In 1912 the election of a Deputy to the Duma was to take place in
Warsaw. The population of the town consists of between seven and eight
hundred thousand. As among them there are 300,000 Jews, the majority of
the electors, it was in the power of that majority to elect a Jewish
Deputy. Because of their Polish national feeling, however, they gave up
this right, as they wanted Warsaw, as the capital of the Kingdom of
Poland, to be represented by a man who not only in spirit, but also by
race, was a Pole. Of the Polish committee they only demanded that the
party concerned be no enemy to the Jews. It proved, however, that the
committee in its arrogance would not deal with them at all and proposed
Kucharschewski, a pronounced anti-Semitic candidate and a man who
publicly declared that he desired the election to the Duma only to work
for the extermination of the Jews of Poland. By the way, it is strange
to notice how the word "exterminate," which thirty years ago in the days
of Bismarck and Eduard von Hartmann as _Ausrotten_ was subject to the
curse and condemnation of the Poles, has now come to honor, and how
easily it passes their lips.
As the Jews, of course, could not vote on such a man, they urgently
asked the committee to propose another candidate not inimical to them.
This reasonable request was refused with coarseness and Kucharschewski's
candidacy maintained. Because of that the Jews were obliged to look
about for another candidate of Polish family who was fit for the
position and was not hostile to them. In spite of numerous applications,
they did not succeed in finding such a man; at the last moment, when all
attempts had failed, Jagello, the Social Democrat, declared himself
willing to accept the candidacy of the Jews.
The only thing in his favor was the fact that he was of pure Polish
blood. As their leading men all belong to the higher middle class, they
did not share his views. But the state of affairs forced them to support
him. Lord Beaconsfield used to maintain that the natural disposition of
the Jewish race was conservative, but foolish politics, instead of
encouraging the conservative instincts of the race, forced it to cast
its lot with the most extreme elements of the opposition. It has proved
true here.
Jagello was elected.
The leading men in Russian Poland, who, as a matter of fact, through the
whole new century, had fought against the Jews, although secretly, for
fear they should forfeit the sympathy of the intellectual aristocracy of
Europe, used this electoral victory of the Jews, which had been forced
upon them, to throw off the mask and openly act as their passionate
enemies. The so-called co-operative movement developed during the last
twelve years, and in itself nothing but a fight against the Jewish
commerce, under a different name, now changed into a systematic and
cruelly effected boycotting of the Jewish population. In private as in
public life, the openly pronounced password was: not to buy from Jews,
not to associate with Jews.
At the head of this movement marched the intelligence of Poland, among
others some of its most famous authors, avowed free thinkers as
Nemojewski, nay, as Alexander Swientochowski. Literary life presents
many changes, metamorphoses, which in thoroughness are not very much
inferior to those of Ovid. A good deal is necessary to make one who for
one-half century has witnessed the want of character among writers feel
even the slightest surprise. But I should willingly have sworn that I
should never have lived to see Alexander Swientochowski a nationalist,
he the most uncompromising adversary of nationalism, who endured a good
deal for his conviction, to see the poet of "Chawa Rubin" an
anti-Semitic chief. Not only does all that Alexander Swientochowski
wrote rise against him, but also the words, the powerful words, which
issued from his mouth in his palmy days.
The whole Polish press placed itself at the disposal of this movement.
Young Polish louts were posted outside the Jewish shops and ill-treated
the Christian women and children who wanted to buy there. By means of
the well-known Dumowski a new paper, Dwa Groszi, was started, which
simply urged pogroms. It soon came to bloody struggles. Polish
undergraduates killed an old Jew in the Sliska Street in Warsaw. In the
little town of Welun peasants poured naphtha on the house of a Jew and
put fire to it, burning a large family. Similar acts occurred in several
other places, until the Russian Government stopped this pogrom movement
in order to prevent the Polish nationalism from getting stronger.
The Polish priests in the villages incited the people from the pulpit to
boycotting of and war against the Jews. After the sentence in the Beilis
action the Polish newspapers were almost alone in publishing on
circulars the information that Beilis had been acquitted, but that the
existence of religious murder had been satisfactorily proved. Nay, the
free thinker, Nemojewski, wrote a book, in which he maintained the
monstrous lie that Jewish religious murders are facts, and traveled all
over the country with an agitatorial lecture to the same purpose.
Under these circumstances, the Jews in Russian Poland turned to the few
men whose names were so esteemed or whose characters were so
unimpeachable that their words could not be unheeded.
Ladislas Mickiewicz, the excellent son of the great Mickiewicz, who had
passed his whole life in Paris, first as a publisher and translator of
the works of his father, and then as a Polish patriotic author,
convened, together with some other prominent men, a great meeting at
Warsaw to restore the inner peace. In vain he begged and besought his
countrymen, who had enemies enough otherwise, not to act as enemies of
the Jews, who had always been their friends. No Polish newspaper gave
any report of his speech.
