No story was too absurd to be given credibility and systematic
circulation. It was reported, and seriously believed, that at a place
unnamed and a time unknown some Jew had enclosed a million and half
roubles in a coffin and shipped the coffin to Germany. The chief Rabbi
and the Jewish community of Warsaw telegraphed to the “Novoe Vremya”
and several other leading papers, protesting against this monstrous
slander against the Jews at a time when their sons were shedding their
blood freely on the battlefields. The “Novoe Vremya” declined to
publish the telegram.[29]
The Jewish community of Petrograd appealed to the Grand Duke Nicholas,
then Commander-in-Chief of the Russian armies, in these words:
“The entire Jewish people would cast out, with scorn and indignation,
those base criminals who, forgetting duty and conscience, would, in
this year of universal sacrifice, break their sacred vows of loyalty
to the fatherland. Such treachery is alien to our faith and was never
known to exist among Jews to any greater extent than among other
peoples. =And never yet, in the course of the centuries, no matter
to what persecutions the Jews, under the influence of prejudice
created by their devotion to their ancient faith and customs, may
have been subjected, has any government denounced ALL of its subjects
as traitors to their country. This is the first time in all history
that such an attitude has been assumed by any government toward the
Jews. At the very time that our sons are fighting in the ranks of the
Russian army for the honor and glory of Russia, we, their fathers,
are held responsible for the acts of a few criminals and are being
persecuted for their vile deeds, aimed at the betrayal of our own
sons. Never has any man or any people been subjected to torment
greater than this, to humiliation less bearable or more offensive to
honor or self-respect....= Your Imperial Highness! In this sad hour of
trial we long to implant in our people faith in a brighter future, we
long to preserve that tie of loyalty towards our common country which
is so essential for the welfare of all the peoples inhabiting Russia,
and which was demonstrated so powerfully when the insolent enemy first
threw down the gauntlet to Russia. We do not wish to admit discord,
despair and sorrow where should reign only unity, harmony, hope. =And
we dare to appeal to your Imperial Highness in the hope that measures
insulting to us will cease to be applied, that the stamp of outcast be
removed from our faces and that we may be permitted, as loyal sons of
our country, freed from all suspicion, to use our whole strength in
the struggle with the common enemy.”=
No reply was received to this appeal; on the contrary, the policy of
fastening upon the Jews all the blame for Russian defeats was carried
out consistently by the military machine. The “Russki Invalid,”
the official journal of the War Department, in the spring of 1915,
definitely accused the Jews of disloyalty to the State and of sympathy
for Germany, and openly attributed Russian disaster to this cause.[30]
Military orders like the following were common:
ORDER No. 89.
ISSUED TO THE SOLDIERS OF THE FORTIFIED REGION, FORTRESS
NOVOGEORGIEVSK, NOV. 27, 1914.
“The German newspapers print articles declaring that among the Russian
Jews the Germans find reliable allies who, besides supplying them with
food, are often the best and unpaid spies, ready to enter any service
injurious to the cause of Russia, and that in German victory the Jews
see their salvation from Imperial oppression and Polish persecution.
Similar information continues to come in from the army.
In order to protect the army from the harmful activities of the Jewish
population, the Commander-in-Chief has ordered that the forces of
occupation take hostages from among the Jewish population, warning
the inhabitants that in case of treacherous activities on the part of
any one of the local inhabitants not only during the period of our
occupation of a given inhabited point, but also after our leaving it,
the hostages will be executed, which order is to be carried out in
case of necessity.
Upon occupation of inhabited points, careful searches are to be
made to find out whether there are any arrangements for wireless
telegraphy, signaling, pigeon stations, underground telegraphs, and so
forth, and the full penalty of the law is to be meted out to anyone
connected with this.
Reference: Telegram by General Oranovsky of this year under No. 3432.
Signed, Chief of the Fortified Region.
General of the Cavalry, BOBYR.”
This order was issued from the press at six o’clock in the evening,
December 2, 1914, and immediately proved profitable to the dregs of the
Russian soldiery, as was demonstrated at a court martial held in Lomza,
where it was proven that three members of a signal corps had “planted”
a telephone in the motion picture theater of a Jew named Eisenbiegel,
and had then arrested him and demanded 5,000 roubles blackmail. In the
course of the trial it developed that =one of the men was responsible
for the hanging of no less than seventeen innocent Jews as spies solely
because they were unable or unwilling to pay the blackmail demanded by
him.=[31]
Even the loyalty of Jewish soldiers was officially questioned. Order
No. 1193 of the General Staff, dated April 27–May 10, 1915, commands
all the troops “To watch the Jewish soldiers—especially their readiness
to surrender as prisoners—and in general, their entire conduct.”
But the publication and circulation of orders like these reacted
disastrously upon the Russian arms. By branding the entire Jewish
population as traitorous the military authorities encouraged the Poles
to fabricate new slanders, the spread of which only served to heighten
the distrust of the populations and to make the fighting area of Poland
a quagmire for the Russian armies. The troops did not know whom to
trust or distrust. Instead of fighting on friendly ground, welcomed
and supported by the moral and economic resources of the civilian
population, the Russians fought on ground undermined by hatred,
dissension and distrust.
When they began to realize this state of affairs some of the Russian
commanders made desperate efforts to check the spy mania.
General P. Kurlov issued the following order in the Baltic provinces on
February 25, 1915: