Part 7

“The freedom and outward exercise of all forms of worship shall be assured to all persons belonging to the Roumanian State, as well as to foreigners, and no hindrance shall be offered either to the hierarchical organizations of the different communions, or to their relations with their spiritual chiefs. The subjects and citizens of all the Powers, traders or others, shall be treated in Roumania, without distinction of creed, on a footing of perfect equality.”

Roumania having become an independent nation upon its recognition by these Powers, and upon the conditions set forth in the treaty of Berlin, it may be possible at the conclusion of the war that the violations of this treaty on the part of the Roumanian Government may be considered by the Powers whose honor is thus flaunted by an open violation of a treaty to which they solemnly became parties.

PALESTINE

The Jews of Palestine were among the earliest victims of the war. The greater part of them are dependent, wholly or in part, upon their co-religionists in Europe and America. With the outbreak of the war all the normal channels of communication were temporarily interrupted. Even had this not occurred the complete stagnation of trade in Europe would have made it impossible for the Jews, who were themselves in difficulties, to continue to afford material assistance.

The difficulties of the situation before Turkey became a belligerent are briefly set forth in the following extracts from a report, dated October 21, 1914, made by Mr. Maurice Wertheim, who was entrusted by Ambassador Morgenthau with the distribution of a fund of $50,000 contributed by American Jews.

The colonists themselves did not stand in actual need of assistance, as they are largely men of certain means and can help themselves. Furthermore, they are able to obtain their bank deposits in the following manner: the Anglo-Palestine Bank, with which most of the Jews in Palestine do business through their various branches in Jaffa, Jerusalem, Haifa, Safed, and Tiberias, etc., are registering or certifying for their depositors checks down to the smallest denominations. These checks are made payable to the drawer, endorsed by him, and the registration stamp of the bank is equivalent to a notice that the check will be cashed by the bank after the moratorium. With these checks the colonists are able to supply their immediate needs and harvest their crops.

The only pressing requirement of the colonists was to exchange some of these checks for gold in order to pay Government taxes and military exoneration fees, and this was arranged.

Further than this, the two great needs of the Jewish colonies, generally speaking, were: (a) to take care of Jewish laborers thrown out of employment by existing conditions, and (b) to secure new markets for their products to take the place of those that had been affected by the war.

There are about 2,500 Jewish laborers in the colonies. It is impossible to determine the exact percentage of unemployed amongst them, but even if we assume that only half of them are out of employment, it is easily seen that the amount of money we were able to divert to this purpose will not go very far. I might say here that in dividing the fund amongst the various districts in Palestine, we allotted to the colonies a somewhat larger proportion than their population justified.

The opening up of new markets for Palestinian agricultural products (oranges, wine and almonds, are the chief articles of export), is probably the most pressing need of the colonist movement in Palestine. Colonists feel that the chief market for the oranges which in the past has been England, will be greatly interfered with, and if they are not able to dispose successfully of their products, their entire future and very existence will be threatened.

The situation in the larger centers of population is very bad. Almost no currency enters the country and foreign checks that do find their way there are not realizable. This naturally places in great want those who depend on the “Chaluka” contributions and also the large class who depend on money sent by relatives. Furthermore, the industries of manufacture of antiques and souvenirs are completely stopped, owing to want of customers, and there is no money to conduct industries such as building, carpentering, tailoring and shoemaking, in which large numbers of Jews are employed. I found that the better class of Jews had themselves organized temporary relief, but their possibilities of assistance are rapidly drawing to a close. People who had, a few weeks before my visit, contributed to the maintenance of soup kitchens, stood in need themselves upon my arrival. One Jewish hospital had already closed.

The food situation in Palestine was precarious, for while prices had not risen to any large extent, yet the source of supply was limited. The introduction of wheat from the East of the Jordan had been prohibited by the Government (which restriction through the efforts of the Ambassador we have endeavored to have lifted). In order to guard against possible shortage of food and also to offer food at the cheapest possible price, our Committee will purchase from time to time as large quantities of food as it can, have bread baked itself, and will sell same at cost, or possibly a little less.

When Turkey entered the war as an ally of Germany and Austria-Hungary the situation of the 50,000 Russian Jews, who constituted half of the Jewish population of Palestine, became precarious. As nationals of an enemy country, they became liable to any restrictions or deprivation of rights which military necessity or international animosity might dictate. Thus these thousands of Jews were to suffer because they technically bore the nationality of a country which had virtually exiled them.

