None of the known local instigators of the outbreak were arrested up to the date of my departure from Kishineff.
Some of the rioters protested, on arrest, that they were led to believe that the local authorities had lent their sanction to the massacre and looting, in order to punish the Jews for being the enemies of the Tsar’s Government and the supporters of Socialism.
The Juge d’Instruction, M. Davidovitch, who had to deal with the accused in the first instance, was at one time a contributor to the Bessarabetz—the active agent of the outbreak. I was informed that he had written an article for the paper shortly after the massacres, showing how the Jews were themselves the sole cause of the attack made upon them at Easter.
Two especially revolting outrages, the particulars of which have been published, one, the killing of a woman who was enceinte, and the putting of feathers in her body after disembowelling her; and the murder of a child two months old, were not included in the list of murders which I obtained, and I am not satisfied that these two crimes were actually committed as alleged. The Jewish doctors in the Hebrew Hospital could not confirm the report or particulars of these two cases. In the instance of the infant, they told me that the mother, in defending herself, and subsequently in her flight from the mob, had let the child fall, and that its death really happened in that way.
The foundation for the other and more inhuman story was, I think, this: A Jew named Kainarsky, a dealer in sheep and cattle gut, was attacked, robbed, and murdered in a slaughter-house. The mob cut open his bowels and put feathers inside; prompted, doubtless, to this act of barbarity by the nature of the poor fellow’s calling and business. It was an outrage base and inhuman enough, in all conscience, but not quite so fiendish in character as that of the account which represented a woman with child as the object of this peculiar atrocity.
The man thus murdered is included in the list of victims given to me in Kishineff, while no woman is mentioned as having undergone such mutilation, a circumstance which, it is sincerely to be hoped, disposes of the story as untrue.
“Byei Zhidoff!” the terrible cry which was the signal of slaughter at Easter, means “Kill the Jews!” Zhidoff is a term of Russian contempt for the Jew.
The “Narodovostvo,” or People’s Freedom Party, which is supposed to be a growing movement in Russia, has no branch or supporters in Kishineff, at least I failed to obtain information of its existence. It represents an aspiration rather than an original force. A student who joined the rioters on the first day’s outbreak, with the object of diverting the mob, if possible, from resorting to extreme violence against the Jews, began by raising a cry for constitutional freedom. The crowd did not understand him, whereupon he shouted “Down with the Government at St. Petersburg!” He was instantly knocked down, and would have been killed had the police not interfered on seeing a Russian in danger. He was taken off to prison.
Ten days after the Kishineff massacres there was an attempted Socialist demonstration at Odessa. It was in some way supposed to be a May Day Labour affair, but assumed the form of an Anarchist turnout, of which the police appeared to have had timely intimation. A band of some forty men, workers and prolétaires, attempted to march toward the centre of the city, with a red flag at their head. After proceeding along a small street, and raising a few feeble cries, they were pounced upon by the police and taken to prison. It was found, on examination, that nineteen of the forty were Jews. They were all liberated after a few days’ detention.
One ground of objection to the Zionist movement for the repatriation of the Jews is that the Hebrews, who are not a military people, would be shut off from European help while being at the mercy of Turkish rule and of Arab hostility in Palestine. The implied loss of European protection may be an imaginary risk. The record of the Turks in the matter of modern anti-Semitism compares more than favourably with that of the tender feelings of European Christianity. The Arab is of the same racial family as the descendants of Father Abraham, and even were the offspring of Ishmael more numerous in Palestine than they are estimated to be, they might be trusted to show no more savage propensities towards their Israelitish kindred than Russian Seminarists or Roumanian Christians have done in recent years.