I most urgently beg your advocacy, and that of the American press generally, of this proposal. It would be a mission worthy of a statesman, and its certain fruits would be the Tsar’s protection for the Jews from Odessa to Warsaw against further organised outrage during his lifetime.
The public man in the States eminently qualified for this humane mission is ex-President Cleveland. Such an ambassador on a friendly visit to St. Petersburg would attract the world’s attention, and success would be sure to crown his undertaking.
I attended several meetings of the Central Relief Committee while in Kishineff. The last one was on the eve of my departure, last Friday. The committee meets daily to examine applications and distribute assistance in money, food, and clothing. Kishineff is divided, for relief purposes, into twenty-two districts. Each has its local committee, who report to the Central Executive Committee of Fifteen, whose chairman, Dr. J. S. Mutznik, is a leading physician and one of Kishineff’s wealthy residents. Assisting him are several equally representative Jews, like Dr. Kohan-Bernstein, Rabbi Ettlinger, S. M. Grossman, E. Galperin, S. Perelmutter, I. Kipperwasser, E. Reidel, M. Kligman, Z. Rosenfeld, Israel Pappervasses, and several other well-known citizens.
A Ladies’ Committee gives valuable co-operation, attending to and reporting upon the women, girls, and orphans requiring aid. These ladies showed me over the food, clothing, and general assistance departments of the Central Committee Headquarters. I found everything well organised and efficiently executed. The Rabbis and leading members of the Ladies’ Committee have founded an asylum for the orphans of massacred parents.
I visited this temporary asylum and photographed the orphans and their guardians. Up to the date of my departure the Central Relief Committee had expended a total of 130,000 roubles; one-fourth of which was used in the purchase and distribution of food for the people whose homes had been destroyed, and for others made workless by the riots. Small sums of money had been advanced to the owners of shops and little stores to enable them to renew business; 1000 roubles were given in several instances.
This action of the Committee was severely criticised by the friends and representatives of the Jews who were killed. These complained that the money contributed from abroad ought to be apportioned according to relative loss, and that the subscribers would not estimate the injury done to a tailor’s or shoemaker’s store at three or four times the value of a murdered father, mother, or brother.
In this connection, I pointed out to Dr. Mutznik that, as those whose stores were looted could, under Russian law, claim adequate compensation from the city or the government, it would be more equitable to devote the major portion of the funds received to the present and future assistance of those who have suffered the greater wrong and injury in the loss of parents, of employment, and in other ways. To this view he agreed, though he was very doubtful if the claims for compensation already lodged in behalf of the store-owners will be fairly dealt with, or even considered, by the authorities.
Under the law as it stands, three independent witnesses must depose, not alone to the injury done to a particular store or business, but to the person or persons accused of being guilty of the looting or destruction. And no blood or marriage relative of the person seeking redress is permitted to testify! Under such conditions, and in view of the fact that most of the male Jews fled and hid themselves when the outbreak occurred, many of the claims for compensation will fall to the ground for want of sufficient evidence as to the names and complicity of the actual perpetrators of the destruction.
Dr. Mutznik believes that the relief work must be continued during the coming winter, to the larger number of artisans and labour applicants. Most of the Jewish merchants and employers have fled to Odessa, Cracow, and other cities. They will not return until they are assured of safety, and in their absence those whom they employed will, in all probability, remain without work.
My appeal through the press in behalf of the violated women and girls, and for the orphans, was warmly endorsed by the Ladies’ Committee and the Rabbis. Mesdames Mutznik and Hornstein, leading members of this committee, with true matronly feeling, pleaded the exceptionally hard cases of the young girls and of the violated married women. The case of the orphans speaks for itself, and needs no advocacy apart from the cruel facts which plead so forcibly for their utter helplessness.