Israel in Europe

by G. F. Abbott

By this generous concession the Roumanians claimed, and their apologists have innocently endorsed the claim, that they did as much as could fairly be expected from them. The illusory and disingenuous nature of the concession was patent to all, and the friends of the Jews were quick and emphatic in pointing it out to the Western Cabinets. But the Western Cabinets had by this time begun to think that they had done enough for Israel. Some of the Powers, like Germany, were anxious to conciliate Roumania in order to obtain a railway concession. Others, like England, were equally anxious to secure commercial advantages, while they one and all were cordially tired of the tedious and unremunerative crusade on behalf of justice. ♦1880♦ Lord Salisbury, in authorising the British representative to announce to the Bucharest Government the glad news that they could henceforth regard their country as a sovereign state, timidly expressed a hope, on behalf of England and France, that, in return for the Powers’ forbearance, Roumania, by a liberal application of the revised article of the Constitution, would bring matters “into exact conformity with the spirit of the Treaty of Berlin.” Thus the East once more succeeded in the time-honoured method of conquering by sheer inertia, and by dividing the Western Powers through their separate interests; and the Jews were left to float or founder according to the decrees of Fate. They did not float.

The Roumanians, through the alteration in the letter of their Constitution, by which the Jews were no longer excluded from the franchise as non-Christians but as non-Roumanians, had nominally placed them on a par with other aliens—Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, and Italians—and, having done this, they professed intense astonishment that the Jews, alone among foreigners, continued to clamour for civil and political rights. Yet the reason of their obstinacy is not far to seek. The subjects of England, France, Germany, and Italy are quite content with their status, for they would gain nothing by enrolling themselves as Roumanian citizens. Their nationality affords them ample protection against injustice, while the wretched Jews, whose cause France and England had pleaded in vain, if they are not Roumanian citizens, are citizens of no city. They have no Government to which they might appeal in an hour of need. Furthermore, it was feared from the very first that the cumbrous machinery of individual naturalisation would be put in motion as rarely as possible, and experience has more than confirmed those fears. During the twenty-four years which elapsed between the Treaty of Berlin and 1902, very few live Jews were granted the franchise. For the posthumous naturalisation of the six hundred who had fallen in battle fighting for the freedom of Roumania, and that of two hundred more, admitted at the same time, was an exceptional act of liberality which has created no precedent. From 1878 to 1888, out of 4000 applications only thirty were granted, and since that date fifty more, bringing up the whole number to a grand total of eighty.[215]

During the same period the disabilities, under which the hapless race was suffered to remain labouring, have grown almost incredible in their severity, and have eclipsed the grievances which the Treaty of Berlin so unsuccessfully attempted to remove. Those grievances already amounted to oppression. The Jews were obliged to serve in the army as their Christian fellow-countrymen, and to pay the same taxes; and yet, though burdened with the same duties, they were denied equal rights. They were made to assist in the defence of a country which they were forbidden to call their own, and to contribute to the expenditure of a Government whose actions they had no voice in controlling. But, at all events, they were allowed the privilege of earning a livelihood. Since that time all the weight of Roumanian legislation and popular fanaticism has been brought to bear upon one object—the extinction of the Jewish race in the kingdom.

As an example of this systematic persecution may be mentioned the law of 1885, excluding the Jews from the trade in liquor, which had been open to them since 1849. This arbitrary act was justified by the argument that the Jews were fostering the vice of intoxication among the peasants. But the law has not lessened the consumption of liquor by a single drop. The Roumanian peasant still drinks as much as he drank before. Nor does the fact that his drink now comes from a Christian instead of a Hebrew source seem to produce any difference in its effects. The truth is that the Roumanian peasant is one of the most thirsty in the world, occupying as he does the third place in the scale of universal bibulosity. The brandy bottle is his companion in joy, and ever present comforter in sorrow. At weddings, as at funerals, brandy is an honoured guest. On holidays it enhances the merriment, and on week-days it relieves the monotony of work. To the brandy bottle, as to an infallible counsellor, the Roumanian peasant still appeals at times of taxation or any other domestic calamity.

Among such calamities the greatest and most frequent is famine; for, though Roumania is, next to Russia, the principal grain-exporting country in Europe, the Roumanian agriculturist, like his Russian neighbour, and for similar reasons, is one of the most favourite victims of hunger. “It sometimes happens,” says the Queen of Roumania, “that in one year the soil yields enormously, and in the succeeding year, owing to a failure of the crops, we have famine.... It is difficult for any but those who have seen it for themselves to imagine what a poor harvest means in a purely agricultural state. It is horrible. Hunger in its most appalling aspect stalks everywhere.... Picture fields that look like empty threshing-floors; starving cattle, their bones starting through their flesh, browsing on the barren ground, and falling dead from sheer exhaustion; men, women and children without so much as a handful of meal left to provide their meagre diet of ‘mamaliga.’” At such times “the taverns are far too much frequented; it is one way of cheating an empty stomach.”[216]

It is, of course, undeniable, and the fact is attested by all those who have studied the question of temperance reform in any part of the world, that the supply tends to foster the demand. But no one has ever asserted that it creates it. Nor has it been demonstrated that temperance is promoted by the exclusion of one portion of the population from a trade which is open to all others.

