A kindly-faced man is sitting in my office. He speaks such good English you can tell he is a foreigner only by the peculiar way he pronounces some words. He says “dough” for though. Just imagine yourself sitting quietly by and listening, then you will know why many thousands come to us from one part of Europe. “We were friendly with all the people of our town. My ancestors had been in the same business for generations. All the Russians trusted us and although we were Jews they would rather deal with us than with their own countrymen. One day there had been many murmurs around us; the people had looked less friendly; they were ignorant, superstitious people, and they were miserably poor. Few of them could read or write. The nobility had fleeced them for centuries, but the nobility was too strong to be reached and so as scapegoats for the nobles we were pointed out as the cause of their wretchedness. We went to sleep that night, peaceful, prosperous and unsuspecting. At midnight our house was in flames. I never again saw father, mother, brothers, or sisters alive. I escaped in the night and was hidden by some friendly Russians. High above the roar of the flames and the din and slaughter rose the hoarse cry of the peasants—Our Daddy, the Tzar, wants it. Our Daddy, the Tzar, wants it.” Multiply that scene by thousands and you have a Russian pogrom. Oppression brings many Jews.
The Russian. The Russian does not leave his land because of the winter cold. He leaves it because he dare not speak out against the wrong he sees. He is always fearful of some police spy making charges against him, shutting him up in prison, and sending him to Siberia. No one is safe from these spies. The Russian comes to America because here he can think aloud and here he can worship according to the voice of his own conscience. America is his hope.
One of our poets pictures America as she really is, a refuge for these fleeing, hunted people. He shows how the tyrant must give up the chase and return empty-handed when once these poor people have reached our friendly shores.
“There’s freedom at thy gate, and rest
For earth’s down-trodden and opprest,
A shelter for the hunted head,
For the starved laborer toil and bread,
Power, at thy bounds,
Stops, and calls back his baffled hounds.”