CRACOW AND THE POLISH JEW
Ever since I can remember I have had a special and peculiar interest in
the history and the progress of the Jewish race. The first book that
I knew, the Bible, was a history of the Jews, and to my childish mind
the most fascinating portion of that book was the story of the manner
in which Moses led the children of Israel out of the house of bondage,
through the wilderness, into the promised land. I first heard that
story from the lips of my mother, when both she and I were slaves on a
plantation in Virginia. I have heard it repeated and referred to many
times since. In fact, I am certain that there is hardly a day or a week
goes by that I do not meet among my people some reference to this same
Bible story.
The Negro slaves were always looking forward to the time when a Moses
should arise from somewhere who would lead them, as he led the ancient
Hebrews, out of the house of bondage. And after freedom, the masses of
the Negro people have still continued to look to some great leader,
some man inspired of God, who would lead them out of their difficulties
into the promised land, which, somehow, they never seem able to reach.
As I learned in slavery to compare the condition of the Negro with that
of the Jews in bondage in Egypt, so I have frequently, since freedom,
been compelled to compare the prejudice, even persecution, which the
Jewish people have to face and overcome in different parts of the world
with the disadvantages of the Negro in the United States and elsewhere.
I had seen a good deal of the lower classes of the Jews in New York
City before going to Europe, and when I visited Whitechapel, London, I
had an opportunity to learn something of the condition of the Polish
and Russian Jews who, driven from their native land, have found refuge
in England. It was not until I reached Cracow, in Austrian Poland, or
Galicia, however, that I really began to understand what life in the
Ghetto, of which I had heard so much, was really like. It was not until
then that I began to comprehend what the wear and tear of centuries of
persecution, poverty, and suffering had meant in the life of the Jews.
One of the first things I observed in regard to the Jews abroad was the
very different forms which racial prejudice takes in the different
countries that I visited. For example, in East London, which has long
been the refuge for the poor and oppressed of other countries, the Jew
is tolerated, although he is not liked. It is not clear just what is
the source of the English prejudice. Complaint is sometimes made that
the Jewish immigrant has driven out the native Briton from certain
parts of East London, but it is admitted at the same time that in such
cases it is because the Jew has proven a better tenant. He does not
drink, he is law-abiding, and he pays his rent regularly. It seems to
be true in London, also, as it is in New York, that as soon as the
Jewish immigrant has made a little success he does not remain in the
same quarter of the city. He soon moves out and his place is taken by
some new and half-starved fugitive from Russia or Roumania, so that
there is a constant stream of "greeners," as they are called, coming
in, and another, perhaps somewhat smaller, stream of those who have
been successful moving out. In spite of this fact, it is generally
admitted that general conditions have improved under the influence
of the Jews. English prejudice where it exists seems to be due,
therefore, partly to economic causes and partly to the general distrust
of the alien that seems to be gaining in England with the influx of
immigration from southern Europe. In Denmark, on the contrary, where
the Jews seem to be very largely represented among the educated and
well-to-do classes, I discovered a great deal of prejudice against the
Germans but almost none against the Jews. In fact, one of the most
distinguished men in Denmark, outside of the King, a man who has been a
leader in the intellectual life of that country during the past thirty
years, Prof. Georg Brandes, is a Jew.
In Germany I learned that, while the Jews are prominent not only in
business but in the professions, it was still difficult for them to
rise in the army or to advance to the position of professor in the
universities, unless they have first been baptized.
In speaking about this matter to a German whom I met at one of the
hotels in Vienna, I called to mind the name of a distinguished
professor whose name I had heard as an instance of a Jew gaining a high
position in a German university.
"Oh, well," he replied, "he has been baptized."
That recalls to my mind a conundrum which an acquaintance proposed
while we were discussing some of the peculiarities of race prejudice in
Europe.
"When is a Jew not a Jew?" he asked. The answer is of course, "When
he is a Christian." In other words, prejudice in Germany seems to be
directed only against the Jew who clings to his religion.
When I reached Prague in Bohemia I learned that among the masses of the
people there is little distinction made between Jews and Germans, since
both speak the same language, and the Czechs, confusing the one with
the other, hate both with a double hatred, first, for what they are,
and then for what they seem to be.
