent. I hate to
return to further reference to these deeds. It has become a horrible and
repugnant subject, but I convince myself that some good will come of it
in tending to keep alive the sympathy of the American people in the
future of the victims who escaped with life, but also with broken hearts
and the outlook of a dismal future.
Meyer Weissman had a very small store in one of the poorest Jewish
quarters of the city. He had lost an eye, by an accident, when young.
The mob attacked and demolished his little grocery on Easter Sunday. He
offered them all the money in his possession to spare his life. It was
a sum of sixty roubles. The leader took the money, and then said: “Now,
we want your eye; you will never again look upon a Christian child.” He
implored them to kill him instead of making him blind for life. They
gouged out his eye with a sharpened stick, and left him. Amidst sobs and
suffering he told me his story in the Jewish Hospital.
Near the bed of poor blind Meyer Weissman was that of Joseph
Shainovitch, whose head had been battered with bludgeons, and the victim
left for dead. He told me that it was this same gang who killed his
mother-in-law, by driving nails through her eyes into the brain. This
story I refused to believe, thinking it might be born of some horrible
nightmare following the poor fellow’s terrible experience. But from no
less than six different sources, one of them being a Christian doctor, I
learned that the facts were as stated by Joseph. Among the other
witnesses were the men who dug the unfortunate woman’s grave.
In the female ward of the same hospital there were still upwards of a
dozen girls and married women, when I visited the place, whose injuries
were too serious to allow of their discharge. I heard their stories: at
least those which could in part be related to a man.
One of the girls, aged about seventeen, was a perfect type of Jewish
beauty, with a face which a painter would envy as a model for a Rachel.
Her head was covered with bandages. She had been alone for three hours
in the hands of a dozen men, who had killed her father and mother, and
they left her for dead. A young Jew, evidently her lover, sat at her
bedside while the tale of her sufferings and losses was being told.
In the next bed was a married woman, a mother of four children. She had
not fully recovered consciousness, and all the events of the night of
her agony were as yet not completely known to her. She, too, had been
beaten and left for dead, after having been assaulted by many men.
At the Rabbi’s house, as already related, I met several more victims of
the mob’s nameless infamies. One was a girl of sixteen, named Simme
Zeytchik, very pretty, and childish-looking for her years. She said that
all her assailants were Russians, mainly Seminarists, and told the Rabbi
that fifteen of these young ruffians had outraged her.
She was one of twenty women who had sought refuge in the loft of the
house No. 11 Nicolaievskai Street, and who were discovered by the mob,
as were several other groups of women and girls in similar
hiding-places.
I have before me a record of thirteen girls and women of ages ranging
from seventeen to forty-eight, who were assaulted by from two to twenty
men, and in many cases left for dead.
Six young girls who are known to have undergone similar violence were
ashamed to come to the Rabbi’s house to tell their tale of wrong and
ruin.
The foregoing list does not exhaust the number of women who were
subjected to the greatest wrong that can be done to their sex.
All house-breaking and robbery were suspended in the night-time during
the outbreak, and the younger men of the thirty or forty gangs of
rioters went in search of the hidden girls and married women. Those who
can do so naturally hide the narrative of their wrong, and suffer in
silence. The actual number of the mob’s victims in the most ruffianly of
their crimes will therefore never be fully known.
Apart from the desperate and hopeless efforts of the forty murdered men
to save wives and daughters, and the solitary attempt at organised
resistance described in a previous letter, the 10,000 or 12,000 Jewish
men of Kishineff offered little or no resistance to the 1500 or 2000
Moldavian and Russian assailants of their women, homes, and property.
Ninety per cent. of them hid themselves, or fled to safer parts in and
out of the city for refuge.
A thousand determined men, even in spite of the action of the Chief of
Police in virtually protecting the mob, could have saved many lives and
averted most of the outrages on the women and girls. One plucky little
Jew, Leon Koulberg by name, a member of the Kishineff Fire Brigade, with
only a few helpers, faced a band of fifty-six Moldavians and drove them
from his district.
Many Russians of both sexes nobly exerted themselves to protect the
women from the mob. But from no quarter in the city, and from no source,
did I learn of any attempt being made by Russian or Moldavian clergymen
(with one solitary exception) to perform a similar Christian duty.
Instances of incredible baseness on the part of the Moldavians were
given me by various witnesses.
Mordka Mynduik was escaping from a gang of ruffians in the Skulanska
Rogatka suburb. He was invited into a Moldavian neighbour’s house, and
murdered by those who had offered him hospitality and protection.
Israel Ullman fell a victim to a similar act of Moldavian perfidy.
Three men and a woman with a child were fleeing from pursuers, and were
directed to take a certain course over a field towards the railway
station. They ran into an ambush, and two of the men were killed, the
woman and child, however, escaping.
Another woman and her child sought the house of a converted Jew for
safety, after her home had been demolished. The “Christian” Jew holds a
position under the City Government. He knew the frightened woman well,
and had been on terms of the closest intimacy with her family before
climbing into office as the reward of his “conversion.” He shut the door
in the face of the terrified wife of his former friend.
What impressed one most painfully in Kishineff, after the narratives of
outrage, was the seeming indifference of the mass of the Russian and
Moldavian people over the whole infernal business. They had to
recognise the great injury done to the city by the riots and their
results. That was too patent to be ignored. But, with the exception of a
comparatively small number of Christians, already alluded to, there
appeared to be neither regret nor remorse among the citizens generally
over the deeds which had riveted the world’s attention upon them as a
community capable of perpetrating acts so base and inhuman. This callous
bearing I attribute mainly to the tactics of the anti-Semitic press,
combined with the amazing silence maintained by the Greek Church
prelates and clergy in relation to these crimes.
The _Bessarabetz_ and _Znamya_, the only papers circulating in
Kishineff, audaciously blamed the Jews for what had occurred, and
carefully abstained from reproducing the comments of foreign journals
upon the rioting at Eastertide. By this means the people were prevented
realising the extent and character of the external indignation aroused
by the reports of the events of April, and they were left by these
means, or by their own indifference, a community apparently unconcerned
about the massacres and infamies which had found victims only among
Jews.
As far as I could learn, there had not been a solitary word spoken or
act done by any of the prominent ecclesiastical authorities of Kishineff
which could be construed, even charitably, into a condemnation of the
killing of harmless men and the ravishing of innocent girls beneath the
shadows of the many Christian churches which adorn the capital of
Bessarabia. The sufferers were only Jews.
Each evening during my stay in this soulless city large crowds gathered
in the Royal Gardens to enjoy the music of the fine Dragoon Band which
performed Polish polkas, and the Hungarian “Chardash” and Russian
marches in faultless fashion. Throngs of gaily dressed ladies, under the
escort of the young officers of the garrison, were always in evidence,
along with students from the colleges and Seminarists supplied by the
religious high schools of the city. It was fashionable Kishineff’s
rendezvous for evening enjoyment, recreation, and social gossip, and the
tables of the cafés rang with laughter when the groups of visitors were
not drinking in the music of some operatic selection or of an inviting
waltz from the band.
Not a single Jew had been seen in this place of popular resort since
April 19th.
One evening my dragoman called my attention to a group of young
Seminarists sitting at a table near to ours. They were boisterous in
their merriment, and appeared to be enjoying the recital of some
unusually piquant incident or adventure, amidst the smoke of their
cigarettes and the relish of their coffee.
“That gang,” observed my dragoman, “judging from what I have heard some
of them say, must have been among those who violated the girls and women
in the loft of No. 11 Nicolaievskai Street, where Simme Zeytchik was
outraged by a number of young students.”
It was only that morning we had seen this girl of sixteen at the Rabbi’s
house, and heard her story.
The Mayor of Kishineff, M. Karl Schmidt, received me most courteously
when I called upon him in the fine municipal buildings on the Alexandra
boulevard. He has been burgomaster of the city for a quarter of a
century, almost in unbroken succession. A man of some sixty summers, of
tall and commanding appearance and of cultured manner, he impresses you
at once with the feeling that you are in the presence of a strong,
capable, and upright personality.
He willingly accorded me an interview, but answered my questions in a
manner suggesting a reserve which was more official than personal:
“What was the origin of the outbreak, Mr. Mayor?”
“The writings in the anti-Semitic press, and their effect upon the
minds of ignorant people who dislike the Jews both for their race and
religion. The alleged murder by Jews of the Christian boy at Doubossar
and of a girl here in Kishineff, who committed suicide, inflamed the
populace. When the real facts were published, the truth was believed to
be an invention to cover up a Jewish crime, and the frequenters of cafés
and the workingmen, who are hostile to the Jews, remained convinced that
Christian blood had been actually obtained in this way for ritual
purposes.”
“Do you find the Jews of the city a turbulent or provocative people?”
“No. They resemble most other people, in having good and bad numbered
among them. There has been nothing whatever in their behaviour, as far
as my many years’ experience of Kishineff goes, to explain or in any way
to palliate the attacks made upon them. The great mass of them are very
poor, but they are most patient and never disorderly.”
“Have they any secret or revolutionary society here?”
“Nothing, in my belief, worth serious attention. Some of the younger
Jews call themselves Socialists, but there are not many, and I do not
think they need cause the authorities any serious anxiety.”
“Is there any similar organisation, under any name, among the Russian or
Moldavian workingmen?”
“There is some kind of a society which scatters pamphlets about and
things of that kind from time to time. Its members were among the
rioters and against the Jews.”
“Do you take the reports of the riots in the matters of the killed,
wounded, and looting as having been exaggerated?”
“No. I am sorry to say there were more people killed than the
forty-three reported deaths. A few bodies have been found since the last
report was issued. The number of persons wounded is difficult to find
out. Many poor Jews who want to obtain a share of the relief funds
declare they were injured, but they carry no traces of wounds or hurts,
when examined. The accounts of the destruction of dwellings and stores
have not been overstated. Enormous damage has been done, and both the
city and the actual sufferers will feel the great loss for years to
come. I understand you have been visiting the scenes of the disorders,
and you can judge for yourself as to the extent of the damage and
mischief done.”
“Do you anticipate any recurrence of the trouble on the Emperor’s day?”
(Date of the Tsar’s Coronation, May 27th.)
“I have seen the Vice-Governor on the matter, owing to the rumours you
mention, and I am satisfied he will act promptly and severely if any
attempt of the kind should be made. He will post soldiers at all points
of danger near where the Jews reside, and these will be under officers
who will have orders to fire on any persons who may try to renew the
riots.”
“Is it true, as reported, that the police were, to some extent,
participators in the Easter outrages?”
“That is not an easy nor yet a pleasant question to answer. I have no
control of any kind over the police force of the city, and I was not a
witness of the disgraceful events in April. Some loot was, I believe,
found in the possession of a few policemen, and this fact has given rise
to the charge to which you refer. But it is most unfair to impute to all
the force of the city and to its officers conduct so disgraceful, owing
to the very few who were mixed up with the disturbers and their
looting.”
“What forces, military and police, were in the city in April?”
“Probably about seven or eight thousand troops and three hundred police
and officers.”
“Surely, there were in these forces means enough to have dealt promptly
and effectively with the bands of rioters?”
The Mayor showed evidence of painful hesitation before replying to this
question, but ultimately said:
“Oh, there was a most lamentable and unfortunate misunderstanding!”
Whereupon he politely handed me another cigarette, to indicate that it
would be no use to pursue that subject any further.
“Can you suggest any remedy to prevent these anti-Semitic outbursts, Mr.
Mayor?”
“I fear not. The Government measures promulgated, from time to time,
with regard to the Jews, are deemed necessary for the preservation of
order. I cannot discuss the worth or wisdom of these measures, but I can
understand why the Jews should think them unjust.”
“One question more, sir: Do you think that the Zionist movement offers
any feasible or effective solution of the question?”
“As the Mayor of Kishineff, I would consider the loss of the Jewish
community as a commercial calamity for the city. But, I confess, if I
were a Jew, I would be a Zionist.”
CHAPTER IX
III. M. DE PLEHVE’S VERSION
The official explanation from the Russian Government was made by M. de
Plehve, Russian Minister of the Interior, to Mr. Arnold White. The
following is the full text of the document, which was sent to Mr. White
in the English language, and published in _The Times_, June 13, 1903:
“Russia’s agricultural and labour population is ill at ease, living
common life with Jewish inhabitants of wide-developed commercial
instinct. Hence constant antagonism, material racial religious character
coming to verge of frenzy at least possible occasion. Strained relations
between Russians and Jews of Bessarabia were made the worst by fact of
finding outlying village murdered Christian boy, murder attributed by
population to ritual Jewish habits. Official denials ritual murder not
given credit by peasants, attributing other murders of Christians in
towns Kiev and Kishineff likewise to Jews. On Easter Day, on market
place of Kishineff, workers holiday-making saw a Jew proprietor of
carousing machine strike a Christian women, who fell to the ground,
letting go her infant baby. This incident was nearest cause of outburst.
