The Jews in the Eastern War Zone
()
About this ebook
Related to The Jews in the Eastern War Zone
Related ebooks
The Jews in the Eastern War Zone Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Hebrew Impact on Western Civilization Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNationalizing a Borderland: War, Ethnicity, and Anti-Jewish Violence in East Galicia, 1914–1920 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWithin the Pale: The True Story of Anti-Semitic Persecution in Russia Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Shield Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Unknown Ethnic Cleansings: White Spots in Modern History Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsImmigrants to Freedom: Jews as Yankee Farmers! (1880'S to 1960'S) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsUnited States Jewry, 1776-1985: Volume 4, the East European Period, the Emergence of the American Jew Epilogue Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Jewish Resistance: Uprisings against the Nazis in World War II Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHarry Haft: Survivor of Auschwitz, Challenger of Rocky Marciano Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Shores of Refuge: a Hundred Years of Jewish Emigration Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Jews of Barnow: Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsShelter from the Holocaust: Rethinking Jewish Survival in the Soviet Union Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5In the Shadow of the Shtetl: Small-Town Jewish Life in Soviet Ukraine Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Egg Dealer from Nowy Wiśnicz Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Jewish Confederates Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Jewish State: The Historic Essay that Led to the Creation of the State of Israel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Archangel: The American War with Russia Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Shield Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Jews of Eastern Europe, 1772-1881 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRussian Jews Between the Reds and the Whites, 1917-1920 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSummary of The Hundred Years' War on Palestine by Rashid Khalidi: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBad Rabbi: And Other Strange but True Stories from the Yiddish Press Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5You Gentiles Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The American Jew as Patriot, Soldier and Citizen Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Slav Nations Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsJews in America: The First 500 Years Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDay of Reckoning: How Hubris, Ideology, and Greed Are Tearing America Apart Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Guggenheims: A Family History Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
Classics For You
The Silmarillion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Poisonwood Bible: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Old Man and the Sea: The Hemingway Library Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Flowers for Algernon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wuthering Heights (with an Introduction by Mary Augusta Ward) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Confederacy of Dunces Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fellowship Of The Ring: Being the First Part of The Lord of the Rings Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Things They Carried Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Little Women (Seasons Edition -- Winter) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Master & Margarita Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Master and Margarita Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Farewell to Arms Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Odyssey: (The Stephen Mitchell Translation) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Republic by Plato Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Rebecca Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Animal Farm: A Fairy Story Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Count of Monte Cristo (abridged) (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Learn French! Apprends l'Anglais! THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY: In French and English Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Grapes of Wrath Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Good Man Is Hard To Find And Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mythos Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5We Have Always Lived in the Castle Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Jungle: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Bell Jar: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Count of Monte-Cristo English and French Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ulysses: With linked Table of Contents Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Persuasion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sense and Sensibility (Centaur Classics) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The End of the Affair Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related categories
Reviews for The Jews in the Eastern War Zone
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
The Jews in the Eastern War Zone - American Jewish Committee
American Jewish Committee
The Jews in the Eastern War Zone
Published by Good Press, 2022
EAN 4066338081582
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION
RUSSIA
INTRODUCTION
THE PALE OF SETTLEMENT
THE OUTBREAK OF THE WAR
POLES AND JEWS
THE WAR IN POLAND
SUPPRESSION OF YIDDISH PRESS AND SPEECH
WHOLESALE EXPULSIONS
PROTESTS OF LIBERAL RUSSIA
AUSTRIA-HUNGARY
GALICIA
ROUMANIA
PALESTINE
APPENDIX
REPORT OF THE RUSSIAN-JEWISH RELIEF COMMITTEE
SPEECH OF DEPUTY FRIEDMAN IN THE DUMA
ABSTRACT OF SPEECH OF BARON R. R. ROSEN IN THE COUNCIL OF THE EMPIRE
INTRODUCTION
Table of Contents
Of 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