The Jews in the Eastern War Zone

by American Jewish Committee

WHOLESALE EXPULSIONS

This public official distrust of the Jewish population of Russia increased with the Russian reverses, and the assumption by the authorities that the loyalty of all the Jews was open to suspicion gave added impetus to the spy mania, set the Jews apart as a dangerous people and delivered them helpless into the hands of the Cossack soldiery and the hostile Poles. The atrocities committed upon the Jews in Poland and Galicia have already been referred to. But a more disastrous, though less spectacular, consequence of the governmental attitude towards the Jews was the systematic expulsion of the entire Jewish population from the war zone, an act which assumed the character of a merciless war by Russia upon its own population.

From the very beginning of the war there were individual cases of Jews, who, being suspected of bad faith, were ordered to leave a given locality. There were also sporadic expulsions, or rather a forced exodus, of the entire civilian population of localities which the authorities desired to clear for military operations. But it was in March, 1915, that the authorities began systematically to expel Jews from all the Polish provinces, even those not occupied by German troops, and from the governments of Kovno and Kurland, thus affecting about 30 per cent. of the entire Jewish population of the Empire. Even the Jewish deputy from the Kovno district, Friedman, was expelled, in spite of his constitutional privileges as a member of the Duma.

The first sufferers were the Jewish inhabitants of the smaller towns, because these were readily segregated. In a very brief space of time the region where the Jews constitute over eighty per cent. of the population of the small towns was absolutely denuded of Jewish inhabitants.[35] It was only the rapid invasion of this territory by the Germans which prevented the complete expulsion of every one of the two million or more Jews who inhabited this area. And those who have remained in this territory for the present have been promised, by decree of the supreme military authorities of Russia, immediate expulsion as soon as the Russian troops regain a foothold here.[36]

The enforcement of the expulsion orders was carried out ruthlessly. The time generally allowed was twenty-four hours, rarely forty-eight hours. The Jewish inhabitants of the governments of Kurland and Kovno were given from five to twenty-four hours’ notice.[37]

The Jews of the city of Kovno were notified on the evening of May 3 (16) to leave not later than midnight of May 5 (18), 1915.

Cruelty of Officials

In a speech delivered in the Duma the non-Jewish deputy Dzubinsky declared:

“As a representative of our 5th Siberian division I was myself on the scene and can testify with what incredible cruelty the expulsion of the Jews from the Province of Radom took place. The whole population was driven out within a few hours during the night. At 11 o’clock the people were informed that they had to leave, with a threat that any one found at daybreak would be hanged. And so in the darkness of the night began the exodus of the Jews to the nearest town, Ilzha, thirty versts away. Old men, invalids and paralytics had to be carried on people’s arms because there were no vehicles.

“The police and the gendarmes treat the Jewish refugees precisely like criminals. At one station, for instance, the Jewish Commission of Homel was not even allowed to approach the trains to render aid to the refugees or to give them food and water. In one case a train which was conveying the victims was completely sealed and when finally opened most of the inmates were found half dead, sixteen down with scarlet fever and one with typhus....

“In some places the Governors simply made sport of the innocent victims; among those who particularly distinguished themselves were the governors of Poltava, Minsk, and Ekaterinoslav ... who illegally took away the passports of the victims and substituted provisional certificates instructing them to appear at given places in one of five provinces at a given date. When they presented themselves at these designated places they were shuttled back and forth from point to point at the whim or caprice of local officials.

“In Poltava the Jewish Relief Committee was officially reprimanded by the governor for assuming the name ‘Committee for the Aid of Jewish Sufferers from the War,’ and ordered to rename itself ‘Committee to Aid the Expelled’ on the ground, as stated explicitly in the order, that the Jews had been expelled because they were politically unreliable—and, therefore, presumably, deserved no help.”[38]

