they are called "the deported"; the newspapers refer to them as "the
homeless ones." At first came three thousand Jews from the province of
Kovno. They were followed by Kurland Jews, and now about seven
thousand Jews have been settled in the government of Tavrida. Other
parties are expected....
They had wandered a long time before they reached their new place of
residence. Obviously, the authorities who handled the deportation
thought only of how to get rid of the Jews, and those on whom the
newcomers were thrust had not been informed in time and did not know
how to arrange to take care of them.
The first party, three thousand strong, stayed a while at Melitopol,
then they were transported to Simferopol where they remained five
days, and were finally distributed over the towns and townlets of
northern Crimea.
It is told that one of the parties was assigned to Yekaterinoslav, but
the authorities refused to accept the people and ordered them to
proceed further. The local papers report that a group of deported Jews
was transported from Pavlograd to Jankoy, then, according to an
instruction from the Ministry of the Interior they were shipped to
Voronezh....
There are many old men and women, many girls and mothers, and a large
number of children in the party which has been brought here. All of
them are miserable and exhausted, a number are ill, either because
they had been sick when the catastrophe overtook them or because they
fell ill on the way, and there are many pregnant women among them. As
a result of their long wanderings, wives have lost their husbands and
mothers their children and they eagerly question everybody about those
dear to them.
Little has been written in the newspapers about the Jews deported from
the zone of military activities, and so far little has been heard of
either the state or the social organisations coming to the assistance
of these "war sufferers," who feel the burden of war even more heavily
than those who fled from the war-stricken districts on their own
account. There was a vague statement that the Pirogov Society is
aiding the Jews deported to the Government of Poltava and that meagre
sums were contributed by the Union of Towns and the Ministry of the
Interior,--that is all the newspapers have so far reported.
The burden of taking care of the newcomers fell entirely on the local
Jewish communities. It was a heavy burden, for there are no more than
about twenty thousand Jewish families in the entire government of
Tavrida. These twenty thousand families had to take care and to
support seven thousand homeless people, mostly small tradesmen and
peddlers who had had no time to liquidate their businesses and who
could not take along any property, for bedding was the only thing they
were allowed to carry.
They had to find housing facilities in all haste, to organise
transportation and medical aid, and to solve the food and employment
problems. An attempt was made to utilise the deported in agriculture,
in which labour is nowadays exceedingly scarce in Crimea. But the old
people and the children are not fit for agricultural work and it would
take too long to train the able-bodied women. On the other hand, the
largest and more prosperous Crimean towns, such as Simferopol and
Sebastopol, Yalta, Yevpatoria, and Theodosia, where the deported Jews
could easily find employment, are closed to the newcomers. Only the
smaller and poorer towns and townlets where even the local Jews can
scarcely get employment, are put at the disposal of the newcomers as
their places of residence. There was even a project to settle a
portion of these people in the city of Perekop. This town counts only
one Jewish family among its population. It consists of a prison and
several deserted shanties, and reminds one of that legendary Siberian
town, which was made up of a single pillar erected as an indication of
the site where the city was supposed to stand.
The local Jewish communities spend about fifty thousand rubles monthly
on feeding the deported. This sum does not include the expenses of
transportation and housing. The local communities applied to the
Petrograd Committee, but it took upon itself only fifteen thousand
rubles. The remaining thirty-five thousand are contributed by the
Jews, who have also to support their specific cultural institutions as
well as municipal institutions of a general character.
The representatives of the Simferopol Jewish community applied to the
Governor of Tavrida for financial help. I do not know whether they
were successful. Meanwhile, other parties of deported Jews are
expected here, and how the Jews will be able to handle them, is more
than I can tell.
