The Jews in the Eastern War Zone

by American Jewish Committee

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.