CHAPTER VI

THE ZIONIST SOLUTION

No truer general statement of the case of the Russian Jew, or nobler

appeal to enlightened humanity in his behalf, has been made in our time

than by Cardinal Manning, in a letter addressed to a London meeting in

December, 1890. Every word of this superbly Christian epistle is as true

and as applicable to-day as it was thirteen years ago, and I quote the

concluding sentences of it here as being both a powerful argument in

behalf of an oppressed people, and as a testimony to the liberty-loving

spirit of a Cardinal of the Catholic Church:

“Six millions of men in Russia are so hemmed in and hedged about by

penal laws as to residence, and food, and education, and property, and

trade, and military service, and domiciliary visits, and police

inspection as to justify the words, that ‘no Jew can earn a

livelihood,’ and that ‘they are watched as criminals.’ The narratives

before us may be highly coloured, they may be overcharged; but, all

deductions made, they show both a violent and a refined injustice, which

is perpetually as ‘iron entering the soul.’

“And, further, when the cry of such a multitude of suffering is wafted

through the commonwealth of Europe, it is surely a part of the comity of

nations that we should, with all due respect, make known what we have

heard, in the confidence that, if things be so, the first to seek out

and to treat such evils would be the supreme authority of the Realm from

whence those wailing voices came.

“We show no disrespect in believing that what reaches our ears may not

have reached the ears of those who are most highly exalted. Knowledge

travels more readily on lower levels, and often does not ascend to the

highest regions; the highest are, as a rule, the last to know the

excesses and malpractices of their local authorities. We, therefore,

with all due reverence, petition the Imperial Ruler of all the Russias

to take account of all the Governors of the Jewish Pale; and even this

we should not venture to do, if the sufferings alleged were not of such

a kind and of such an extent as to violate the great and primary laws of

human society. On this broad and solid base of natural law the

jurisprudence of European civilisation rests. The public moral sense of

all nations is created and sustained by participation in this universal

common law; when this is anywhere broken, or wounded, it is not only

sympathy but civilisation that has the privilege of respectful

remonstrance.

“I am well aware of the counter allegations, not only of the

anti-Semitic press, but of guarded and responsible adversaries;

nevertheless, it is certain that races are as they are treated. How can

citizens who are denied the rights of naturalisation be patriotic? How

can men, who are only allowed to breathe the air, but not to own the

soil under their feet, to eat only a food that is doubly taxed, to be

slain in war, but never to command--how shall such a homeless, an exiled

race live the life of the people among whom they are despised, or love

the land which disowns them?

“It would seem to me that if such were the sufferings of any nation,

even in Central Africa, we should be not only justified, but called on,

to intervene. How much more, then, in behalf of a race who, in their

past and their present and their future, demand of us an exceptional

reverence; a race with a sacred history of nearly four thousand years; a

present without parallel;, dispersed in all lands, with an imperishable

personal identity, isolated and changeless, greatly afflicted, without

home or fatherland; visibly reserved for a future of signal mercy.

“Into this I will not enter further than to say that any man who does

not believe in their future must be a careless reader, not only of the

old Jewish Scriptures, but even of our own. It is not our duty to add to

their afflictions, nor to look on unmoved, and to keep the garments when

others stone them.

“If we know the mind of our Master who prayed for them in His last hour,

we owe to them both the justice of the Old Law and the charity of the

New.”

I have come from a journey through the Jewish Pale, a convinced believer

in the remedy of Zionism. I failed to see any other that can offer an

equal hope of success. It is a necessity of the actual situation, and

faces the growing perils of the position of the Russian Jew with a

courageous plan of repatriation. Hope for partial or ultimate

emancipation in Russia there is none. Other countries cannot be expected

to relieve Russia of the unhappy victims of oppression and poverty.

Where, then, are they to go?

Russia has a direct responsibility in their impoverishment and

discontent, and this fact demands at her hands every help which the

Zionist plan requires in its execution, financial co-operation with the

wealthy Jews of Christendom in providing the cost of emigration, the

purchase of suitable land in Palestine, and in obtaining the necessary

rights of settlement and guarantee of protection from the Turkish

Government. This latter provision is generally believed to be an affair

of money, to be arranged with the Sultan; but, in any case, the moral

help of other great Powers would not be refused in such a chivalrous,

humane enterprise when once the influential Jews of Europe and America

made it, as they easily could do, an appeal for assistance to the sense

of justice and of reparation of the nations of Christendom.

It is some eighteen years since I rode from Mount Carmel to Nazareth,

thence to Tiberias, and back through the beautiful plain of Jezreel,

down to Nablus in Samaria on the way to Jerusalem. Jericho, the wilds

of Judea, the country to the west, across the pastoral lands of Sharon,

were also visited. I found the German Templer colonies at Haifa, Nablus,

and Sarona wearing all the appearance of comfortable clusters of garden

and farming homesteads. The Jews of Bessarabia are as sober and as

industrious and, at least, as intelligent as these German emigrants.

They have progressed in South Russia when permitted to cultivate the

land. Why should they not be able to grow grain in Galilee, fruit and

olives in Samaria, meat in the mountains of Judea, and wine and other

products congenial to the soil and climate in the vale of Sharon, and

elsewhere, in a land which once flowed rich with milk and honey?

Christendom is prejudiced against this race because its sons are

generally non-producers of wealth, and mere exploiters of the fruits and

necessities of direct industry. This is largely, but by no means wholly,

true, while the taunt bears with it the spirit of Pharisaical virtue

unconscious of self-accusation. Twenty per cent. of the Jews of

Bessarabia are artisans and labourers working for wages. But, if the

race generally are exploiters and extortioners, who made them so? Are

not historical conditions and centuries of deliberate oppression in

every Christian land (Ireland honourably excepted) answerable for the

Hebrew predilection to profit-seeking by other than the methods of

immediate production? And are the Gentiles of the lofty moral school of

critics so much above the doctrine and practice of the commercial greed

of buying in the cheapest, and selling in the dearest, market?

“Expedients of every kind and shade,” writes Herbert Spencer

(“Philosophical Essays,” vol. ii., on “Commercial Morality”), “from

innocent deception to anything you please, excepting open robbery,

prevail even in the higher grades of the commercial world. Innumerable

frauds, untruth, both in words and in principles of business, and

carefully devised subterfuges are generally in vogue, while many of

these have become established as commercial usages.”

It is on record somewhere that no Jew has ever become a millionaire in

Scotland or in the United States. His powers of dextrous money-mongering

are blunted in some pronounced Christian lands by methods as expert and

morals as accommodating as his own. But, whatever ground there may be

for the somewhat general feeling prevailing against the Hebrew race for

its financial unscrupulousness ought to make for and not against the

Zionist movement, which seeks to find a place of refuge and of safety

for those whose present sufferings and unhappy prospects appeal to the

best side of our common humanity.

Cardinal Manning’s noble words, quoted in support of this humble

advocacy of the cause of an oppressed people, will surely find a direct

response in every kindly heart and head which may reflect upon the story

and the sufferings of the Russian Jew.

PART II

_THE KISHINEFF MASSACRES_

CHAPTER VII

I. ORIGIN AND AGENCY

Kishineff is the capital of Bessarabia, the seat of its government, and

the chief centre of its trading industry. It has a present population of

130,000, of a mixed ethnological community. The Russians number about

8000; the Moldavians, 50,000; the Jews, 50,000, with Bulgarians, Serbs,

Greeks, Macedonians, and Germans accounting for the balance.

In the time of the Romans, Bessarabia formed part of the Imperial colony

known as Dacia, and the Moldavian peasantry, who form the greater part

of its present population, are said to be descendants of Roman

“undesirables” who were forcibly exiled to the Balkan regions. From

thence they emigrated, in time, to the rich lands lying west of the

Dniester. The succession of conquering and colonising peoples who fought

for the possession of this most fruitful region is historically

bewildering. Cymri and Scythians, Greeks and Getæ, Romans and Goths,

Huns and Avars, Bulgars and Slavonians; until, in the seventh century,

the Bessi arrived, and gave the country its name of “Bessarabia.” Then

came, in due course, Ugrians, Kumans, Polovtzians, and Mongolians. In

the Middle Ages the Republic of Genoa founded colonies along the

Dniester, which in turn gave way to an invasion of Turks. During the

eighteenth century Russian power asserted itself in the land, and

portions of the southern provinces which belonged to Turkey were, in our

own time, ceded to the great Empire, thus completing Russian possession

of the most fought-for country embraced within the wide dominions of the

Tsars.

Thirty years ago Kishineff was on a level with an average Turkish town.

According to its present Mayor, M. Karl Schmidt, the city owes its rapid

rise and prosperity, and its present flourishing trade, solely to the

Jews. They built up its commerce, organised its banks, developed its

general business, and made it the handsome, thriving city it is to-day.

The country around the city is a great wine-growing region, and the

Moldavian peasants are the chief producers of this most marketable

commodity. They are not an intelligent race, and are even more

superstitious, if possible, than the average Russian Mujik. They do not

migrate from their villages in search of labour, like Russian workers in

the central provinces. Their spare time is spent in eating sunflower

seeds, and in drinking vodka during the winter months.

The economic relations between these Moldavian wine-growers and the Jews

of Kishineff are most intimate. They have no business capacity whatever,

and they dispose of their produce to the Jew brokers and dealers, who

make, at least, a ten per cent. profit on such transactions.

These intimate trading connections have not led, as recently alleged, to

any marked ill-feeling against the intermediaries; though it is only

natural to assume that the profits of the skilled exploiter are not

always a source of satisfaction to the mind of the peasant producer.

What I was assured of, in this connection, from all sources of

information sought by me in Kishineff, was that the origin of the

outbreak at Easter was not, in any sense, traceable to these dealings

between the Jew merchants and brokers of the city and the surrounding

Moldavian farmers.

The genesis of the recent massacres is to be found in the special

legislation which gives the Jew the mockery of civil rights within a

pale of legal domicile. There are, at least, a hundred laws, ordinances,

and special regulations having for object the coercing of him in all

his religious, social, and industrial rights; even within this Pale of

Settlement.[2] He is crowded into urban centres and denied, under

penalties, access to where conditions of work and location might relieve

him of his poverty and wretched home. Fines are levied upon him for

infringements of these coercive regulations, and this fact induces him

to circumvent such restrictive measures, while it appeals also to the

police to help him to do so--for a consideration.

The first serious trouble experienced by the Jews of Bessarabia began

about eight years ago. A _sous-prefect_ of police, named Von Oglio,

appointed in the Beltzy district by the present Vice-Governor,

Ostrogoff, harassed the Jews by exactions and blackmail until they

“struck” against being further bled in this manner. He retaliated as

follows:

On the Hebrew festival of Yom Kippur, one of the most solemn ceremonies

of the year, Von Oglio entered the local synagogue, seized the Torah,

or sacred writing, flung it on the floor, ordered a policeman to pick it

up, to seal it, and then had it conveyed to--the local prison! He next

expelled the small congregation, and placed his seal upon the lock of

the place of worship.