The War has ruined many homes and made many men, women, and children
homeless. But it would hardly be an exaggeration to say that fate has
been most ruthless to these deported Jews. The so-called "refugees,"
after all, acted freely; they brought with them, if not what they
wanted at least what they had time, what they were able to take; they
could go wherever there was work. The refugees were everywhere
welcomed and helped by both the authorities and the public
organisations. Special days for the soliciting of donations were
appointed and large sums collected. Wherever they went people tried to
alleviate their sufferings. But the deportation of the Jews took place
as if on the sly, without attracting any one's attention, without
engaging the sympathies of the people at large to the degree which
might be expected.
The deported proved a heavy burden not only for the Jewish but also
for the Gentile population of the humble villages of the government of
Tavrida, which were flooded by the newcomers. The prices of food, and
the rent soared up, and competition among tradesmen and small
merchants grew more ruthless,--in a word, life here became much harder
than the War alone would have made it.
II
As one observes these throngs of old men, children and pregnant women
who are deported and tossed from one end of the country to the other,
simply because they are Jews, one wonders to whom it brings profit or
happiness. It is clear that it does no one any good and no one finds
this wholesale deportation either just or necessary.
"In discussing the deportation of Jews the Minister of the Interior
pointed out that this measure was not justified by the actual
behaviour of the Jewish population, which is in general loyal to the
country and cannot bear responsibility for the actions of criminal
individuals, of whom unfortunately no nationality is free" (_Yuzhnyia
Vyedomosti_, No 10). The same communication contains the following
statements: "It was asserted that the wholesale accusation of the Jews
as traitors is wholly groundless.... In view of this the council of
Ministers, by an overwhelming majority, decided to make intercession
to put an end to the deportation of the Jews."
Whether the Council of Ministers has interceded and whether its
efforts were crowned with success,--I know not. The papers published
several orders whereby separate groups of deported Jews were permitted
to return to their former places of residence,--for instance, the
deported Galician Jews were allowed to return to Galicia,--but there
was no general rescript which would put an end to the deportation....
The wholesale deportation of the Jews caused a great perplexity among
the population of Crimea. Even people who are not over-sensitive to
problems of truth and justice and whose sympathies are far from being
broad, show signs of being stirred up. Suppose the Council of
Ministers is mistaken, they say, and the presence of the Jews in the
governments of Kovno and Kurland is really a danger for the State, but
then do not Germans live in those provinces, in even larger numbers
than Jews? Time and again we read in the newspapers of the friendly
reception of the German armies by the German population of Kurland.
There were also registered cases where penalties were imposed on
individual persons who either showed too great an enthusiasm for the
German troops or rendered them material services. Nevertheless,
nothing was heard about the German population of the Government of
Kurland being deported in a wholesale manner,--at least, not a single
train with Kurland Germans has reached Crimea.
On the other hand,--so thinking people keep on arguing,--if the Jews
have proved to be more German than the Germans themselves, and the
Teutonic population of Kurland act like loyal Russian subjects, why
then liquidate the land owned by the Crimean Germans, who have been
living in Crimea for more than a century, who have never shown any
disloyalty to Russia, who, furthermore, are separated from the German
frontier by thousands of versts and who are, therefore, by no means
able to inform the Germans from Germany about the movement of our
troops in the provinces of Kurland and Kovno.
And once more rises the question: "In whose interests is all this
done?"
The matter has also another aspect. How many Jews were deported--tens
or hundreds of thousands--no one knows exactly; but seeing the large
masses which are being shifted from place to place, people wonder how
many cars were necessary to transport all these throngs. And then it
occurs to them that all these trains could bring in enormous cargoes
of coal, sugar, kerosene and other wares which are so badly needed
here, and carry away grain and fruit, which are needed elsewhere, thus
making life more livable in many corners of our vast country.
And people who have the enviable capacity of not losing their
equanimity under any circumstances, remark that in this fashion the
Jewish problem is being settled and the Pale of Settlement removed.
"Here already the provinces of Voronezh and Penza are opened to
Jews.... Little by little all of Russia will be opened up...."