All this took place before the war. The provisional result was the
economic destruction of the Russian-Polish Jews. But now during the war
the glow of the bloody hatred of the Jews has blazed out in far stronger
flames and the Russian Government has as yet done nothing to subdue or
quench the fire.
During the mobilization several Polish newspapers, for instance, The
Glos Lubelski, brought the alarming news in heavy type: "In England
great pogroms against the Jews. The English Government does not check
them." The paper was conscious of the lie. But the question was to set
an example to follow.
When the lack of gold and silver began to be felt the Polish newspapers
accused the Jews of hiding the valuable metals. On closer examination,
it was found that many non-Jewish business people (for instance,
Ignaschewski in Lublin, a very rich Pole) were withholding whole bags
full of gold and silver coins, for which they were punished rather
severely; but this was not proved against a single Jew.
Furthermore, the Jews were, among other things, accused of having
smuggled in a coffin 1,500,000 rubles in gold into Germany; and the
protest against the accusation entered by the representatives and
ministers of the Jewish congregation at Warsaw was printed in Russian
papers, but not in a single Polish one.
All these things were preparations for pogroms; but many others were
made. The anti-Semites printed a proclamation in Yiddish in which the
Jews were called upon to revolt against Russia; they took care that this
proclamation was put into the pockets of the unsuspecting Jews in the
streets of the different towns; those who had distributed the papers
denounced the party concerned to the police. Everybody upon whom the
proclamation was found was shot.
At last the Jews were, as in the Middle Ages, both in word and writing
accused of having poisoned the wells. If some Cossacks or other Russian
soldiers died, the Poles accused the Jews of having caused their death.
The chief accusation was, however, the accusation of espionage, which
obtained general credence and was used both when Austrian troops came to
some town or village and when Russian troops expelled the Austrians. The
result was the same. A suitable number of Jews were conscientiously shot
by the Russians as well as by the Austrians. There are, however, lists
of those who really have been unmasked as spies. A Potocki was among
them, and had to pay for it with his life; but no Jewish name is found
on these lists.
The accusation is, however, always believed, as the Jew has, for about
two thousand years, been characterized as Judas.
The legend about Judas may without exaggeration be described as one of
the most foolish legends of antiquity; that it has been believed is one
proof among thousands of the indescribable simplicity of mankind. Few
legends carry like it the stamp of lie on their faces and few legends
have millennium after millennium caused so many evils and horrors. It
has tortured and murdered by hundred thousands.
According to the supposition the story is impossible. The supposition is
that a man in possession of superhuman attributes, a god or a demi-god,
day after day goes about and speaks in the open air in a town and its
neighborhood. So little does he make a secret of his doings that a short
time before he had made his entry at broad daylight, welcomed with
exultation by the whole population. He is known by each and all, by each
woman and each child. So little does he want to hide that he walks about
accompanied by his disciples, preaching day and night, sleeping among
them. And to think it should be necessary to buy one of his disciples to
denounce him and deliver him, to betray him, and that--for the sake of
the effect--with a kiss! Indeed if he had hidden in some cellar, then
there would be some meaning in it; but as things are, those who seek
him need only ask: which of you is Jesus? He would not have tried to
deny his name.
Judas is then not only quite superfluous, but an absurdity, the origin
of which is to be found in the desire to place the black traitor
opposite the white hero of light and in the hatred of Jews arising among
the first Gentile Christians, who later made the world forget that not
only this straw-doll, Judas, but also Jesus and all the Apostles, all
the Disciples and all the evangelists were Jews.
Nevertheless, in the conception of the rude masses this Judas--as he was
called--has become the Jew, the typical Jew, the traitor, and the spy.
Still as late as in the last decennium of the last century, Capt. Alfred
Dreyfus fell a victim to this old foolish legend.
And now it is again rehashed against the Jews in Russian Poland.
The pogroms have, by virtue of these Judas accusations and the many
other dreadful accusations, spread all over Russian Poland and there
they are spreading more and more, while Galicia as well as Posen has
proved susceptible to the incitations which have not failed. Many
hundreds of innocent people have fallen victims to them.
Here are a few instances from many:
In the town of Bechava, conquered by the Austrians, the Polish leaders,
among whom was a very well-known estate owner, applied to the Austrian
commandant, accusing the Jews of secret connection with the Russian
Army. In consequence of this the Austrians killed a 67-year-old man
called Wallstein, and his 17-year-old son. When, after a short time, the
Austrians were driven away, the same estate owner accused the Jews of
the town to the Russian commandant of being in communication with the
Austrians, having delivered to them all provisions for the purpose of
depriving the Russians of them. In consequence of his accusation, many
Jews were shot and their houses burned down.
In the towns of Janow and Krasnik the Jews were accused of having put
out mines to destroy the Russians. The Jews, and among them many
children, were hanged on the telegraph poles, and the two towns
destroyed.
