Читать книгу The Jews in the Eastern War Zone - American Jewish Committee - Страница 3
INTRODUCTION
ОглавлениеOf all the people that have suffered deeply from the present war, none have borne a greater burden than the Jews—in physical and economic loss, in moral and spiritual torment.
Jews are today fighting each other in all the armies of Europe. Russia alone has over 350,000 Jewish soldiers; Austria has over 50,000; altogether there are probably one-half million Jews in the ranks of the fighting armies.
The Jews are bearing the brunt of the war’s burdens, not only on the field of battle, where they suffer with the rest of the world, but also in their homes, where they have been singled out, by their peculiar geographic, political and economic position, for disaster surpassing that of all others.
When the war broke out, one-half of the Jewish population of the world was trapped in a corner of Eastern Europe that is absolutely shut off from all neutral lands and from the sea. Russian Poland, where over two million Jews lived, is in a salient. South of it is Galicia, the frontier province of Austria. Here lived another million Jews. Behind Russian Poland are the fifteen Russian provinces, which, together with Poland, constitute the Pale of Jewish Settlement. Here lived another four million Jews.
Thus seven million Jews—a population exceeding that of Belgium by one million—have borne the brunt of the war. Behind them was Holy Russia, closed to them by the May Laws of 1881. In front were hostile Germany and Austria. To the south was unfriendly Roumania. They were overwhelmed where they stood; and over their bodies crossed and recrossed the German armies from the west, the Russian armies from the east and the Austrian armies from the south. True, all the peoples of this area suffered ravage and pillage by the war, but their sufferings were in no degree comparable to those of the Jews. The contending armies found it politic, in a measure, to court the good will of the Poles, Ruthenians and other races in this area. These sustained only the necessary and unavoidable hardships of war. But the Jews were friendless, their religion proscribed. In this medieval region all the religious fanaticism of the Russians, the chauvinism of the Poles, combined with the blood lusts liberated in all men by the war—all these fierce hatreds were sluiced into one torrent of passion which overwhelmed the Jews.
Hundreds of thousands were forced from their homes on a day’s notice, the more fortunate being packed and shipped as freight—the old, the sick and insane, men, women and children, shuttled from one province to another, side-tracked for days without food or help of any kind—the less fortunate driven into the woods and swamps to die of starvation. Jewish towns were sacked and burned wantonly. Hundreds of Jews were carried off as hostages into Germany, Austria and Russia. Orgies of lust and torture took place in public in the light of day. There are scores of villages where not a single woman was left inviolate. Women, old and young, were stripped and knouted in the public squares. Jews were burned alive in synagogues where they had fled for shelter. Thousands were executed on the flimsiest pretext or from sheer purposeless cruelty.
These Jews, unlike the Belgians, have no England to fly to. The sympathy of the outside world is shut off from them. They have not the consolation of knowing that they are fighting for their own hearths, or even for military glory or in the hope of a possible reward or indemnity. The only thought they cherish is that after the struggle shall be over they may at last achieve those elementary rights denied to no other people, the right to live and move about freely in the land of their birth or adoption, to educate their children, to earn a livelihood, to worship God according to the dictates of their conscience.
RUSSIA
Nearly half of the Jewish population of the world lives in Russia, in the immediate area of active hostilities, congested in cities, which are the first point of attack. The dreadful position of the Jews of Russia in normal times is well known. Forbidden to live outside of the enlarged Ghetto, known as the Pale of Settlement; burdened with special taxes; denied even the scant educational privileges enjoyed by the rest of the population; harried by a corrupt police, a hostile Government and an unfriendly populace—in brief, economically degraded and politically outlawed—their condition represented the extreme of misery. It was the openly expressed policy of the reactionaries who ruled Russia to solve the Jewish question by ridding the country of its Jews. “One-third will accept the Greek Church; one-third will emigrate to America; and one-third will die of starvation in Russia”—so ran the cynical saying. Some did abjure their faith, tens of thousands did starve in Russia and hundreds of thousands did emigrate to America.
Loyalty of Russian Jews
Then came the war. The Jews saw therein an opportunity to show the Christian population that in spite of all the persecutions of the past they were ready to forget their tragic history and to begin life anew in a united and regenerated Russia. Thousands of Jewish young men who had been forced to leave Russia to secure the education which their own country denied them returned voluntarily to the colors even though they knew that all hope of preferment and promotion was closed to them. On the field of battle the Jewish soldiers displayed courage and intelligence which won the respect of their fighting comrades and gained for hundreds of them the much desired cross of St. George, granted for distinguished valor in the face of the enemy; while those who remained at home opened and equipped hospitals for wounded soldiers without distinction of race or creed, contributed generously to all public funds, and, in brief, gave themselves and their possessions unsparingly to the Russian cause.
It appeared at first as though the long desired union with the Russian people was about to be realized. But it soon developed that the chains which bound the Jews of Russia to their past could not be broken. Forces which they could not possibly control doomed them to the greatest tragedy in their history. The Pale in which they lived was Polish in origin and population. Poles and Jews were fellow victims of the Russian oppressor; but instead of being united by the common bond of suffering, they were separated by religious and racial differences and above all by dissension deliberately fostered among them by the Russian rulers until it developed into uncontrollable hate.