He then applied the “May Laws” in all their rigour, and forced all who

had not special permits to leave the town, even men who had lived there

in peace for thirty years; taking proceedings against them under

circumstances which led to the death or injury of their cattle and the

ruin of their crops. This conduct on the part of the local head of the

police excited a corresponding feeling of hostility among the local

peasants. They saw the guardians of the law ill-treating those whom they

were supposed to protect, and they followed the example thus set them.

Suits for reparation and damages were brought by some of the wealthier

victims of this police tyranny, but no redress was obtained. Von Oglio

was removed, without degradation or punishment, to another district, and

no further steps were taken by the authorities.

The chief instigator of the recent massacres now appeared on the scene.

Up to 1894 the only paper in the province of Bessarabia was the

_Bessarabsky Viestnik_, a journal of a moribund existence. In this year

one Pavolachi Kroushevan, of Moldavian origin, acquired the dying sheet,

and amalgamated it with a new daily paper, the _Bessarabetz_. The

Vice-Governor, Ostrogoff, was press censor, in virtue of his higher

post, and he extended his patronage to Kishinev’s only daily organ in

the most marked manner.

Kroushevan commenced at once a vicious anti-Semitic campaign. He singled

out for special attack municipal offices in which Jews were employed as

clerks and in other capacities, and demanded that the hated Hebrews

should be driven out to make room for Christians. This was done.

Popular feeling was worked up in this manner to such a heat that the

paper became the dominating force in the public life of the city. It was

the only paper read in Kishineff. Its circulation reached 20,000, and

its articles against the Jews were directly addressed to the police,

soldiers, workingmen, Seminarists (Kishineff possesses half-a-dozen

Royal and Ecclesiastical Colleges, Gymnasiums, and High Schools), and to

all the lower employés of the Governor’s, Post Office, Telegraph, and

other public departments.

From fiery denunciation the Editor progressed to deliberate incitations

to violence. Articles headed “Death to the Jews!”--“Crusade against the

Hated Race!”--“Down with the Disseminators of Socialism!” followed each

other, while Kroushevan organised a society under the patronage of his

paper, in which the most rabid of his pupils in the anti-Semitic war

were enrolled.

All this was ostentatiously tolerated by the present Vice-Governor,

Ostrogoff.

Kroushevan got into financial difficulties a few months ago, and removed

to St. Petersburg, leaving the paper in charge of the deputy-editor, but

continuing himself as directing head of the staff. Its ferocious

anti-Jewish spirit and propaganda were in no way abated by this

arrangement.

This brings us down, in the matter of time, to a few weeks before the

recent massacres.

There next happened two events that gave the _Bessarabetz_ a match with

which to explode the mine of popular fury it had been building in the

popular mind for four years. One was a murder of a boy at a village

south of Kishineff, called Doubossar; and the other the suicide of a

girl within the city itself. These were at once seized upon by the

Kroushevan organ as “proofs” that they were instances of Semitic ritual

murder! They were deliberately declared to be cases of the sacrifice of

Christian blood in the performance of Hebrew rites at Passover! Steps

were taken at once to put the true facts before the people, in public

inquests and declarations; but the match had already ignited the end of

the _Bessarabetz_ fuse, and those who were resolved to strike terror

into the “Socialist Jews” of Bessarabia and Southwestern Russia paid no

heed to the documents and evidence which told the truth about the

Doubossar boy’s death and the girl who took poison and who passed away

in the Jewish Hospital in Kishineff. The plot was ripe for execution,

and the Paschal time, associated by the atrocious legend with the

kidnapping and killing of Christian children, was fixed upon for

action.

CHAPTER VIII

II. LETTERS FROM KISHINEFF[3]

To arrive at definite conclusions as to the immediate and the

contributory causes of the sanguinary outrages perpetrated upon the Jews

of Kishineff on the 19th and 20th of April, was a tedious and painful

process, beset with innumerable difficulties. To try to find the truth

amidst a mass of conflicting testimony, where murder and rape and rapine

are charged against one side, and where the actual perpetrators of these

deeds are supposed to be all in prison awaiting some form of trial,

would be a formidable task even where the law and popular feeling were

on the side of justice. But in a city where the injured class are placed

almost beyond the protection of the law of the land, and where public

passion is alike the author of outrage and the apologist of partisan

officials, it is necessarily much more difficult for the searcher after

unbiassed evidence to secure the object of his quest.

Disregarding entirely the accounts which have been published in the

Russian and foreign press, I adopted the following means of reaching

something approximating to the real facts as to the outrages; their

instigators, cause, and extent, and the measure of representative

Russian feeling in relation thereto:

On arriving at Odessa I interviewed Count Schouvaloff, the retiring

Civil Governor of South Russia, and I reproduce from memory (not having

taken notes of the conversation) what he was courteous enough to say. I

also obtained expressions of opinion from Russian and other merchants

in Odessa upon anti-Jewish feeling in South Russia; and these views,

frankly biassed as they were, will speak for a very large class of

Russian and of resident foreign Christian opinion about the Jews and

their racial and commercial character, as developed in this country.

Immediately upon reaching Kishineff, I called upon the responsible

leaders of the Jews to whom I carried letters of introduction from

London, Paris, and New York. They are prominent citizens, and are

largely of the medical profession. I obtained from them and others,

including the three Rabbis of the city, a very copious statement of all

that occurred there on the 19th and 20th of last month.

Resolved to compare this _ex parte_ testimony with such Russian evidence

as might be least tainted with anti-Semitic prejudice in this now

somewhat demoralised place, I solicited and secured interviews with two

Christian doctors of Russian blood; also with one of the highest civil

functionaries in the district, who is a noble of great wealth, of unique

local influence, whose name I am not permitted to use, but for whose

_bona fides_ I can absolutely vouch; and, in addition, I was privileged

to hold fully an hour’s conversation on the subject of the riots and

outrages with M. Karl Schmidt, who has been Mayor of the city for the

last twenty-five years without interruption; the strongest possible

evidence to his popularity with all classes of his fellow-citizens, and

to his worth and capacity as a Russian municipal ruler.

I then met by appointment in the Jewish Hospital all the medical men,

Jews, who had professionally attended to the persons brought there

during and after the riots, who could speak as to the number of killed

and wounded, and the extent of the injuries inflicted upon the

unfortunate victims of the mob’s fury. The statements made to me by

these doctors I repeated to the two Russian doctors I have already

referred to, and I have noted down their comments upon the accounts

given me by their Hebrew medical _confrères_.

My next step was to visit the scenes of outrage in the city, and in the

Skulanska Rogatka district, where the most atrocious of the crimes were

committed, and to obtain from the living witnesses of the outrages an

account of what they saw and experienced, some of them from women and

girls who went through the saturnalia of ruffianism as victims of

outrage and of rape.

From these tales of revolting deeds I proceeded to the Jewish Cemetery,

where I saw and counted the forty-four newly made graves of the

massacred men, women, and children, whose freshly turned mounds stand

there to-day with their simple Hebrew wooden marks of identity, as an

appeal to the God alike of Christian and of Jew against deeds done in

the pretended name of religion which might even shame devils to

perpetrate.

I have taken pictures of these graves, of the shed in which the young

girl of thirteen was assaulted, and killed with four men, of groups of

little girls and women who passed through the two nights of horror in

the quarter where the Moldavian fiends committed the worst deeds, and of

houses in which numerous murders were committed.

Knowing how unlikely it would be for me, or for any man, to obtain from

modest maidens and respectable married women any account, or even

admission, of their having been violated, I sought the Rabbis of the

city, and got from them and from some of the victims whom I met there

particulars of the outrages to which they and others were subjected.

These will, as far as the subject can permit it, be dealt with in

subsequent letters.

Let me to this extent forestall what I shall have to say about the

violation of women. All the worst of these crimes were the work of

Moldavians, and not of Russians. This, I am convinced, is absolutely

true. Many of these Moldavians are descended from the colony of convicts

and criminals founded by Pagan Rome in the country now known as

Roumania; and the several centuries’ experience by the race of Turkish

rule, before being inflicted as subjects upon more civilised

governments, has not morally improved the original taint in the blood of

their present-day representatives.

Two letters,[4] one signed by Count Tolstoy and the other from Maxime

Gorky, addressed to the committee in charge of the labour of relief in

Kishineff, express the hateful feeling of indignation and of abhorrence

with which the cultured Russian mind looks upon these revolting deeds of

mediæval savagery in our day.

_Letter I_

KISHINEFF, May 21st.

The first survey of the situation here satisfies me there is no

likelihood of any further serious outbreak for the present. The

military precautions seem fully adequate to the task of dealing with any

emergency.

The Jews, however, are still terror-stricken, and in fear of renewed

violence. Wealthy families have fled the city, but the vast mass of the

Hebrew community, numbering fully fifty thousand souls, are too poor to

purchase the means of seeking protection in flight.

All the Russians I have met, from Odessa to this city, condemn the

abominable acts of the anti-Semitic mobs as strongly as other people.

The true origin of the massacres will need patient and careful inquiry,

but it can in a general way be put down to combined racial, economic,

and other factors, inflamed by violent incitations of the local

anti-Jewish press.

The latest list of the killed and wounded, and accounts of looting and

destruction, gives these figures: Killed, 44; badly wounded, 83;

injured, 500. Houses wrecked, 700; shops and small stores looted and

damaged, 600; 2000 families are said to be ruined in their business and

employment, and 10,000 people require relief.

The wealthy Jews of the City and Pale have subscribed about forty-five

thousand dollars, while donations from Germany, France, England, and the

United States amount, so far, to some thirty thousand dollars more.

All the vengeance of the mobs seems to have been directed against the

very poorest of the Jews. Shops were only looted, but artisans were

killed.

Much greater help than that already received will be required to prevent

starvation.

_Letter II_

KISHINEFF, May 25th.

During a brief halt in the South Russian capital, Odessa, I availed

myself of an opportunity of visiting the retiring Civil Governor,

Lieutenant General Count P. P. Schouvaloff, elder son of Count Paul

Schouvaloff, formerly Russian Ambassador at Berlin, and subsequently the

most popular Viceroy of Poland who reigned in Warsaw since the stormy

days of 1863. The Count received me with courtesy and affability at his

private palace, on the Nicolai Boulevard. His Excellency had, he

informed me, been abroad during the last two months, and had only just

returned to take adieux of the local officials and citizens of Odessa

before assuming the functions of his new post in the Ministry of the

Interior. Had he been in Odessa during the terrible events in Kishineff

he would, _ex-officio_, have been in possession of intimate knowledge of

the tragic occurrences, upon which he should have had no hesitation, he

was good enough to say, to have given me the frank expression of his

views. As it was, the Count regretted he could say very little indeed.

