All in a Life-time

by Henry Morgenthau; French Strother

That was the beginning of a full fortnight of Warsaw hearings. Day after day, we sat there, listening, questioning, taking voluminous notes, making bulky records. There came representatives from the Jews of Lodz, Lemberg, Cracow, Vilna, and other towns—each delegation with its own story and each entreating us to visit its city and conduct personal investigations there. The story of the men from Minsk is worth repeating: they claimed possession of definite information of a conspiracy against them whereby, when the Polish Army should enter Minsk, Anti-Semitic Bolshevist soldiers, lagging in the rear of the Bolsheviki’s retreat, would “snipe” at the conquerors from houses occupied by Jews, so that the Jews would be blamed and pogroms result; they even gave the location of the houses.

Thus it went from morning until night. One day there were ten different delegations, each important, each interesting, to be listened to. It was not long before we found, to our surprise, that the chief sources of trouble could be traced to a comparatively few factional leaders, not more than would fill a small room, and that for these the opportunity to express their clashing views was in itself a relief to the tenseness of the situation.

In a class by himself, however, was Rabbi Rubenstein, who came from Vilna when we were in the middle of one of our endless conferences with Warsaw Zionists. He was a Lithuanian and though he had been flogged for refusing to sign a paper charging the Bolsheviki with the Vilna outrages, he was still defiant toward the Poles. Learned in more than Jewish scholarship, he had a grasp of the economic laws involved in the present difficulties and a keen understanding of world politics that was touched with statesmanship. But, above all, he was the shepherd pleading for his sheep; he displayed a pathetic faith that here at last was a tribunal anxious to dispense justice. Imagine a face like that of some mediæval artist’s “Christ,” lined with the horror of his recent experiences; eyes wide with the grief that they had suffered in witnessing the massacre of the flower of his flock. His gesturing hands shook, his voice was broken by emotion, but he recounted the history of these now well-known Vilna excesses with an eloquence that was all the more moving because it was wholly unstudied, and every now and then the current of his speech was broken by spasmodic ebullitions of resentment which he could no longer repress.

He begged us not to make the mistake of previous hasty investigators. He implored us to spend at least three days in Vilna. His community had retained two lawyers, who had collected all the evidence; everything would be thoroughly prepared, but there were so many witnesses to be examined that a three days’ sojourn was the minimum necessity. Here, it was clear, was no religious fanatic; his plea was so brilliant, his sincerity so convincing, that we readily agreed with his request.

I have said that the Zionists were our first callers; they were also our most constant. We were soon in close contact with all their leaders, attended their meetings, and studied their activities. Some were pro-Russian, all were practically non-Polish, and the Zionism of most of them was simply advocacy of Jewish Nationalism within the Polish state. Thus, when the committee of the Djem, or Polish Constitutional Assembly, called on us, led by Grynenbaum, Farbstein, and Thon—all men who had discarded the dress and beard of the Orthodox Jew—and when I discovered that they were really authorized to represent that section of the Jews that had complained to the world of the alleged pogroms, I notified them that we were willing to give them several hours a day until they had completed the presentation of their case to their entire satisfaction. That programme was adhered to.

Besides their version of the excesses, they presented evidence of considerable political bad faith and much economic oppression on the part of a section of the Poles. Contrary to explicit understanding, an election had been set for the Jewish Sabbath; and there had been gerrymandering at Bialystok, so that in the municipal election the Jewish votes had been swamped by voters admitted from surrounding villages. We were told of the development of coöperative stores which both excluded the Jews as members and were pledged against patronizing Jewish wholesale merchants or manufacturers.

“But,” we asked, “you don’t expect to end these things by propaganda for an exodus to Palestine?”

They admitted that taking anything short of 50,000 Jews a year out of Poland would effect no noticeable decrease in the population there. They were afraid that the Government intended to treat the Jews in the old way and that they would not be given rights equal to those of other Polish citizens; if they could not go to Palestine, if they were to be regarded as a foreign mass in the Polish body politic, they wanted the privileges that they felt ought to be granted them, to offset the privations of such a situation. To that end they were employing the Zionist agitation.

“We want,” they said, “to be permitted to vote for Jewish representatives no matter what part of the country we or they live in. The Jews form fourteen per cent. of Poland’s population. We want a fourteen per cent. representation in Poland’s Parliament. That will give us fifty-six members instead of the eleven Jewish members there at present.”

They admitted that their fifty-six could sway legislation only in case of close divisions among the other parties.