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....