Other laws have been passed, forbidding the Jew to lend money to the Christian, and the Christian to be ruined by the Jew. The futility of such enactments, everywhere manifest, is nowhere more clearly proved than in Roumania. The boyards, impoverished by the extravagance which characterises the newly-emancipated and semi-civilised nobleman, still go to the money-lender. But the main object is achieved—to represent the Jew as corrupting the wealthy, and as ruining the poor. It would perhaps have been wiser on the part of Roumanian legislators to try to reform their people instead of persecuting those who simply minister to its vices and exploit its follies. Eradicate the demand, and the supply will cease of its own accord, is a remedy not yet understood at Bucharest. Still primitive in their mental attitude, Roumanian politicians act on the principle ridiculed by the Eastern proverb: They beat the saddle when the beast is to blame.

How far the Roumanian’s misfortunes are to be traced to the Jew can be shown from the fact, established by statistics, that the number of Jews in the Balkan States, though the case is far different in other parts of the world, is in inverse ratio to the advanced condition of the general population. In Servia the Jews are barely counted by the hundred (00.20), and so they are in Greece (00.34). In the latter country the race would be even more scarce, were it not that many shrewd and enterprising Greeks are tempted to emigrate to foreign countries. In Bulgaria also the Jews form an insignificant minority (00.76).[217] In the kingdom of Greece they enjoy perfect freedom of worship and all the rights and privileges of Hellenic citizens. In the Principality of Bulgaria also they are treated on equal terms with the Christians. Why is it that in Roumania only they figure in their hundreds of thousands and are oppressed? The answer is obvious. The Jews have become numerous in Roumania, where the degraded condition of the people offers the line of least resistance; and the rulers of those countries fearing lest, if they do not protect their own compatriots from the competition of a superior race, the wealth and influence of the latter might increase to a dangerous extent, harass and handicap them by prohibitive legislation.

However, the Jew’s fecundity seems to be proof against any degree of persecution. In spite of all checks, the Jews in Roumania, as their forefathers in Egypt, “increased abundantly and multiplied, and the land was filled with them.” The Roumanian legislators were, therefore, bound, in consistency with their own policy, “to deal wisely with them.” And now ensued a literal repetition of the first chapter of the Book of Exodus. King Charles appears to be actuated by the same fears as those which dictated the policy of Pharaoh: “lest they multiply, and it come to pass, that, when there falleth out any war, they join also unto our enemies, and fight against us, and so get them up out of the land.” The experience of thousands of years has taught no lesson to Roumanian statesmen, and Jewish disabilities have kept pace with the increase of the victims. At the present moment the Jews are excluded not only from the public service but also from the learned professions. They are allowed neither to own land nor even to till it in the capacity of hired labourers. Mere residence in a country district is a punishable offence, and when the Jew, driven from the open country, takes refuge in a city, most avenues to an honest living are studiously closed to him. He is permitted to engage in none but the lowest trades and handicrafts. Nay, even as journeymen artisans the Jews are not allowed to exceed the proportion of one to two Christians. Education is altogether forbidden to them. In addition to these and like restrictions, which doom Israel to perpetual penury and ignorance, these unfortunate Roumanians who cannot boast a “Latin” pedigree are treated by their “Roman” fellow-countrymen as pariahs. They are insulted and baited by high and low, without the slightest means of redress; their social, as well as their political, status being literally more degraded than that of the gipsy; and that will convey a sufficiently clear idea to those who know the feelings of loathing and horror which that unfortunate outcast inspires in the Roumanian peasant. In one word, the Roumanian Jews can only be described as bondsmen in their native land.

In the Middle Ages the Synagogue, as well as the Church, indulged in various gruesome performances calculated to strike terror into the hearts of sinners. One of the varieties of the ban, book, and candle rite was also adopted by the Law Courts as a means of extracting evidence from unwilling witnesses. The Austrian newspapers, in the summer of 1902, published detailed accounts of a judicial torture of the kind, known as “Sacramentum more Judaico,” revived by the modern Roumanians in cases where Jews are engaged in litigation with Christians. Without the least regard for his religious susceptibilities, the Roumanian Jew is obliged to go through all the ritual solemnity of a mock burial: his nails are cut, he is wound up in a shroud, placed into a coffin and then laid out, corpse-like, in the synagogue. The Rabbi, under the eyes of a congregation of revolted co-religionists and scornful unbelievers, pronounces an awful, comprehensive and minute malediction upon the Jewish plaintiff and his progeny, should he not speak the truth. The corpse repeats the imprecations after the Rabbi; for if he declines to curse himself and his family he loses his case.[218]