Part 4

“On the night of April 28th, in Kuzhi, northwest of Shavli, the Germans attacked a detachment of one of our infantry regiments resting there. This disclosed the shockingly treacherous conduct of a part of the population—especially the Jewish part—towards our troops. The Jews had concealed German soldiers in their cellars before our troops arrived, and at a signal they set fire to Kuzhi on all sides. The Germans, leaping out of the cellars, rushed to the house which our regimental commander was occupying. At the same time two of the battalions, supported by cavalry, attacked our outposts and captured the village. The house in which the commander had his headquarters soon fell in. Colonel Vavilov ordered that the regimental colors be burned, and, refusing to surrender to the Germans, was killed. Our reinforcements then arrived, drove the Germans out of Kuzhi at the point of the bayonet, and saved the remnants of the burning standard. All the local inhabitants who had taken part in this terrible affair were brought before a court-martial and the ringleaders will be sent to Siberia. This sad incident again demonstrates the need of keeping constant guard, particularly over all those Jewish towns which have at any time been held by the enemy.”

This story, in all its circumstantial details, was spread broadcast throughout the Empire, in all the official and semi-official organs of the government, on the bulletin boards, wherever the Russian populace congregates. By military order it was brought to the attention of every man in the army, down to the last private. Country editors were ordered to reprint the story under threat of prosecution. Not a hamlet in all Russia but shuddered at the monstrous treachery of the Jews. In Tashkent the clergy offered a prayer in the Cathedral, petitioning God to deliver the Russian army from the machinations of Jewish traitors. Even the Liberals, usually sympathetic toward the Jews, were silent, as no defense was possible in so black a case.

Then it occurred to someone to make an investigation. Three deputies of the Duma went to the spot in person and discovered that =in the entire village of Kuzhi there were only six Jewish families—all but one living in miserable huts without cellar space; that the one cellar in a Jewish house was only nine by seven and too low for a man to stand upright in; that it could not possibly hide enough German soldiers to attack, much less annihilate, a Russian detachment; that the few Jews of the town had left it, with the permission of the military authorities, on April 27th, the day before the town had been attacked by the Germans, and were known to have spent the night of April 27–28 at another village, Minstok; and, finally, that no Jews had been tried, convicted or executed at Kuzhi; in brief, that the story was, from beginning to end, an absolute fabrication.=

This Kuzhi story was branded as a lie by the Jewish Deputy Friedman in the Duma on July 19 (August 1), 1915. He was supported by the non-Jewish Deputy Kerensky, who denounced the fabrication in these words:

=“I declare now from this rostrum that I personally went to the town of Kuzhi to verify the accusation that the Jewish population of Kuzhi had committed a treacherous assault on the Russian army, and I feel it my duty to reiterate that this is but an ignominious slander. There was no such case, and under local conditions there could be none.”=

But the refutation of the lie was not spread throughout Russia. It has been consistently suppressed by the military censor, and to this day the great majority of the Russian people, in the absence of disproof, fully believe the story.

The Shavli Case

Another spy story widely circulated in the anti-Semitic press was that the Jews of Shavli had been expelled from Kurland because they were detected in the act of leading the German troops on to Shavli. This also was printed in all the military and semi-official newspapers of Russia and from there reprinted in the general press. The newspaper “Dehn” pointed out the absurdity of this and similar charges:[28]

“Accepting the story as it stands, without demanding the names of the Jews found guilty, or any other details, let us simply examine the map. Shavli is not in Kurland at all. It is in the province of Kovno, and is 50 versts from the nearest point in Kurland, and more than 50 versts from the nearest point inhabitated by Jews. The Germans, we know, moved to Shavli, not through Kurland, but from the opposite direction. =The charge, if true, would therefore mean that the Jews of Kurland went 100 versts out of their way in an entirely strange territory in order to commit treason by communicating with Germans. This is obvious nonsense. Nor is it less obvious that this fiction has been manufactured out of whole cloth.= And this is how it was manufactured: Reports reached the newspapers that the Jews of Kurland were being expelled. The anti-Semitic papers at once argued that if the Jews were being expelled they must have committed some treason, and since the line of the German advance was known to be in the general direction of Shavli, =and since these people were too lazy to consult the map, they promptly decided that the expulsion must have been due to the fact that the Jews of Kurland had guided the Germans to Shavli.”=

And so this preposterous story was started on its way.

Other Spy Stories

No story was too absurd to be given credibility and systematic circulation. It was reported, and seriously believed, that at a place unnamed and a time unknown some Jew had enclosed a million and half roubles in a coffin and shipped the coffin to Germany. The chief Rabbi and the Jewish community of Warsaw telegraphed to the “Novoe Vremya” and several other leading papers, protesting against this monstrous slander against the Jews at a time when their sons were shedding their blood freely on the battlefields. The “Novoe Vremya” declined to publish the telegram.[29]

The Jewish community of Petrograd appealed to the Grand Duke Nicholas, then Commander-in-Chief of the Russian armies, in these words:

