At the beginning of the war the number of Jews in the Russian Empire
was estimated at six million or more, comprising fully half of the
total Jewish population of the world. =Ninety-five per cent. of these
six million people were confined by law to a limited area of Russia,
known as the Pale of Settlement,= consisting of the fifteen Governments
of Western and Southwestern Russia, and the ten Governments of Poland,
much of which territory is now under the German occupation. In reality,
however, residence within the Pale was further restricted to such an
extent that territorially the =Jews were permitted to live in only one
two-thousandth part of the Russian Empire.=[1] No Jew was permitted to
step outside this Pale unless he belonged to one of a few privileged
classes. Some half-privileged Jews might, with effort, obtain special
passports for a limited period of residence beyond the Pale; but the
great majority could not even secure this privilege for any period
whatsoever. A tremendous mass of special, restrictive legislation
converted the Pale into a kind of prison with six million inmates,
guarded by an army of corrupt and brutal jailers.