In Vienna and Budapest the Jews, through the newspapers which they
control, seem to exercise a powerful influence on politics. I remember
hearing repeated references while I was there to the "Jewish press."
In Prague it is said that every German paper but one is controlled
by Jews. Jews are represented, however, not only in the press in
Austria-Hungary, but in the army and in all the other professions.
They are not only financiers and business men, but doctors, lawyers,
artists, and actors, as elsewhere in Europe where they have gained
their freedom. Nevertheless it is still against the law for Jews and
Christians to intermarry in Austria-Hungary.
I have referred at some length to the condition of the Jews in other
parts of Europe where they have profited by the social and political
freedom which was granted them in the course of the nineteenth century,
because their progress there is in such striking contrast with their
condition as I saw it in and around Cracow, in Galicia; as it is,
also, just across the borders of Austria-Hungary, in Russian Poland
and Roumania, and as it seems to have been in other parts of Europe
seventy-five or a hundred years ago, before the gates of the Ghetto
were opened and the inhabitants emancipated.
Some notion of the conditions under which the Jews lived, in almost
every part of Europe, a hundred years ago, may be gathered from the
restrictions which are imposed upon them to-day in Russia and Roumania.
In Roumania a Jew can neither vote nor hold office in the civil
service. He is excluded from the professions; he is not permitted,
for example, to become a physician or even open a pharmacy; he is not
permitted to live in the rural districts; he may neither own land
outside of the town nor work as an agricultural labourer. In the mills
and factories not more than 25 per cent. of the employees may be Jews.
Although they are practically restricted to business enterprises, Jews
may not become members of chambers of commerce. Jews are bound to
serve in the army, they pay heavier taxes, proportionately, than other
portions of the community, but they are classed under the laws as
"aliens not subject to alien protection."
In Russia, Jews are not allowed to live outside of what is called the
"Pale of Settlement," which includes twelve provinces on the western
and southwestern borders which Russia has annexed during the past
two hundred years. Only merchants who pay a special license of 1,000
rubles, or about $500, university graduates, and a few others may live
outside the pale. A Jew is not even permitted to live in Siberia unless
he has been sent there in punishment for crime.
Inside the pale, Jews are not allowed to live outside the cities and
incorporated towns. Although Jews are allowed to vote in Russia and
send representatives to the Duma, they are not permitted to hold office
or to be employed in the public service. They are compelled to pay in
addition to the ordinary taxes, which are heavy enough, taxes on the
rents they receive from property owned by them, or inheritances, on
the meat killed according to the Jewish law, on candles used in some
of their religious observances, and on the skull caps they wear during
religious services. In spite of this they are excluded from hospitals,
schools, and public functions, which, in the pale, are mainly paid for
out of the extra taxes imposed upon them.
The most singular thing about it all is that the disabilities under
which the Russian Jew now labours are at once removed by baptism. Not
only that, but every Jew who allows himself to be sprinkled with holy
water, in sign of the renunciation of his religion and his people,
receives thirty rubles, "thirty pieces of silver," as a reward.
The Jews whom I saw in Galicia are not subject to any of the medieval
restrictions which are imposed upon members of their race in Russia and
Roumania. They enjoy, in fact, all the political rights of other races.
Nevertheless, Jews in Galicia are said to be poorer than they are in
some parts of Russian Poland, although very much better off than in
some parts of southern Russia.
Elsewhere in Europe, where they have had their freedom, Jews are as a
rule more prosperous than the people by whom they are surrounded. In
Berlin, Germany, for instance, where Jews represent 4.88 per cent. of
the total population, 15 per cent. of those who had an income of 1,500
marks, or more, were Jews. Statistics show that similar conditions
exist in other parts of Europe.[3]
When I asked an acquaintance, who had lived a number of years in
Austria, why this was so, he replied that there were so many Jews in
Galicia that there were not enough other people to support them. He
then went on to explain that between the two classes, the nobility who
owned the land and the peasant who cultivated it, the Jew represented
the trader, or middleman. It was, therefore, literally true that there
were not enough other people in the country to support the Jew, who
represents, however, not more than 11 per cent. of the total population.