Like the rest of his countrymen who had a jealous regard for the good

repute of Russia abroad, his Excellency sincerely deplored the

frightful popular _émeute_ in the Bessarabian capital. But there were

one or two things to be borne in mind by a foreign observer and

commentator, he was anxious to point out. He need not, perhaps, he

remarked, dwell upon the unsophisticated condition of the Russian

peasant or artisan; his simplicity, ignorance, and the practically

unlimited credence he gave to sinister and plausibly mischievous

counsellors. Against these qualities in the simple Russian, there was to

be set, he insisted, the vastly superior intelligence of the Jew, of all

grades and conditions. It was, unfortunately, an indisputable fact, in

his opinion, that the Jews, more especially where they were numerically

equal to their orthodox neighbours--and in South Russian centres they

formed the predominant elements--exploited the Christians in a hundred

unscrupulous ways, to their own aggrandisement. The Jew not only knew

the law better than his Christian neighbour, but he was an adept in

circumventing it. Consequently the exploited Russian failed to obtain

legal redress, and occasionally the ignorant people, instigated by the

worst class of criminals, whose only object was plunder, took the

law--according to their own primitive conception of it--into their own

hands, with such frightful results as were lately seen in Bessarabia.

In his Excellency’s opinion the limitations placed upon the Jews in this

country should be made somewhat more stringent, in the protective

interests of the Jews themselves. That was to say, he remarked, they

should be deprived of much of the immunity under which they now

exploited the uneducated Christians. On the other hand, improvement

might be effected by a more careful choice being made in the appointment

of Governors in Jewish centres. Younger and more active men are

required, who will keep themselves fully and exactly _au courant_ with

every latent movement among the people under their jurisdiction. They

should be just, intelligent, and alert Governors, his Excellency said,

upon whom it would be practically impossible to spring any sudden

outbreak, and they should be prepared to apply instantly repressive

measures at all time.

Count Schouvaloff would not enter into any discussion of the Jewish

question in Russia, but he might be permitted to observe that it was, in

his opinion, one for Jews themselves, in the main, to solve. Generally

speaking, he had little hope in any change for the better in the

inimical feeling between Jew and Christian in Russia, so long as there

existed no standard of commercial rectitude among Jews. There was no

question of religious intolerance, although, unfortunately, it was no

difficult thing for _agents provocateurs_, whose object, as already

said, was plunder, to arouse the fanaticism of simple people on

occasions like Easter festivals.

Such is the view, briefly expressed, of a Russian Governor whom I

believe to be, from the evidence of my own countrymen in Odessa, as well

as from common repute, a singularly honest and high-minded member of the

gubernatorial class in this country.

Count Schouvaloff, on parting, cordially expressed his great admiration

for “the most progressive and enlightened nation in the world,” and

fervently trusted the United States and Russia, as the two great Pacific

powers, would ever remain the firmest of good friends and neighbours.

Interviews with three prominent Russian merchants--all men of good

social standing and repute--failed almost entirely to elicit any more

friendly expression towards the Jews. They denounced as inhuman the

iniquities of the ignorant, savage mob at Kishineff, but could not shut

their eyes to “the trade trickeries and treacheries,” to use their own

words, which, at the hands of grossly ignorant, lower-class Russians,

brought such terribly retributive punishment upon the Jews. None of

these gentlemen could, or would, admit that religious hatred or Paschal

rancour were the incentive motives of the terrible outbreaks against the

Hebrews. There were exceptions, of course, they were careful to remark,

but, generally speaking, the Russian Jew was very largely the author of

his own persecution.

It is alike disappointing and depressing to find with what remarkable

unanimity this unfavourable view is taken by an otherwise fair-minded

class of Russians, in the South Russian capital. Considering that nearly

the whole of the trade and commerce of the city and port of Odessa is in

the hands of Jews, it is only natural that the Christian merchant’s

opinion of his Hebrew rival and neighbour should be strongly tinctured

by competitive prejudice and jealousy. Much allowance must, therefore,

be made for that; but, on the other hand, ’tis no less remarkable that

among, for example, the resident foreign Consular corps and other

independent and impartial observers in the same city, it is almost

equally difficult to elicit a favourable opinion of the Jews, although

the majority of these authorities were solicitous to qualify their

opinions by pointing out to me that it is not against the Jews

themselves, but against Jewish methods and their shady commercial

_morale_ generally, that public feeling and sentiment run so strongly.

There is a comparatively large English colony in Odessa, and the

shipping is almost entirely in the hands of British ship-brokers, and,

as the exporters are all Jews, these agents have intimate knowledge of

the latter. Here, again, one hears the same condemnatory opinions of the

Jew’s want of commercial morality. This is not, I regret very much to

say, a pleasing picture of the Jewish element in this great Russian

centre, but my duty and resolve is to give a faithfully accurate record

of the opinion and views I am seeking from authentic sources and

representative people of all classes. Among educated and enlightened

Russians one finds anti-Semites who are not one whit less rancorous

than the ignorant and benighted Mujik. But the former would never dream

of murdering his Jewish neighbour.

The only other comment that suggests itself in connection with this

matter, especially in reference to Count Schouvaloff’s implied

suggestion that the Kishineff massacres are mainly due to Jewish

exploitation of artisans and peasants, and to their customary commercial

trickery, is this: The rioters of April last were not peasants, nor were

the victims of their licensed brutality usurers or profit-mongers. The

murderers and looters were chiefly labourers and artisans, led by

Seminarists; and the victims were, almost in all instances, Hebrew

workingmen and their families. The sinister influence of the local

anti-Jewish press is also a factor in the origin of the riots which his

Excellency overlooked, and which others in Odessa did not refer to when

expressing their views upon the Kishineff reign of terror at

Eastertide.

_Letter III_

KISHINEFF, May 27, 10 P. M.

An attempt to renew disorder near the market place this afternoon was

promptly dealt with and suppressed by the military. A large crowd

gathered about five o’clock, near the scene of the first outbreak on

Easter Sunday, when, as on that occasion, some boys were made use of to

test the disposition of the police and military by throwing stones at

some Jewish residences. In this instance there was no hesitation on the

part of the authorities. The military rode round the crowd at once, and

hemmed them in, when forty of the leaders and instigators were

immediately arrested and taken to the prison.

Hundreds of families fled from the city last night, owing to threats

that the deeds of Easter would be repeated to-day. The trains to Odessa

were packed with fugitives, while all the hotels in Kishineff were

crowded by Jews whose wives and daughters could not leave the city, and

dare not remain in their homes.

The more I make myself acquainted with the measures which seem to be

imperatively ordered by the central Government, the more I am convinced

that the authorities here will not hesitate for a moment to employ the

sternest methods to preserve order. Fifty ball cartridges have been

served out to each soldier. At every dangerous point in the Jewish

quarters soldiers are posted with fixed bayonets, while cavalry patrols

are constantly moving from one quarter to another, day and night, in

vigilant surveillance of the situation.

I visited the Jewish districts in the city and suburbs twice to-day, and

found everything quiet.

The city is still paying dearly, in the virtual suspension of all work,

for the riots in April. Business is completely disorganised through the

injuries done to shops and warehouses, and the flight of Jewish dealers

and employers.

I desire to appeal most urgently for assistance for the future of the

girls and married women who were savagely violated during the riots at

Easter. These girls have now no hope of marriage where the facts of

their dishonour are publicly known. Under the rigorous moral law of

Moses married women who are outraged must be divorced from their

husbands. There are several such cases among the victims of the mob’s

brutality, and their misfortunes, along with those of the young girls

referred to, make a peculiarly pathetic appeal to the sympathy of those

who may be blessed with the means by which the future of these unhappy

creatures might be made less miserable and hopeless.

There are also from fifty to one hundred orphans, children of murdered

fathers and mothers, who are to be provided for. Some of the money

subscribed from abroad ought to be specially ear-marked for alleviating

these three classes of exceptional suffering and wrong.

_Letter IV_

BERLIN, June 3d.

Finding it impossible, on account of the Russian censorship of all

telegraphic messages relating to the Kishineff outrages, to forward this

despatch from that city, I do so from this point.

I have completed an investigation as to the origin, authors, and extent

of the recent massacres and looting, while I have also traversed almost

the whole of the Jewish Pale of Settlement, from Odessa to Warsaw,

inquiring into the present state of anti-Semitic feeling arising out of

the outbreak at Easter.

The origin of the sanguinary riots at Kishineff, on the 19th and 20th of

April, was not, as reported in the Russian official press,[5] an assault

by a Jew proprietor of a merry-go-round upon a Christian woman, whereby

a mob of peasants were incited to attack the Jews. There is no truth in

this account.

The real origin of the outbreak was this:

The only daily paper in Kishineff is the _Bessarabetz_. It is a

violently anti-Semitic organ. Its chief editor is Pavolachi Kroushevan,

of Moldavian origin. He has systematically inflamed the popular feeling

against the Jews, as the foes of Russia, as the propagandists of

Socialism, and as the enemies of the Christian religion. These attacks

have been continuous for the last six years. Merchants and employers

giving work to Jews were held up to public odium, and the expulsion or

extermination of the race was openly urged. The _Bessarabetz_ has a

circulation of 20,000, chiefly among the police, municipal employés, and

workmen generally.

Two events occurring shortly before Easter were seized upon by

Kroushevan to incite the mob to murderous violence. One was the murder

of a boy belonging to the village of Doubossar, situated between

Kishineff and Odessa, by his relatives for gain. The other was the

suicide of a girl and her death at the Jewish Hospital of Kishineff.

The _Bessarabetz_ declared them to be both ritual murders by the Jews,

and summoned the Russian Christians to punish the authors of the alleged

crimes.

The chief Rabbi of Kishineff, fearing from past experiences the results

of these ferocious appeals, hastened to the Greek bishop, and implored

him to calm the popular mind by giving an episcopal assurance that no

such ritual was practised, and no such crimes committed, by the Jews.

The bishop’s reply was that he feared there was some Semitic sect which

really did indulge in the use of Christian blood in the Paschal

ceremonies, and he refused to intervene.

Ten days before the riots broke out a body of representative Jews

visited the Governor and warned him that Kroushevan’s incitations would

lead to murder, unless restrained. General Von Raaben assured the

deputation that all necessary precautions would be taken, but no attempt

was made by him to stop the appeals of the _Bessarabetz_ to the popular

anti-Semitic hatred.

