“You are politicians, and I am a politician,” I concluded, “therefore we can talk in that language. You have been preparing for a pogrom. Now I want to tell you that your government is as anxious as I am to avoid further maltreatment of the Jews, and if any occurs in Stanislawa, you will be removed from office.”
After we had a friendly discussion of the plight in which the local Jews found themselves, the Burgomaster assured me that there would be no difficulties in his city, and there were none.
I wish that I could adequately describe the scene that I witnessed in Pinsk. It has haunted me ever since, and has seemed a complete expression of the misery and injustice which is prevalent over such a large part of the world to-day. A few months before our arrival, a particularly atrocious Jewish massacre occurred. A Polish officer, Major Letoviski, and fifteen of his troops had entered an assembly-hall where the leading Jewish residents had gathered, as a committee in behalf of the American Joint Distribution Committee, to distribute supplies of flour for the unleavened Passover bread. The Poles arrested these Jews and marched them hurriedly to the public square and in the dim light of an automobile lamp, placed thirty-five of them against the cathedral wall and shot them in cold blood.
A somewhat hazy charge had been made that these men were Bolshevists, but no trial was given them, and, indeed, the charge was subsequently shown to be untrue. Returning to the scene of execution on the next morning, the troops found that three of their victims were still breathing; these they despatched, and all the thirty-five corpses were then thrown into a pit in an old Jewish cemetery, without an opportunity for decent burial or religious exercises, and with nothing to mark the graves.
Up to the time that our Commission came, not a single Jew had been permitted to visit that cemetery; but I was allowed to inspect the scene of this martyrdom, and, when I entered, a great crowd of Jews, who had followed me, also went in. As soon as they reached the burial place of their relatives, they all threw themselves upon the ground, and set up a wailing that still rings in my ears; it expressed the misery of centuries.
That same evening I attended divine service at the Pinsk synagogue. The building was crowded to its capacity, the men wedged into almost a solid mass. Those that could not enter were gathered outside. All the Jews of Pinsk were there. This was their first opportunity since April to express their grief in their house of worship. This huge mass cried and screamed until it seemed that the heavens would burst. I had read of such public expression of agony in the Old Testament, but this was the first time that I ever completely realized what the collective grief of a persecuted people was like. To me it expressed the misery of centuries and remains a pitiful memory and symbol of the cry for help that is still going forth from a great part of Europe.
Who were these thirty-five Victims? They were the leaders of the local Jewish community, the spiritual and moral leaders of the 5,000 Jews in a city, eighty-five per cent. of the population of which was Jewish; the organizers of the charities, the directors of the hospitals, the friends of the poor. And yet, to that incredibly brutal, and even more incredibly stupid, officer who ordered their execution, they were only so many Jews.
Something of the same sort happened at Vilna. There was fighting between the advancing Poles and the retiring Bolsheviki; shots were fired from private houses against the Polish troops, and the Poles, in the anger of their new-found authority, assumed that the Jewish houseowners were guilty. They did not stop to learn the fact that the Jews of Vilna were glad to get rid of Bolshevist rule: they slaughtered or deported all who were suspects—men like Jaffe, that Jewish poet who lived in a world of his own beautiful and harmless dreams, were treated shamefully.
These descriptions of the occurrences at Pinsk and Vilna are totally inadequate to describe the fearful plight of the Jews. Even the fuller accounts contained in my official report to the American Commission to Negotiate Peace—which is printed in full in the Appendix—does not adequately portray the sad conditions of these Jews in Poland at present. Giving harrowing details will not remedy the situation, and might be misconstrued and do harm to those suffering people. Hence, I have abstained.
It was in Vilna that we had a real show-down with the Chief of State of Poland. All this time we had been in the unpleasant position of a delegation of foreigners endeavouring to render a service to a country whose president openly resented our presence there.