Workers began breaking windows, pulling down Jewish stores as sign of
protest. Police, which always gives much to be desired in provincial
towns, failed to make efficacious intervention, the many thousand mass
of onlookers and holiday-makers approving riot, hindering policemen’s
actions. After demonstrators came plunderers’ outbreak, lasting from
five in the afternoon to ten evening, and leaving nine Jewish bodies on
place. Night brought disturbance to end what goes far to prove momentous
character of outbreak letting loose popular passions with strength
natural forces. On Monday morning Jews wishing intimidate and inflict
punishment on Christian workers, began on market place, assembling in
groups armed sticks and weapons; Jews being more numerous had best of it
in two first encounters, and a Christian was seen to fall, receiving
bullet wound. This called forth popular passion in all its abject force
and abomination. Russian peasants driven to frenzy, excited by race
religious hatred, under influence of alcohol, being worse than South
Americans lynching negroes. Unfortunately Governor of Bessarabia did not
make appearance in person. Easter Sunday and Monday gave over command to
military men what he had no right of doing, as he, in consequence, had
put the police aside, and on the other hand, left the military forces
without actual guidance. Troops can take towns by assault, but cannot
carry out police duties without special instructions. In the end, the
town being divided in districts, with a special military command in
each, the disturbances ceased on Monday evening. By this time the
Minister of the Interior had ordered by wire to proclaim martial law,
and--an unprecedented fact--had sent the Director of Police Department
to investigate as to the responsibilities of local officials. In
consequence the Governor, the chief of the town police, and some other
officials were dismissed outright. Many hundreds of rioters are in
prison with hard work in the Siberian mines awaiting them after trial.
The Minister of the Interior has issued a circular to the Governors all
over Russia authorising them to make immediate use of firearms in case
of anti-Jewish disturbances.
“The Russian Government is the first to disapprove of such horrid acts
of violence, but it cannot, in compliance with the requests of the
Radical and revolutionary Press, give the Jews new rights of
citizenship, as this is sure to drive the Russian population to new
excesses against the Jews, who are hated by peasants with such
extraordinary force.”
A further statement was made by M. de Plehve to Mr. White[6] in reply to
a communication calling his Excellency’s attention to the statement
“from our Russian correspondents” in _The Times_ of June 6th, that
General Von Raaben, the Governor of Kishineff, telegraphed three times
to the Minister of the Interior during the riots for permission to use
force before he received any reply:
ST. PETERSBURG, June 7 (20).
The former Governor of Bessarabia, the General Von Raaben, had not,
when in office, sent to the central Government authorities any
request whatever, asking for authorisation to use force against the
Kishineff miscreants. All communications with the Governor of
Bessarabia relating to the disturbances in Kishineff were limited
to the following proceedings:
1. Having received in the night on the 7th of April a telegram
announcing the outbreak of disturbances, the Minister of the
Interior, who was at the time staying in Moscow, had made, on the
7th of April, a personal report of this news to his Majesty, and
had received the Emperor’s instructions directing him to send to
the Governor von Raaben an implicit order to put an immediate end
to the disturbances by any means at his disposal, however they may
be resolute and harsh. The Minister, accordingly, sent to the
Governor of Bessarabia an urgent telegram giving this order.
2. The same day the Minister of the Interior, of his own accord,
sent to the Governor of Bessarabia another telegram declaring the
town Kishineff and its district in the state of enforced security
(something of a state of siege), and this was made in order to give
the Governor the means of inflicting, by way of administrative
power, punishment on persons who assemble in crowds on the streets.
3. On receiving the report of the Director of the Police Department
who was sent by the Minister to Kishineff in order to investigate
in person as to the cause of the disturbances, and the means taken
to quell them, and render their recurrence impossible, the Minister
of the Interior had written to the General Von Raaben a letter,
requesting him to dismiss the chief of the town police in Kishineff
for failing to make an effective use of the power he was invested
with as an official responsible for the security of the town
inhabitants. And, lastly,
4. The Minister of the Interior had, by telegram, informed the
General Von Raaben that his Majesty had, for the same reasons,
ordered him to be dismissed.
No other communications had passed, on the question of the
Kishineff riots, between the Minister of the Interior and the
Governor of Bessarabia.
CHAPTER X
IV. AN IMPARTIAL ACCOUNT
It will be observed that M. de Plehve ignores altogether the part played
by the _Bessarabetz_ in the period which led up to the massacres. He
makes mention of the fact that he sent the chief Director of Police to
investigate the origin of the assassinations and the conduct of the
officials. But he omits all mention of the petition presented to the
Director-General Lopoukhine, in behalf of the relations of victims, in
which the responsibility of this paper was clearly demonstrated in no
less than thirty-five marked copies, handed to the Director-General,
containing in citations to murder the Jews, and to drive them from
Russia.
M. de Plehve next asserts that the “nearest cause of the outburst” was
the striking of a Christian woman on Easter Day in the market place “by
a Jew proprietor of a carousing machine.” Here again the Minister has
been badly informed by his subordinates.
I sought for and found the proprietor of this identical carousing
machine (a merry-go-round). He was not a Jew, but a Christian, German by
nationality, and Reinhold Mergert by name. He told me he saw no
Christian or other woman struck by any Jew on the occasion, while no
such act was committed by himself or anyone in his employment.
Had any such injury been done to a Christian woman by a Jew, would the
carousing machine have been spared by the mobs which wrecked seven
hundred Jewish homes, and five or six hundred Jewish shops the same day?
Or would the Jew be alive to tell the story?
I saw this very machine in full swing, with its loads of laughing
children, on several days during my stay in the city.
“Workers then began breaking windows, pulling down Jewish stores, as
sign of protest,” continues M. de Plehve, in his official explanation.
My information, gathered on the spot from eye-witnesses--Russian and
Jewish--tells a far different story. It is this:
A few nights before the outbreak, members of the society organised by
the _Bessarabetz_, a large number of Moldavian and Russian artisans, and
several Seminarists and students, assembled in the “Moscow” hall.
Speeches were made in which it was declared that the Tsar had given
permission to kill Jews for a period of three days, beginning on the
coming Sunday!
The conveners of this meeting were the leaders of the mobs of Sunday,
April 19th, and Monday, the 20th.
That there had been plan, premeditation, and organisation for all this,
there is not a shadow of doubt. It was no sudden uprising, as M. de
Plehve had been informed, but a carefully prepared and officered
arrangement to strike terror into the “Jewish Socialists” of Kishineff,
and, through them, into the alleged propagandists of revolutionary
doctrines throughout the cities and towns of the Pale, from Odessa to
Warsaw.
One more fact establishing the case of preparation:
A fortnight before the riots the band of thirty Albanians referred to in
Letter IV arrived in Kishineff. They were strangers and evil-looking.
They all took part in the riots, and the mutilations of a child and of
two of the four Jews murdered at 13 Asia Street, Bender Rogatka
district, were the work of these imported brigands. They were not
imprisoned after the riot. They were expelled the city.
The various bands of rioters referred to above proceeded with absolute
impunity, in presence of the police, to destroy Jewish homes and smash
and loot Jewish shops, until darkness set in, on the Sunday night. In
places where Christian citizens lived among Hebrews, a cross marked in
black was found on the front of the house, or an ikon was displayed in
a window. Not one of the dwellings thus indicated as non-Jewish was
injured. I counted over a hundred such houses marked and protected in
this manner during my stay in the city. At the junction of Podolian
Street and Armenian Street, looking out upon an open space, with a
police station forty paces away, and a military barracks some two or
three hundred yards distant, the Feldstein premises were in possession
of the looters for fully five hours, owing to the trouble they found in
breaking open Mr. Feldstein’s safe, where they found fifteen thousand
roubles. All this time police and soldiers were in the street, actually
looking on at the “sport.” The looters were grateful for this official
neutrality, and brought up out of the Feldstein cellars bottles of
champagne which they shared freely with the officers of the peace and a
few of the soldiers, one leader of the gang, mounting the roof of the
saloon, and asking the crowd of spectators to drink with him “the
health of Kroushevan, the Editor of the _Bessarabetz_, and terror of
the Jews.”
Before this festive toast had been proposed the incident of the meat
took place, which had such a fiendish influence upon the subsequent
proceedings of these patronised ruffians.[7]
The attack on the Feldstein saloon and home occurred near the dinner
hour, and some meat was being prepared for the family meal. The family
fled, or rather was rescued by a humane gendarme, a neighbour, when the
mob assailed the premises. The rioters found the meat alluded to in the
kitchen, whereupon the leader of the band fixed it upon the end of his
stick, mounted the house-top (a building of one story), and, holding up
the meat to the gaze of the people and police below, shouted, “Behold
the remains of a Christian child which we found in the home of the rich
Jew, Feldstein!”
By eleven o’clock that night ten Jews had been murdered, and hundreds
of homes and shops broken into and looted.
Over twenty thousand roubles’ worth of costly wines was destroyed in the
Feldstein premises. After eleven at night dozens of vehicles were seen
carting away goods and property from places visited by the mobs, and
articles of furniture, which had been flung into the streets. The
vehicles were owned and led, in every instance, by virtuous
anti-Semites.
During all these hours General Von Raaben, the Governor, remained
indoors. No orders of any kind were issued by him, or by the
Vice-Governor, either to the police or military. The mobs were left in
possession of the city, with not alone the indirect encouragement by the
non-action of the authorities, in face of assassinations and looting,
but with the knowledge that the head of the police of the city,
Tchemzenkov, or “Baroda,” as he was popularly called, had been seen
driving round the streets during the day, smoking, as if thoroughly
enjoying the whole infernal saturnalia of sanguinary ruffianism.
Seeing that there was no protection offered them by the authorities,
some Jews organised themselves during the night of Sunday, and on the
“sport” being renewed at eight on Monday morning, they gathered, to the
number of 150, at the New Bazaar, and easily drove away one or two of
the gangs, one shot only having been fired, which inflicted a slight
wound upon a rioter. Instantly the police and military were on the
scene; the Jews were dispersed, and their leaders arrested and lodged in
the prison.
The deeds of Sunday were more than surpassed, in character and in
number, on the second day. Over thirty more men, women, and children
were butchered; some of the unfortunate victims being mutilated in a
manner more barbarous than anything recorded against the customs of
African savages. Then, at the hour of seven on Monday evening, the city
was declared in a state of siege, and the military cleared the centre
of the town of the murderous bands in a few moments. But only to drive
them to the Bender Rogatka, Skulanska Rogatka, and other districts and
suburbs, where they sought out the women and girls who were concealed in
lofts and in other hiding-places the previous day.
It is not possible to describe the outrages perpetrated during this
night. Women and girls who went through it all told me their stories in
the house of the Rabbi and elsewhere, and it was impossible to doubt the
statements which, in depicting the infamies resorted to by “Christian”
men, recorded their own sufferings and dishonour.
One statement must, however, be put on record. A number of women and
girls, some twenty in all, were discovered concealed in a loft at No. 11
Nicolaievskai Street. For four hours the moral pupils of the
_Bessarabetz_, and of the religious and other colleges of Kishineff,
held their victims in this dark place; several of these being girls
under seventeen. A married woman, who succeeded, after being violated by
six ruffians, in breaking away from her captors, ran to the nearest
police station, and implored an officer to rescue the women, including
her daughter, Simme, aged sixteen. She was driven from the station and
told that “the Jews are only getting what they deserve.” The woman’s
name is Chane Zeytchik, and the gallant officer in question is one
Maretzky.
There were many exceptions, however, among the police; the dictates of
decent humanity asserting themselves where the connivance of their chief
had outraged their sense of moral manhood. Among these was officer
Sloutschevsky, of one of the Bender Rogatka streets, who with twelve men
drove a mob of seventy out of his district. Several artillery officers
off duty also helped to save families and women. These instances of
Samaritan kindness were gratefully mentioned to me by both men and women
who had witnessed such acts. Among the comparatively few Christians who
were conspicuous in this humane service were the citizens Dorianov,
Demtchenks, Dr. Doroschevsky, Dr. Wolsky, the pope Laschkov, and M.
Georgior. Many Russian women also saved the girls of their Jewish
neighbours by giving them shelter in their homes.
The mobs were composed mainly of Moldavian and Russian workingmen; the
former being five-sevenths of the whole. The Albanian contingent has
already been referred to. A few Macedonian refugees, and some
Bulgarians, were also among the gangs. All the accounts given to me
agreed in one particular--that the worst crimes were the work of the
Moldavians. In the murders inside the carpenter’s shed in the Skulanska
Rogatka suburb, all the assassins were Moldavians resident in the very
district. The sister-in-law of little Feya Wouller[8] told me that the
Moldavian father and son who led the mob in this work, and in the
murder of her husband, who tried to save his little sister, were walking
about free during my stay in Kishineff, having been released from prison
after a few days’ detention.
A brace of other assassins, a car-driver and his son, who were concerned
in no less than four murders, were pointed out to me in the streets!