“The entire Jewish people would cast out, with scorn and indignation, those base criminals who, forgetting duty and conscience, would, in this year of universal sacrifice, break their sacred vows of loyalty to the fatherland. Such treachery is alien to our faith and was never known to exist among Jews to any greater extent than among other peoples. =And never yet, in the course of the centuries, no matter to what persecutions the Jews, under the influence of prejudice created by their devotion to their ancient faith and customs, may have been subjected, has any government denounced ALL of its subjects as traitors to their country. This is the first time in all history that such an attitude has been assumed by any government toward the Jews. At the very time that our sons are fighting in the ranks of the Russian army for the honor and glory of Russia, we, their fathers, are held responsible for the acts of a few criminals and are being persecuted for their vile deeds, aimed at the betrayal of our own sons. Never has any man or any people been subjected to torment greater than this, to humiliation less bearable or more offensive to honor or self-respect....= Your Imperial Highness! In this sad hour of trial we long to implant in our people faith in a brighter future, we long to preserve that tie of loyalty towards our common country which is so essential for the welfare of all the peoples inhabiting Russia, and which was demonstrated so powerfully when the insolent enemy first threw down the gauntlet to Russia. We do not wish to admit discord, despair and sorrow where should reign only unity, harmony, hope. =And we dare to appeal to your Imperial Highness in the hope that measures insulting to us will cease to be applied, that the stamp of outcast be removed from our faces and that we may be permitted, as loyal sons of our country, freed from all suspicion, to use our whole strength in the struggle with the common enemy.”=

No reply was received to this appeal; on the contrary, the policy of fastening upon the Jews all the blame for Russian defeats was carried out consistently by the military machine. The “Russki Invalid,” the official journal of the War Department, in the spring of 1915, definitely accused the Jews of disloyalty to the State and of sympathy for Germany, and openly attributed Russian disaster to this cause.[30]

Military orders like the following were common:

ORDER No. 89.

ISSUED TO THE SOLDIERS OF THE FORTIFIED REGION, FORTRESS NOVOGEORGIEVSK, NOV. 27, 1914.

“The German newspapers print articles declaring that among the Russian Jews the Germans find reliable allies who, besides supplying them with food, are often the best and unpaid spies, ready to enter any service injurious to the cause of Russia, and that in German victory the Jews see their salvation from Imperial oppression and Polish persecution. Similar information continues to come in from the army.

In order to protect the army from the harmful activities of the Jewish population, the Commander-in-Chief has ordered that the forces of occupation take hostages from among the Jewish population, warning the inhabitants that in case of treacherous activities on the part of any one of the local inhabitants not only during the period of our occupation of a given inhabited point, but also after our leaving it, the hostages will be executed, which order is to be carried out in case of necessity.

Upon occupation of inhabited points, careful searches are to be made to find out whether there are any arrangements for wireless telegraphy, signaling, pigeon stations, underground telegraphs, and so forth, and the full penalty of the law is to be meted out to anyone connected with this.

Reference: Telegram by General Oranovsky of this year under No. 3432. Signed, Chief of the Fortified Region.

General of the Cavalry, BOBYR.”

This order was issued from the press at six o’clock in the evening, December 2, 1914, and immediately proved profitable to the dregs of the Russian soldiery, as was demonstrated at a court martial held in Lomza, where it was proven that three members of a signal corps had “planted” a telephone in the motion picture theater of a Jew named Eisenbiegel, and had then arrested him and demanded 5,000 roubles blackmail. In the course of the trial it developed that =one of the men was responsible for the hanging of no less than seventeen innocent Jews as spies solely because they were unable or unwilling to pay the blackmail demanded by him.=[31]

Even the loyalty of Jewish soldiers was officially questioned. Order No. 1193 of the General Staff, dated April 27–May 10, 1915, commands all the troops “To watch the Jewish soldiers—especially their readiness to surrender as prisoners—and in general, their entire conduct.”

But the publication and circulation of orders like these reacted disastrously upon the Russian arms. By branding the entire Jewish population as traitorous the military authorities encouraged the Poles to fabricate new slanders, the spread of which only served to heighten the distrust of the populations and to make the fighting area of Poland a quagmire for the Russian armies. The troops did not know whom to trust or distrust. Instead of fighting on friendly ground, welcomed and supported by the moral and economic resources of the civilian population, the Russians fought on ground undermined by hatred, dissension and distrust.

When they began to realize this state of affairs some of the Russian commanders made desperate efforts to check the spy mania.

General P. Kurlov issued the following order in the Baltic provinces on February 25, 1915:

ORDER No. 27

“Of late, more and more anonymous denunciations and reports concerning crimes and actions closely connected with the peculiar conditions of war times are coming in in the provinces given over to my supervision. Such reports not only lack confirmation in most cases, but investigations prove that they are caused in the majority of cases not by a patriotic desire to help the military authorities, but by personal reasons of revenge, not only not admissible in war time, but also particularly criminal. By distracting the attention of officials from their necessary duties, these reports promote disorder and excitement among the local population.

“I have asked the various Governors to order the police officials under their supervision not to institute any investigations on the basis of anonymous denunciations except in extraordinary cases (Article 300 of the Criminal Code), but to forward these denunciations to me and wait for orders.

“In the case of signed denunciations and reports, the police officials must first of all question the denunciator, warning him of the consequence of a false denunciation, and if any signs of crime should be established in the courses of the examination, he should be dealt with according to Articles 250 to 261 of the Criminal Code, or the Governors should impose penalties in their administrative capacity. I order the police officials to strictly follow Article 254 of the Code when making an investigation. Witnesses found to bear false reports shall be subjected to criminal prosecution according to Article 940 of the Code.

“In view of the particularly criminal character of false denunciations in war time, I shall apply the most rigorous measures to those found guilty of this offense.

“I have asked the Governors to make this order public to all.”[32]

SUPPRESSION OF YIDDISH PRESS AND SPEECH

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.

WHOLESALE EXPULSIONS

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.

Cruelty of Officials

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.=