* * * * *
THE JEW
_Mikail Petrovich Artzibashef, the author of Sanine was born in
the year 1878 in Southern Russia. He is widely read both in his
own country and outside of its borders. In 1905 he took part in
the revolutionary movement, and was indicted, but escaped
punishment because of the temporary success of the popular
movement at the end of that year._
THE JEW
(A STORY)
BY M. ARTZIBASHEF
It so happened that the second platoon of the third squad of the
Ashkadar regiment found itself completely cut off from the main body
of the army, and this without the loss of a single cartridge or
soldier.
How this came about, and why a group of men, fifteen or twenty strong,
had suddenly become an independent fighting unit, none of them could
tell.
At the outset, the entire Ashkadar regiment zealously trudged
throughout the long autumn night along an interminable road, leading
no one knew where, into the dark, damp, and hostile distance. To smoke
or to converse was forbidden. In the dark, the black mass of the
regiment, bristling with its bayonets like some huge, porcupine-like
creature, crawled steadily onward, filling the air with the shuffling
of innumerable feet. The men kept stumbling over each other, and
swore viciously in half tones; they slipped in the mud and sank
knee-deep into the wheel-tracks filled with cold water. "Some road!"
they sighed quietly.
At dawn the regiment was brought to a halt and was stretched along the
edge of a wide potato field, which the soldiers had never seen before.
It was drizzling with sickening persistence, and the dark-blue
distances, mildly sloping and mournful, were blurred in the haze of
the rain. On both sides, as far as eye could reach, ranks of grey
officers and soldiers were wretchedly soaking in the rain. Water was
dripping from their sullen faces and it looked as though they were all
weeping over their fate--the fate which had cast them upon this
strange, unknown, God-forsaken field. In a few hours many of them will
perhaps be lying dead amidst the half-rotted potato stems on the wet
soil with their pallid faces upturned to the cold heavens, the very
ones which now weep also over their dear, distant country.
Behind, a battery crew was vainly attempting to set the cannon which
were sinking into the soaked plough-land. One could hear the hoarse
angry voices, the cracking of whips, and the heavy, strained snorting
of horses. In front of them lone officers wandered in drenched cloaks
in the rain; still farther behind the curtain of rain and the thick
fog there rumbled cannons and it was impossible to tell whether they
belonged to the enemy or not. At times the shooting seemed to come
from afar-off on the right. Then the rumble of the guns was deep and
muffled like the sound of heavy iron balls rolling over the ground; at
other times, the discharges were quite near and rent the air with a
crash, bursting over the men's very heads, as it were.
The commander of the squad stood right in front of his men and kept
lighting cigarettes shielding them with the skirts of his cloak. He
did it so often that it seemed as if he had been vainly attempting to
light the same cigarette for the last three hours. The soldiers were
attentively looking at his back and were all morbidly anxious to help
him. It was cold and damp, and they felt an incessant, nauseating
gnawing in the pit of the stomach. It was not fear but an indefinite
anguish, a sort of _the-sooner-over-the-better_ feeling.
Several hours passed in this manner, but towards noon it all changed
abruptly. Though the sky was still as grey as before and it drizzled
continuously, it grew lighter, the clouds in one spot became white and
shining and one felt that the sun was somewhere behind them. But
amidst this cold white light a disquieting feeling pervaded the
atmosphere and the gnawing anxiety was turning into unbearable agony.
Suddenly, an aide-de-camp dashed past on a horse, covered with froth
and fuzzy with dampness. Officers began to scurry back and forth;
sharp commands were heard; and the bugles resounded.
"Well, comrades!" ... said some one in the ranks in a high, false tone
of voice. Every one heard this exclamation and understood it, but no
one turned around to see where it came from. The grey mass of people
suddenly stirred, gave a sigh, surged like the sea whipped by a gale,
and, sinking at each step into the mud, the entire regiment rolled
forward, over the expanse of the shoreless fields which now suddenly
looked strange and dreadful. The soldiers, their faces haggard and
queer, were crossing themselves as they ran. They marched in disorder,
and when they were stopped on the hill-crest, they turned the
regiment into a confused mob of breathless and perplexed men. Some
even forgot to lower their rifles.