Chief of Police Tchemzenkov was also requested to act in the interest of

peace, and curb the diatribes of the _Bessarabetz_. He replied that it

would “serve the Jews right if they were driven from the city for

encouraging the propaganda of Socialism.”

Having by the blood accusation articles, and through the circulation of

a Roumanian anti-Semitic pamphlet purporting to give instances of

numerous murders of Christian children by Jews, roused the Kishineff

populace to a state of savage fury, Kroushevan’s local accomplices

planned an attack for the Easter holidays. Kishineff Jews declare that

Kroushevan came to the city, in disguise, from St. Petersburg, on the

eve of the outbreak, to plan the riots. This statement I could not get

verified. A meeting was held and a plan of attack decided on. A few days

previously a band of strangers arrived at Kishineff, comprising thirty

Albanians and some Macedonians, believed to be brigands brought

especially for an attack on the Jews.

The chief instigators of the riots were Kroushevan and the staff of the

_Bessarabetz_; a doctor who is of Greek origin; a Moldavian doctor; a

Moldavian engineer; a notary; two sons of a prominent merchant; two

students, sons of prominent citizens; two Odessa students; two minor

officers, and several well-known citizens.

The actual leaders of the riots were students and Seminarists from the

Royal School and the city religious colleges.

All the statements made to me agree that the Seminarists directed the

movements of the mob on both days, disguised as labourers and strangers.

The rioters comprised thirty bands, averaging fifty each, with a

Seminarist on a bicycle directing the attack. Some of the bands were

composed of the lower employés of the various departments of the

municipality--the telegraph, post office, and other municipal offices,

but artisans and labourers, and Moldavians from the suburbs, formed the

greater body of the rioters, with the Albanian strangers above

mentioned.

These bands, with sticks and stones, but no firearms, attacked the

Jewish quarters at thirty different points simultaneously, thus proving

a deliberate plan of operation.

All the evidence that I have gathered during eight days of searching

inquiry in Kishineff convinces me that the riots were not a casual or

accidental uprising of a mob against the Jews, but formed a carefully

planned attack by the local anti-Semitic leaders, with the passive

connivance of the Chief of Police and the active encouragement of some

of his officers. Von Raaben’s deplorable weakness in not employing his

military force to quell the riots during the first day is responsible

for the horrors of that and the massacres and the violations of women

and girls of the second day.

The majority of the rioters were of Moldavian origin. These Moldavians

are as numerous as the Jews in Kishineff and constitute the most

ignorant and brutal element of the populace.

The rioting began with the looting of the Jewish shops and the

demolition of houses. The mob, finding the military not employed against

them and the police witnessing the attacks sympathetically--many of the

police taking part and participating in the looting--passed from murder

and massacre to the violation of Jewish women and girls.

I have two detailed statements, carefully prepared by eye-witnesses of

the scenes. One is a copy of the indictment of the authors of the

massacres, which has been lodged with the Procureur; the other is a

specially prepared statement by two Christian ladies, one Russian and

one Russo-French, who investigated a certain class of outrages for my

information. Here are a few instances of the worst crimes:

The Feldstein family is one of the most respectable in Kishineff. The

mob attacked their saloon on the corner of Armenia Street at noon on the

first day, Sunday, April 9. The police barracks are some forty paces

away. The soldiers and police patrolled the street during the five hours

occupied by the mob in demolishing the saloon and destroying fifteen

thousand roubles’ worth of wines. A safe containing a large sum of money

was also broken open and robbed. While that section of the mob was thus

employed, the leader of the gang found in the kitchen of the family

residence the meat for the family’s dinner. He put it on a stick,

mounted to the roof of the saloon, which is of one story, and,

addressing the mob, the police, and the military in the street,

declared, “Here are the remains of a Christian child found in the house

of the wealthy Jew, Feldstein.”

The members of the household were saved by a Russian employé of

Feldstein and a humane gendarme, from the fury of the mob. On completing

the destruction of the place, the leader drank to the health of Editor

Kroushevan from the roof of the looted premises.

At No. 13 Asia Street in the Bender Rogatka quarter some of the worst

outrages were perpetrated. Twelve families, all Jewish artisans, lived

in the yard. A mob of Moldavians, some Russian workingmen, and a few

Albanians attacked the occupants of the yard. The majority of the Jewish

men escaped, while the women and girls, numbering sixteen, concealed

themselves in a loft under the roof of a one-story house. Four Jewish

men tried to defend the place, and were murdered. Their wives and

daughters, with a dozen women and children, had taken refuge in a loft

under the roof of No. 13. It was from some of these I obtained the facts

here recorded.

One Mottel Greenspoon, a glazier, was stunned by a blow from a bludgeon,

and the Albanians mutilated him while still alive. They then choked a

child, two years old, and cut out its tongue, while alive.

The other three men were killed and then had feathers put on their

faces. As an act of desecration of the dead, two drunken women, one

Moldavian and one Bulgarian, trampled on the body of Greenspoon as it

lay mutilated in the yard. The mob then found its way to the loft where

the women were concealed, and remained several hours. All the women and

girls were violated.

All this time the police and soldiers were patrolling the open space in

front of the house where these fiendish crimes were committed. I saw

blood spattered on the walls of the rooms and yard, and picked up a

child’s schoolbook on which some murderer had wiped his hands.

At the household Foudyn, No. 33 Gostinna Street, four men and one woman

were killed. Sixteen families lived in this yard, all those of artisans.

The mob came the first day and demolished the windows and doors. It

returned the next day for massacre. Sixteen women and eight children

were concealed in the loft. The first killed was a boy of sixteen, who

begged piteously for life, saying he had done no wrong, was a scholar

of the state school, and wanted to live. His father, at the other end of

the yard, heard the boy’s cries, but could not save his life. They

killed him while the father lay stunned, unable to make an effort to

save the boy’s life. It was Mr. Baranovitch, the father of the boy, a

most intelligent and respectable man, who told me the story of his son’s

murder. As at the house in Asia Street, the women and girls who had

concealed themselves in the loft were discovered and violated by the

mob. One married woman escaped through the roof, leaped to the ground,

ran to the nearest police station, and implored help, but she was driven

out by the officer, who said the Jews were only receiving what they

deserved. Another married woman named Feya Katzap was bludgeoned to

death in the yard of this house.

The scene of the most diabolical crimes and violations committed by the

mob was the Skulanska Rogatka suburb, eighty per cent. of the population

of which are Moldavians, the Jews forming the remainder. This is the

residence of the poorer class of the workers of both races. The mob

broke into the yard on the evening of the second day, Monday, April 20.

Twenty-five persons, mostly women and children, hid themselves in a

carpenter’s shed owned by one Grillspoon. The houses in the yard were

demolished, and the mob was going away when the cry of a child in the

shed indicated the place of concealment of the women. The shed was

instantly attacked by Moldavians, led by a father and son, who were

neighbours of the Jews. Grillspoon, the owner of the shed, was killed,

together with four other artisans, who were defending the place, and one

woman, the wife of the owner, was murdered after violation. The mob also

found a pretty girl, named Feya Wouller, aged thirteen, and her fate is

so awful that I can only state that after having been violated by more

than a dozen of these Moldavians they fought for her body like famished

wolves after life was extinct. When found the next morning by her

relatives the body was seen to be literally torn in two.

The sister of Feya Wouller, whose brother died trying to defend the

women and children, assured me that the Moldavian leader and his son,

who led the mob in his district, are walking about free at this moment.

Three brothers, well-known in the city, are implicated in several of the

murders. A car-driver and his two sons took part in four murders and

general looting, but none of these men are now in prison. The Jews

killed by the car-driver and his son are Eydel Drochman, one Galantor,

one Kantor, and the boy Baranovitch.

During the worst stages of the riot the chief police officer,

Tchemzenkov, drove through the city smoking cigarettes. At one period of

the disturbance, on the morning of the second day, the Jews of the New

Bazaar organised a body of about 150 to defend themselves, but Police

Officer Dobroselsky, on finding them able to drive the mob away,

arrested several of the defenders and broke up the body.

Among the prominent looters of the Jews’ shops was the soldier servant

of a military surgeon; and a son of a murdered woman, Keyla Konza,

declares that among those who violated and killed his mother were four

common soldiers.

Joseph Newman testifies that his father was killed in the presence of

Policeman Stepanovitch.

A Christian Russian says that he heard the students from Odessa shout to

the mob, “Kill the Jews!”

A prominent employé in the municipal office in the city was declared to

be an active director of the mob, showing where the Jews lived, and

shouting, “Kill the Jews!”

Several police officers did their duty and saved many lives in the

Jewish districts. Among these was Officer Sloutschevsky, of Bender

Rogatka, who, with twelve men, drove the mob away. They went from this

to the Asia Street district, where another police officer was

patrolling, and he allowed them to commit the murders described. Some

artillery officers, who were off duty, manfully saved several Jewish

women.

On the morning of the first day’s outbreak large crosses were chalked on

the houses of the Christians living in streets inhabited by the Jews,

and none of these dwellings or shops were injured. Ikons (images) were

shown in the windows of other houses, and thus indicated places not to

be attacked. During the progress of the first day’s outrages the Bishop

of Kishineff, while on his way to dinner with a rich noble, passed in

his carriage through the mob, giving his blessing to the crowd. Upon

hearing of this incident, I refused to believe it possible, and resolved

to interview the nobleman, who is Michael Nicolavitch Kroupensky. He

received me courteously, and said:

“Bishops in Russia always give blessings to people when passing through

the streets. This was purely an accidental coincidence. The Bishop is a

humane man.”

So that the fact remains that the Bishop did pass through the mob on his

way to dinner, and uttered no word to persuade the mob to stop its

murder and pillage.

The Jews are convinced from every evidence that the outbreak was a plan

of the local anti-Semitic leaders to punish and terrorise the Jews for

their supposed propaganda of Socialism in conjunction with the leaders

of the Socialists of Western Europe. The fanaticism and superstition of

the Moldavian and Russian mob were then excited by the fabricated

stories of Jewish ritualistic murders of Christian children, to cover

the organised political plot against the local Socialist movement. I was

informed by Nobleman Kroupensky that on the day following the riots

thirty young Jews were arrested, and that five of them were found to be

in possession of pamphlets appealing to the workingmen of Russia to

demand a constitutional government like that of England. Some officials

of the municipal department, some police officers, and others connived

at the attack in order to crush the alleged Jewish Socialist

propaganda. The artisans and labourers had been appealed to by the

_Bessarabetz_ to drive out the Jew workers, who labour for low wages,

and thus do much injury to Christian families. No evidence was adduced

for me to implicate the Government at St. Petersburg in a responsibility

for the outbreak which had covered Russia’s name with shame, but

Minister de Plehve must have known that some kind of manifestation was

contemplated. Thinking, probably, the affair would not culminate in

massacres, but might assume the character of an anti-Socialist

demonstration, he took no steps to meet the emergency which actually

arose until too late. The present Vice-Governor of Bessarabia,

Councillor of State Ostrogoff, is a notorious anti-Semite. This fact,

coupled with threats of the police and the murderers at large that the

next attack will be a St. Bartholomew for the Jews of Kishineff,

explains the flight of nearly all the Jewish leaders and wealthy members

of the race from the city, leaving only the poor members of the Hebrew

community apprehending a renewed attack.