No distinction of age, sex or physical condition was made. As most of the able-bodied young men were at the front, those affected by the expulsions were the persons least able to bear up under the suffering and privation entailed—old men and women, children, the sick from the hospitals, the insane from the asylums, even wounded and crippled Jewish soldiers—all were driven out en masse, without the slightest regard for human comfort or decency. Women in labor were given no consideration and many births occurred along the route. Mothers were separated from their children, entire families were broken up and dispersed all over Russia. The Jewish and liberal Russian press is filled with long lists of victims seeking their lost relatives. Where transportation was provided, the exiles were packed in cattle-cars and forwarded to their destination on a way-bill, like so much freight. In many places thousands of them were forced for weeks at a time to stay in congested villages which were absolutely unable to afford them a roof and shelter, or to sleep in the freight cars or in the open fields. And tens of thousands were forced to tramp weary distances along the open road, or, in the fear of the soldiery, to take to the back roads, the woods and swamps, there to die of hunger and exposure.

The total number of Jews who have been expelled to date is unknown. Expulsions are still going on. At the beginning of June, 1915, at the deliberation of the Petrograd Central Committee for the Relief of Jewish War Sufferers, which was participated in by the most prominent provincial committees, it was calculated that the total number of homeless Jews ruined by the expulsion—in Poland and the northwestern district—is 600,000 at the least.[39] After the Kovno-Kurland expulsions there collected in the Vilna government alone some 200,000 exiles.[40] In Riga there gathered, by May 18 (31), some 9,600 families or 42,000 persons.[41] Up to August 6, 1915, there collected in the government of Volhynia upwards of 250,000 refugees.[42]

Hostages

There is evidence to indicate that the Russian government, overwhelmed by the consequences of the expulsion policy, has suggested to the military authorities the advisability of repatriating the exiles; but these authorities have refused to consider the suggestion except on condition that the Jews voluntarily give hostages from among their own ranks, these hostages to include the Rabbi and other leading Jews. This proposal has been universally rejected by the Jews through their representative in the Duma, Deputy Friedman, in a letter to the President of the Council of Ministers:

“As a deputy from the province of Kovno, from which I, together with all other Jews, have now been expelled, I consider it my duty to call the attention of your excellency to the following:—

“According to the latest decrees of the authorities the Jews who have been expelled from their homes are to be allowed to return on condition that they give hostages. This monstrous condition, which the government aims to impose upon its own subjects, the Jewish people will never accept. They prefer to wander about homeless and to die of starvation rather than to submit to demands which insult their self-respect as citizens and Jews. They have honestly performed their duty toward their country and will continue to do so to the very end. No sacrifices frighten them and no persecutions will make them swerve from the path of honor. But neither will any persecutions force them to accept a lie, to give testimony, through base submission, that the monstrous accusations against them are true. When the insolent enemy threw down the gauntlet to Russia the Jews arose to shield their country with their breasts, and I had the honor to appear at the historic session of the Duma as their spokesman in the expression of this spontaneous, inspiring enthusiasm. The Jews gladly assumed all the sacrifices demanded of them by their country because of a feeling of duty to the land to which they are bound by century old, historic bonds, and also because of a sincere hope for a brighter future. And I may say with deep conviction that even now, after all that we have gone through, this sense of duty is as strong as ever. But with the very same deep conviction I consider it my right and my duty to declare that no privations will shake our firm conviction that as Russian subjects we cannot be made the victims of measures applicable only to enemies and traitors; that we consider ourselves and shall never cease to consider ourselves above all suspicion of treason to our duty and our vows. If the authorities really desire to return the Jewish people to the places from which they were driven away by order of the authorities they must take cognizance of this feeling which I can testify under oath, on the basis of many conversations and observations, is universal among us. This permission to return under shameful conditions is only a new and senseless insult. So the entire Jewish population feels, and this feeling is shared by me, their representative.”

Misery of Refugees

This sudden uprooting of an entire people from the land in which it has dwelt for centuries has brought irretrievable disaster to the Jews of Poland and Russia. It has been estimated that nearly three of the six million Jews of Russia and Poland are now without means of support.

Overwhelming and incalculable as the economic loss may be, the moral losses far exceed them in intensity. Jewish communal life is disrupted. Many of the cities and towns from which the expulsions took place were centers of Jewish culture. Most of the Jewish colleges and schools have been closed and many of the buildings and synagogues have been destroyed. It is safe to say that these losses cannot be repaired for generations to come.