Upon the intervention of the German and American Embassies, however, the Ottoman Government made special concessions to these Jews. Several weeks’ time was allowed for those who so desired to become Turkish subjects by naturalization. Upon the expiration of this period, those who had not availed themselves of this offer were ordered to leave. About 600 were forcibly expelled and about 7,000 others left voluntarily. Most of the fugitives took refuge in Egypt, whence a number emigrated to the United States. In the spring of 1915, however, the Council of Ministers decided that the deportations be discontinued.

The difficulties of the economic situation of the Jewish population were further increased by Turkey’s entrance in the war. The Government confiscated most of the crops, and a great many of the settlers were either drafted into the army or compelled to buy immunity.

In March, 1915, the American Jewish Relief Committee and the Provisional Zionist Committee were enabled, through the courtesy of the United States Government, to send a food ship to Palestine. Although considerable portions of these supplies were diverted by the Turkish Government into non-Jewish channels, the food question was to a great extent solved, and conditions have been steadily improving. The present situation is briefly described in the following extracts from a report of the Provisional Executive Committee for General Zionist Affairs, dated August 10, 1915:

The _economic_ situation has also shown some improvement. The arrival of the relief food ship “Vulcan” has been partly responsible for this result. After considerable discussion with the government authorities, the following ratio of distribution has been agreed upon; 55 per cent. for the Jews, 26 per cent. for the Mohammedans, and 19 per cent. for the Christians.

The sending of the relief ship has had the important effect of lowering considerably the prices of food. The gathering of the harvest is now in full swing. The crops are satisfactory, especially in Galilee, which is principally a corn growing country. Our farms, in particular, have proved an important factor in the present crisis by supplying the colonies and cities with grain at reasonable prices. There is reason to believe that Palestine will now be able to hold its own in the matter of food, without depending on further shipments from America. There is still some shortage felt in sugar and in some less important groceries, of which small quantities may still be procured from Egypt.

The economic prospects would be considerably brighter were it not for the _locust_ which has swept over Palestine in large numbers. In corn-growing Galilee the danger is less palpable than elsewhere where plantations are the principal feature of agriculture. The fight against the plague has been taken up energetically and systematically.

The danger of a shortage in grain was another problem that needed careful consideration. While in normal times Palestine is in a position to export grain abroad, the outbreak of the war, owing to the heavy requisitions of the Government and the difficult communications with the North of Palestine and the Hauran, the granaries of the country, brought an alarming situation. To deal with it, a special committee was organized. A number of well-to-do Jews bought up quantities of grain and had them milled, offering the flour to the public at cheap prices. In this way the danger threatening the population from unscrupulous speculators was averted and the prices were kept down. Thus, when, shortly before Passover, the price of flour had soared up as high as 65 francs, the action of the committee had the effect of reducing it to 48. The committee also supplied public institutions with cheap flour.

As another means of relief, public stores were opened by the committee for the sale of provisions. In spite of the fact that some of the goods were requisitioned by the government, the stores served a good purpose, helping, among other things, to circulate the checks of the Anglo-Palestine Company.

From the very beginning of the crisis, the Palestina Amt made it a rule that no workingmen were to be dismissed, as such action might subject them to the danger of starvation. To supply all the workingmen with employment, public works were undertaken, such as road building, canalization and water supply. Several builders who had been forced to discontinue their building operations were assisted with loans to resume them.

Finally, a Public Loan Association was organized to meet the needs of those who had formerly received remittances from abroad, and, owing to the discontinuation of these remittances consequent upon the outbreak of the war, found themselves in pitiable circumstances. Some 900 persons took advantage of the facilities offered by the Association.

According to the statistics compiled by the Palestina Amt and embodied in a separate report, some 8,000 Jews left the country during the crisis. Of these, 4,000 were from Jaffa, 2,000 from Jerusalem, 1,500 from the Judean colonies and 500 from the colonies in Galilee. The estimated number of Jews at present in Palestine is 88,100, of whom 13,500 are to be found in the colonies.

The requisitions and the war contributions levied upon the Jews during the war, amount to 152,805 francs.

APPENDIX

I.