The military measures to preserve order were adequate when I left

Kishineff on Friday morning, but if these are relaxed in any way, no

protection remains for the terrorised men, women, and children against

further violence, The journal edited by Kroushevan is still circulating

in the city, and, while more restrained in its language than before the

massacres, it is keeping alive the racial animosity against the

defenceless Jews. I would urge the following measures to afford some

immediate protection for the Jews of Bessarabia and the Pale:

First, that the Government at St. Petersburg issue a ukase declaring

there is no truth in the horrible fiction of Jewish ritual murders of

Christian children; second, that the bishops and clergymen of all

cities, towns, and villages be compelled to read the same from their

pulpits, thereby stopping the circulation of these atrocious legends

within the borders of Russia; third, that a conference of the leading

Jews of Western Europe be held without delay, to consider the best means

to solve the problem of the Russian Jew, and how best to help the Jews

of the Pale to protect themselves under the existing Russian laws.

Unless some action of this nature is taken soon, more outrages will

follow. I found the feeling in the larger cities, where the Jews are

strong, very excited and apprehensive. In one city the Jews have

purchased 9000 revolvers to protect themselves. There is a constant

panic in Kiev, from which most of the wealthy Jews have fled to Cracow,

while Jewish refugees from Kishineff were refused shelter on their

arrival at Kiev by the terrified Jews of that city.

In Warsaw I found more confidence than elsewhere, as, in this large

city, with its quarter of a million of Jews, the Polish Socialists, who

are a strong organisation, have promised to aid the Jews if any attack

should be made on them by the anti-Semites. The Governor, General

Tchetverikoff, is a capable officer, free from anti-Semite prejudices,

and he has made it plain, in the measures already taken, and in some

straight talk, that he will deal promptly and sternly with any attempt

to repeat the Kishineff ruffianism in the city under his control.

Throughout the whole Pale the police and peasants are told by the

anti-Semites that the Tsar has issued an order to kill all the Jews or

drive them from Russia.

_Letter V_

LONDON, June 6th.

The situation at Kishineff at the present time is this: The military

measures in force are fully adequate for an instant repression of any

attempted renewal of outrages. Owing, however, to the notorious

anti-Semitic leanings and record of the Vice-Governor, Ostrogoff, the

Jews who have fled the city, and the poorer class who suffered most and

who cannot leave for lack of means, dread another outbreak.

They likewise note the indulgent punishments inflicted upon the

directors of the riots, while several men known to have committed murder

and to have been implicated in the tortures of women were actually

liberated from prison after a few days’ detention, on the ground of

alleged lack of sufficient evidence of their guilt. The feeling in

Kishineff is general that the rank and file of the rioting bands were

retained in custody, while the instigators and ringleaders were

permitted to go free.

I do not credit the statement going the round of the press which alleges

that Governor Von Raaben telegraphed to St. Petersburg for permission to

use the military in Kishineff in dealing with the mob, and that he

waited vainly for an authoritative reply. No such permission was needed

from either Minister de Plehve or the head of any other department. The

criminal code armed the local Governor with the fullest power and

discretion for the employment of soldiers within his government or

province as a supplementary force to the police to preserve order. There

were 8000 military and 350 police at Von Raaben’s command during the

first day’s riot, and he was as much in absolute control of those forces

in the task of dealing with the outbreak against the Jews as the

Governor of New York State would be of the State militia in a similar

emergency.

As to the question of remedy: What can be done to safeguard the men,

women, and children within the Jewish Pale, from Odessa to the Baltic,

from periodic outrage; and free the name of a great empire from the

reproach of such organised Christian barbarism as that of Kishineff?

This question cannot be dismissed on the plea that American and European

opinion is concerned only with the humane task of relief. The best

possible measure of relief that could be offered to the victims of

anti-Semitic oppression in Russia, at this crisis, would assume the

character and form of a friendly mediating influence exercised with the

Tsar in behalf of the Jews of his Empire.

I have discussed this idea with a high Russian official during my tour,

and I briefly summarise our conversation.

In reply to my question as to what could be done by the friends of

Russia in the United States to procure some better protection for the

Russian Jew, this official, who is thoroughly conversant with both

American and British politics, said:

“It is no use appealing to Russia through the medium of indignation

meetings. This is not how to exercise a friendly influence such as is

desired. We resent attempts to meddle in our domestic affairs through

the agency of political demonstration. It is an unwarranted interference

by other countries in our internal concerns. How, may I ask, would your

Government and press consider our action if we organised great

gatherings and delivered violent speeches in protest against, say, the

burning alive of American citizens, not alone without trial, but

independent even of the form of legal indictment? You must look at the

position of our Government in relation to the hateful crimes of

Kishineff from many points of view. Our system of administration differs

radically from yours, while the civil position of the Jews here has no

parallel in civil and political conditions in America except, perhaps,

in your treatment of the Negro and the Chinaman. Whatever faults our

system may possess in your eyes, we consider it as being adapted to the

domestic requirements of Russia, and to the social temperament of our

people. We are not in any sense a cruel or a persecuting nation, nor do

we hate the Jews on any religious ground. But we never will admit a

people so foreign in every respect to the Russians in racial traits and

character, in faith and in general reputation, to an equality of

citizenship. You might as well ask the American people to permit

Chinamen to become Mayors of San Francisco or members of Congress.

There is something more to be said in relation to Kishineff; not in any

sense by way of palliating the horrible outrages which I condemn as

strongly as you do, but in the way of, say, such an explanation as a

Governor of Alabama or Carolina would try to account to civilised

opinion for some act of a mob of Christian citizens in burning a

fellow-citizen at the stake. The Jew in Russia is the disciple and

propagandist of Socialism. He has introduced this menace to our

Government and system from abroad. He is believed by the tens of

thousands of our people who are employed in our departments to be their

racial enemy, and the foreign plotter inside our gates against the Tsar,

who is the head of the system which gives them their means of livelihood

and some prospect of future positions for their sons.

“These are the class of Russians who hate the Jews most, and the hatred

is begotten of the same human selfishness which stirs up strife between

rival classes in other countries.

“It is necessary to know all this in order to understand the fact that

many persons above the rank of artisans and labourers took part in the

shameful outrages at Kishineff.

“Allow me now to reply direct to your question:

“I can only make a suggestion, which is this: Let some prominent

statesman or highly respected citizen of the United States visit St.

Petersburg and seek an interview with the Emperor. This would be

welcomed as an act of friendship, and could not be considered as an

intrusion even by our Government officials. The Tsar would be sure to

receive such a visitor as the spokesman of friendly American feeling.

“No kinder-hearted man lives to-day than the Emperor. No one in your

country deplores the outrages of April more than he does. Moreover, like

all Russians, he holds the great American nation in high esteem, and

cherishes the friendly relations which have so long subsisted between

the two countries. If, then, some one of your leading men, commanding

wide respect, would undertake such a mission, he would accomplish a

thousand times more to guarantee the Jews against further outrage than

10,000 public meetings organised by the Jews of your cities or on the

suggestion of Russia’s kind friends on the London press.”

I most urgently beg your advocacy, and that of the American press

generally, of this proposal. It would be a mission worthy of a

statesman, and its certain fruits would be the Tsar’s protection for the

Jews from Odessa to Warsaw against further organised outrage during his

lifetime.

The public man in the States eminently qualified for this humane mission

is ex-President Cleveland. Such an ambassador on a friendly visit to St.

Petersburg would attract the world’s attention, and success would be

sure to crown his undertaking.

I attended several meetings of the Central Relief Committee while in

Kishineff. The last one was on the eve of my departure, last Friday. The

committee meets daily to examine applications and distribute assistance

in money, food, and clothing. Kishineff is divided, for relief purposes,

into twenty-two districts. Each has its local committee, who report to

the Central Executive Committee of Fifteen, whose chairman, Dr. J. S.

Mutznik, is a leading physician and one of Kishineff’s wealthy

residents. Assisting him are several equally representative Jews, like

Dr. Kohan-Bernstein, Rabbi Ettlinger, S. M. Grossman, E. Galperin, S.

Perelmutter, I. Kipperwasser, E. Reidel, M. Kligman, Z. Rosenfeld,

Israel Pappervasses, and several other well-known citizens.

A Ladies’ Committee gives valuable co-operation, attending to and

reporting upon the women, girls, and orphans requiring aid. These ladies

showed me over the food, clothing, and general assistance departments

of the Central Committee Headquarters. I found everything well

organised and efficiently executed. The Rabbis and leading members of

the Ladies’ Committee have founded an asylum for the orphans of

massacred parents.

I visited this temporary asylum and photographed the orphans and their

guardians. Up to the date of my departure the Central Relief Committee

had expended a total of 130,000 roubles; one-fourth of which was used in

the purchase and distribution of food for the people whose homes had

been destroyed, and for others made workless by the riots. Small sums of

money had been advanced to the owners of shops and little stores to

enable them to renew business; 1000 roubles were given in several

instances.

This action of the Committee was severely criticised by the friends and

representatives of the Jews who were killed. These complained that the

money contributed from abroad ought to be apportioned according to

relative loss, and that the subscribers would not estimate the injury

done to a tailor’s or shoemaker’s store at three or four times the value

of a murdered father, mother, or brother.

In this connection, I pointed out to Dr. Mutznik that, as those whose

stores were looted could, under Russian law, claim adequate compensation

from the city or the government, it would be more equitable to devote

the major portion of the funds received to the present and future

assistance of those who have suffered the greater wrong and injury in

the loss of parents, of employment, and in other ways. To this view he

agreed, though he was very doubtful if the claims for compensation

already lodged in behalf of the store-owners will be fairly dealt with,

or even considered, by the authorities.

Under the law as it stands, three independent witnesses must depose, not

alone to the injury done to a particular store or business, but to the

person or persons accused of being guilty of the looting or

destruction. And no blood or marriage relative of the person seeking

redress is permitted to testify! Under such conditions, and in view of

the fact that most of the male Jews fled and hid themselves when the

outbreak occurred, many of the claims for compensation will fall to the

ground for want of sufficient evidence as to the names and complicity of

the actual perpetrators of the destruction.

Dr. Mutznik believes that the relief work must be continued during the

coming winter, to the larger number of artisans and labour applicants.

