He willingly accorded me an interview, but answered my questions in a manner suggesting a reserve which was more official than personal:
“What was the origin of the outbreak, Mr. Mayor?”
“The writings in the anti-Semitic press, and their effect upon the minds of ignorant people who dislike the Jews both for their race and religion. The alleged murder by Jews of the Christian boy at Doubossar and of a girl here in Kishineff, who committed suicide, inflamed the populace. When the real facts were published, the truth was believed to be an invention to cover up a Jewish crime, and the frequenters of cafés and the workingmen, who are hostile to the Jews, remained convinced that Christian blood had been actually obtained in this way for ritual purposes.”
“Do you find the Jews of the city a turbulent or provocative people?”
“No. They resemble most other people, in having good and bad numbered among them. There has been nothing whatever in their behaviour, as far as my many years’ experience of Kishineff goes, to explain or in any way to palliate the attacks made upon them. The great mass of them are very poor, but they are most patient and never disorderly.”
“Have they any secret or revolutionary society here?”
“Nothing, in my belief, worth serious attention. Some of the younger Jews call themselves Socialists, but there are not many, and I do not think they need cause the authorities any serious anxiety.”
“Is there any similar organisation, under any name, among the Russian or Moldavian workingmen?”
“There is some kind of a society which scatters pamphlets about and things of that kind from time to time. Its members were among the rioters and against the Jews.”
“Do you take the reports of the riots in the matters of the killed, wounded, and looting as having been exaggerated?”