REPORT OF THE RUSSIAN-JEWISH RELIEF COMMITTEE

_NOTE.—The following report was issued by the (Russian) Jewish Committee for the Relief of Sufferers from the War, to its members in Russia, in May, 1915, since when conditions in Russia and Poland have steadily grown worse. The authoritativeness of the report is guaranteed by the personnel of the committee, numbering among its membership the foremost Jews of Russia, among whom may be named: Baron A. de Gunzberg, H. Sliosberg, M. Ginsburg and B. Kamenka, chairman of the Executive Committee; M. A. Warschavsky, chairman of the Organizing Committee; and D. Feinberg, L. Bramson and M. Kreinin, Secretaries._

=Terrible disaster has befallen the Jewish population of the Pale of Settlement and of Poland. Hunger and thirst and disease and death, and moral sufferings beyond the power of human pen to describe are the lot of hundred thousands of Jewish men, women and children whom the war has driven from their homes, whose houses and hearths have been plundered and destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of our unfortunate brethren are staring in hopeless despair into a future that seems to spell nothing but new tears and sufferings....=

According to the data collected by the General Polish Relief Committee, =in Poland, alone there are at least 200 towns and about 9,000 townlets and villages that have suffered from the war, the material damage amounting to the gigantic figure of over a milliard roubles ($500,000,000).= Besides the terrible losses sustained by the rural population, the whole industrial production, amounting to nearly 800 million roubles a year, has been ruined. About three million townspeople are destitute, and of these three million at least half, i. e., 1,500,000, are Jews. To this number of unfortunate victims we have to add the population of the provinces of Kovno and Grodno in the northwestern region of the Pale, the provinces of Bessarabia, Podolia and Volynia in the southern and southwestern regions. These provinces, bordering upon Germany and Austria, have a Jewish population of at least 500,000 people. =Thus the total number of Jews that have, in one way or another, suffered immediately from the conditions of warfare equals over two million people, representing one-third, of the total Jewish population of Russia.=

Besides, there are hundred thousands of destitute Jews in Galicia (within Russian occupation) looking forward to relief from this country.

To the utter ruin of their material welfare there are added the unspeakable sufferings that the population of the war area has to endure. In the most favorable of cases the inhabitants of the border places escape from the zone of fire, taking refuge in the inner parts of the country; while a large proportion of those unfortunate Jewish families have remained in the ruined places, facing the phantoms of starvation and disease that gather a rich harvest among them.

Such is the devotion and love of the Jews to their native places, to their own corner, that they prefer to stay in the devastated towns and townlets and villages, if only permitted to do so. And those who have fled from their homes take the first opportunity of returning, heedless of the terrible disasters lying in store for them. A vivid example, typical of many other instances, is given by the Jews in the villages of Vissiltsy, District Busak, province Kielce. Our delegate found the place razed by hostile shells. The population—mostly Jews—for over three months had been huddling together in cellars, where they had taken refuge. They were not to leave their shelter by day; no food was to be cooked, no fire lighted at night—such were the stringent orders from military quarters. A humane military chief permitted them to crawl out of their dingy holes by night and feed out of the soldiers’ cauldron. But soon another chief took his place and the unfortunate Jews were left to starve in their cellars. =Those that succumbed were buried in holes that the survivors dug for them in the very same cellars....=

Infinitely tragic too is the fate of those Jews who, by rigorous orders of the military authorities at a notice of from three to twenty-four hours are expelled from whole provinces of Poland, their presence near the area of hostilities being considered “a danger to the safety of the Russian arms.” Leaving their homes and belongings, the fruit of years of hard toil, an open prey, the unfortunate exiles by the thousands wend their weary way to towns and villages, thirty or more miles distant, that have not yet come within the decrees of the military authorities. Old men, sick women, clasping little children in their arms, carrying bundles with some scanty belongings that they had snatched up in haste, fill the silent roads with the sound of their moans and sobs. Here an old man breaks down, breathing his last sigh in the middle of the road. There a woman kneels by the roadside staring in despair too deep for tears, at the child that lies dead in her arms.... Many are those who succumb on their way; indescribable are the sufferings of those who survive. Scarcely have they found shelter in a hospitable town or townlet when—alas! too frequently—the prohibition of the authorities is a few days later extended also to these places, and again the Jewish population must start upon its weary pilgrimage....

The total number of refugees from the war zone and of exiles can scarcely be calculated with precision because large numbers have made their way to numerous small townlets throughout the Pale, thus frustrating systematic registration, while, at the same time, the progress of the war tends to swell the host of refugees daily.

Some idea of their number is given by the following approximate figures:

Warsaw 75,000 people Radom 2,000 people Vilna 12,000 people Gussiatin 1,000 people Kielce 3,000 people Shakvi (Suvalki) 1,500 people[56] Konsk 4,000 people Lomzha 5,000 people Minsk 2,000 people Khmelnik Prassnysh 1,500 people (Prov. Kielce) 1,500 people

And yet these figures only show the number of refugees who have applied for assistance; hundreds of thousands of others are meanwhile living upon their savings and do not come under the registration. But they also will be at the end of their scant resources one of these days and will join the ranks of the destitute.... Thus, for the above-named places and for many other dozens of towns and townlets the number of refugees within their walls may be doubled without fear of exaggeration.