One feature of the massacres is most significant, and is not mentioned
by M. de Plehve in his official account, namely: All the Jews who were
killed, with one exception, were workingmen, regular or casual;
carpenters, masons, smiths, clerks, and a few very poor jobbing dealers.
The exception was one Galantor, a cattle dealer, who was known to have
fifteen thousand roubles in his possession. He was assassinated and
robbed by the driver and his son alluded to above.
The women and girls who suffered were the wives and daughters of Jewish
artisans. Those females who were killed were also, like the male
victims, of the same class. A few young ladies of richer families
suffered too, but their names, for obvious reasons, were not made known
to their families. No rich Jews were killed or wounded.
The leaders of the gangs, in almost every instance, were Seminarists,
disguised as workingmen. There were two students from Odessa, sons of
wealthy Kishineff families, prominent among the captains of the mobs;
but to the seminaries of the city belonged the shame and dishonour of
having contributed mostly all the directors, guides, and active
instigators of the two-days’ carnival of crime, lust, and looting.
Employés of the post office and telegraph departments were along among
the rioters, but chiefly for loot.
Among the organisers of the plot, but not in the actual execution of it,
were a notary of the city, an engineer, a well-known wealthy citizen,
two minor officers, two sons of a rich merchant, and members of the
staff of the _Bessarabetz_.
None of these had been arrested when I left Kishineff, on the 30th of
May last.
The question of official responsibility has been raised, and a circular
alleged to have been issued by M. de Plehve has been published which
would tend to connect the Minister of the Interior with an intimate
knowledge of the intended outbreak. No one in Kishineff with whom I came
in contact knew of any such circular. Charges of complicity were freely
made against the Government by many leading Jews, but no proofs of any
kind were adduced. These charges were entirely based upon the culpable
inaction of Governor Von Raaben, and the all but active participation of
the head of the City Police in the riots, along with the well-known
anti-Semitic record and feeling of the Vice-Governor, Ostrogoff.
Official responsibility might be deduced from these facts, but I failed
to discover any evidence, outside these circumstances, which could even
indirectly bring home to the Government the charge of guilty connivance
in the _Bessarabetz_ plot.
The Governor was, beyond all doubt, the person most to blame for the
crimes which were allowed to disgrace the capital of his province and a
civilised city during two whole days. And he was forewarned in time of
what was coming.
Ten days before Easter he was waited upon by leading Jewish citizens and
his attention called to the incendiary appeals of the _Bessarabetz_, in
connection with the murder of the boy at Doubossar. General Von Raaben
assured them that they need not dread any disturbance, as he would not
hesitate to employ all the military force at his disposal in order to
preserve law and order. He fulfilled this promise on Easter Sunday and
Monday by refusing to leave his house during the forty-eight hours in
which the slaughter of forty-five victims of the anti-Semitic crusade
was carried out.
It has been alleged that the Governor, on realising the gravity of the
first day’s events, wired to St. Petersburg for authority to declare a
state of siege. This I believe to be untrue. M. de Plehve’s explicit
statements, as given in his second communication to Mr. Arnold White,
dispose of this allegation. In face of the clear language of the
Criminal Code it would be an absurd and unnecessary proceeding on the
part of the Governor.
Clause 340 of this Code, and Clauses 1 and 8 of the supplement to
Section 316, of Vol. II., give, I am informed, the fullest powers to the
administration of any province or city to take all necessary measures
for quelling riots or disturbances which threaten to become a menace to
life or property. There could, therefore, be no excuse or ambiguity in
the language of the law necessitating such a message, as that alleged,
to the central Government. What happened, in all probability, was this:
Someone in lower authority, seeing the criminal neglect of the Governor
in presence of such a situation as was developed on Monday morning, may
have telegraphed to M. de Plehve an account of what was taking place.
This would necessarily have to be verified, in reply to messages from
the Minister, and in this way, as he relates in his despatch to Mr.
Arnold White, he ordered martial law to be proclaimed on Monday evening;
unfortunately after most of the murders and other outrages had been
committed.
In an official sense only M. de Plehve is answerable for the conduct of
his subordinates, as all Ministers are, under similar circumstances,
even in constitutionally governed countries; but without evidence, which
has not yet been forthcoming from any quarter, I refuse to credit
accusations of direct cognisance of, or complicity in, the plot which
owed its origin to the indications of a powerful local paper; its plan
and purpose to local anti-Semites; and in the execution of which several
minor officials of the local administration, some police officers,
employés of public departments, students, Seminarists, and Moldavian
and Russian artisans were notoriously engaged. In character it was a
savage anti-Semitic outbreak, and in purpose a terrorising demonstration
against the Jews as advocates of Socialism and suspected enemies of the
Tsar’s Government.
M. de Plehve’s borrowed version of the origin and objects of the
outbreak is the concoction of incriminated local officials, and members
of the _Bessarabetz_ staff. It is therefore, and on that account,
prejudiced and untrue.
CHAPTER XI
V. DOCUMENTS
(I) _Petition addressed by the Jews of Kishineff to the Director-General
of the Police Department sent from St. Petersburg by M. de Plehve to
investigate the causes of the massacres._
TO HIS EXCELLENCY THE DIRECTOR OF THE POLICE DEPARTMENT:
We, the numerous Jewish inhabitants of the town of Kishineff, having
suffered from an inhuman and sanguinary outburst which resulted in
unprecedented plundering on the part of an unrestrained mob on the 6th
and 7th (19th and 20th) of April, perceive in the arrival of your
Excellency into our town an unmistakable sign that the Supreme
Government takes an interest in the causes responsible for the sad
event, and in the conditions which made the occurrences assume such
terrible proportions. In this case we, the Jewish population of the town
of Kishineff, are convinced that your Excellency will not refuse to
listen to our complaints as sufferers.
It is impossible, in our opinion, to attribute the causes of the present
outbreak to the economical exploitation of the Christians by the Jewish
inhabitants. Hitherto there has been no friction between Jews and
Christians, in Bessarabia in general and in Kishineff in particular.
This state of affairs is explained partly by the peaceful character of
the local population, partly by the favourable economic condition of the
province. The result has been that for the last twenty years there has
been no collision whatever between the two groups of the population in
the province of Bessarabia; and whilst in the South and Southwest of
Russia several outbreaks against the Jews have occurred, peace and order
reigned at Kishineff.
When in the eighties the whole South was ablaze with attacks against
the Jews, not a single spark found its way into Bessarabia. During all
those years the province suffered on several occasions from failure of
crops, and yet the Christians never thought of attributing the cause of
economical troubles to their Jewish neighbours. The present year,
following upon a very good one for Bessarabia, could offer no reason
whatever for hostile feelings between Jews and Christians on economical
ground.
We are therefore of opinion that the economical question must be
entirely excluded from a consideration of the recent massacres. Not only
does the rich and fertile province of Bessarabia secure an easy
existence for every kind of work, but it is also quite free from the
vagabond element of the rabble in seaports, from whom the rioters are
usually recruited. The recent outbreaks, unequalled even in the history
of attacks on the Jews, are so entirely out of harmony with the usual
social life and habits of the province, that we must necessarily look
for the reasons not in the relations existing between Jews and
Christians, but in special events which have taken place during the last
few years, and in certain occurrences immediately preceding the
outbreak. Among such events we count, in the first instance, the
influence of the local press, the only representative of which is the
_Bessarabetz_. This paper has been established for over five years.
Before its existence there was no local organ in the province (with the
exception of the short-lived _Bessarabsky Viestnik_). Thus the
_Bessarabetz_ was bound to begin its activity upon virgin soil, and its
influence was, for this very reason, considerable from the commencement.
In the second year of its existence the paper began a systematic
campaign of Jew-baiting, which took a much more monstrous form than that
in any other paper. The _Bessarabetz_ evidently made a special feature
of Jew-baiting. We could quote articles which plainly incite the mob to
exterminate the Jews. The local population, with only one paper, the
_Bessarabetz_, at its disposal, the Censor having refused to authorise
another organ, were told day by day that “_the Jews are enemies_,” and
that “_the Jews must be destroyed_.”
The local Censor, in the person of the administrative power, evidently
found such a tendency useful from some other point of view, otherwise
his attitude remains quite incomprehensible. It naturally followed that
the average reader, and especially the half-educated mass, had in the
end to adopt the views of the press which told them that the
extermination of the Jews was not only desirable but also possible. This
is one phase of the state of affairs,--the preparatory stage, consisting
in the endeavour to influence the local population towards one end and
in one particular direction. The absence of any other local organs, the
attitude of the Censor, and the daily activity of several individuals
under the leadership of the editor of the _Bessarabetz_, helped forward
the movement. There is hardly a number of the paper which did not
contain an attack on the Jews. Phrases like “_death to the Jews_,” “_all
the Jews must be killed_,” were suggested regularly as the means of
solving the Jewish question. Being the only local organ the
_Bessarabetz_ is read in all the taverns and teashops, and it is evident
to what an extent this paper could foster the hatred of the Christians
towards the Jews and how all-pervading its influence upon the passions
of human nature must have been.
In order to convince his readers of the necessity of solving the Jewish
question, especially in the spirit advocated by the paper, the editor of
the _Bessarabetz_ availed himself of the circumstances, inexplicable at
the beginning, attending the murder of a lad living in Doubossar. As
insinuatingly as possible he attributed the disappearance of the lad to
ritual murder by the Jews, and to the alleged requirement of Christian
blood. The official denial of the accusation by the competent judicial
authorities was purposely worded in such a way as to be only half
convincing.
All these circumstances, together with the general attitude of the
_Bessarabetz_, could not but create such a state of mind in the mob that
one stone thrown into a Jewish window was sufficient to call forth a
regular attack. We are unable to trace the source whence came the
circulars read in the taverns and according to which: “the Tsar had
ordered the extermination of the Jews during the three days of Easter.”
We must, however, remark that under the conditions existing, it was
impossible for the mob not to consider these circulars as the logical
sequel to the campaign of the _Bessarabetz_ extending over a course of
years.
If we now turn to the lesson which the population of Kishineff could
take from the action of the local administrative authorities towards the
Jews, we see that the mass could not but come to the conclusion that
what was unlawful with regard to any other section of the inhabitants,
was legal and permissible where Jews were concerned. These acts include
the expulsion of Jews from various localities, subsequently recognised
as unjust by the Senate; and the actions of individuals, as, for
instance, the _Pristav_ Von Oglio.
The Jewish population, becoming aware long before the festivals of the
attitude of the crowd and of the dangers that threatened them, addressed
themselves through their representatives to the Governor of the
province, and asked him to take the necessary measures to protect them
and their property. The Governor gave them a reply of a very assuring
nature, relying upon which the Jews considered it needless to think of
self-defence.
Under these circumstances the Easter festival approached with danger
feared by all the population. It was talked of publicly and openly; it
was no secret even to the authorities. Strangely enough, however, not
only did the local government take no preparatory measures against a
possible outbreak, but even when the attack began it neglected to take
the steps within its power which would have prevented the massacres from
assuming unheard-of proportions, and of which it is impossible to speak
without feelings of horror and pity. Before the very eyes of the police
almost incredible havoc was worked upon human victims, and cruelties
committed unequalled in the history of Russia during the past few
decades. The military power remained inactive and, for reasons
altogether incomprehensible, the local government did not avail itself
of the rights and privileges accorded to it in such cases by the § 340
of the Criminal Code and by § 1 and § 8 of the additions to § 316.
Remaining unmoved itself, it kept inactive the military forces and thus
encouraged the mob. The latter, perceiving the passive attitude of the
authorities, soon ceased breaking the windows and took to sacking houses
and shops, and finally to murder and violation.
In their complaints addressed by the sufferers to the public
prosecutor, they pointed to cases where the police encouraged the
rioters by the words: “Kill the Jews!” (Byei Zhidoff!). Jews who had
armed themselves in self-defence were soon disarmed by the police. The
result of such an unheard-of state of affairs has been the loss of 45
lives, with 86 dangerously wounded and 500 slightly wounded, and the
violation of women and children--in a word, all the horrors of a
massacre.
It is not astonishing that when some of the rioters were arrested they
expressed surprise, asking: “Why they were being arrested, since it had
been permitted to kill the Jews?” There was an instance in which the mob
was engaged over eight hours plundering one house, situated in a
populous street, without being stopped, although the sufferers applied
for help to all the authorities. Only towards five o’clock in the
afternoon of the 7th (20th) of April, when the military were called upon
to check the riot, did the rabble cease its terrible work.
The horrors and crimes committed have brought about a state of things
which, offering no guarantee as far as life and property are concerned,
prevents the inhabitants from resuming their peaceful occupations. The
people, deprived of their homes and property, are trembling for their
lives. The losses cannot be exactly estimated, but they amount to
several millions of roubles, and the fire that has broken out in
Kishineff is spreading all over the province. The Jewish population
therefore trusts that your Excellency will restore order and
tranquillity and protect the Jewish inhabitants from the dangers
threatening their lives and property. The arrival of your Excellency
into our town has already inspired us with the hope that definite and
energetic measures will be taken.