Russian Atrocities
Immediately before the war the struggle had assumed its bitterest form—that of an unrelenting boycott waged against the Jews. When the war broke out the political status of the Poles changed overnight. Both the Russian and the German armies found it politic to cultivate the good will of the Polish population. Many Poles seized the opportunity to gratify personal animosity, religious bigotry or chauvinistic mania by denouncing the Jews, now to the one invader and now to the other, as spies and traitors. In Germany the animus of the attacks was to some extent uncovered and the lies refuted. But in Russia they found fertile soil. The Russian military machine had met with defeat at the hands of the Germans. To exonerate themselves in the eyes of their own people the military camarilla eagerly seized the pretext so readily furnished them by the Poles and unloaded the burden of their ill-fortune upon the helpless shoulders of the Jew. Men, women, even children were executed without the shadow of evidence or the formality of a trial. Circumstantial stories of Jewish treachery, invented by the Poles, were accepted as the truth and circulated freely through the Russian press and on the local government bulletin boards; but when official investigation proved these stories false in every particular, the publication of the refutation was discouraged by the censorship. The authorities gave the troops a free hand to loot and ravage, even encouraging them by the publication of orders which officially denounced all Jews as spies and traitors. The result was a series of outrages unprecedented even in Russia. A million Jews were driven from their homes in a state of absolute destitution.
Protest of Liberal Russia
All of the liberal elements of Russia protested against this campaign of extermination, but were powerless in the face of the military Government. Hundreds of municipal bodies, trade and professional organizations, writers, publicists and priests, petitioned the civil government to admit the Jews to human equality or at least to suspend its policy of persecution. These memorials, together with the speeches delivered in the Duma, constitute a body of evidence from non-Jewish sources, which must condemn the Russian Government in the eyes of the world. (See pages 70–83; 117–120.)
GALICIA
During the ten months of the Russian occupation of Galicia the Jews of that section suffered even more severely than did the Jews who dwelt in the Russian Pale. For here the Jews were the subjects of the enemy and no pretext was needed for their maltreatment. The Ruthenians and Poles who occupied the land were friendly to Russia, which promised them independence and power. But Russia could expect nothing from the Jews of Galicia, for they were already in the possession of rights and liberties not enjoyed by the Jews of Russia, and the weight of the Russian invasion fell upon them mercilessly. Here thousands of Russian Jewish soldiers were forced to give up their lives in an attempt to impose upon the free Jews of Galicia the servitude from which they themselves so ardently longed to escape in Russia. They were forced to witness the desecration by their Russian companions-in-arms of synagogues, the outrage of Jewish women and the massacre of innocent and helpless civilians of their own faith.
ROUMANIA
Though Roumania is not yet a belligerent, some of the Jews of that country have been vitally affected by the war. In July of 1915, the Ministry of the Interior issued a general order expelling the Jews of the towns near the Austro-Hungarian frontier into the interior. Though this order was later alleged to have been designed to prevent the operations of Jewish grain speculators from Bukowina, many Jews who had resided in the border towns for generations were summarily expelled.
This action of the Government was bitterly criticized by the liberal press and in a memorial addressed to the King by the League of Native-born Jews, and the order was finally revoked.
Whether the present Balkan situation may or may not result in the entrance of Roumania among the belligerent nations there is no doubt that upon the termination of hostilities the question of Roumania’s treatment of the Jews should be reopened.
PALESTINE
At the outbreak of the war Palestine contained, according to reliable estimates, about 100,000 Jews, some of whom were economically independent agriculturists, but the great majority of whom were aged pilgrims dependent upon their relatives and the good-will offerings of their pious co-religionists in Europe. The war cut them off completely both from the markets of Europe and from their relatives and friends; nearly the entire Jewish population was thus left destitute. Their position was further aggravated by the severity with which Turkey, upon her entrance into the war as an ally of the Central Powers, treated the nationals of hostile countries. About 8,000 Jews who declined to become Turkish subjects were either expelled or departed voluntarily.
JEWS IN OTHER BELLIGERENT COUNTRIES
In all the countries where the Jews have heretofore enjoyed freedom there has been no special Jewish problem during this war. The Jews have identified themselves completely with the lands of their birth or adoption, and have shared the trials and glories of the peoples among whom their lot was cast.
In England, the Jewish population, according to estimates prepared by Lord Rothschild, furnished more than its share of recruits to the British army, its quota of 17,000 comprising about eight and a half per cent. of the total Jewish population as compared with the six per cent. furnished by the non-Jewish population. The Lord Chief Justice, Baron Reading, a Jew, mobilized the financial resources of the country and was called upon to head the Anglo-French commission which negotiated the $500,000,000 credit secured in the United States. Lord Rothschild is treasurer of the Red Cross organization. Hon. Herbert Samuels is a member of the Coalition cabinet. A Jewish battalion organized by Palestinian fugitives rendered exceptional service to the allies in the Gallipoli Peninsula. Many rewards, including the bestowal of Victoria Crosses and promotions, are listed in the Anglo-Jewish press every week.
In Germany the Jews, although without complete social privileges, have borne their full share of the burdens of war. To Herr Ballin, the head of the mercantile marine, was given the task of organizing the national food supply, and other Jews have been prominently identified with every department of the industrial mobilization of the country. In France and Italy, Austria-Hungary and Turkey, Jews are to be found in the ministerial cabinets, in command of troops in the field, and prominent in charge of the medical service of the armies.
Thus the present war has again demonstrated the great truth that, in times of struggle as in times of peace, the Jews constitute a most valuable asset to those nations that accept them as an integral part of their population and permit them to develop freely, but wherever an autocratic government demoralizes its people by confronting them with the spectacle of an unprotected minority denied all human rights, the government itself feels the reaction and the moral tone of the nation is thereby impaired.
