THE AMERICAN JEWISH COMMITTEE NEW YORK 1916 THE AMERICAN JEWISH COMMITTEE Officers Executive Committee OFFICE: 356 Second Avenue, New York City THE JEWS IN THE EASTERN WAR ZONE...

Of all the people that have suffered deeply from the present war, none have borne a greater burden than the Jews—in physical and economic loss, in moral and spiritual torment. Jews are today fighting each other in all the armies of Europe. Russia alone has over 350,000 Jewish soldiers; Austria has over 50,000; altogether there are probably one-half million Jews in the ranks of the fighting armies. The Jews are bearing the brunt of the war’s burdens, not only on the field of battle, where they su

4. Protests and manifestoes of non-Jewish organizations, parties and leaders against the anti-Jewish policy of the government. These protests have been made publicly and have passed unchallenged by the Russian Government. In brief, the present report is based exclusively upon evidence furnished by the Russian government itself, officially in its own press, or countenanced by reason of the revision applied, through its military and civil censorship, to the opposition press, or in public speeches

Russia acquired the great bulk of her Jewish population through the partitions of Poland, from 1773 to 1795. Strongly medieval in outlook and organization as Russia was at that time, she treated the Jews with the exceptional harshness which the medieval principle and policy sanctioned and required. By confining them to those provinces where they happened to live at the time of the partitions, she created a Ghetto greater than any known to the Middle Ages; and by imposing restrictions upon the ri

At the beginning of the war the number of Jews in the Russian Empire was estimated at six million or more, comprising fully half of the total Jewish population of the world. Ninety-five per cent. of these six million people were confined by law to a limited area of Russia, known as the Pale of Settlement, consisting of the fifteen Governments of Western and Southwestern Russia, and the ten Governments of Poland, much of which territory is now under the German occupation. In reality, however, res

It was against this background of ever-spreading persecution and misery that the great war broke upon the Jews. They accepted it as loyal Russian citizens, and not without hope that it might lead to some improvement in their own conditions. The Kehillas (communities) of Petrograd, Odessa and other cities officially sent large sums in gold for the reservists, established hospitals for the use of the wounded without distinction of race or creed, held great patriotic demonstrations in the synagogue

The conflict between the Poles and Jews dates back to the earliest period of Jewish life in Poland. In its early stages it was purely religious. The Church Synod of 1542 declared that: “Whereas the Church tolerates the Jews for the sole purpose of reminding us of the torments of the Savior, their number must not increase under any circumstances.” [15] The Synod of 1733 reiterated this gospel of hate by declaring that the reason for the existence of the Jews is: “That they might remind us of the

When the fighting armies overran Poland, the Poles saw their chance and seized it. The dream of a free Poland had never been absent from their minds. When the world catastrophe came the Poles saw in it not only an opportunity to regain their land, that had been dismembered more than a century before, but also an opportunity to avenge themselves on the hated Jews. Just as the Russians had always played the Poles against the Jews, so now the Poles hoped to play Russian, German, Austrian and Jew ag

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 ex

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 spectacula

3. That the expelled were driven by agents of the police in Vilikomir, Zhagory and Shadov into freight cars inadequate for the accommodation of one-tenth of them, and that the remainder, including children, aged men and women, and invalids were compelled to follow afoot? 4. That the officers of the local governments took no steps to check the repeated robberies by the local population of the property left by the exiles? 5. That the officers of the Gendarmerie of Homel prohibited the supplying of

1. No person of Jewish nationality may enter Galicia. 2. No persons of Jewish nationality may pass from one district of Galicia into another. 3. Infractions of this decree will be punished by a fine of three thousand roubles ($1,500) or by three months’ imprison­ment.” [52] The spirit of these documents, communicated to the troops, produced a series of outrages against the Jewish population more horrible even than any perpetrated in Russia. As each town was invaded by the Russians the troops fir

The future of Roumania is of interest to the Jews for two especial reasons: first, because the Jews of Roumania are deprived of their rights as citizens in contravention of a solemn promise made by Roumania to the Great Powers at the Berlin Congress in 1878; secondly, because it will no doubt be Roumania’s aim to win back from Austria-Hungary certain large territories, including Transylvania and Bukowina, in which the bulk of the population is of Roumanian descent, thus, if successful, incidenta

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 situati

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

(August 2, 1915) (Translated from Petrograd “Retch,” of August 3, 1915, and published in the New York “Times,” September 23, 1915) In spite of their oppressed condition, in spite of their status of outlawry, the Jews have risen to the exalted mood of the nation and in the course of the last year have participated in the war in a noteworthy manner. They fell short of the others in no respect. They mobilized their entire enrollment, but, indeed, with this difference, that they have also sent their

August 22 (September 4), 1915 (Translation from “Retch,” No. 231, August 23 (September 5), 1915) Baron Rosen began with the statement that while the question of supplies for the army and navy was paramount, there was nevertheless another side to it, and that was the question of the domestic policy of the Empire. He reminded his hearers that in May, 1913, he had warned the Council of the Empire of the catastrophe imminent in Europe, but that his statement had been met with ridicule and skepticism