* * * * *
(II) _List of the killed and those that died from wounds in the
Hospital._
1. Seltzer, Michel Josiphov.
2. Makhlin, Moses Chaskelev, 45 years, Asia Street, No. 13, killed by a
bootmaker; his daughter was also killed; murderers armed with hammers.
3. Berladsky, Hosea Abramovitz, Asia Street, No. 13, had hidden himself
in the attic, and was thrown into the street.
4. Kainarsky, Kopel Davidovitz, 60 years old. His grandsons know the
murderer. The sons are in the hospital. Kainarsky was killed in the
slaughter-house; he lived in the Mountzeskaya road. His money was taken
from him and his abdomen was opened and filled with feathers.
5. Tounik, Jacob Elchunov, killed in his own house.
6. Kogan, Abraham Routor, killed in the slaughter-house; was a dealer in
fowls.
7. Menduk, Mottel Davidovitz, shop-keeper in the Mountzeskaya Street,
killed in the slaughter-house in the stables; wife and children in
Berlin (?) in very poor circumstances.
8. Ullman, Israel Yacoblewitz, wine-shop proprietor near the botanical
gardens; wife and children in Berlin.
9. Shalistal, Israel Leiservitz.
10. Baranovitz, Benja Shimenov, lived in Gostinaya Street, No. 33. With
him in the same house 8 men were killed.
11. Fanarnei, Eiss Davidovitz (?); lived near the slaughter-house. The
daughter Fliga is in the hospital, and is ignorant of the father’s
death.
12. Salapter, Ben-zion Leibov, lived in Gostinaya Street, No. 33;
killed; the roof was torn off by the mob who killed Galantor, cattle
dealer, and robbed him of 1500 roubles, and others with clubs.
13. Goldiss, Chaim Leibov.
14. Chaskelevitz, David Nisselev, smith; killed together with his
grandmother. His sister, 12 years old (violated), has since died in the
hospital.
15. Wouller, Leinha; married, no children; killed defending his sister
Feya, aged 13, who was violated and killed; wife now at home.
16. Liss, Hirsch Yankelev, killed in the courtyard; lived at the corner
of Gostinaya Street, No. 2; dealer in bread, etc. Son was in the
hospital, student of the commercial school.
17. Krupnik, Idel; lived in Krovskaya Street, No. 52.
18. Krupnik, Isaac, son of the former.
19. Drachmann, David Moisuv; baker, worked in the bakery of Silberstein.
20. Greenspoon, Mordecai; killed with a knife. The murderers mutilated
the body.
21. Byeletzky, Isaac David Mendelev.
22. Kantor, Joseph Abramovitz; joiner, lived in Gostinaya Street, No.
33, 28 years old, married.
23. Bolgar, Hirsch Chaimov; commission agent at the railway station;
killed in the courtyard; married, 8 children.
24. Nissenson, Chaim Nissinov, formerly a bookkeeper. Died in the
hospital the following day, in consequence of blows received on the head
with clubs; he was in a terrible state.
25. Urrmann, Samuel Baruch, died in the hospital.
26. Weinstein, Abraham; bootmaker, 47 years old; died in the hospital.
27. Kiegel, Moshe Samuel; lived in Ismailovsk Street, shopkeeper, 27
years old; married, no children.
28. Brachmann, Aaron Isaacov; his wife is now in the hospital.
29. Rosenfeld, Isaac Yankelev.
30. Greenberg, Joseph Hirsch Danilov. Lived in Nicolaievskai Street, No.
33.
31. Charidon, David Abrahamov, brought in a box (to hospital or
cemetery?) with parts of his body cut off; single.
32. Kodja (?), Beila Leiserovna.
33. Katzap, Rose Falikovna; lived in Gostinaya Street, No. 33; killed in
the yard; lived with her son.
34. Papagei (?), Chaja Sarah Abramovna.
35. Berger, Itlia, 52 years old; had come on a visit to Kishineff.
36. Spivak, Pinya Isaacov.
37. Fishmann, Simeon; 6 months old; smothered whilst the mother defended
herself.
38. Michel Shaev Lashkoff.
39. Wolowitz, Kalmann, 60 years old; died in the hospital.
40. Kiegelmann, Chaya Leah, 38 years old, died in the hospital; daughter
employed in the free reading room in the professional school.
[This list is not complete. It was probably prepared soon after the
massacres. A few dead bodies have been found since the first lists were
compiled.--M. D.]
* * * * *
(III) _Extracts from a report upon the outrages by two Christian
ladies._
Seltzer. Gostinaya Street, No. 75. His daughter rushed to the police
station, asking for help. The police replied: “We shall do nothing.” The
father escaped, but was caught by the crowd and killed; the policeman
who took him to the hospital trampled him under his feet.
The Jews assembled on Monday, and armed themselves in self-defence, but
the police officer, Dobroselsky, ordered them to disarm.
Makhlin. Asiatskaya Street, No. 13. Whilst the crowd was at its
murderous work in this place, the Jews addressed themselves to the
military, asking for help. The reply was: “We have no orders.” About 300
Jews assembled near the barracks, when suddenly a drunken sergeant
(feldwebel) rushed in, calling out to the Jews: “Dogs, I shall kill all
of you.” The Jews rushed away, frightened, and fell into the hands of
the mob.
Makhlin, Berladsky, Greenspoon, and Nissenson were killed.
The daughter of Berladsky was thrown down from the attic.
The daughter of Makhlin had the skin of her finger torn off, together
with the rings.
Greenspoon. (The following is told by his wife.) She had hidden herself,
together with two little children and a neighbour, in a shed. When her
husband was being beaten in the yard she rushed out to defend him, but
one ruffian struck the child in the face and pushed her back into the
shed. She found the dead body of her husband only on the following
morning, in a neighbouring yard. In the same house there were wine
vaults, and the crowd drank, shouted, and danced upon the corpses.
Myntsheskaya Road. Forty families lived here.
Munduk.
Meier Weismann.
Kogan, Abraham, was running towards the town to save himself, when he
was caught by the crowd and struck upon the head. His wife, who was with
him, was caught by fifteen men, who violated her, in the open road, one
after the other. A daughter, 22 years old, and two sons, 16 and 18 years
old, were wounded, and when they sought refuge in the house of a retired
Colonel, who was cashier in the gut-works, he refused to shelter them. A
converted Jew showed equal cruelty with regard to the victims.
Israel Ullmann. When the crowd left him, thinking he was dead, his
little son came, crying: “Father, father!” Ullmann lifted up his head,
and some of the Christian onlookers shouted: “Ullmann is still alive.”
The murderers returned and finished him.
Fanorissi Siss and his wife. The wife had nails driven through her eyes.
Chariton.
Kainarsky.
Baronowitz, Gostinaya Street, No. 33. Whilst the crowd was breaking the
windows, the Assistant Police Officer passed, but took no notice of what
was happening. The officer Goresonsky passed afterwards and showed the
same indifference. The son of Baronowitz hid himself in the closet; the
crowd tore off the roof and killed him. When the father saw that the son
was being killed, he wept and begged the murderers to take everything,
but to spare his son. The murderers replied: “Be quiet, Jew; we shall
soon do the same to you.” Whilst he was endeavouring to save the other
children he was dragged back into the yard.
Baronowitz fell on his knees before the officer Solovkin, kissed his
hands, and told him that his son had been killed. “Well,” said the
officer, “don’t worry; it is all over now in your house, they will harm
you no more.”
Drachmann. Gostinaya Street, No. 33.
Skyljanskaya Rogatka. When the Jews went to the police station to ask
for help, the inspector replied: “Serves you right, why do you use our
blood?”
A little girl of ten years, having begged the officer Osovsky to protect
her from the murderers, the officer replied: “Go away, you Jewish brat.”
Kiegelmann, killed; wife died in the hospital. A son and a daughter, 18
years old, defended themselves, when six ruffians seized the girl by the
hair, dragged her out into the yard, and attempted to violate her. She
fought desperately, defending her honour, her clothes were torn off her
body, but at last the ruffians left her. The mother rushed to the
daughter’s assistance, but was severely injured.
Weinstein. The wife was ill (she has died since) in bed. The crowd, led
by some Government officials, came into the house and beat the husband
until he fell down bleeding and motionless. The little children defended
the bedridden mother. One little girl, 10 years old, having thrown her
arms round her mother, had her arm cut off; another daughter and her
intended had their teeth broken, and their lips cut off. The murderers
were two peasants whom they knew well, and who used to be on very good
terms with the family. They left the house shouting: “Where are Itzko
and Israel [two sons], we shall kill them.”
Volowitz. Killed; one daughter dangerously wounded; she begged the
murderers to kill her together with her father. A younger daughter
rushed into the streets, imploring the military for help, but the
officer took no notice of her.
Alexandrovskaya Street, No. 37. Golder hid himself in the cellar, having
with him a child 2 years old. There he passed the night. The child, in
consequence of the cold, died the next day.
Fishmon, Solomon. The crowd was led by several men, evidently belonging
to the better class of society. The wife of F. tried to escape, holding
in her arms a child 10 months old, when somebody struck her in the back
so violently that she fell, and in her fall smothered the infant with
her own body.
Not far away from the scene of the murder, the Superintendent of the
Police, the _Pristav_ Solovkin, and the patrol were looking on quietly
and unmoved.
A Christian boy of about 15 jumped upon a tram, asking: “Are there no
Jews here?” There was only one Jewish woman whose husband had just been
killed, and who, tremblingly, managed to hide herself behind her
neighbour, a Christian woman. At last the reply was given: “No Jews
here.” Then a gentleman, well dressed, having a hat on, and with rings
on his fingers, asked the boy: “Well, how goes it?” “Very well,” replied
the youth. “By the evening we shall have killed all the Jews.” The
gentleman encouragingly patted the boy on the cheek.
The Superintendent of the Police visited the crowd on the first day of
Easter, addressed a few words to them, and went away. The crowds
shouted: “Hurray, bravo!” and at once began breaking the windows.
Elie Mutshnik and 150 Jews came on the first day of the riots to the
Vice-Governor to ask for help. The latter ordered the soldiers to
disperse them.
Whilst the crowd of rioters was attacking a family in which there were
little children, a lady, passing by, said to her husband, a Government
official, that she was sorry for the children. “Never mind,” said her
husband, “let them get their reward.” An eyewitness says that the
military and the police refused to help the victims, and coolly looked
on whilst houses were sacked, and men and women killed.
In Asiatskaya passage (Perenlok) all the houses were destroyed, and many
women violated.
Among the rioters were women, girls, students of the seminary,
government officials,[9] and some belonging to the better classes.
CHAPTER XII
NOTES AND COMMENTS
There is another anti-Semite organ edited by Pavolachi Kroushevan. It is
named the _Znamya_, or _Standard_. Though published in St. Petersburg,
it has a large sale in Bessarabia.
Both the _Bessarabetz_ and the _Znamya_ have studiously refrained from
alluding to the indignation excited in Western Europe and in the United
States over the consequences of their savage appeals to fanatical mobs.
No other papers being read in Kishineff by the anti-Jewish section of
the populace, these people remain unaffected by this outburst of public
reprobation in other countries. They are under the impression that the
attack on the hated Hebrews was a good work done for the Tsar, the
church, and themselves.
The credulity of the average Russian, in all anti-Hebrew matters, is
boundless. A Christian lady in Odessa told me that her servant, a very
intelligent-looking young girl, informed her a few evenings after the
horrible events at Kishineff, that the Jews of Odessa were planning the
murder of all the Christian children in the city. When the girl was
asked what information she had of this intended wholesale slaughter, she
replied: “I was told so! The Jews will put poisoned chocolate on
Christian doorsteps some night, and then, when the children come out for
school or play the following morning, they will see the chocolate, eat
it, and die. All the Jews in Odessa should be burned out!”
* * * * *
The popes, or Russian priests, are not in any special sense
anti-Semitic. Anyhow, they wield little, if any, influence of that or
any other kind upon even the simple and superstitious peasantry. The
Russian pope is, in fact, a man who has neither social nor political
importance of any kind. He is not invited to the houses of the nobility,
nor is he looked up to or relied upon by the people. He is a badly
educated Mujik, as a rule, and commands neither the confidence of his
own class nor the esteem of the ruling order. When he marries, his
family ties and domestic interests are believed to be his chief
considerations, while the worldly benefits of his clerical position,
comparatively small though these may be, are believed to be his primary
concern in life. Whatever little distinction belongs to his garb and
calling arises entirely from the fact that he is, in reality, a clerical
soldier of the Tsar; earning his living as an officer of a religious
army, whose head and commander-in-chief is the great Emperor of all the
Russians. He is, in another sense, the Tsar’s moral policeman among the
Russian people.