One of the first persons I met in Galicia was a representative of this
poorer class of Jews. I reached Cracow late one afternoon in the latter
part of September. There was a cold wind blowing and, for the first
time since I had left Scotland, I noticed an uncomfortable keenness in
the evening air, which was an indication, I suppose, that I was on the
northern and eastern or the Russian side of the Carpathian Mountains.
One of the first persons I encountered as I was standing shivering at
the entrance of the hotel was a pale-faced, brown-eyed little boy, who
spoke to me in English and seemed to want to establish some sort of
friendship with me on the basis of our common acquaintance with the
English language. He was unmistakably a Jew and, as we walked down
the street together, he told me something of his life in London and
then in Cracow. I gathered from what he was able to tell me that his
father, who was a cabinetmaker and, as he said, "very poor," had found
it harder to live in the fierce competition of the London sweatshops,
where he had been employed, than in the Ghetto at Cracow, and so had
grown discouraged and returned.
I learned from him, as I did later from others of his race, that not
all the Jews who came to England and America succeed and get rich in
a few years, as seems to be commonly supposed. Some of them fail,
and some get into unexpected troubles, and frequently families who
immigrate are broken up and some of them sent back as a consequence of
the enforcement of the immigration regulations, so that there is not so
much eagerness to go to America as there was a few years ago.
In spite of this fact the Jews of Galicia, nearly every one of whom
probably has friends or relatives either in England or America, seem
to look with peculiar interest upon every one who speaks the English
language, because they regard them as representatives of a people who,
more than any other in the world, have tried to be just to the Jews.
A few days later I met in a little village a few miles from Cracow a
Jewish trader who, like most of the Jews in this part of the country,
spoke German as well as Polish, so that with the assistance of Doctor
Park I was able to speak with him. He said that his business was to
buy grain and fodder from the large landowners in different parts of
Galicia and sell it again to the peasants, who used it to feed their
stock. When he learned that I was from America and that I wanted to
see something of the life of the peasant people he volunteered to be
my guide. It was a very fortunate meeting for me, for I found that
this man not only knew about the condition of nearly every family in
the village, but he understood, also, exactly how to deal with them so
that, at his touch, every door flew open, as if by magic, and I was
able to see and learn all that I wanted to know.
In the meantime I noticed that our guide and interpreter seemed to be
quite as interested in learning about America as I was interested in
getting acquainted with Galicia. He interlarded all his information
about the condition of the peasants in different parts of the country
with questions about conditions in America. As it turned out, he not
only had relatives in America, but he had a cousin in New York who had
got into trouble and been sent to prison for three years on account
of some business irregularity. It was a small matter, according to
my Jewish friend, that would not have cost more than eight days'
imprisonment in Galicia. He could not understand, therefore, how a poor
man should be treated more harshly in a free country like America,
where all are equal, than he was at home, where he was the underdog and
did not expect consideration. What seemed to trouble him most, however,
was the fact that he had not heard from his cousin for a year and no
one knew what had become of him.
When the matter was explained to me, I told the man that if he would
give me the name and last address of his cousin, when I returned to New
York I would look the matter up and, if possible, learn what had become
of the missing cousin.
This seemed to me a very natural proposal, under the circumstances,
but it evidently took the poor man by surprise, for he stopped, stared
at me an instant, and then in the most humble manner knelt down and
kissed my hand. I confess that at first I was a little shocked and
rather disgusted. Afterward I learned that it is a common habit, more
especially in Russia, for peasants to kiss the hands and even the feet
of their superiors. The thought that occurred to me, however, was that
it must have taken many centuries of subjection and oppression to make
this attitude of humility a familiar and natural way, as it seemed to
be in this case, of expressing gratitude.
The singular thing about it all was that this Jew who had shown himself
so humble toward me looked down upon and despised the Polish peasants
among whom he trades. He referred to them as "ignorant and dirty
creatures." For all that, he seemed to have learned their ways of
expressing himself to those to whose power or influence he looked for
help or protection.
Under these circumstances, with these ingrained habits in the masses of
the people, I found it hard to imagine just what the right of manhood
suffrage, which has recently been conferred upon the people in all the
provinces of Austria, was likely to mean in actual practice.
