It appears also that the similarity of the Yiddish and German languages
further laid the Jews open to distrust. The use of Yiddish, in
conversation, in correspondence, over the telephone, in the theatre,
etc., was prohibited by legal, military and civil authorities under
penalty of heavy fine and imprisonment. In Lodz, Vilna, Riga, Warsaw,
and other Jewish centers, the performance of plays in Yiddish was
prohibited and theatres closed.
Letters from foreign countries to Russia, in any language except
Yiddish were generally passed by the censor after scrutiny, but letters
in Yiddish were as a rule not delivered at all.
In July, 1915, the commander of the Russian forces issued the following
absolute order:
“On the basis of the power entrusted to me according to Paragraph 6,
Article 415, Section 6, I prohibit postal and telegraph communications
within the district occupied by the army entrusted to me, in the
Jewish, German, and Hungarian languages.”[33]
By this order the Russian government not only branded the entire
Jewish people as spies and traitors, but also prevented hundreds of
thousands of Jewish soldiers at the front from communicating with
relatives and friends, because many of the soldiers had been prevented
by educational restrictions from learning to read and write Russian.
To the Jewish soldier unable to read or write was thus denied even
that scant comfort which his Russian comrades might derive from the
stereotyped communications checked on the regulation postal card and
mailed by field-post.
At the beginning of the war the military censors assumed command of
the entire press of Russia. That they used their power with the utmost
unfairness against the Jewish press was charged without contradiction
in the Duma by Professor Milyukov, Deputies Bomash, Suchanov and
others, who pointed out that if the aim of the censor was to suppress
every truth and encourage every lie against the Jews, they could not
possibly have pursued a more consistent policy. Deputy Bomash furnished
the following concrete instances of perversion of facts by the
censorship.
1. It systematically expunged or mutilated the names of Jews to whom
the cross of St. George had been awarded.[34]
2. When the Mayor of Petrograd congratulated the Jewish community
upon the heroic conduct of a lad of 13, named Kaufman, the censor
suppressed the fact that Kaufman was a Jew, and that the community
referred to was the Jewish community.
3. Stories in the Russian press of the valor of Jews in the French
armies are either suppressed or the Jewish names cut out.
4. A news item referring to the fact that General Semenov, whom Jewish
soldiers had saved from capture by the Germans, was treating Jews
kindly was suppressed by the censor.
5. Letters of regimental commanders to the parents of Jewish hussars
congratulating them on the valor of their sons, or notifying them of
medals of honor bestowed upon them, were suppressed by the censor.
6. The military censorship also suppressed news of an absolutely
non-military nature, whenever it might in any manner have been
construed as friendly to Jews. Thus, a news item referring to the
non-sectarian activities of the National Relief Committee, headed
by the Princess Tatyana, daughter of the Czar, was suppressed. A
news item regarding the disapproval of the Council of Ministers of
the policy of expelling Jews _en masse_ and of wholesale charges of
treachery was also suppressed.
7. Even the official declaration of Count Bobrinski, Military-Governor
of Galicia, referring to the correctness of the conduct of the Jews of
Galicia, was suppressed.
8. But—outrageously false items published in the notoriously
anti-Semitic papers were generally passed by the censor without
hesitation. The “Novoe Vremya,” the “Russkoe Znamya,” and other
anti-Semitic organs, systematically published reports of wholesale
Jewish desertions, treachery, spying, etc., without at any time
producing an iota of evidence. Thus, “Russkoe Znamya,” declared that
the loyalty of not a single Jewish soldier could be depended upon.
The “Novoe Vremya” declared that the Jews were without exception
embittered enemies of the Russian army, and that during the Japanese
war 18,000 out of 27,000 soldiers voluntarily surrendered as prisoners
to the Japanese. Stories without name, date or place to the effect
that small Polish boys warned the Russian soldiers to take nothing
from Jews because everything they would furnish was poisoned were
passed by the censor, and made much of by the press. The notorious
Kuzhi canard was not only passed by the censor and printed in the
official and semi-official press of Russia, but the censors even
hinted to that section of the press which hesitated to publish a tale
so manifestly absurd that future relations with the censorship might
be imperilled if the story were not given proper publicity. Editors
received a continuous stream of circulars forbidding the touching of
questions which had absolutely no relation to the war.
9. When the great writers and publicists of Russia decided that it
would be desirable, for the honor of Russia, to speak a good word
for the Jews and thereby indirectly deprecate before the world the
merciless governmental policy, the pamphlet containing their symposium
was suppressed by the military censor. Even the preliminary letter of
inquiry sent out by these eminent Russians, soliciting information as
to the participation of Jews in the war, was suppressed. The Jewish
weekly, the “Novy Voskhod,” was fined 2,000 roubles and ultimately
suppressed because of the publication of this letter.
In spite of these suspensions, however, the six million Jews of Russia
still continued, in a measure, to inform themselves as to the conduct
of their sons in the field, and as to matters of Jewish interest in
general, through the half dozen, or more, Jewish newspapers, which
managed to struggle on in spite of the repeated fines and suspensions
imposed by the censor. But on July 5, 1915, the entire Jewish press
was suppressed. Lately several papers have been revived in new form,
but today the Jews of Russia are practically in the dark. They have no
effective means of communicating with one another or with the Russian
public. They can neither prevent the instigation of calumnies nor
refute them when spread abroad. They live in a constant state of terror
lest some new Kuzhi slander set the country aflame against them.