* * * * *
The ordinary Russian policeman corresponds in many respects to the
average member of the Royal Irish Constabulary. He is a man of the
peasantry, of fine physique, and of unbounded self-importance. He lacks,
however, the education and superior intelligence of his Irish rural
prototype, while his reputation is on a lower moral plane. He is badly
officered, as a rule, and this accounts largely for the suspicion which
attaches to the performance of his duties in districts where the
numerous vexatious restrictions in operation against the “Semitic
malady” are so many temptations to the guardian of the law “to wink the
other eye” at evasions of legal obstructions made profitable _not_ to
see. His pay is small, and this, too, is an explanation of his official
dereliction in these matters.
Strenuous efforts have been, and are still being, made to induce a more
educated class of Russians to officer the police force of the Empire,
but with slow and uncertain results, so far. The nobility look upon the
army as the only honourable service open to them, apart from diplomatic
and administrative posts. Trade and commerce are, of course, _infra
dig._, and the police is even more so, from the point of view of all
sections of the aristocracy, poor and rich, fortunate and the reverse.
There is not, strictly speaking, a Russian middle class, but there will
soon be an intellectually developed class of men from a corresponding
social grade turned out of Russia’s fine colleges and gymnasiums, from
whose ranks an educated body of officials will be recruited for this and
kindred public employments. Well officered, and better paid than they
now are, the Russian police would soon rank in efficiency, as well as in
appearance, with the best peace-preserving forces of any country.
* * * * *
A Russian city mob has little or no fear of the police force. Nor do the
ordinary military, as a rule, inspire rioters with any sense of serious
apprehensions. The explanation is probably due to the immediate kinship
of class and feeling between the rough elements of an urban community
and the conscript force of which they are a potential part, and (in
anti-Semitic outbreaks) to the fact that policeman, soldier, and artisan
share a common sentiment of antipathy towards the Jew. It is
emphatically otherwise with Cossacks. The mob exhibits no hesitation
when confronted with this arm of the military power. It disperses in
double-quick time. I was told by one of the foreign Consuls in Odessa
that on one occasion, some fifteen years ago, there was a sudden
outbreak of mob violence which neither military nor police could, or
would, quell. They attacked the houses of some foreign residents, and
the Consul was called upon for protection. He went at once to the
Governor, and suggested the employment of a dozen Cossacks to clear that
part of the city of the disturbers. A troop of these splendid horsemen
was turned loose without delay, and the riots were at an end within an
hour. Nothing can stop their sweeping charge through a city’s streets.
They ride over or through obstacles, human or otherwise, knout in hand,
and spare no one who has not already cleared out of their path. As the
Consul remarked to me when discussing the action, and inaction, of the
military at Kishineff, “A dozen Don Cossacks would have settled the
whole business with the rioters on Easter Sunday in half an hour.”
* * * * *
During an attack upon a Jew’s shop in Kishineff, an artillery officer,
who was lodging in a Christian house opposite, saw a soldier enter the
premises, and join in the looting of the unfortunate Hebrew’s goods. The
officer, indignant at the disgraceful act of the soldier, rushed across
the street, and seizing the military culprit, tore off his number, with
the view of reporting him to the Colonel of his regiment. The mob turned
upon the officer, who was compelled to seek shelter in his quarters. The
windows were smashed with stones, and he was called upon to return the
badge containing the soldier’s number. This he refused to do, and
telephoned to the nearest military barracks for assistance. He was
ultimately rescued from the mob’s threatening display.
* * * * *
It was difficult to obtain any reliable account of the actual number of
persons who were arrested, tried, and punished for the murders and
looting on the 19th and 20th of April. M. Polak, the Procurator from
Odessa, came to Kishineff to put the law in motion against the rioters.
About seven hundred out of the fifteen hundred or two thousand persons
implicated were lodged in prison. M. Polak had to rely upon the local
authorities to execute the orders of the Government through him. After
his return to Odessa no less than five hundred of the prisoners were
liberated, following an inquiry before the _Juges d’Instruction_ which
was remarkable for the hurried manner in which it was conducted.
Punishment averaging a few months’ imprisonment was meted out to about
150, by the judges of the peace, before whom the cases were sent by the
_Juges d’Instruction_. Some fifty were held on more serious charges, but
the results of their trials are not yet made known. They will presumably
be tried before the Criminal Court of Assize.
None of the known local instigators of the outbreak were arrested up to
the date of my departure from Kishineff.
Some of the rioters protested, on arrest, that they were led to believe
that the local authorities had lent their sanction to the massacre and
looting, in order to punish the Jews for being the enemies of the Tsar’s
Government and the supporters of Socialism.
The _Juge d’Instruction_, M. Davidovitch, who had to deal with the
accused in the first instance, was at one time a contributor to the
_Bessarabetz_--the active agent of the outbreak. I was informed that he
had written an article for the paper shortly after the massacres,
showing how the Jews were themselves the sole cause of the attack made
upon them at Easter.
Two especially revolting outrages, the particulars of which have been
published, one, the killing of a woman who was _enceinte_, and the
putting of feathers in her body after disembowelling her; and the murder
of a child two months old, were not included in the list of murders
which I obtained, and I am not satisfied that these two crimes were
actually committed as alleged. The Jewish doctors in the Hebrew Hospital
could not confirm the report or particulars of these two cases. In the
instance of the infant, they told me that the mother, in defending
herself, and subsequently in her flight from the mob, had let the child
fall, and that its death really happened in that way.
The foundation for the other and more inhuman story was, I think, this:
A Jew named Kainarsky, a dealer in sheep and cattle gut, was attacked,
robbed, and murdered in a slaughter-house. The mob cut open his bowels
and put feathers inside; prompted, doubtless, to this act of barbarity
by the nature of the poor fellow’s calling and business. It was an
outrage base and inhuman enough, in all conscience, but not quite so
fiendish in character as that of the account which represented a woman
with child as the object of this peculiar atrocity.
The man thus murdered is included in the list of victims given to me in
Kishineff, while no woman is mentioned as having undergone such
mutilation, a circumstance which, it is sincerely to be hoped, disposes
of the story as untrue.
* * * * *
“Byei Zhidoff!” the terrible cry which was the signal of slaughter at
Easter, means “Kill the Jews!” Zhidoff is a term of Russian contempt for
the Jew.
* * * * *
The “Narodovostvo,” or People’s Freedom Party, which is supposed to be a
growing movement in Russia, has no branch or supporters in Kishineff, at
least I failed to obtain information of its existence. It represents an
aspiration rather than an original force. A student who joined the
rioters on the first day’s outbreak, with the object of diverting the
mob, if possible, from resorting to extreme violence against the Jews,
began by raising a cry for constitutional freedom. The crowd did not
understand him, whereupon he shouted “Down with the Government at St.
Petersburg!” He was instantly knocked down, and would have been killed
had the police not interfered on seeing a Russian in danger. He was
taken off to prison.
Ten days after the Kishineff massacres there was an attempted Socialist
demonstration at Odessa. It was in some way supposed to be a May Day
Labour affair, but assumed the form of an Anarchist turnout, of which
the police appeared to have had timely intimation. A band of some forty
men, workers and _prolétaires_, attempted to march toward the centre of
the city, with a red flag at their head. After proceeding along a small
street, and raising a few feeble cries, they were pounced upon by the
police and taken to prison. It was found, on examination, that nineteen
of the forty were Jews. They were all liberated after a few days’
detention.
* * * * *
One ground of objection to the Zionist movement for the repatriation of
the Jews is that the Hebrews, who are not a military people, would be
shut off from European help while being at the mercy of Turkish rule and
of Arab hostility in Palestine. The implied loss of European protection
may be an imaginary risk. The record of the Turks in the matter of
modern anti-Semitism compares more than favourably with that of the
tender feelings of European Christianity. The Arab is of the same racial
family as the descendants of Father Abraham, and even were the offspring
of Ishmael more numerous in Palestine than they are estimated to be,
they might be trusted to show no more savage propensities towards their
Israelitish kindred than Russian Seminarists or Roumanian Christians
have done in recent years.
Two or three millions of Jews in Palestine would, however, develop a
national sentiment and idea that would soon nourish a spirit of
patriotism capable of defending them from possible Arab aggression. The
Jews of the world would be their foreign friends and allies, while the
civilised nations inhabited by the scattered Hebrews could not in reason
neglect to take a sympathetic interest in the protection and welfare of
one of the oldest peoples in the world, restored again to the Promised
Land of Israel.
Russia’s diplomatic common sense should see in the Zionist movement a
noble racial effort, worthy of assistance on its merits, but especially
calling for Russian help and encouragement. The creators of the Pale of
Settlement, and those responsible for the poverty and suffering which
are alone due to this cause, owe some reparation to the people who have
been thus treated. No ten million pounds which Russia could spend on
her army and navy would render her empire a better or more lasting
service than what would follow to her domestic peace if a sum of that
amount, or more if necessary, were devoted to the carrying out of the
great work of the Zionist leaders. If Russia will only trust and obey
her better instincts in adopting a humane policy of this kind, coupled
with a stern moral warfare against the propagation of the
blood-accusation legend inside the Empire, she will cure the “Semitic
malady,” which will otherwise grow to be an increasing and more
dangerous evil within her borders.
* * * * *
The Russian Jew as an emigrant to the United States is a subject which
will demand serious consideration after public interest in the Kishineff
horrors subsides. All who can find means to go will leave Bessarabia,
unless the Tsar is inclined, or induced, to speak words which will be an
Imperial guarantee against further violence. No such words have yet
been uttered. This is much to be regretted by all who believe in the
humanity of the Emperor’s personal disposition. It tends to create the
possibly erroneous and unjust suspicion that the terror created by the
massacres in April is to be used by the Tsar’s advisers “_pour
encourager les autres_,” to lessen the extent of the “Semitic malady” by
emigrating from Russia. But, in any case, large numbers of Jews will
endeavour to quit the Pale, and their relatives and friends who fled in
1891, and who have prospered in America, may be counted upon to lend
assistance to the new aspirants for United States citizenship and
protection.
It is the proletarian Jew and the members of the small huckstering class
who are the chief undesirables in Russia now. They are three-fourths of
the Semitic population of the Pale, and their numbers are increasing.
I saw thousands of these in the cities and towns, from Odessa to Warsaw.
They are not a drunken nor an abnormally immoral class. Russian
officials have testified to their general good conduct, on the whole;
when due allowance is made for the precarious nature of their
employments and the poverty of their lives. I observed how uniform were
the healthy looks of their children, even amidst some of the most
wretched surroundings. This is a good testimony to personal character
and civic qualities. In England the children of the lowest classes are
neglected and underfed by parents who expend in gin and beer what would
provide more nourishment for their offspring. There is no corresponding
bad trait in the average proletarian Jew of the Pale.
There are, as a matter of course, traits of low cunning, of shady
subterfuge, and of other obnoxious qualities found among a people who
have been hunted and ground down for generations. It would amount to a
miracle of racial morality if such results did not follow from the
treatment and experiences of the Russian Jew. They are also sufferers
from the indifferent sanitary system of towns like Kishineff, where
there is an abundance of water badly utilised in municipal management
for the health and cleanliness of the poorer quarters and suburbs of the
city.
* * * * *
Their poverty and persecution, along with the habits peculiar to the
lowest grade of Hebrew humanity in Eastern Europe, render them
singularly objectionable in appearance; carrying with them, as they do,
all the traces of social degradation which cling to a pariah people as a
physical certificate of the wrongs and hardships they have had to
endure.
No country, be it ever so free, hospitable, or humane, could in reason
be expected to open its ports to such a class of emigrant in order to
relieve the Russian Government and nation of these wronged and
unfortunate undesirables. They must first be improved in the land of
their birth by more liberty and better treatment, or be sent for
change--for better conditions of industrial life and hopes--to
Palestine, where land labour could be provided for them. Transplantation
would be an effective remedy, if carried out under careful supervision.
The root qualities of the Jew--his intelligence, his faith, his intense
ambition to possess money--would, under a more favourable environment,
reclaim him from the induced vices which have naturally grown out of the
congenial surroundings of poverty, suffering, and injustice. The human
being who can succeed in living at all the semblance of a civilised
existence, under the depressing conditions obtaining for the Jew within
the towns of the Pale, could not fail in winning a better livelihood
where rural industries and _petit_ culture, such as the soil and
situation of Palestine will encourage, would be open to his
intelligence, ambition, and energies. Such a Jew has no hope in Russia.
He could not possibly meet a worse fate in Palestine. No other country
can be expected to give him the privilege of its citizenship. Therefore,
if he is not to be improved off the face of the earth by a corroding
poverty, or by periodical outbreaks like that of Kishineff, he should be
taken by the Zionist movement to where there are both the promise and
inspiration of a new life.
The Polish proletarian Jew has more virility than the Hebrew of the same
class within the Pale. He is no more prepossessing in appearance, while
it is not wronging him to say that he is less desirable, in some other
respects, as a citizen of another country. The Jews are sufficiently
numerous in Poland to enlist the co-operation of Socialist revolutionary
forces there, and thereby to obtain, by some means, a right to live.