Nothing was impressed more forcibly upon me during my study of
conditions in Europe than this--namely, that we can tell very little
from the mere fact that this or that political institution exists in a
country just what privileges or disadvantages these institutions bring
to the masses of the people. In fact, it seems to be just as true in
Europe as it is in America, that mere legislative enactments can of
themselves no more produce justice and freedom than they can produce
industry and thrift. After the physical bondage has been destroyed
there still remains the bondage of superstition, of ignorance, and of
religious, class, and racial prejudice. The act of this Jew in kissing
my hand was a revelation to me, not only of his own state of mind, but
of the conditions by which he was surrounded.
I think this one incident, more than anything else I saw or heard while
I was in Galicia, gave me an insight into the life of the people. It
seemed to me I could understand, for example, from this alone, why the
Jews have made little more progress in Galicia than they have in the
neighbouring provinces of Roumania and Russia.
As for my guide, I might add that I never heard from him afterward.
If he wrote to me the letter never reached me, and I do not know what
finally became of the cousin whom he had lost.
Perhaps I ought, before I attempt to describe the condition of the
poorer class of Jews in Cracow, to say something of another Ghetto
which I saw while in Europe.
During my stay in Prague I took a walk one day through an ancient
quarter of the city which had been formerly inhabited by Jews. The
Ghetto of Prague is said to have been the largest and most famous in
Europe. It was, in fact, a city in itself, for it contained not merely
the oldest synagogue in Europe, with a famous old Jewish burial ground
attached to it, but also a Rathhaus, or city hall, and a market
in which, according to tradition, Jewish traders at one time sold
Christian slaves. So thoroughly were the Jews at one time established
in this quarter of the city that it went under the name of Judenstadt,
or Jewtown. There they maintained, in a small way, a separate civil
government of their own, just as they do, to a lesser extent, in Russia
to-day. In his book on the Jews, already referred to, Mr. M. Fishberg,
to whom I am indebted for many facts and statistics concerning the
condition of the Jew, says of the Jews in Russia to-day:
They speak their own language, Yiddish, and many conduct their
affairs, keep their ledgers, write contracts, wills, and many
other documents in this dialect; the registration of births,
marriages, and deaths is done by their rabbis, and the divorces
granted by them are recognized by the state as valid; in the
smaller towns they prefer to settle their differences before
their own judiciary (Beth din), and not in the state courts; they
collect the greater part of their own taxes for the Government in
the name of the Jewish community; not only is each individual Jew
required to do military duty, but the Jewish community as a whole
is held responsible for delivering annually a certain number of
recruits. This separateness goes as far as the calendar with many
Jews, who date their letters and documents according to the Hebrew
and not the Russian calendar. Up to about fifty years ago it was a
disgrace for a Jew to be able to read Russian or German, or even
to have in his possession a book in one of these vulgar languages;
it was a sin next to apostasy. But during the last two generations
a profound change has taken place.
At the time I was in Prague the ancient Ghetto was in process of
demolition, and it illustrates the change which has come in recent
years that most of the people living in the narrow streets and battered
ancient buildings of the former Ghetto were not Jews but Christians.
After Prague, the city which has the oldest and most interesting Ghetto
in Europe is Cracow, and the most interesting thing about it is the
fact that it is still inhabited by Jews. They live there to-day very
much, I suppose, as they did a hundred years ago, a race separate
and apart, more removed, apparently, from the manners, customs, and
comprehension of the rest of the world than any people this side of
China.
I have known Jews nearly all my life. I have done business with them
and have more than once talked to them in their synagogues, and have
always found sympathy and support among them for the work I have had
to do for my own people. I have frequently visited and studied, to
some extent, the poorer classes in the Jewish quarter on the East Side
in New York. In spite of this, however, when certain strange figures
in long black coats, soft felt hats, with pale faces, lighted by dark
glittering eyes and framed by glossy curls which hung down on either
side in front of their ears, were pointed out to me in Vienna, I had
not the slightest notion to what race or nationality of people they
belonged. Later on, when I reached Cracow, these same slender figures
and pale, delicate faces became very familiar to me, and I learned to
recognize in them the higher type of Polish Jew.