Before them the hazy network of rain was still hanging and the
distances stretched, strange and hostile. But now the fields were
astir with flickering pale flames and a ceaseless scattered cracking
of guns. In the grey sky a small black dot was discernible, seemingly
motionless, but changing in size. When it grew larger, a faint buzzing
was heard from above and made the soldiers turn their grey, ghastly
faces upward.... Then a mighty buzzing suddenly resounded behind the
regiment, and a Russian aeroplane flew over the heads of the men like
a drenched bird. As the aeroplane rose higher and higher, the soldiers
watched the distance between it and the small black dot far up in the
sky grow smaller and smaller.
Voices were now heard from the ranks and when the black dot was
rapidly beginning to grow smaller, sinking, as it were, in the sky and
approaching the horizon, those voices became loud and gay.
"He don't like it, what! See him run for his life! Well done! Fine
fellows!" ... was heard along the ranks.
The soldiers suddenly became lively and for a moment forgot about
themselves and the uncertain fate that was in store for them.
"Why not put you on that aeroplane, Yermilich!... You'd be quite handy
at it, wouldn't you!" the soldiers were poking fun at each other.
All at once a confused many-voiced cry and a disorderly crackling of
rifles was heard ahead of them; then a crowd of soldiers came running
from that direction, at first singly, then in groups, and finally in a
mass. They belonged to another regiment of the same division. One
could discern from afar their wide-open eyes, rounded mouths, and an
expression of frantic terror on their pale faces.
The officers of the Ashkadar regiment, waving their swords and yelling
something indistinct, were running over the washed-out field to meet
the running men, but the grey crowd momentarily knocked them down,
trampled upon them, completely covered them, and mingled itself with
the Ashkadar men. And everything that, but a while ago, was so clear
and important now became confused and meaningless.
Like the waters that wash off a dam pierced in but a single point,
even so did the running soldiers confuse and sweep away the regiment.
The Ashkadar men themselves were partly infected by the panic and
began to run they knew not why, apparently possessed by that
mysterious power which is transmitted from man to man and which pushes
one from behind and compels him to run farther and farther, aimlessly
and blindly.
The entire mass of men started down the slope, but having encountered
the battery with a crew yelling and waving their hands, it swerved
aside. Then as this mass ran into the regular line of soldiers, who
were rapidly coming to meet them, their rifles carried at charge, it
threw itself to one side, then to the other, then backwards and
forwards and finally scattered over the fields, filling the air with
mad outcries and disorderly shooting. It was at that very time that
the second platoon of the third squad strayed from its regiment and
its officers. Seventeen in all, instinctively keeping together, they
found themselves outside of the battle-field in a narrow loamy ravine
overgrown with dwarfish trees. The ravine was deep and had washed-out
clay slopes. High above it stretched a muddy, uneven strip of grey
sky, which poured an unceasing rain upon the soaked red clay, upon the
small wet birch trees, and the group of soldiers, who had lost their
way and driven by inertia were hurrying further downward.
The soldiers, all reservists, were thick-set, bearded and pock-marked
peasants from the governments of Kostroma and Novgorod and among them,
was a dark little Jew, Hershel Mak, who alone thought and planned for
the rest of them. All these country people taken right from the plough
were unable to grasp how it all happened, and were not even sure
whether anything had happened at all. They could not tell whether
there was a battle or not, whether it was good or bad to be left
without officers in this confounded ravine, and what would come of it
all. Only Hershel Mak understood that there was a battle, that the
front ranks came right under the crossfire of the machine-guns, that a
panic resulted and that the Ashkadar regiment was knocked off its
feet by a crowd of runaways. He knew that the regiment was broken up
without a shot and that now they were left to their own fate, in a
place which might well be within the very centre of the enemy's
position. Hershel Mak was well aware of the fact that for the present
no one would or could worry about them and that they must alone
disentangle themselves from this mess,--and his versatile mind began
at once to work to the utmost of its ability.