They are not so powerless as those within the Pale, and Russia may soon
find it a wise and necessary policy to allow them to have a freer
access than they now enjoy to the resources of the country, in order to
lessen their growing numbers in the ancient capital of the Kingdom of
Poland. There are over a quarter of a million of them in Warsaw. They
would be a dangerous element there if driven to extremities, or in the
event of any complications arising between the Russian Empire and
Germany. In any case, the Polish Jew will work out his own destiny. He
has lived in Poland for over seven hundred years, and this long
experience of varied forms of fortune and of oppression gives him a
tenure and a hope which may yet win him back some of the rights and
privileges he once enjoyed before he lost the tolerant protection of the
Polish people in becoming the agent and tool of the Polish landed
aristocracy.
* * * * *
Since the foregoing parts of this book were prepared for the press, it
has been announced from Russia that Vice-Governor Ostrogoff has been
transferred from Kishineff to Stavropol, in the Caucasus. This action
marks the severe condemnation of this official’s conduct by the Russian
Government.
The head of the _gendarmerie_ at Kishineff has been retired from
service.
It has also been reported from apparently reliable sources that several
persons who were at first accused of participation in the massacres, and
liberated after a short detention in prison, have been re-arrested, and
will be tried in September. It is further stated that there are to be 53
indictments for manslaughter in addition to 34 prisoners already held
for trial, while 400 other cases are under investigation.
It has likewise been published in the press that former Governor Von
Raaben had asked for, and had been denied, an interview with the
Emperor.
According to reports circulated from Vienna on the 10th of July, the
special visit paid to Kishineff by the Minister of Justice was
responsible for the action of the authorities in re-arresting suspected
culprits, and for the intention to prosecute several of the prominent
instigators of the riots at Easter who had been arrested or accused for
their connection with the massacres up to the date of the author’s
departure from Kishineff.
From a similar Vienna source, it has been reported that one of these
prominent anti-Semites of Kishineff had committed suicide, as a result
of an inquiry instituted into his conduct during the disturbances.
The actual murderers of the Christian boy, Ribalenko of Doubossar, who
was declared by the _Bessarabetz_ newspaper to have been killed by the
Jews for sacrificial purposes, have been discovered and arrested. He was
killed by one Tischtchevko, the caretaker of the orchard in which the
body was found. The murderer confesses that the uncle of the boy took
part in committing the crime. Both the murderers are Russians and
Christians.
The latest published report of the Kishineff Relief Committee gives the
following account of the moneys received and how expended by that body:
“To the end of June 735,476 roubles have been received as follows:
RECEIPTS
Roubles
America, 192,443
England, 16,001
Germany, 35,675
Italy, 5,000
Holland, 1,000
Austria, 10,415
Roumania, 3,023
France, 9,248
Russia, 462,671
-------
Total, 735,476
EXPENDITURES
Roubles
Provisions, 14,700
To sufferers (directly), 273,622
To sufferers (indirectly), 30,000
To 35 families of those murdered or who
died of wounds, 87,500
To two families of invalids, 4,600
To the Ladies’ Committee, for preparing
linen and clothes and for a crèche, 4,000
To settling 50 families in Palestine, 50,000
-------
Total, 464,422
Balance in hand, 271,054
-------
Roubles, 735,476
“The number of families who suffered from the riots is given at about
2750. Applications for relief were received from 2538 families, to the
amount of 2,332,890 roubles. The number of persons murdered, or who died
of wounds, is put down at 47; severely wounded, 92; slightly wounded,
345. Some of the latter were treated by private doctors. The killed left
behind 35 widows and 123 orphans. The number of persons rendered unfit
for work has not yet been ascertained, but is so far given as 50. The
Committee is of opinion that in order to satisfy all the losses for
which only now claims are being made 200,000 roubles will still be
required.”
APPENDICES
APPENDIX I
PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT AND THE JEWS
(_From the Daily Press_)
WASHINGTON, June 15.--Through their representative association, B’nai
B’rith, the Jews of America to-day laid their case before President
Roosevelt and Secretary Hay, and they are content to abide by whatever
the Executive decides is best for them.
A statement of the proceedings given out at the White House concerning
the conference consisted of a memorandum submitted by the B’nai B’rith
on the recent Kishineff massacre, a tentative draft of a petition to the
Tsar, which it is desired this Government should unofficially or
semi-officially assist in delivering to the Tsar, and procuring a reply
thereto, and copies of the replies of Secretary Hay and President
Roosevelt to their callers.
The memorandum says that the facts concerning the Kishineff massacre as
officially reported by the Russian Government have appalled and
horrified not only the Jews in Russia and elsewhere, but the whole
American people, who want something done, and whose hostility to Russia,
if nothing is done, will become intensified and fixed.
In his reply to the memorandum Secretary of State John Hay said:
“No person of ordinary humanity can have heard without deep emotion the
story of the cruel outrages inflicted upon the Jews of Kishineff. These
lamentable events have caused the profoundest impression throughout the
world, but most especially in this country, where there are so many of
your coreligionists who form such a desirable element of our population
in industry, thrift, public spirit, and commercial morality.
“Nobody can ever make the Americans think ill of the Jews as a class or
as a race--we know them too well. In the painful crisis through which we
are now passing the Jews of the United States have given evidence of the
highest qualities--generosity, love of justice, and power of
self-restraining.
“The Government of the United States must exhibit the same qualities. I
know you do not doubt the sentiments of the President. No one hates more
energetically than he does such acts of cruelty and injustice as those
we deplore. But he must carefully consider all the circumstances and
then decide whether any official action can be taken in addition to the
impressive and most effective expressions of public opinion in this
country during the last month. You will have observed that no civilised
government in the world has yet taken official action--this
consideration alone would bid us to proceed with care.
“The Emperor of Russia is entitled to our respect, not merely as the
ruler of a great and friendly nation, but as a man whose personal
character is even more elevated than his exalted station. We should not
be justified in assuming that this enlightened sovereign, who has given
so many proofs of his devotion to peace and religious tolerance, has not
done and is not doing all that lies in his power to put a stop to these
atrocities, to punish the guilty, whether they belong to the ignorant
populace or to high official circles, and to prevent the occurrence of
the outrages which have so shocked humanity. In fact, all we know of the
state of things in Russia tends to justify the hope that even out of the
present terrible situation some good results may come; that He who
watches over Israel does not slumber, and that the wrath of man, now as
so often in the past, shall be made to praise Him.”
The call on the President at the White House followed, and there
President Roosevelt, after the memorandum was laid before him, said:
“Mr. Chairman: I need not dwell upon a fact so patent as the widespread
indignation with which the American people heard of the dreadful
outrages upon the Jews in Kishineff. I have never in my experience in
this country known of a more immediate or a deeper expression of the
sympathy for the victims and of horror over the appalling calamity that
has occurred.
“It is natural that while the whole civilised world should express such
a feeling, it should yet be most intense and widespread in the United
States; for of all the great powers I think I may say that the United
States is that country in which, from the beginning of its national
career, most has been done in the way of acknowledging the debt due to
the Jewish race, and of endeavouring to do justice to those American
citizens who are of Jewish ancestry and faith.
“One of the most touching poems of our own great poet, Longfellow, is
that on the Jewish cemetery in Newport, and anyone who goes through any
of the old cemeteries of the cities which preserve the records of
colonial times will see the name of many an American of Jewish race who,
in war or in peace, did his full share in the founding of this nation.
From that day to this, from the day when the Jews of Charleston, of
Philadelphia, of New York, supported the patriot cause and helped in
every way, not only by money, but by arms, Washington and his
colleagues, who were founding this Republic--from that day to the
present we have had no struggle, military or civil, in which there have
not been citizens of Jewish faith who played an eminent part for the
honour and credit of the nation.
“I remember once General Howard mentioning to me the fact that two of
his brigade commanders upon whom he had placed special reliance were
Jews. Among the meetings of the Grand Army which I have attended one
stands out with peculiar vividness--a meeting held under the auspices of
the men of the Grand Army of Jewish creed in the temple in Forty-fourth
Street--Temple Emanu-El--to welcome the returned veterans of the
Spanish-American war of Jewish faith.
“When in Santiago, when I was myself in the army, one of the best
colonels among the regular regiments who did so well on that day, and
who fought beside me, was a Jew. One of the commanders of the ships
which, in the blockade of the Cuban coast, did so well, was a Jew.
“In my own regiment I promoted five men from the ranks for valour and
good conduct in battle. It happened by pure accident, for I know nothing
of the faith of any one of them, that these included two Protestants,
two Catholics, and one Jew; and while that was a pure accident, it was
not without its value as an illustration of the ethnic and religious
make-up of our nation and of the fact that if a man is a good American,
that is all we ask, without thinking of his creed or his birthplace.
“In the same way, when I was Police Commissioner in New York, I had
experience after experience of the excellent service done--an excellent
work needing nerve and hardihood, excellent work of what I may call the
Maccabee type in the Police Department under me, by police officers of
Jewish extraction.
“Let me give you one little incident with a direct bearing upon this
question of persecution for race or religious reasons. You may possibly
recall, I am sure certain of my New York friends will recall, that
during the time I was Police Commissioner a man came from abroad--I am
sorry to say, a clergyman--to start an anti-Jewish agitation in New
York, and announced his intention of holding meetings to assail the
Jews. The matter was brought to my attention.
“Of course, I had no power to prevent those meetings. After a good deal
of thought I detailed a Jewish sergeant and forty Jewish policemen to
protect the agitator while he held his meetings; so he made his speeches
denouncing the Jews protected exclusively by Jews, which I always
thought was probably the most effective answer that could possibly be
made to him, and probably the best object lesson that we could give of
the spirit in which we Americans manage such matters.
“Now let me give you another little example dealing with a Russian Jew,
an experience I had while handling the Police Department, and that could
have occurred, I think, nowhere else than in the United States.
“There was a certain man I appointed under the following conditions: I
was attracted to him by being told on a visit to the Bowery branch of
the Young Men’s Christian Association that they had a young fellow
there, a Jew, who had performed a feat of great note in saving people
from a burning building, and that they thought he was just the type for
a policeman. I had him called up and told him to take the examination,
and see if he could get through. He did, and he passed.
“He has only been an excellent policeman, but he at once, out of his
salary, proceeded to educate his younger brothers and sisters, and he
got either two or three of his old kinsfolk over from Russia, through
the money he had saved, and provided homes for them.
“I have given you examples of men who have served under me in my
administration of the Police Department in New York and my regiment. In
addition thereto, some of my nearest social friends, some of those with
whom I have been closest in political life, have been men of Jewish
faith and extraction. Therefore, inevitably, I have felt a degree of
personal sympathy and personal horror over this dreadful tragedy, as
great as can exist in the minds of any of you gentlemen yourselves.
“Exactly as I should claim the same sympathy from any one of you for any
tragedy happening to any Christian people, so I should hold myself
unworthy of my present position if I failed to feel just as deep
sympathy and just as deep sorrow and just as deep horror over an outrage
like this done to the Jewish people in any part of the earth.
“I am confident that much good has already been done by the
manifestations throughout the country, without any regard to creed
whatsoever, of horror and sympathy over what has occurred. It is
gratifying to know--what we would, of course, assume--that the
Government of Russia shows the feelings of horror and indignation with
which the American people look upon the outrages at Kishineff, and is
moving vigorously not only to prevent their continuance, but to punish
the perpetrators.
“That government takes the same view of those outrages that our own
government takes of the riots and lynchings which sometimes occur in our
country, but do not characterise either our government or our people.
“I have been visited by the Russian Ambassador on his own initiative,
and in addition to what has been said to Secretary Hay, the Russian
Ambassador has notified me personally, without any inquiry upon my
part, that the Governor of Kishineff has been removed; that between
three hundred and four hundred of the participants in the outrages have
been arrested, and he voluntarily stated that those men would be
punished to the utmost that the law would permit.
“I will consider most carefully the suggestions that you have submitted
to me and whether the now-existing conditions are such that any further
official expression would be of advantage to the unfortunate survivors,
with whom we sympathise so deeply. Nothing that has occurred recently
has had my more constant thought, and nothing will have my more constant
thought, than this subject. In any proper way by which beneficial action
may be taken it will be taken, to show the sincerity of the historic
American position of treating each man on his merits as a man, without
the least reference to his creed, his race, or his birthplace.”
APPENDIX II
A LETTER FROM LEO TOLSTOY
The following is the translation of a letter from Count Leo Tolstoy to a
Jew who had asked his opinion concerning the outrages in Kishineff:
“I have received your letter. I had already received several similar
letters. All the writers request me, as you do, to express my opinion on
the events at Kishineff. It seems to me that these appeals are based on
a misunderstanding. My correspondents supposed that my words carried
weight, and I am therefore begged to express my opinion on an event so
important and so complicated in its origins as the crime committed at
Kishineff. The misunderstanding consists in demanding from me the work
of a publicist, whereas I occupy myself exclusively with a single
definite question, having nothing in common with contemporary
events--viz., the question of religion and its application to life. To
request from me the public expression of my opinion on contemporary
events is as illogical as it would be to demand such expression from any
other specialist who makes use of contemporary events to illustrate his
views. I cannot, like a publicist, even if I thought it would be useful,
express my opinions on everything that occurs, no matter how important
it may be. If I did so I should have to speak hurriedly and without
reflection, repeating what has been said by others, and then my opinions
would cease to have the importance for the sake of which their
expression is sought.
