This public official distrust of the Jewish population of Russia
increased with the Russian reverses, and the assumption by the
authorities that the loyalty of all the Jews was open to suspicion
gave added impetus to the spy mania, set the Jews apart as a dangerous
people and delivered them helpless into the hands of the Cossack
soldiery and the hostile Poles. The atrocities committed upon the
Jews in Poland and Galicia have already been referred to. But a more
disastrous, though less spectacular, consequence of the governmental
attitude towards the Jews was the systematic expulsion of the entire
Jewish population from the war zone, an act which assumed the character
of a merciless war by Russia upon its own population.
From the very beginning of the war there were individual cases of
Jews, who, being suspected of bad faith, were ordered to leave a
given locality. There were also sporadic expulsions, or rather a
forced exodus, of the entire civilian population of localities which
the authorities desired to clear for military operations. But it was
in March, 1915, that the authorities began systematically =to expel
Jews from all the Polish provinces, even those not occupied by German
troops,= and from the governments of Kovno and Kurland, thus affecting
about 30 per cent. of the entire Jewish population of the Empire. Even
the Jewish deputy from the Kovno district, Friedman, was expelled, in
spite of his constitutional privileges as a member of the Duma.
The first sufferers were the Jewish inhabitants of the smaller towns,
because these were readily segregated. In a very brief space of
time the region where the Jews constitute over eighty per cent. of
the population of the small towns was absolutely denuded of Jewish
inhabitants.[35] It was only the rapid invasion of this territory by
the Germans which prevented the complete expulsion of every one of
the two million or more Jews who inhabited this area. And those who
have remained in this territory for the present have been promised,
by decree of the supreme military authorities of Russia, immediate
expulsion as soon as the Russian troops regain a foothold here.[36]
The enforcement of the expulsion orders was carried out ruthlessly. The
time generally allowed was twenty-four hours, rarely forty-eight hours.
The Jewish inhabitants of the governments of Kurland and Kovno were
given from five to twenty-four hours’ notice.[37]
The Jews of the city of Kovno were notified on the evening of May 3
(16) to leave not later than midnight of May 5 (18), 1915.