Most of the Jewish merchants and employers have fled to Odessa, Cracow,

and other cities. They will not return until they are assured of safety,

and in their absence those whom they employed will, in all probability,

remain without work.

My appeal through the press in behalf of the violated women and girls,

and for the orphans, was warmly endorsed by the Ladies’ Committee and

the Rabbis. Mesdames Mutznik and Hornstein, leading members of this

committee, with true matronly feeling, pleaded the exceptionally hard

cases of the young girls and of the violated married women. The case of

the orphans speaks for itself, and needs no advocacy apart from the

cruel facts which plead so forcibly for their utter helplessness.

When visiting these little ones in their temporary shelter, and while

learning from the girls and women, whom the Rabbi assembled in his house

to meet me, the stories of the irreparable wrongs done them, and their

fears of the future now before them, I could not help indulging in the

hope that some wealthy Jewish merchant or banker in New York, London, or

Paris might have the heart and head to bring himself a life’s happiness

in the humane task of aiding these orphans and terribly wronged girls

and women which all the wealth of all the Jews in any one of these

cities could not purchase in palaces, banks, or pleasures.

A Warsaw paper having published an account of the appeal in behalf of

the Kishineff sufferers, my hotel soon became a centre of attention and

of supplication. Hundreds of poor creatures of both sexes came to beg to

be enabled to emigrate. They had heard that the _American_ was proposing

to devote some of the money subscribed in New York and elsewhere to the

task of taking a few thousand families away from the city of blood to

the United States or to the Argentine. No matter what was the proposed

destination, they were willing to go, if it were only to some country

where Christians did not kill Jews. One petition, signed in behalf of

122 families, was presented to me to be forwarded to the _American_ in

the hope of having an early consideration of their claims.

No explanation by my most capable dragoman would disabuse the minds of

these poor people of the forlorn belief that escape from a dreaded

recurrence of the horrors of April might lie in such a petition.

Among my most persistent callers were two matronly-looking ladies, who

also begged to be sent to America. On the first occasion they did not

disclose the nature of their calling, or the extent of their losses. I

pressed them on these points when they came again. One of them replied,

“Our business has fallen off entirely since the riots.”

And what was the business, inquired my dragoman.

“We are midwives,” was the answer. The petition had, of course, to be

refused.

_Letter VI_

LONDON, June 6th.

A few facts concerning Kishineff will be essential to the right

comprehension of the causes which led to the perpetration of the black

deeds of April, and to a proper understanding of a story of

deliberately plotted political crime.

The last census, that of 1897, gave to Kishineff a population of 108,296

souls. Of these over 50,000 were males. The present estimated population

may be put down at or about 130,000. These are divided racially as

follows: Jews, 50,000; Moldavians (Christians), 50,000; Russians, 8000,

with the residue comprising Bulgarians, Serbs, Greeks, Macedonians,

Albanians, and Germans. These figures and estimates are given me by Dr.

Kohan-Bernstein, a leading physician of the city, and are confirmed by

one of the Rabbis, who holds some kind of a government position in

connection with the special taxes levied on the Jews.

The Jews are thus numerically in excess of the Russians and of all other

Christian sects combined, excepting the Moldavians, who are equally

strong in numbers, and even more bitter in their anti-Semitic feeling

than those of Russian blood.

Fully fifty per cent. of the Jews of Kishineff are artisans and

labourers, and in the great majority of cases they are wretchedly poor.

The stern needs of daily life, the want of bread and the shelter of a

home, compel them to work for any pay that may be offered to them.

The Jewish artisan is far and away more intelligent and skilled than his

Moldavian or Russian neighbour of like occupation. He is more expert in

technical details, and more ambitious to do better and to perform more

work for his employer. Poor as he may be he reads more newspapers, and

is an all-round formidable rival to workers who dislike him for his

race, and who dread him as an increasing and competing factor in the

industrial world of Kishineff.

These facts will account to some extent for the part which Christian

workers took in the organised riots of April.

One fact more in this connection has an important bearing upon another

feature of the outbreak--the pillaging of shops and saloons. Kishineff

is the capital of Bessarabia, and is its largest trading and commercial

centre. There are rival Christian and Jewish interests at work in

catering for the needs of so large a place, and these interests collide

in competitive activity in almost every branch of business life.

There are shops, warehouses, and saloons where Christian and Jewish

rivalry conflicts, and in such a combat the Gentile is nowhere, in trade

competition, with the fertile and adroit Jew. Hence, there is as strong

a commercial antipathy toward the unpopular Hebrew in fairly educated

Russian and Moldavian circles as is found on other grounds among the

anti-Semitic artisans and labourers.

These circumstances account for the complacency--to put it no

stronger--with which merchants and leaders of the Christian community

looked on at the pillaging of shops and the destruction of saloons which

belonged to their Jewish rivals. And they also explain why saloons and

stores of Jewish ownership were alone the objects of the mob’s

attention; for the riot was not an affair of blind, popular fury, bent

upon indiscriminate lawlessness. Nothing of the kind. It was

deliberately organised and intelligently directed from start to finish

by leaders who knew what they were about, and how to discriminate

between Russian and Moldavian property and Semitic belongings, in the

matter of looting, and between Jewish and Christian women in another and

more infernal business.

Kishineff, in its central and chief business parts, is a handsome town.

Its leading boulevard, Alexandra Street, would do credit to any American

city. It is more than twice the width of Broadway, New York; is planted

on both sides with acacia trees, and can boast of imposing public

buildings, substantial shops, banks, and jewellers’ stores.

The municipal headquarters, built, like most of the prominent structures

of the city, with a whitish stone, is situated near the middle of the

leading thoroughfare and wears a stately and striking appearance. The

streets are all wide and run as in American cities, at right angles to

each other in uniform arrangement. They are nearly all planted; a

feature which adds greatly to the beauty of the city, in combining the

light green foliage of the acacia trees with the bright, clean look of

the houses and public buildings.

The Royal Gardens and People’s Park are in the centre of the city.

Military bands play each evening in the former, and attract large crowds

of well-dressed citizens, officers of the garrison, youth, and

particularly ladies.

The city, in its chief business and fashionable districts, has the look

of a comfortable, fairly wealthy, up-to-date bourgeois centre, and a

well-governed municipal community; a most unlikely place, in the eyes of

a visitor, to offer itself as a theatre for one of the most abominable

tragedies in modern times.

Kishineff owes its success and prosperity almost exclusively to the

Jews. Thirty years ago it was little more than a rough Bessarabian

village. To-day it ranks, in South Russia, next to Odessa--where there

are over 200,000 of the same race--in population, commercial standing,

and wealth, and all this is freely admitted by educated Russians.

Jews in Russia are compelled by law to reside inside a Pale of

Settlement, or territory comprising some fifteen governments, or

provinces, of western and southern Russia, extending south from the

coast of the southern Baltic to the Crimea, and westward from Charkov

and Smolensk to the borders of Roumania, Galicia, and Prussian Poland.

The area thus embraced in the Jewish Pale is about equal to that of

France, and the number of people of this section of Russia is upward of

27,000,000.

Under the ukase of 1882, which compelled Jews to leave the villages and

live within the towns, these centres became crowded inside of what thus

became virtual economic concentration camps.

Within these limits of legal domicile the density of Hebrew population

is at the rate of some 2800 per square mile. In the non-Jewish towns of

Russia the average is about 60 of urban to 1000 of rural population.

Within the fifteen provinces included in the Jewish Pale, the average is

close upon 230 of urban to every 1000 of country population.

The effects of this crowding of Jews into the towns of the Pale are as

obvious as they are inevitable. There is a dense population, restricted

by necessity and disposition to certain pursuits and occupations, in

places where the economic conditions do not provide opportunities for

the healthy exercise of one-fourth of the industry or abilities which

could under normal conditions find opportunities for profitable

employment.

There are towns in which Jewish tradesmen and artisans are 50 per cent.

of the total population. They are literally penned in within these

places.

This is the economic side of the problem of the Russian Jew. The

political side is even more serious to the Russian administration, and

here we are approaching the consideration of what was the real

underlying cause of the outbreak of a month ago.

All the Jews of the Pale are not poor. Quite the contrary. Despite the

restricted area allowed them, large numbers of them are wealthy through

successful trading. Another and larger section exploit inferior Russian

intelligence and capacity, and earn money in legally forbidden ways by

making it fairly profitable for the obliging Christian to act as a

shield or deputy for the legally boycotted Jew.

Saloons are owned in this way by Jews, and are worked for them by

Christians.

The Jew must not own land. But he can organise a company, place a

Russian in nominal headship of the concern, and in this manner make a

profit out of Russian agriculture.

In many other ways the keen intelligence, the inherited racial capacity

for financial undertakings, the greater natural ability and better

education of the business Jew, and also of the higher artisan Hebrew

section, enable them, even in the face of all the obstacles put in their

way, to give their sons and daughters an education which is gradually

evolving out of an oppressed and degraded race a people of progressive

thought and of political aspirations, who are deemed to be a most

dangerous menace to the government and administration of an

autocratically ruled country.

The educated Jew in Russia is more than an accidental ally of what may

be termed Russian liberal tendencies. He occupies within this huge

empire a semi-penalised political and racial status.

None of the higher state schools must admit more than 5 per cent. of Jew

pupils, even where, as in Kishineff, the Jews are five times more

numerous than the Russians proper.

The Jew cannot buy land.

He is debarred from administrative positions, except in lower grades of

employment, and while he is compelled to serve in the army, he cannot

claim the usual rewards or aspire to the ordinary ambition of men who

make no greater sacrifice than he in the common military service of the

empire.

All these facts, disabilities, and oppressive and depressing conditions,

acting upon the thoughts and ideals of a brainy people, are producing a

powerful anti-Russian political force along the southwestern portion of

the Tsar’s most vulnerable frontier--that bordering upon the Austrian

and Germanic empires. In other words, the Jewish Pale is becoming the

nursery of revolutionary Socialist ideas and the active centre of an

anti-autocratic propaganda.

The riots and terrorism of April, with their attendant horrors, were

deliberately planned, not by robbers or murderers, not on account of

religious bigotry, but for the reasons I have just given--namely, the

feeling of hostility in the minds of administrative employés to a race

believed to be plotting against the Empire, combined with the jealousy

of local artisans and proletarians of the cheaper, better, and pushing

Hebrew workingmen, compelled by absolute necessity to earn a living

within a legally circumscribed sphere of industrial activity.

Hence, on the direct incitation of the local anti-Semite _Bessarabetz_

newspaper, edited by a Russian, who is really a Moldavian, and which is

the only paper published here and read by administrative employés,

Seminarists, and other enemies of Jews, it was resolved, in an organised

riot, to strike terror into the Jewish community of Kishineff, with the

double object of punishing what is believed to be a hostile element

conspiring against the Government, and of forcing the Jews to leave the

city.