The great majority of the Jews in Cracow still make their homes in a
quarter of the city called the "Kazimierz," which gets its name from
that of a Polish king who fell in love with a beautiful Jewess some
four hundred years ago and, for her sake, made Poland a refuge for the
members of her race, who, at that time, were hunted almost like wild
beasts in other parts of Europe.
I visited the Kazimierz late one afternoon, when the narrow, dirty,
and ill-smelling streets were swarming with their strange brood of
slatternly, poverty-stricken, and unhealthy looking inhabitants.
I have been through the Jewish quarter in New York, with its confusion
of pushcarts, its swarms of black-eyed children, and its strange old
men with gray-brown beards wandering careworn and absorbed through the
crowded streets, each anxiously intent on some thought or purpose of
his own. The Jewish quarter on the East Side in New York is, however, a
pale reflection of the Ghetto in Cracow. For one thing, the Jew in New
York, though he retains many of the habits and customs of the country
from which he came, seems, in most cases, to be making an earnest
effort to make an American of himself; to learn the language, adopt the
dress and, as far as possible, the manners of the new country of which
he is soon to become, if he is not already, a citizen.
The masses of the Polish Jews, however, still cling tenaciously to the
customs of their religion and of the Ghetto in which, for a thousand
years or more, they have lived as exiles and, more or less, like
prisoners. Instead of seeking to make themselves look like the rest of
the people among whom they live, they seem to be making every effort to
preserve and emphasize the characters in which they are different from
the people about them.
Although I met in Cracow Jews in all the various stages of
transition--as far as their dress is concerned--from the traditional
Ghetto Jew to the modern literary, professional or business man,
nevertheless the majority of the Jews still cling to the long black
coat which they were compelled to wear in the Middle Ages. Certain ones
have discarded this symbol of exclusiveness, but still wear the long
beard, and the side curls in front of their ears, which seem to be
especially dear to them, perhaps, because, for some reason I could not
understand, they are forbidden to wear them in Russia.
Perhaps it was the effect of the costume, which gave them a strange
and alien appearance, but it seemed to me, at first, as if every Jew
in Cracow had exactly the same features, the same manner of walking,
and the same expression of countenance. As I watched the different
figures in the crowded streets more closely, however, I discovered that
beneath the peculiar dress and manner many different types of human
beings were concealed. There were the pale-browed students, who moved
through the crowd with a hurried and abstracted air; there were slender
and elegant aristocrats, who, while still wearing the uniform of their
race, dressed with a scrupulous correctness and looked at you with an
expression which seemed a curious mingling of the humility of the Jew
and the scorn of the Pharisee.
There was the commonplace plodding Jew, following humbly in the common
ruts of barter and trade and the daily and weekly routine which his
religion prescribed. There was the outcast beggar, dirty and wretched,
doddering aimlessly along the dirty street or sitting in some doorway,
staring disconsolately into the street. There was, also, the dirty,
gluttonous, ignorant, and brutal type, on whom neither suffering nor
fanaticism seemed to have made any impression, and who, in his Jewish
dress and manners, looked like a caricature of his more high-bred
neighbour.
I visited the ancient synagogue while I was in Cracow, which they say
was built for the Jews by that same Polish king, Kazimierz, who first
invited them to take refuge in his country. I saw there the ancient
Roll of the Laws and ancient Prayer Book which were brought from Spain
when the Jews were expelled from that country.
Nearby the synagogue is the ancient Jewish market. A narrow street
leads into an open square in the centre of which is a circular
building. Before one of the entrances of this building a man, with the
pale brow and delicate features which seem to be a mark of superiority
among the people of the Ghetto, was publicly slaughtering geese. The
square in which this building stood was surrounded on all sides by rows
of little market booths, in front of which groups of men and women
were dickering and trading for various small wares. A crowd of women
stood about the building in the centre of the square and watched the
pale-browed man, who did not seem to relish the job, as he rapidly and
dexterously performed the ceremony of cutting the throats of the geese.