“As regards my views on the Jews and on the horrible doings at
Kishineff, they ought, it would seem, to be clear to all who would
interest themselves in my conception of life. I cannot regard the Jews
other than as brothers whom I love, not because they are Jews, but
because, like ourselves and everybody else, they are sons of the one
God the Father. Such love needs no effort on my part, for I have met and
known many excellent people among the Jews. My attitude towards the
Kishineff outrage is likewise defined by my religion and my conception
of life. When I read the first accounts in the newspapers, even before I
knew of the horrible details which afterwards came to light, I realised
the full horror of what had occurred and was filled with a profound pity
for the innocent victims of the barbarity of the mob, mingled with
astonishment at the bestial ferocities of these pretended Christians and
disgust and loathing towards the so-called educated people who stirred
up the mob and sympathised with its doings. But what I felt most deeply
was horror at the criminals who were really responsible for all that had
occurred, horror at our Government, with their clergy, who keep the
people in a state of ignorance and fanaticism, and with their bandit
horde of officials. The outrages at Kishineff are but the direct result
of the propaganda of falsehood and violence which our Government
conducts with such energy. The attitude of our Government towards these
events is only one more proof of the brutal egoism which does not flinch
from any measures, however cruel, when it is a question of suppressing a
movement which is deemed dangerous, and of their complete indifference
(similar to the indifference of the Turkish Government towards the
Armenian atrocities) towards the most terrible outrages which do not
affect Government interests.
“This is all I can say with regard to the events at Kishineff, but it
has all been said long ago by me. If you ask me what, in my opinion, the
Jews ought to do, my answer in that case, as in others, is the logical
outcome of that Christian teaching which I strive to understand and to
follow. For the Jews, as for all men, one thing, and one thing only, is
necessary for salvation; to follow as closely as may be the universal
rule, ‘Do unto others as you would that others should do unto you.’
They should fight the Government not by violence--that weapon should be
left to the Government--but by virtuous living to the exclusion not only
of all violence towards their neighbours, but of all participation in
violence, even when called upon by the Government instruments of
violence for their own advantage. This is all I can say with regard to
the horrible events at Kishineff; all this is very old and is well
known.”
APPENDIX III
Maxime Gorky, the Russian novelist, wrote the following letter to the
Kishineff Relief Committee:
“Russia has been disgraced more and more frequently of recent years by
dark deeds, but the most disgraceful of all is the horrible Jewish
massacre at Kishineff, which has awakened our horror, shame, and
indignation. People who regard themselves as Christians, who claim to
believe in God’s mercy and sympathy, these people, on the day
consecrated to the resurrection of their God from the dead, occupy the
time in murdering children and aged people, ravishing women, and
martyring the men of the race that gave them Christ.
“Who bears the blame of this base crime, which will remain on us like a
bloody blot for ages? We shall be unable to wash this blot from the sad
history of our dark country. It would be unjust and too simple to
condemn the mob. The latter was merely the hand which was guided by a
corrupt conscience, driving it to murder and robbery. For it is well
known that the mob at Kishineff was led by men of cultured society. But
cultivated society in Russia is really much worse than the people, who
are goaded by their sad life and blinded and enthralled by the
artificial darkness created around them.
“The cultivated classes are a crowd of cowardly slaves, without feeling
of personal dignity, ready to accept every lie to save their ease and
comfort; a weak and lawless element almost without conscience and
without shame, in spite of its elegant exterior. Cultivated society is
not less guilty of the disgraceful and horrible deeds committed at
Kishineff than the actual murderers and ravishers. Its members’ guilt
consists in the fact that not merely did they not protect the victims,
but that they rejoiced over the murders; it consists chiefly in
committing themselves for long years to be corrupted by man-haters and
persons who have long enjoyed the disgusting glory of being the lackeys
of power and the glorifiers of lies, like the editor of _Bessarabetz_ of
Kishineff and other publicists. These are the real authors of the
disgraceful and awful crime of Kishineff. To all the shameful names
hitherto given to these repulsive men must be added another, and the
well-deserved one, of ‘instigators of pillage and murder.’ These
hypocrites, with the name of God on their lips, who preach in Russian
society hatred of the Jews, Armenians, and Finns, to-day heap base and
cowardly calumnies upon the corpses of those killed through their
influence, and they shamelessly continue their hateful work of poisoning
the mind and feeling of the weak-willed Russian society.
“Shame upon their wicked heads! May the fire of conscience consume their
decayed hearts, covetous only of lackey-like honours and slavishly
obsequious to power!
“It is now the duty of Russian society that is not yet wholly ruined by
these bandits, to prove that it is not identified with these instigators
of pillage and murder. Russian society must clear its conscience of part
of the shame and disgrace by helping the orphaned and desolated Jews and
assisting these members of the race which has given to the world many
really great men and which still continues to produce teachers of truth
and beauty in spite of its oppressed condition in the world.
“Come, therefore, all who do not want themselves to be regarded as the
lackeys of the lackeys, and who still retain their self-respect; come
and help the Jews!”
APPENDIX IV
FATHER JOHN OF KRONSTADT RECANTS
A Reuter’s telegram from St. Petersburg dated the 13th of June, stated:
“The famous Orthodox priest, Father John of Kronstadt, whose fiery
condemnation of the Kishineff massacre was published in a Liberal
newspaper of St. Petersburg, has published the following statement in
the anti-Semitic journal _Znamya_, the new St. Petersburg organ of M.
Kroushevan, formerly editor of the _Bessarabetz_:
“To my beloved brethren of Christ in Kishineff: From the newspaper
accounts that followed those first published about the Kishineff
catastrophe, I have come to the conclusion that the Jews themselves
were the cause of those disorders and the wounds inflicted and the
murders committed on April 6 and 7 [old style]. I have arrived at the
conclusion that it is the Christians who have suffered in the end, and
that the Jews have been doubly repaid for their losses and injuries by
their own brethren and others. I know this from letters which I have
received from my people, who have lived for a long time in Kishineff who
are well acquainted with the state of things there, and who are most
trustworthy. Therefore I say to Kishineff Christians, forgive the
reproach which I cast upon you alone on account of the horrors
perpetrated. From letters of eye-witnesses I am convinced that one
cannot lay all the blame upon the Christians, who were incited to the
disorders by the Jews, and that the latter are mainly responsible for
the catastrophe.”
No Russian newspaper of any influence, with the exception of the _Novoye
Vremya_, has attempted to palliate the massacre, or to lay the blame for
it on the Jews.
APPENDIX V
Simon of Trent, from an article of Dr. Bloch in the
_Oesterreichische Wochenschrift_, No. 42, October the 20th, 1899.
(Freely translated.)
SIMON OF TRENT
The case of the alleged ritual murder of the child Simon of Trent is the
most important example of its kind, and is therefore frequently quoted
by anti-Semites. I have given the history of the case in the
_Oesterreichische Wochenschrift_. The Vienna _Vaterland_ of the 17th
October, and Pastor Deckert in the _Deutsches Volksblatt_ discuss my
articles, but carefully avoid mentioning the _Oesterreichische
Wochenschrift_. In May, 1893, the Vienna _Vaterland_ was obliged to
publish several articles from my pen, contradicting the statements made
by Pastor Deckert. In an article of May the 30th, 1893, I called
attention to a fact which throws a glaring light upon the history of the
case: Some days before the murder of the child, during the Easter week
of 1475, Bernardinus de Feltre, whilst preaching in Trent against the
Jews, expressed himself to the following effect: “And with these cursed
Jews you are on a friendly footing? You say, although without the true
faith, they are good people? But I tell you that even before the Easter
will have come to an end they will have given you a proof of their
kindness.” (_Cf._ Wadding, “Annales Minorum,” XIV. p. 132). Bernardinus
thus predicted the murder days before it happened. His prophecy was
naturally fulfilled. On Thursday in Passion Week, March the 23d, Simon,
the 28-months’-old son of the tanner Andreas, disappeared. Bernardinus
accused the Jews, and on Saturday the body of a child was discovered in
the house of Samuel. The Jews themselves informed the Bishop Hinderbach,
in consequence of which information all of them, including women and
children, were imprisoned.
In his article of the 17th of October, Pastor Deckert maintains that:
“It is not true that the confessions made by the Jews were obtained by
means of torture, and that they had been tortured whilst there were
absolutely no indications of their guilt.” Pastor Deckert is right.
There were proofs against them, proofs of a very extraordinary nature.
As soon as the bishop saw the body of the child he exclaimed: “This is
the work of the Jews!” (Acta Sanc., II., March 24, p. 497), and swore to
have revenge. He entrusted the prefect of the town, Johann de Salis,
with the conduct of the action. The latter put the richest Jews to (an
ordeal?) trial, and the wounds having begun to bleed as soon as the Jews
approached the body, which is always the case, as experience teaches
(experientia compertum est), when a murderer approaches his victim, this
fact was a convincing proof of the guilt of the Jews. There was also
another “proof” against the Jews. In the prison of Trent a converted
Jewish criminal, Johann de Feltre, was detained. By accusing his former
coreligionists he could hope for freedom; and he became a witness, ready
to say anything and everything against the Jews. Pastor Deckert
maintains that “it is not true that the confessions of the Jews were
obtained in consequence of tortures only.”
I have refuted his statement with his own words. On p. 21 of his article
he himself states: “_only torture could make them confess; without
tortures they would have confessed nothing_.” The Jews were submitted
for several days to the most inhuman tortures, and only then
_confessed_. This is proved by the contents of the letters of the Bishop
addressed to the Pope: “The accused Jews have been tortured for several
days (per pluries dies torti et interrogati), but have confessed
nothing”; and in another place the Bishop writes: “Although much has
been done against the Jews, a fortnight has passed without any result.”
Had the prisoners confessed at the first, second, or third application,
the official would not have employed so many variations of torture. _All
the alleged confessions had therefore been obtained by means of terror
and tortures of the most cruel character._
The sufferings of the martyrs are related in the letters of the Bishop
addressed to the Pope:
“On the 30th day of March (Vienna Acts, fol. 51) Samuel was ‘examined’
for the first time; he was, however, sent back to prison to ‘recover’
(animum repetendi), which term means in judicial language that he had
_fainted_. On the following day (March 31st) he was undressed, and with
his feet and hands tied, hoisted up on a rope and kept suspended in the
air, his limbs being thus turned out of their joints. As, however, he
still persisted in maintaining his innocence, he received ‘una
cavaletta’ (a leap), in other words, he was quickly lowered and pulled
up again; then the cord on which he was suspended was ‘touched,’ _i.
e._, _beaten_, and he was made to ‘leap’ several times. The victim
having swooned, the torture ceased. It was continued, with several
variations of exquisite cruelty, on the 3d of April.
On the 4th day (April the 7th) the procedure was resumed; and as the
victim exclaimed: “If I were to confess my guilt, I would only be
telling a lie,” _a wooden peg was attached to his leg, whilst he
remained suspended in the air_, thus considerably augmenting the pain.
Then a _pan filled with fire and brimstone was held to his nose_.
He still maintained his innocence, until at last, mad with pain and
suffering, he _confessed_ that he and Tobias had _strangled_ the boy.
This admission, clearly contradicting the blood accusation, was all that
could be obtained from him. Samuel was kept imprisoned for two months
(up to June the 7th) whilst the other Jews were being “examined.”
Evidently Samuel must have retracted his confession of the 8th of April,
as the following excerpt from the Acts will show:
WEDNESDAY, June the 7th, in the torture chamber.
Invited to speak the truth and informed that all his companions had
confessed their guilt, he replied that if they had done so they had told
a lie. The prefect of the town having been informed that the drinking of
holy water made criminals confess their guilt, Samuel was made to drink
a spoonful of consecrated water.
He persisted, however, in maintaining his innocence. Then two hot boiled
eggs were put under his shoulder-blades. Asked to speak the truth, he
promised to do so, but in presence of the prefect and the captain of the
town only. Left alone with these two gentlemen, he asked them to promise
him, “that he would only (!) be burnt and not have to die any other
death.” That is the manner in which he was made to _confess_ his guilt.
In spite of his mad self-accusations he was asked again to tell “_the
truth better still_” (Interrogates, quod melius dicat veritatem, minante
eidam Samueli, quod si non dicat veritatem, ponetur ad cordam. Qui
Samuel respondit, quod vult dicere veritatem, quia ex quo confessus est
mortem pueri, vult confiteri aliqua), and was threatened with new
tortures. On the 21st of June he was burnt alive. All the other victims
were treated in the same manner, even those who had accepted baptism.