The rain was rushing in murmuring streams down the slopes of the
ravine and along its bottom, and the noise of the water drowned the
crackling of the machine-guns and the thundering of the cannon. The
ravine extended further down, and apparently into the forest, for the
trees were becoming thicker, and on the ground a deep layer of
half-decayed leaves was mingled with the clay. Once or twice, a heavy
buzzing was heard overhead, and the soldiers involuntarily lifted
their eyes, but there was no aeroplane in sight, and one could not
tell whether it was the enemy or not.
Hershel Mak was walking behind the others, and was deep in thought.
"What are we going to do when we meet the enemy? When we were with the
regiment, we knew what to do.... But we don't know the high military
rules! Maybe, we shouldn't fight at all,--maybe, according to the high
military rules it is necessary to retreat a bit?... How is one to tell
I'd like to know."
Just then on the opposite bank of the stream which in its overflowing
formed shallow muddy puddles something dark began to flicker among the
trees, and the enemy soldiers in light grey cloaks, and varnished
helmets protected with linen covers came forward. This was an enemy
detachment which had also strayed away from its regiment. A
non-commissioned officer, husky and red-bearded, was in charge of it.
The Germans' gait was also uncertain. They walked with rifles carried
at charge, timidly looking about and were just going to stop to talk
over their situation, when they noticed the reddish-grey cloaks and
the bayonets.
"Halt!" yelled out a flaxen-haired Kostroma peasant.
He did it so forcefully that two crows flew off in fright and rose
high above the ravine.
Hershel Mak nearly fell into the water. The red and the grey soldiers
separated by about fifty steps and a small, turbid, rain-beaten
rivulet were eyeing each other with amazement rather than with terror.
Thin scattered cries of terror and dismay were heard from the other
side, and all at once it grew still with an ominous strained
stillness.
"Listen ... eh," ... whispered Hershel Mak, touching the gun of the
Kostroma reservist. But at this very moment, the soldiers as if in
response to a command stepped back a pace or two, got down on their
knees and an uneven crackling of guns rent the damp air.
The flaxen-haired Kostroma peasant and another soldier, a father of a
large family, nick-named "uncle," threw up their arms and fell heavily
upon the soaked clay.
The first was killed on the spot, but as to the "uncle," he clutched
his abdomen, sat up and began to howl in a thin, piercing voice:
"Bro-o-thers!"
And the soldiers were seized with a savage anger, immense and
terrible, similar to the nervous fury with which one tramples upon a
snake. Scattered bullets began flying amidst the wet trees, and wild
outcries filled the air. The bullets hissed far over the forest and
sank with a swish into the clay; birch leaves, quietly circling, were
falling to the ground where three light-grey figures were writhing in
convulsions of pain and horror.
The husky non-commissioned officer was the first among these to cease
stirring. He lay there with his face stuck in the cold mud of the
stream. A volley of bullets, still more uneven than the first answered
it, and presently single shots, interrupted by furious outcries of
pain, by groans of the wounded and rattling of the dying came from
both sides.
Pale flames flickered everywhere; the bark was being ripped from the
small birch trees; here and there were seen ghastly distorted faces
and shivering hands hurriedly fussing with the guns. The biting odour
of blood and gun-powder filled the air, and a bluish smoke rose slowly
to the sky, passing through the twigs shivering, as it were, with
fear, and under the birches there lay two groups of men, charging
their guns, shooting, slaying one another, and strewing the wet earth
with crippled, writhing, moaning bodies.
* * * * *
Suddenly the shooting ceased just as unexpectedly as it had begun.
There was no one upon the clearing except the wounded, and the dead.
The reddish soldiers hid behind the stones and the grey behind the
trees.
The fire ceased. The hearts of the men beat rapidly and painfully with
a vicious inhuman terror, but no one fired a single shot. An hour
passed and then another. The men lay silently behind the stones and
the trees, each group eyeing the enemy sharply and closely watching
their slightest movements.