These were handed to him by a good-natured looking woman, wearing an
apron and high boots, red with blood. After the geese were killed they
were hung over a pit to drain, while fresh victims were brought from
the baskets and crates standing about in the open square. A foul smell
from the open pit in which the geese were allowed to bleed filled the
square. This did not add to the dignity of the proceedings, but it
served to impress them upon my memory.
In one corner of the square I noticed a dull gray-coloured building
from which troops of little Jewish children were issuing. It was one
of those schools by means of which Jewish teachers, through all the
persecutions and dispersions of nineteen centuries, have kept alive the
memory of the Jewish history and the Jewish law and so kept the race
together. I do not think I know of anything which so illustrates and
emphasizes the power of education as the influences which these schools
have had upon the Jewish people.
I was interested in all that I saw of the life of the Jew in Cracow,
because it gave me some idea of the poverty, degradation, and squalor
in which more than half of the Jewish race is living to-day in
different parts of Europe. Of the twelve million Jews in the world,
about nine millions live in Europe. Of this number more than six
million live in Russia and nearly two million and a half in Austria,
Roumania, and the other parts of southeastern Europe. I have given some
idea of the poverty of the Jews in Galicia, where they are politically
free. From all that I can learn the Jews in Russia and Roumania are
very much worse off than they are in the Austrian province of Galicia.
Most of us, who are acquainted with Jews only in America or in western
Europe, have been led to believe, in spite of the evident poverty of
many of the Jews who live on the East Side in New York and in the
Whitechapel district of London, that, as a race, the Jews are extremely
wealthy. I was surprised, therefore, to read recently the statement,
made by Jews who have investigated the condition of their own people,
to the effect that, while they are undeniably wealthier than their
Christian neighbours in the countries in which, during the past hundred
years, they have been granted their freedom, taking the Jews as a
whole they are poorer than any other civilized nation in the world. In
short, one writer has said: "If we were to capitalize their wealth and
distribute it among the twelve millions of Jews they would dispute with
any poor nation for the lowest place in the scale of wealth."[4]
The direction in which the Jews seem to be superior to all of the rest
of the world is apparently not in wealth but in education. Even in
Russia, where they do not have the same educational advantages that
are given to the rest of the population, it is found that, while 79
per cent. of the total population can neither read nor write, the
percentage of illiteracy among the Jews is 61 per cent. which is 18 per
cent. less than that of the rest of the population.
In western Europe, where Jews have equal opportunities with their
Gentile neighbours in the matter of education, they are far in advance
of them in education. Statistics for Cracow show, for example, that
while only a little more than 2 per cent. of the Jews who applied for
marriage licenses were unable to read and write, between 15 and 20 per
cent. of the Christians in the same category were illiterate. In Italy,
where 42.6 per cent. of the men and 57 per cent. of the women of the
Christian population over fifteen years of age are unable to read and
write, only 3 per cent. of the men and 7.5 per cent. of the women among
the Jews are illiterate.
In Austria over 25 per cent. of the students of the universities are
Jews, although they represent only 5 per cent. of the population.
In Hungary, where Jews represent 4.9 per cent. of the population,
they furnish 30.27 per cent. of the students in the universities
and other schools of higher education. In Baden, Germany, Jews have
proportionately three and a half times as many students as the
Christians. Since 1851 the number of Jewish students in Austrian
universities has increased more than sevenfold, while the number of
Christian students has scarcely more than trebled in that time.
One reason for this is that the Jews have almost invariably made their
homes in the cities, where the opportunities for education existed.
They have, at the same time, been almost wholly engaged in business,
which not only requires a certain amount of education, but is in
itself, more than other occupations, a source of education.
The name rabbi, or teacher, has always been a title of respect and
honour among the Jews from the earliest time. It was the name that his
disciples bestowed upon Jesus.
If there were no other reasons why the story of the Jew should be
studied, it would be interesting and inspiring as showing what
education can do and has done for a people who, in the face of
prejudice and persecution, have patiently struggled up to a position of
power and preëminence in the life and civilization in which all races
are now beginning to share.
FOOTNOTES:
[3] M. Fishberg, "The Jews," p. 366.
[4] M. Fishberg, "The Jews: A Study of Race and Environment," p. 361.