The Jews in the Eastern War Zone

by American Jewish Committee

(Translated from Petrograd “Retch,” of August 3, 1915, and
published in the New York “Times,” September 23, 1915)

In spite of their oppressed condition, in spite of their status of outlawry, the Jews have risen to the exalted mood of the nation and in the course of the last year have participated in the war in a noteworthy manner. They fell short of the others in no respect. They mobilized their entire enrollment, but, indeed, with this difference, that they have also sent their only sons into the war. The newspapers at the beginning of the war had a remarkable number of Jewish volunteers to record. Gentlemen, those were volunteers who were entitled through their educational qualifications to the rank of officers. They knew that they would not receive this rank; and nevertheless they entered the war.

The Jewish youth, which, as a result of the restrictions as to admission to the high schools of the country, had been forced to study abroad, returned home when war was declared, or entered the armies of the allied nations. A large number of Jewish students fell at the defense of Liege and also at other points on the western front.

The Zionist youths, when they were confronted with the dilemma of accepting Turkish sovereignty or being compelled to emigrate from Palestine, preferred to go to Alexandria and there to join the English army.

The Jews built hospitals, contributed money, and participated in the war in every respect just as did the other citizens. Many Jews received marks of distinction for their conduct at the front.

Before me lies the letter of a Jew who returned from the United States of America:

“I risked my life,” he writes, “and if, nevertheless, I came as far as Archangel, it was only because I loved my fatherland more than my life or that American freedom which I was permitted to enjoy. I became a soldier, and lost my left arm almost to the shoulder. I was brought into the governmental district of Courland. Scarcely had I reached Riga when I met at the station my mother and my relatives, who had just arrived there, and who on that same day were compelled to leave their hearth and home at the order of the military authorities. Tell the gentlemen who sit on the benches of the Right that I do not mourn my lost arm, but that I do mourn deeply the self-respect that was not denied to me in alien lands but is now lost to me.”

Such was the sentiment of the Jews that found expression in numerous appeals and manifestations in the press, and finally also in this House. Surely these sentiments should have been taken into account. One should have a right to assume that the Government would adopt measures for the amelioration of the fate of the Jews who found themselves in the very centre of the war-like occurrences. Likewise, one should have taken into account the sentiments of hundreds of thousands of Jews who shed their blood on the field of battle.

Instead of that, however, we see that from the beginning of the war the measures of reprisals against the Jewish populace were not only not weakened but, on the contrary, made much stronger. Banished were Jewish men and women whose husbands, children, and brothers, were shedding their blood for the fatherland. A wounded soldier named Alexander Roskhov, who had been shot in the eye, came to Charkof for further treatment. On his passport were the words, “To be sent to a settlement.” The private soldier Godlewski, one of whose legs had been amputated, and who found himself at Rostof on the Don for recuperation, they tried to send to his native village in the Government of Kalisch, already under German occupation; and it was only due to the activities of the Rural League that he was permitted to stay. An apothecary’s helper, who likewise had been wounded on the battlefield, was not allowed to remain in Petrograd for his cure, and it was only by virtue of special intercession that he was later allowed to sojourn two months more at Petrograd, with the notice, however, that at the expiration of this period no further extension of his sojourn would be granted.

In a long war lucky events alternate with unlucky ones, and in any case it is naturally useful to have scapegoats in reserve. For this purpose there exists the old firm; the Jew. Scarcely has the enemy reached our frontiers when the rumor is spread that Jewish gold is flowing over to the Germans, and that, too, in aeroplanes, in coffins, and—in the entrails of geese!