While numerous towns and townlets have, in generous hospitality, opened their gates to the unfortunate refugees and exiles from the war area, the native Jewish population of these places is itself suffering a severe economic crisis, an acute attack of unemployment, which as a matter of fact, is further intensified by the influx of refugees eager to offer their services, for the smallest remuneration. Thus poverty and misery are growing in these places too, the burden of relief becoming too heavy for the local community to bear.

We have already stated that the industrial life of Poland and in a large part of the Pale has been laid waste as a consequence of the war. Hundreds of factories have been destroyed, hundreds others have had to stop work for want of capital, raw material, fuel and—first and foremost—for want of a market for their articles of production. Many thousands of workmen who were formerly employed by these factories have remained without bread.

Whole branches of trade have been shattered, burying the welfare of the artisans under their ruins. The tailors, weavers, bootmakers, builders, trades, normally sustaining a large percentage of Jews in Poland and in the Pale, are dead; the artisans are left to starve, unless something can be done to save them.

Commercial life also has been laid waste. The merchants—great and small—are ruined; hundreds of merchant’s clerks are thrown out of work and have to apply to public charity.

There is yet another class of sufferers whose wants and needs have to be attended to. About 300,000 Jews are fighting in the ranks of the Russian army. Their mothers, wives and children are receiving but scanty support (about 2 roubles a head) from the Government. About half of them, however, are not getting any Government aid at all, their marriages, although legally solemnized, not having been entered in the official marriage registers. (It is a well known fact that the uneducated Jews of Poland and in the Pale frequently omit to have their marriages registered, failing to realize the full importance of this formality.) Rent and food having become considerably dearer with the outbreak of the war, the soldiers’ families often suffer acute want, which necessitates immediate help lest these people become charges on their community. Many of the soldiers will never return from the battlefields; others will come back as cripples, unfit to support themselves or their families. They will all want support of some kind or another....

It is a boundless sea of troubles that has to be coped with and the full weight of the task is falling upon Jewish shoulders. The gulf dividing the bulk of Russian society from Jewish life and needs and sorrows has not been bridged over by the horrors of war. Though now and again a voice of sympathy is heard from Russian quarters, here and there a Russian hand is extended to feed a starving Jewish child, both moral and material assistance offered by non-Jews to our stricken people is but infinitesimal as compared with the magnitude of the distress.

Nor do we now wish to dwell specifically on Polish-Jewish relations, it being too well known to what extent they have become pointed during the recent months, bearing in their train infinite, yea, unbearable sufferings for our Jewish brethren.

In order to unite the efforts of Jewish society towards the relief of the Jewish sufferers from the war, at the very outbreak of the European conflagration there was formed at Petrograd a General Jewish Relief Committee, with the sanction of the Russian authorities, to act as a center for the collection and distribution of funds to the destitute and needy Jews. At the very beginning of its activity the General Committee issued an appeal to the Jewish public calling it to its duty to the unfortunate sufferers, just as the Jewish soldiers fighting and distinguishing themselves in the ranks of the Russian army are doing their duty by their mother country.

Jewish society at large has shown its usual responsiveness and material support has been forthcoming in as large a measure as individual means and circumstances would permit.

Committees, similar to the General Committee, working on the same lines and in close unity with it have since been organized in prominent centers of the stricken area and outside of it—e. g., in Warsaw, Moscow, Kiev, Odessa, Kharkov, and in addition the existing Jewish organizations, such as the Central Committee of the Jewish Colonization Association, the Society for the Promotion of Education in Russia, the Jewish Health Society, the Society for the Promotion of Trade and Industry among Russian Jews, etc., etc., are taking active part in the relief work. Representatives of the various committees and societies working in the war zone and outside it meet periodically in order to discuss new measures and schemes for the alleviation of the terrible distress.

The conditions and extent of distress in towns, townlets and villages of Poland and of the Pale are being ascertained through delegates of the General Relief Committee working actively and energetically towards the organization of various forms of relief in the several districts. In a number of places the local Jewish community has readily joined in the relief work, doing its utmost to meet the demand for food, shelter, clothing; the local philanthropic and communal Jewish institutions thus becoming valuable agencies of the General Relief Committee. On the whole, however—particularly as far as Poland is concerned:—=the organization of assistance to the war sufferers is meeting with endless difficulties, due largely to the fact that the suffering population is in such a state of frantic terror, that many Jews do not even dream of applying to anyone for assistance. In many instances the first terror has given way to complete apathy.=