_Letter VII_

DALKEY, June 9th, 1903.

The hideous realities of the actual outrages committed during the two

days’ inferno of murder and outrage surpass in the naked horror of their

details almost anything which the imagination could invent. I hate to

return to further reference to these deeds. It has become a horrible and

repugnant subject, but I convince myself that some good will come of it

in tending to keep alive the sympathy of the American people in the

future of the victims who escaped with life, but also with broken hearts

and the outlook of a dismal future.

Meyer Weissman had a very small store in one of the poorest Jewish

quarters of the city. He had lost an eye, by an accident, when young.

The mob attacked and demolished his little grocery on Easter Sunday. He

offered them all the money in his possession to spare his life. It was

a sum of sixty roubles. The leader took the money, and then said: “Now,

we want your eye; you will never again look upon a Christian child.” He

implored them to kill him instead of making him blind for life. They

gouged out his eye with a sharpened stick, and left him. Amidst sobs and

suffering he told me his story in the Jewish Hospital.

Near the bed of poor blind Meyer Weissman was that of Joseph

Shainovitch, whose head had been battered with bludgeons, and the victim

left for dead. He told me that it was this same gang who killed his

mother-in-law, by driving nails through her eyes into the brain. This

story I refused to believe, thinking it might be born of some horrible

nightmare following the poor fellow’s terrible experience. But from no

less than six different sources, one of them being a Christian doctor, I

learned that the facts were as stated by Joseph. Among the other

witnesses were the men who dug the unfortunate woman’s grave.

In the female ward of the same hospital there were still upwards of a

dozen girls and married women, when I visited the place, whose injuries

were too serious to allow of their discharge. I heard their stories: at

least those which could in part be related to a man.

One of the girls, aged about seventeen, was a perfect type of Jewish

beauty, with a face which a painter would envy as a model for a Rachel.

Her head was covered with bandages. She had been alone for three hours

in the hands of a dozen men, who had killed her father and mother, and

they left her for dead. A young Jew, evidently her lover, sat at her

bedside while the tale of her sufferings and losses was being told.

In the next bed was a married woman, a mother of four children. She had

not fully recovered consciousness, and all the events of the night of

her agony were as yet not completely known to her. She, too, had been

beaten and left for dead, after having been assaulted by many men.

At the Rabbi’s house, as already related, I met several more victims of

the mob’s nameless infamies. One was a girl of sixteen, named Simme

Zeytchik, very pretty, and childish-looking for her years. She said that

all her assailants were Russians, mainly Seminarists, and told the Rabbi

that fifteen of these young ruffians had outraged her.

She was one of twenty women who had sought refuge in the loft of the

house No. 11 Nicolaievskai Street, and who were discovered by the mob,

as were several other groups of women and girls in similar

hiding-places.

I have before me a record of thirteen girls and women of ages ranging

from seventeen to forty-eight, who were assaulted by from two to twenty

men, and in many cases left for dead.

Six young girls who are known to have undergone similar violence were

ashamed to come to the Rabbi’s house to tell their tale of wrong and

ruin.

The foregoing list does not exhaust the number of women who were

subjected to the greatest wrong that can be done to their sex.

All house-breaking and robbery were suspended in the night-time during

the outbreak, and the younger men of the thirty or forty gangs of

rioters went in search of the hidden girls and married women. Those who

can do so naturally hide the narrative of their wrong, and suffer in

silence. The actual number of the mob’s victims in the most ruffianly of

their crimes will therefore never be fully known.

Apart from the desperate and hopeless efforts of the forty murdered men

to save wives and daughters, and the solitary attempt at organised

resistance described in a previous letter, the 10,000 or 12,000 Jewish

men of Kishineff offered little or no resistance to the 1500 or 2000

Moldavian and Russian assailants of their women, homes, and property.

Ninety per cent. of them hid themselves, or fled to safer parts in and

out of the city for refuge.

A thousand determined men, even in spite of the action of the Chief of

Police in virtually protecting the mob, could have saved many lives and

averted most of the outrages on the women and girls. One plucky little

Jew, Leon Koulberg by name, a member of the Kishineff Fire Brigade, with

only a few helpers, faced a band of fifty-six Moldavians and drove them

from his district.

Many Russians of both sexes nobly exerted themselves to protect the

women from the mob. But from no quarter in the city, and from no source,

did I learn of any attempt being made by Russian or Moldavian clergymen

(with one solitary exception) to perform a similar Christian duty.

Instances of incredible baseness on the part of the Moldavians were

given me by various witnesses.

Mordka Mynduik was escaping from a gang of ruffians in the Skulanska

Rogatka suburb. He was invited into a Moldavian neighbour’s house, and

murdered by those who had offered him hospitality and protection.

Israel Ullman fell a victim to a similar act of Moldavian perfidy.

Three men and a woman with a child were fleeing from pursuers, and were

directed to take a certain course over a field towards the railway

station. They ran into an ambush, and two of the men were killed, the

woman and child, however, escaping.

Another woman and her child sought the house of a converted Jew for

safety, after her home had been demolished. The “Christian” Jew holds a

position under the City Government. He knew the frightened woman well,

and had been on terms of the closest intimacy with her family before

climbing into office as the reward of his “conversion.” He shut the door

in the face of the terrified wife of his former friend.

What impressed one most painfully in Kishineff, after the narratives of

outrage, was the seeming indifference of the mass of the Russian and

Moldavian people over the whole infernal business. They had to

recognise the great injury done to the city by the riots and their

results. That was too patent to be ignored. But, with the exception of a

comparatively small number of Christians, already alluded to, there

appeared to be neither regret nor remorse among the citizens generally

over the deeds which had riveted the world’s attention upon them as a

community capable of perpetrating acts so base and inhuman. This callous

bearing I attribute mainly to the tactics of the anti-Semitic press,

combined with the amazing silence maintained by the Greek Church

prelates and clergy in relation to these crimes.

The _Bessarabetz_ and _Znamya_, the only papers circulating in

Kishineff, audaciously blamed the Jews for what had occurred, and

carefully abstained from reproducing the comments of foreign journals

upon the rioting at Eastertide. By this means the people were prevented

realising the extent and character of the external indignation aroused

by the reports of the events of April, and they were left by these

means, or by their own indifference, a community apparently unconcerned

about the massacres and infamies which had found victims only among

Jews.

As far as I could learn, there had not been a solitary word spoken or

act done by any of the prominent ecclesiastical authorities of Kishineff

which could be construed, even charitably, into a condemnation of the

killing of harmless men and the ravishing of innocent girls beneath the

shadows of the many Christian churches which adorn the capital of

Bessarabia. The sufferers were only Jews.

Each evening during my stay in this soulless city large crowds gathered

in the Royal Gardens to enjoy the music of the fine Dragoon Band which

performed Polish polkas, and the Hungarian “Chardash” and Russian

marches in faultless fashion. Throngs of gaily dressed ladies, under the

escort of the young officers of the garrison, were always in evidence,

along with students from the colleges and Seminarists supplied by the

religious high schools of the city. It was fashionable Kishineff’s

rendezvous for evening enjoyment, recreation, and social gossip, and the

tables of the cafés rang with laughter when the groups of visitors were

not drinking in the music of some operatic selection or of an inviting

waltz from the band.

Not a single Jew had been seen in this place of popular resort since

April 19th.

One evening my dragoman called my attention to a group of young

Seminarists sitting at a table near to ours. They were boisterous in

their merriment, and appeared to be enjoying the recital of some

unusually piquant incident or adventure, amidst the smoke of their

cigarettes and the relish of their coffee.

“That gang,” observed my dragoman, “judging from what I have heard some

of them say, must have been among those who violated the girls and women

in the loft of No. 11 Nicolaievskai Street, where Simme Zeytchik was

outraged by a number of young students.”

It was only that morning we had seen this girl of sixteen at the Rabbi’s

house, and heard her story.

The Mayor of Kishineff, M. Karl Schmidt, received me most courteously

when I called upon him in the fine municipal buildings on the Alexandra

boulevard. He has been burgomaster of the city for a quarter of a

century, almost in unbroken succession. A man of some sixty summers, of

tall and commanding appearance and of cultured manner, he impresses you

at once with the feeling that you are in the presence of a strong,

capable, and upright personality.

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?”

“No. I am sorry to say there were more people killed than the

forty-three reported deaths. A few bodies have been found since the last

report was issued. The number of persons wounded is difficult to find

out. Many poor Jews who want to obtain a share of the relief funds

declare they were injured, but they carry no traces of wounds or hurts,

when examined. The accounts of the destruction of dwellings and stores

have not been overstated. Enormous damage has been done, and both the

city and the actual sufferers will feel the great loss for years to

come. I understand you have been visiting the scenes of the disorders,

and you can judge for yourself as to the extent of the damage and

mischief done.”

“Do you anticipate any recurrence of the trouble on the Emperor’s day?”

(Date of the Tsar’s Coronation, May 27th.)

“I have seen the Vice-Governor on the matter, owing to the rumours you

mention, and I am satisfied he will act promptly and severely if any

attempt of the kind should be made. He will post soldiers at all points

of danger near where the Jews reside, and these will be under officers

who will have orders to fire on any persons who may try to renew the

riots.”

“Is it true, as reported, that the police were, to some extent,

participators in the Easter outrages?”

“That is not an easy nor yet a pleasant question to answer. I have no

control of any kind over the police force of the city, and I was not a

witness of the disgraceful events in April. Some loot was, I believe,

found in the possession of a few policemen, and this fact has given rise

to the charge to which you refer. But it is most unfair to impute to all

the force of the city and to its officers conduct so disgraceful, owing

to the very few who were mixed up with the disturbers and their

looting.”

“What forces, military and police, were in the city in April?”

“Probably about seven or eight thousand troops and three hundred police

and officers.”

“Surely, there were in these forces means enough to have dealt promptly

and effectively with the bands of rioters?”

The Mayor showed evidence of painful hesitation before replying to this

question, but ultimately said:

“Oh, there was a most lamentable and unfortunate misunderstanding!”

Whereupon he politely handed me another cigarette, to indicate that it

would be no use to pursue that subject any further.

“Can you suggest any remedy to prevent these anti-Semitic outbursts, Mr.

Mayor?”

“I fear not. The Government measures promulgated, from time to time,

with regard to the Jews, are deemed necessary for the preservation of

order. I cannot discuss the worth or wisdom of these measures, but I can

understand why the Jews should think them unjust.”

“One question more, sir: Do you think that the Zionist movement offers

any feasible or effective solution of the question?”

