Immediately before the war the struggle had assumed its bitterest
form—that of an unrelenting boycott waged against the Jews. When the
war broke out the political status of the Poles changed overnight. Both
the Russian and the German armies found it politic to cultivate the
good will of the Polish population. Many Poles seized the opportunity
to gratify personal animosity, religious bigotry or chauvinistic
mania by denouncing the Jews, now to the one invader and now to the
other, as spies and traitors. In Germany the animus of the attacks
was to some extent uncovered and the lies refuted. But in Russia they
found fertile soil. The Russian military machine had met with defeat
at the hands of the Germans. To exonerate themselves in the eyes of
their own people the military camarilla eagerly seized the pretext so
readily furnished them by the Poles and unloaded the burden of their
ill-fortune upon the helpless shoulders of the Jew. Men, women, even
children were executed without the shadow of evidence or the formality
of a trial. Circumstantial stories of Jewish treachery, invented by the
Poles, were accepted as the truth and circulated freely through the
Russian press and on the local government bulletin boards; but when
official investigation proved these stories false in every particular,
the publication of the refutation was discouraged by the censorship.
The authorities gave the troops a free hand to loot and ravage,
even encouraging them by the publication of orders which officially
denounced all Jews as spies and traitors. The result was a series of
outrages unprecedented even in Russia. A million Jews were driven from
their homes in a state of absolute destitution.