The demoralization and pauperization of the individual refugees is painfully noticeable everywhere. Beggary, which was practically unknown among the Jews, is now only too frequent.

The appalling misery of the refugees is fully described in the appended report of the Russian Jewish Committee for the Relief of War Sufferers (see p. [98]). The Jews of the Empire living outside of the war zone, have assumed a system of self-taxation which, added to their normal—or rather normally excessive—burden of taxation is practically impoverishing them. The small Jewish community of Moscow alone gives about 85,000 roubles a month, ranging from an average of 200 roubles per month imposed upon 265 manufacturers down to the 10 roubles per month imposed upon their poorest clerks. Other cities are contributing in proportion but they cannot possibly keep pace with the ever-growing need.

Unfair Administration of Relief

And in the midst of this catastrophe the old struggle between the Poles and Jews has continued with unabated ferocity. The local relief committees refused to accept Jews as representatives, denied Jews any help whatsoever and even drove them away, by intimidation and force, from the relief stations supported by their own people. Of seventy-one relief committees operating in Poland, fifty-two contained no Jewish members, although the Jews constituted nearly one-half of the urban population and thirteen to fourteen per cent. of the rural population in these places. In the other nineteen committees the Jewish membership constituted scarcely ten per cent. of the total, although the Jewish population ran from thirty-five to sixty-eight per cent. of the total population in the cities and from ten to fifteen per cent. in the rural districts.[43] And in most of these places the Jews had contributed the major part of the relief funds. Even institutions supported solely by Jewish contributions were expropriated by the Poles.

Thus “the magnificently equipped Hospital for the Wounded, in Warsaw, created at the expense of the Jewish Kehillah, which had refitted the Roman Hotel for the purpose, has been running until now under the official name of the Warsaw Local Relief Committee. But this has turned out to be an anti-Semite organization without a single Jewish representative, its board being made up of rabid Judeophobes, who feel no scruples in the methods and means of their anti-Jewish policy. Private donations, the personal labor of Jews—all this has gone into Polish institutions, all this has disappeared in the Polish river-bed,” declares “Novy Voskhod,” Sept. 11 (24), 1914.

The present attitude of the Jews of Russia toward this problem is well reflected in a letter, published in a recent issue of “Evreyskaya Zhizn,”[44] from a Jew, the owner of a salt mine, who had been invited, among others, to contribute salt for the poorer people of Warsaw, without distinction of race or creed. He replied, in effect, that the proposal met with his deepest sympathy, but he took the liberty of inquiring as to who would have charge of the distribution of the salt. “Everybody knows,” he wrote, “the intolerant attitude of the Polish Relief Committee toward the Jews. This makes us doubt whether your high principle would be carried out conscientiously if administered by Polish hands. The Warsaw Committee is particularly distrusted, and it would be extremely unpleasant for me to feel that the necessaries that we contributed should be withheld from our own fellow Jews. On the other hand, we would welcome gladly every effort on the part of Russian organizations to undertake to cooperate with Poles and Jews in this matter to insure an equitable distribution.”

When the Central Citizens’ Committee of Warsaw was dissolved by the German governor of Poland, in September, 1915, its accounts showed that it had distributed over eleven million roubles ($5,500,000) since the outbreak of the war, of which the Jews received scarcely 100,000, although they constitute one-sixth of the population and the funds had been gathered with the express understanding that the distribution be absolutely without discrimination between Poles and Jews. The Liquidation Commission which disposed of the balance on hand at the time of the dissolution of the Central Committee—some 1,290,000 roubles—allotted it all to Polish institutions. Although there are 300,000 Jews in Warsaw, the majority of them in dire need, not a rouble was offered for their relief.

Finally it must be noted that the occupation of Poland by the German forces has afforded little relief to the Jews, as the scarcity of food in Germany precludes the shipment of any considerable quantities of provisions to ameliorate the distress of the starving Jews of Poland.