A statement bearing on the situation of the Russian Jews under the
Bolshevist régime was issued by the celebrated Russian jurist and
former Senator, Oscar Grusenberg, and made public on June 10. The
document follows:
Those who think that the Jews are at present ruling Russia are
profoundly mistaken. The new laws, or rather administrative
regulations, which the Bolsheviki have promulgated, have hurt the
Jewish population more than other citizens, for the Bolshevist
legislation has ruined the commerce and industry of the country.
After the Bolshevist insurrection we lived through events similar
to those of October, 1905. In October, 1917, pogroms occurred in
200 Jewish towns and hamlets.
The tragedy of the Jews in Russia is heart-breaking. The united
Russian Jewry, counting upward of 6,000,000, exists no longer.
With the secession of the Ukraine, Lithuania, and Poland, the
number of Jews in Russia is reduced to a million and a half. The
situation of the Jews in the Ukraine, and particularly in Poland
and Lithuania, under German domination, is very sad. The Jews have
lost in this war, in killed and wounded, the majority of their
youth. A great many Jewish soldiers are pining in prison camps,
others are locked up in jails on slanderous charges of treason.
The Jews are almost the only nationality in Russia which, by every
means available, is seeking to arrest the process of splitting
up the Russian Empire, and which works for the reunion of the
portions that have seceded.
Hundreds of thousands of Russian Jews were ruined at the moment
when the Bolsheviki took over the Governmental power. The
population visited its wrath on the Jews, because some of the
Bolshevist leaders are or are said to be Jews. But the Russian
Empire has been demoralized, not by the Jews, but by the old
régime. Russia lacks great leaders with heroic characters, who
know how to act in an hour of distress. This made possible the
triumph of men like Lenine and Trotzky.
The Jewish leaders of the Bolsheviki are themselves a product of
the old régime. Czarism persecuted and exiled them. Education they
were forced to seek abroad, and there, in foreign lands, they
lost all connection with and love for Judaism and Russia. Every
country is to them but a railroad station. It is these former Jews
and present Bolshevists that are responsible for the appalling
misery which has befallen the Russian Jews.