Israel, son of Mohar of Brandenburg, was arrested on the 27th of March,
tortured from the 12th to the 21st of April, and having expressed the
wish to be baptised was freed. On the 26th of October, however, he was
again arrested, tortured several times, and killed on the wheel on the
19th of January. This sentence was due to the fact of his having given
evidence before the Papal Legate, the Bishop of Ventimiglia at Roveredo,
relating to the “examination” of the accused. In No. 128 of the Vienna
_Vaterland_ (May the 10th, 1893) I proved that the Duke and the Council
of Venice sent two eminent “jurisconsults” from Padua to Trent to
investigate the manner in which the accused were examined. The learned
doctors were maltreated by the mob. An “Apostolic note” issued by Pope
Sixtus IV., on the 10th of October, 1475, prohibits, under punishment of
excommunication, the claim that the child Simon of Trent was a martyr.
It is not proved, says the “note” that the child Simon had been murdered
by the Jews (nihil adhuc certum compertumve nostro judicio aut
approbatum de quodam puero Simone Tridentino per Judæos, ut dicitur,
interfecto). The Pope appointed the Legate, Bishop of Ventimiglia,
Giovanni dei Giudici, to investigate the case. The investigation took
place at Roveredo, in 1476, and the innocence of the Jews was proved. An
Zelinus, a citizen of Trent, proved that a certain Swiss, Zanesus,
living in Trent, and an enemy of the Jews, was the actual murderer of
the child. That the Papal Legate had clearly established the innocence
of the Jews is manifest by the acts of the case, dated: October the 20th
and 29th, and November 2d, 1475, and April 3d, 1476.
It was natural, therefore, that with regard to this case Pope Paul III.,
in a Bull of May the 12th, 1540, declared the blood accusations to be
nothing but the result of hatred and envy, and of covetousness due to a
desire to seize and appropriate the possessions of the Jews. The Bull
further prohibits, under the severest punishment of the Church, the
revival of such accusations in the future.
INTERPELLATION ADDRESSED BY DR. BYK, DR. RAPPOPORT, AND COLLEAGUES
TO HIS EXCELLENCY, THE MINISTER OF JUSTICE, VIENNA.
The false and terrible accusation that the Jews require blood of
Christians for their religious rites and ceremonies has been
systematically disseminated, for the last few months, all over Austria.
The immediate cause of the movement was the Polna case of the murder of
Agnes Hruza. A Jew has been accused of the crime, but although his guilt
has not yet been proved, the circumstance has been used by a prejudiced
party, hostile to the Jews, and ritual murder suggested. At the trial
the public prosecutor, representing the government, public morality, and
the law, placed himself under the influence of that accusation by the
use of the words, “the well-known motives of the crime.” The president
of the court found no words of protest against the blood legend, which
was made use of, in presence of an excited crowd, for party purposes.
Although there was no ground and no corroboration for the accusation,
the belief gained popularity, thanks to the attitude of these organs of
justice. That the unrestrained spread of such a terrible accusation must
bring about disastrous consequences, is self-evident. No law and no
power are strong enough to protect those who require the blood of
innocent human victims for their religious rites. The whole extent of
the danger was perceived centuries ago, and Popes and temporal
(non-religious) rulers, especially kings of Poland, strongly prohibited
the raising and spread of the false accusation. This was done by the
Popes: Innocent IV. (in the “Bulls” of May the 28th, 1247; July the 5th,
1247; and September the 22d, 1258); Gregory X. (October the 7th, 1272);
Martin V. (February the 20th, 1422); Michael V. (November the 5th,
1447); Paul III. (May the 12th, 1540); who, availing themselves of their
fullest authority, most emphatically, and under pain of the severest
punishment of the Church, forbade the Christians to raise blood
accusations against the Jews. The example of the Popes was followed by
the kings of Poland: Jan Albrecht in his edict of 1496; Zygmunt I.,
1514; Zygmunt II., August, 1548; Stephen Batory, 1576 and 1580; Zygmunt
III., 1592; Wladystan IV., 1663; Jan Kazimir, 1694; Michael I., 1696;
August II., 1763; August III., 1763, and Stanislaus August, 1765;
commanded eternal silence (æternum silentium) in regard to the calumny
of the blood accusation, under the penalty of “pœna talionis.” In
Bohemia, where the case of Huelsner occurred, the Kings Ottokar II.
(March 29th, 1254; and August 23d, 1268); Wenzel II. (1300); and
Ladislav IV. (May the 15th, 1454), issued similar decrees. In other
countries special laws, relating to the blood accusation, have been
enacted. The condition of the present Austrian legislation makes the
promulgation of special laws unnecessary. Unfortunately, however, the
law is powerless against the extravagant excesses of the press; and thus
daily, in various languages, the legend of the ritual murder is spread
among all classes of society.
In the face of the above facts, we beg to submit the following
questions:
(a) Is your Excellency aware of the existing evil?
(b) What measures does your Excellency propose to take, with a view to
put an end to it?
Dr. Byk, Dr. Rappoport, Piepes-Poratynski, Dr. Rosenstock, Dr.
Trachtenberg, Dr. Kolischer, Yaworski, Bilinski, Dziednszycki, Gorski,
David Abrahamovicz, Dielemba, Struszkiewicz, Gizowski, Moysa, Wladimir
Gniewosz, Bogdanowicz, Pientak, Milewski, Dr. Walewski, Ratowski,
Lewicki, Roszkowski, Henzel, Popowski, Weigel, Kareis, Auspitz,
Straucher, Tittinger, Sokolowski.
POPE INNOCENT IV. (5th July, 1247).
_To the Archbishops and Bishops of Germany._
We have received a pitiable complaint from the Jews of Germany. They say
that some nobles, lay and ecclesiastical, and other powerful and notable
men within your cities and dioceses, designing to seize and usurp their
goods unjustly, devise against them impious counsels and invent diverse
pretexts. Without considering that testimonies to the Christian Faith
have proceeded from their records and that the Sacred Scripture among
other precepts of the Law says: “Thou shalt not kill,” and forbids them
at their Passover ceremonies to touch any dead flesh, they falsely
accuse the Jews of using in these same ceremonies the body of a murdered
child, thinking that the said practice is required by their Law, whereas
it is clearly contrary to their Law. And they cast upon the Jews, with
malicious intent, any corpse that by chance is discovered at any place.
Attacking them with these and other inventions, and without formal
accusation, confession or conviction, and in despite of the privileges
conceded to the Jews by the clemency of the Holy See, they despoil them
of their goods (contrary to the law of God and to justice), and they
visit them with hunger, imprisonment, and so many calamities and
afflictions, punishing them with diverse punishments (even condemning
many of them to shameful death) that the Jews, living under the rule of
the said princes, notables, and powerful men in worse plight than were
their fathers under Pharaoh in Egypt, are compelled to leave places
where they and their ancestors have dwelt from time immemorial. Hence,
in fear of extermination, they have thought it necessary to have
recourse to the protection of the Holy See. Now, therefore, being
unwilling that the Jews should be unjustly harassed (for God in his
mercy awaits their conversion, seeing that, on the testimony of the
Prophet, it is believed that the remnant of them is destined to be
saved), we order that you show yourselves favourable and well disposed
to them, and whenever you find any violent attempt made against them,
with respect to the matters mentioned above, by the prelates, nobles,
and powerful men aforesaid, you shall see that the matter is treated
according to law, and shall not in future permit the Jews to be
improperly molested on these or similar charges by any persons
whatever. Those who molest them you shall summarily restrain by your
ecclesiastical censure.
POPE INNOCENT IV. (1247).
_To the Archbishop of Vienna._
Divine justice has not cast down the Jewish people without preserving
the remnant of them for salvation. Therefore, it is an act of zeal that
deserves no commendation, or of cruelty that is worthy of detestation,
when Christians, either through greed for wealth or thirst for blood
(disregarding the merciful nature of the Christian Church, which allows
the Jews to live in its midst and to practise their own rites), plunder,
torture, and slay them without trial. Now, the Jews living within your
province have lately brought before the Holy See a pitiable complaint.
They say that certain prelates and nobles of the province, desirous of
having a pretext for cruelty towards them, have accused them of the
death of a girl who is said to have been found secretly murdered near
Valréas, that they have inhumanly committed some of them to the flames
without legal trial or confession, while they have despoiled others of
all their possessions and driven them away, and that--against the wont
of the Mother who, herself free, brings forth children that they may be
children of freedom--they have compelled their children to be baptised
against their will. Now, since we are unwilling to tolerate such
things--as, indeed, we could not do without transgressing the will of
God--we hereby command you to deal according to law with such attacks on
the Jews, of the nature that has been described above, as are made by
bishops, nobles, and rulers. You shall not permit the Jews to be
unjustly ill-treated on these or similar grounds, and you shall restrain
the evil-doers by the summary use of ecclesiastical censures.
POPE INNOCENT IV. (25th September, 1253).
Moreover, in order to counteract the wickedness and greed of evil men,
we decree that no one shall harm, or trespass on, the cemeteries of the
Jews, or shall dig up dead bodies to obtain money, or shall charge them
with using human blood in their ceremonies. Though they are ordered in
the Old Testament to use no blood at all--not to mention human
blood--yet many Jews have been killed at Fulda and in many other places
on suspicion of having used human blood. By the authority of these
presents we strictly forbid such actions in the future. If any man,
having become acquainted with the purport of this decree, contravenes
it--we pray that such a thing may not happen--let him be exposed to the
danger of losing his office or rank, or let him be punished by
excommunication, unless he makes suitable amends for his presumption;
but we wish this protection of ours to be given only to those who use
no devices for the subversion of the Christian faith.
POPE GREGORY X. (7th October, 1272).
Since Jews cannot bear testimony against Christians, we decree that the
testimony of Christians against Jews shall be of no avail unless there
is a Jew bearing testimony among them. For it sometimes happens that
Christians lose their children, and Jews are charged by their enemies
with taking them away and killing them and using their hearts and blood
for religious purposes; the fathers of the children, or other
Christians, in hatred of the Jews, hide the children away, so that they
may cause trouble to the Jews and gain money from them for relieving
them from their trouble, and in order that they may most falsely assert
that the Jews have secretly stolen and murdered the children and that
they use the blood for religious purposes, whereas their law strictly
forbids them to use blood for ceremonial purposes, or to taste it, or
to eat the flesh of animals with cloven hoofs, as has been many times
demonstrated at our court by Jews converted to the Christian faith. On
charges of this kind Jews have often been seized and imprisoned
unjustly. We decree that in such cases the testimony of Christians
against Jews shall not be admitted; that Jews imprisoned on this empty
charge shall be liberated; that they be not imprisoned in future on this
empty charge unless (which we cannot believe) they are found in the act.
(Signed by the Pope, four cardinals, and two bishops).
POPE MARTIN V. (20th February, 1422).
It sometimes happens that many Christians, in order that they may extort
money from the said Jews and deprive them of their goods and substance
and cause them to be killed, invent pretexts and assert (at times of
plague and other calamities) that the Jews have poisoned the wells and
mixed human blood with their unleavened bread: they say that it is in
consequence of these crimes, which they unjustly ascribe to the Jews,
that the calamities are caused. Hence the population is moved against
the Jews and massacres them and persecutes and afflicts them in many
ways.
POPE NICHOLAS V. (1447).
Some persons have ventured to make the untruthful assertion that the
Jews are unable to celebrate certain of their festivals without using
the liver or heart of a Christian.
POPE PAUL III. (12th May, 1550).
_To the Clergy of Hungary, Bohemia, and Poland._
We have heard with displeasure, through the complaints of the Jews in
your parts, that various ... towns, nobles, and powerful men among you,
being jealous of the Jews and hostile to them, and blinded by hatred and
envy, or, as is more probable, by greed, and wishing to have a pretext
for depriving them of their goods, falsely charge them with slaying your
children and drinking their blood, and committing many other horrible
crimes specially directed against our faith. Thus they attempt to arouse
the feelings of simple Christians against the Jews, and it often results
that the Jews are not only robbed of their property, but are even
murdered.
THE END
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FOOTNOTES:
[1] Observation No. 6418, “Code of Laws,” Vol. VIII.
[2] See Appendix
[3] These letters are republished by the willing permission of Mr.
W. R. Hearst, for whose papers they were written from Kishineff and
elsewhere. They have, of course, undergone a necessary revision.
It is believed that by including these letters as they were originally
written, with only such changes as were necessary to a permanent
form, a more vivid realisation of the scenes of the tragedy has been
afforded than would have been possible if their facts alone had been
incorporated with the body of the narrative.
[4] See Appendix.
[5] See M. de Plehve’s version.
[6] _The London Times_, June 26, 1903.
[7] See Letter IV.
[8] See Letter IV.
[9] “Government officials” here would stand for telegraph messengers,
or employés of other departments.--M. D.
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