In a speech delivered in the Duma the non-Jewish deputy Dzubinsky
declared:
“As a representative of our 5th Siberian division I was myself on the
scene and can testify with what incredible cruelty the expulsion of
the Jews from the Province of Radom took place. =The whole population
was driven out within a few hours during the night. At 11 o’clock the
people were informed that they had to leave, with a threat that any
one found at daybreak would be hanged. And so in the darkness of the
night began the exodus of the Jews to the nearest town, Ilzha, thirty
versts away. Old men, invalids and paralytics had to be carried on
people’s arms because there were no vehicles.=
=“The police and the gendarmes treat the Jewish refugees precisely
like criminals. At one station, for instance, the Jewish Commission
of Homel was not even allowed to approach the trains to render aid
to the refugees or to give them food and water. In one case a train
which was conveying the victims was completely sealed and when finally
opened most of the inmates were found half dead, sixteen down with
scarlet fever and one with typhus....=
=“In some places the Governors simply made sport of the innocent
victims;= among those who particularly distinguished themselves were
the governors of Poltava, Minsk, and Ekaterinoslav ... who illegally
took away the passports of the victims and substituted provisional
certificates instructing them to appear at given places in one of five
provinces at a given date. When they presented themselves at these
designated places they =were shuttled back and forth from point to
point at the whim or caprice of local officials.=
=“In Poltava the Jewish Relief Committee was officially reprimanded by
the governor for assuming the name ‘Committee for the Aid of Jewish
Sufferers from the War,’ and ordered to rename itself ‘Committee
to Aid the Expelled’ on the ground, as stated explicitly in the
order, that the Jews had been expelled because they were politically
unreliable—and, therefore, presumably, deserved no help.”=[38]
No distinction of age, sex or physical condition was made. As most of
the able-bodied young men were at the front, those affected by the
expulsions were the persons least able to bear up under the suffering
and privation entailed—old men and women, children, the sick from the
hospitals, the insane from the asylums, even wounded and crippled
Jewish soldiers—all were driven out en masse, without the slightest
regard for human comfort or decency. Women in labor were given no
consideration and many births occurred along the route. Mothers were
separated from their children, entire families were broken up and
dispersed all over Russia. The Jewish and liberal Russian press is
filled with long lists of victims seeking their lost relatives. Where
transportation was provided, the exiles were packed in cattle-cars and
forwarded to their destination on a way-bill, like so much freight.
In many places thousands of them were forced for weeks at a time to
stay in congested villages which were absolutely unable to afford them
a roof and shelter, or to sleep in the freight cars or in the open
fields. And tens of thousands were forced to tramp weary distances
along the open road, or, in the fear of the soldiery, to take to the
back roads, the woods and swamps, there to die of hunger and exposure.
The total number of Jews who have been expelled to date is unknown.
Expulsions are still going on. At the beginning of June, 1915, at the
deliberation of the Petrograd Central Committee for the Relief of
Jewish War Sufferers, which was participated in by the most prominent
provincial committees, it was calculated that the total number of
homeless Jews ruined by the expulsion—in Poland and the northwestern
district—is 600,000 at the least.[39] After the Kovno-Kurland
expulsions there collected in the Vilna government alone some 200,000
exiles.[40] In Riga there gathered, by May 18 (31), some 9,600 families
or 42,000 persons.[41] Up to August 6, 1915, there collected in the
government of Volhynia upwards of 250,000 refugees.[42]