“As the Mayor of Kishineff, I would consider the loss of the Jewish

community as a commercial calamity for the city. But, I confess, if I

were a Jew, I would be a Zionist.”

CHAPTER IX

III. M. DE PLEHVE’S VERSION

The official explanation from the Russian Government was made by M. de

Plehve, Russian Minister of the Interior, to Mr. Arnold White. The

following is the full text of the document, which was sent to Mr. White

in the English language, and published in _The Times_, June 13, 1903:

“Russia’s agricultural and labour population is ill at ease, living

common life with Jewish inhabitants of wide-developed commercial

instinct. Hence constant antagonism, material racial religious character

coming to verge of frenzy at least possible occasion. Strained relations

between Russians and Jews of Bessarabia were made the worst by fact of

finding outlying village murdered Christian boy, murder attributed by

population to ritual Jewish habits. Official denials ritual murder not

given credit by peasants, attributing other murders of Christians in

towns Kiev and Kishineff likewise to Jews. On Easter Day, on market

place of Kishineff, workers holiday-making saw a Jew proprietor of

carousing machine strike a Christian women, who fell to the ground,

letting go her infant baby. This incident was nearest cause of outburst.

Workers began breaking windows, pulling down Jewish stores as sign of

protest. Police, which always gives much to be desired in provincial

towns, failed to make efficacious intervention, the many thousand mass

of onlookers and holiday-makers approving riot, hindering policemen’s

actions. After demonstrators came plunderers’ outbreak, lasting from

five in the afternoon to ten evening, and leaving nine Jewish bodies on

place. Night brought disturbance to end what goes far to prove momentous

character of outbreak letting loose popular passions with strength

natural forces. On Monday morning Jews wishing intimidate and inflict

punishment on Christian workers, began on market place, assembling in

groups armed sticks and weapons; Jews being more numerous had best of it

in two first encounters, and a Christian was seen to fall, receiving

bullet wound. This called forth popular passion in all its abject force

and abomination. Russian peasants driven to frenzy, excited by race

religious hatred, under influence of alcohol, being worse than South

Americans lynching negroes. Unfortunately Governor of Bessarabia did not

make appearance in person. Easter Sunday and Monday gave over command to

military men what he had no right of doing, as he, in consequence, had

put the police aside, and on the other hand, left the military forces

without actual guidance. Troops can take towns by assault, but cannot

carry out police duties without special instructions. In the end, the

town being divided in districts, with a special military command in

each, the disturbances ceased on Monday evening. By this time the

Minister of the Interior had ordered by wire to proclaim martial law,

and--an unprecedented fact--had sent the Director of Police Department

to investigate as to the responsibilities of local officials. In

consequence the Governor, the chief of the town police, and some other

officials were dismissed outright. Many hundreds of rioters are in

prison with hard work in the Siberian mines awaiting them after trial.

The Minister of the Interior has issued a circular to the Governors all

over Russia authorising them to make immediate use of firearms in case

of anti-Jewish disturbances.

“The Russian Government is the first to disapprove of such horrid acts

of violence, but it cannot, in compliance with the requests of the

Radical and revolutionary Press, give the Jews new rights of

citizenship, as this is sure to drive the Russian population to new

excesses against the Jews, who are hated by peasants with such

extraordinary force.”

A further statement was made by M. de Plehve to Mr. White[6] in reply to

a communication calling his Excellency’s attention to the statement

“from our Russian correspondents” in _The Times_ of June 6th, that

General Von Raaben, the Governor of Kishineff, telegraphed three times

to the Minister of the Interior during the riots for permission to use

force before he received any reply:

ST. PETERSBURG, June 7 (20).

The former Governor of Bessarabia, the General Von Raaben, had not,

when in office, sent to the central Government authorities any

request whatever, asking for authorisation to use force against the

Kishineff miscreants. All communications with the Governor of

Bessarabia relating to the disturbances in Kishineff were limited

to the following proceedings:

1. Having received in the night on the 7th of April a telegram

announcing the outbreak of disturbances, the Minister of the

Interior, who was at the time staying in Moscow, had made, on the

7th of April, a personal report of this news to his Majesty, and

had received the Emperor’s instructions directing him to send to

the Governor von Raaben an implicit order to put an immediate end

to the disturbances by any means at his disposal, however they may

be resolute and harsh. The Minister, accordingly, sent to the

Governor of Bessarabia an urgent telegram giving this order.

2. The same day the Minister of the Interior, of his own accord,

sent to the Governor of Bessarabia another telegram declaring the

town Kishineff and its district in the state of enforced security

(something of a state of siege), and this was made in order to give

the Governor the means of inflicting, by way of administrative

power, punishment on persons who assemble in crowds on the streets.

3. On receiving the report of the Director of the Police Department

who was sent by the Minister to Kishineff in order to investigate

in person as to the cause of the disturbances, and the means taken

to quell them, and render their recurrence impossible, the Minister

of the Interior had written to the General Von Raaben a letter,

requesting him to dismiss the chief of the town police in Kishineff

for failing to make an effective use of the power he was invested

with as an official responsible for the security of the town

inhabitants. And, lastly,

4. The Minister of the Interior had, by telegram, informed the

General Von Raaben that his Majesty had, for the same reasons,

ordered him to be dismissed.

No other communications had passed, on the question of the

Kishineff riots, between the Minister of the Interior and the

Governor of Bessarabia.

CHAPTER X

IV. AN IMPARTIAL ACCOUNT

It will be observed that M. de Plehve ignores altogether the part played

by the _Bessarabetz_ in the period which led up to the massacres. He

makes mention of the fact that he sent the chief Director of Police to

investigate the origin of the assassinations and the conduct of the

officials. But he omits all mention of the petition presented to the

Director-General Lopoukhine, in behalf of the relations of victims, in

which the responsibility of this paper was clearly demonstrated in no

less than thirty-five marked copies, handed to the Director-General,

containing in citations to murder the Jews, and to drive them from

Russia.

M. de Plehve next asserts that the “nearest cause of the outburst” was

the striking of a Christian woman on Easter Day in the market place “by

a Jew proprietor of a carousing machine.” Here again the Minister has

been badly informed by his subordinates.

I sought for and found the proprietor of this identical carousing

machine (a merry-go-round). He was not a Jew, but a Christian, German by

nationality, and Reinhold Mergert by name. He told me he saw no

Christian or other woman struck by any Jew on the occasion, while no

such act was committed by himself or anyone in his employment.

Had any such injury been done to a Christian woman by a Jew, would the

carousing machine have been spared by the mobs which wrecked seven

hundred Jewish homes, and five or six hundred Jewish shops the same day?

Or would the Jew be alive to tell the story?

I saw this very machine in full swing, with its loads of laughing

children, on several days during my stay in the city.

“Workers then began breaking windows, pulling down Jewish stores, as

sign of protest,” continues M. de Plehve, in his official explanation.

My information, gathered on the spot from eye-witnesses--Russian and

Jewish--tells a far different story. It is this:

A few nights before the outbreak, members of the society organised by

the _Bessarabetz_, a large number of Moldavian and Russian artisans, and

several Seminarists and students, assembled in the “Moscow” hall.

Speeches were made in which it was declared that the Tsar had given

permission to kill Jews for a period of three days, beginning on the

coming Sunday!

The conveners of this meeting were the leaders of the mobs of Sunday,

April 19th, and Monday, the 20th.

That there had been plan, premeditation, and organisation for all this,

there is not a shadow of doubt. It was no sudden uprising, as M. de

Plehve had been informed, but a carefully prepared and officered

arrangement to strike terror into the “Jewish Socialists” of Kishineff,

and, through them, into the alleged propagandists of revolutionary

doctrines throughout the cities and towns of the Pale, from Odessa to

Warsaw.

One more fact establishing the case of preparation:

A fortnight before the riots the band of thirty Albanians referred to in

Letter IV arrived in Kishineff. They were strangers and evil-looking.

They all took part in the riots, and the mutilations of a child and of

two of the four Jews murdered at 13 Asia Street, Bender Rogatka

district, were the work of these imported brigands. They were not

imprisoned after the riot. They were expelled the city.

The various bands of rioters referred to above proceeded with absolute

impunity, in presence of the police, to destroy Jewish homes and smash

and loot Jewish shops, until darkness set in, on the Sunday night. In

places where Christian citizens lived among Hebrews, a cross marked in

black was found on the front of the house, or an ikon was displayed in

a window. Not one of the dwellings thus indicated as non-Jewish was

injured. I counted over a hundred such houses marked and protected in

this manner during my stay in the city. At the junction of Podolian

Street and Armenian Street, looking out upon an open space, with a

police station forty paces away, and a military barracks some two or

three hundred yards distant, the Feldstein premises were in possession

of the looters for fully five hours, owing to the trouble they found in

breaking open Mr. Feldstein’s safe, where they found fifteen thousand

roubles. All this time police and soldiers were in the street, actually

looking on at the “sport.” The looters were grateful for this official

neutrality, and brought up out of the Feldstein cellars bottles of

champagne which they shared freely with the officers of the peace and a

few of the soldiers, one leader of the gang, mounting the roof of the

saloon, and asking the crowd of spectators to drink with him “the

health of Kroushevan, the Editor of the _Bessarabetz_, and terror of

the Jews.”

Before this festive toast had been proposed the incident of the meat

took place, which had such a fiendish influence upon the subsequent

proceedings of these patronised ruffians.[7]

The attack on the Feldstein saloon and home occurred near the dinner

hour, and some meat was being prepared for the family meal. The family

fled, or rather was rescued by a humane gendarme, a neighbour, when the

mob assailed the premises. The rioters found the meat alluded to in the

kitchen, whereupon the leader of the band fixed it upon the end of his

stick, mounted the house-top (a building of one story), and, holding up

the meat to the gaze of the people and police below, shouted, “Behold

the remains of a Christian child which we found in the home of the rich

Jew, Feldstein!”

By eleven o’clock that night ten Jews had been murdered, and hundreds

of homes and shops broken into and looted.

Over twenty thousand roubles’ worth of costly wines was destroyed in the

Feldstein premises. After eleven at night dozens of vehicles were seen

carting away goods and property from places visited by the mobs, and

articles of furniture, which had been flung into the streets. The

vehicles were owned and led, in every instance, by virtuous

anti-Semites.

During all these hours General Von Raaben, the Governor, remained

indoors. No orders of any kind were issued by him, or by the

Vice-Governor, either to the police or military. The mobs were left in

possession of the city, with not alone the indirect encouragement by the

non-action of the authorities, in face of assassinations and looting,

but with the knowledge that the head of the police of the city,

Tchemzenkov, or “Baroda,” as he was popularly called, had been seen

driving round the streets during the day, smoking, as if thoroughly

enjoying the whole infernal saturnalia of sanguinary ruffianism.