The town of Samosch was conquered by the Austrian Sokol troops, those
beautiful slender people whom you do not forget when once you have seen
them train in the capital of Galicia. When they were driven away from
the Russian Army the Poles accused the Jews of the town of having been
the accomplices of the Austrians. Twelve Jews were arrested. When they
denied the charge they were sentenced to death. Five of them had been
already hanged, when in the middle of the execution a Russian priest,
carrying an image of the Virgin in his hand, appeared and with his hand
on this image took the oath that the Jews were innocent and that the
accusation was all an outcome of Polish hatred of the Jews. He proved
that the Poles of the town themselves had supported the Austrians and
that even a telephone connection with Lemberg could be found. The seven
Jews were then set free; five had already been hanged.
In the town of Jusefow, the Jews were accused of having poisoned the
wells through which hundreds of Cossacks had lost their lives.
Seventy-eight Jews were killed, many women were ravished, and houses and
shops plundered.
Similar events happened and still happen daily by hundreds. Greater or
smaller pogroms with murder, rape, and plunder have thus taken place in
the districts of Warsaw, Random, Petrikow, and Kelts.
Only a few Russian Governors, such as Korff, in Warsaw; Kelepowski, in
Lublin, and the Governors of Wilna, Petrikow, and Grodno have spoken,
although too late, against the pogroms, but neither the Government nor
the Poles take these warnings seriously.
Eyewitnesses have told me about Jewish soldiers in the different
lazarets who have turned mad, not through the unavoidable horrors of the
war, but because of the pogroms they have witnessed in the towns they
have passed. They mistake those they have seen murdered for their own
relations; they imagine they see their own mothers, sisters, or beloved
ones in that plight. They are always raving about the same thing.
The pursuit of the Jews by the Russian-Polish anti-Semites is the more
invidious under these circumstances, as 300,000 Jewish soldiers, among
them many volunteers, are serving in the Russian Army, and as the
self-sacrifice of the army and the Red Cross hitherto has been
immeasurable. In the great congregations are special hospitals for
Russian soldiers--regardless of their creed--founded by Jews and with
Jewish money. Not a few Jewish soldiers have already won the highest
military distinctions, nay, a few of them have even received them from
Mr. Rennenkampf, the Commander in Chief himself, who used to be a
zealous anti-Semite, as the Russian Court on the whole is passionately
anti-Semitic. The manifesto from the Czar _To my dear Jewish subjects_,
which has been printed in the French newspapers, has never been anything
but a fabrication.
While the usual accusation against the Jews in Russian Poland was that
of sympathizing with the Russians--for which they have no special
reason--Mr. A. Warinski, who in Russia is classed among the black ones,
also called the true Russians--in "Politiken" has made the charge
against them that the German attempts of gaining the Poles "have only
had the effect desired on the Russian and Polish Jews, as these
elements, because of psychological relation with the Prussians, feel
disposed to place themselves at the side of Germany." This accusation
and the arguments for it might express the culmination. The Jew shall
and must be Judas. If it cannot be accomplished in one way the opposite
way is tried. Mr. Warinski does not say one word about how many Jews
have gone into the war as volunteers out of pure enthusiasm for Poland.
They have not been able to believe, as I for my part cannot believe,
that the last outcrop of nationalism in Russian Poland is more than a
temporary epidemic.
How could Russian Poles in the long run be unfaithful to the only powers
they have been able to appeal to, the only powers which took an
interest in them? How can they who are fighting for their liberty after
so many years' ill-treatment be willing to seize an opportunity to
ill-treat the only people who (to its misfortune) is in their power, the
only people who have suffered far more and twenty times as long as they
themselves; and the only ones who are too strong to be destroyed through
any ill-treatment? How can the Poles, who were at times ruined as a
State through the treachery of their own men, want to fling out the
accusation of treason against a tribe which has never betrayed itself
and which even in the deepest abasement never betrayed the only Slavic
tribe who in the Middle Ages gave a refuge to its children?
I suppose that the Poles will maintain against this appeal to them that
I, whom the Ruthenians could never bring to make any attack on them, am
now, because of my descent, speaking in favor of a matter, which is very
unpleasant to them. My personal descent has so little influenced my
proceedings and way of thinking that during the whole of my public life
I have been subject to continual attacks in national Jewish periodicals
and newspapers as the man who denied community of descent and supposed
community of faith.
This Spring during my stay in America I was continually attacked in the
American Jewish papers as the callous denier of the Jews. It was
nonsense, as is most of that which appears in print, but it proves at
least that it is not on behalf of my blood but on behalf of my mind that
I speak on this occasion. My sympathy is not with the Jews as Jews, but
as the suppressed and ill-treated.
I am the man who a generation ago wrote: "We love Poland, not in the
same way that we love Germany or France or England, but as we love
liberty. For what is to love Poland but to love liberty, to feel a deep
sympathy with misfortune and to admire courage and combative enthusiasm?
Poland is the symbol of all that which the supreme among mankind have
loved and for which they have fought."
These were my words and hitherto I have adhered to them.
Shall I have to feel ashamed of having written them, now that Poland's
future is being decided?