The True Story of Anti-Semitic Persecution in Russia BY M I C H A E L   D A V I T T AUTHOR OF “LEAVES FROM A PRISON DIARY,” “LIFE AND PROGRESS IN AUSTRALASIA,” “THE BOER FIGHT FOR FREEDOM,” ETC. SPECIAL EDITION Philadelphia THE JEWISH PUBLICATION SOCIETY OF AMERICA NEW YORK A. S. BARNES & CO. 1903 Copyright , 1903, By A. S. BARNES & CO., Published, October....

It is deemed necessary, for the twofold aim of this book,—to arouse public feeling against a murder-making legend, and to put forward a plea for the objects of the Zionist movement,—to tell the story of the Russian Jew, apropos of recent massacres. This task could only be partially done in my despatches from Kishineff to Mr. William R. Hearst’s American papers. Moreover, all the despatches were not published, for reasons which govern the exigencies of journals that are concerned much more with a

T HE time when Jews first settled in Russia is a subject of mere historical conjecture. Some accounts assert that colonies of the race were founded in the country bordering on the Black Sea several centuries before the Christian era. All the probabilities favour this view. Both before and after their dispersion by the Romans, a people so intelligent and resourceful as the Hebrews would learn of the fruitful regions watered by the four great rivers which flow into the southern sea-boundaries of t

G RADUALLY the provinces along the western frontier, stretching south from Riga to the territories bordering on the Black Sea, became marked off as a Pale of Settlement. Within these regions all the Jews of the Empire were to be domiciled; saving merchants, bankers, scientists, and eminent Hebrews whose wealth or accomplishments would outweigh in the selfish plans of domestic government the anti-Semitic feeling which appealed to the despotic expediency of exceptional laws. Inside this economic S

P RINCE DEMIDOFF SAN DONATO was a member of the Pahlen Commission, and in his admirable work “ La Question Juive en Russie ” (published at Bruxelles, 1884,) he gives, in his own proposed solution of the problem of the Russian Jew, the broad and liberal measures which forced themselves upon the Commission as an essential basis for a settlement of the question on just and rational lines. He recommended the three following proposals: “(1) For the re-establishment of more healthy relations between t

M . DE PLEHVE and the Tsar can accomplish one good and blessed work, if so minded, without altering a single anti-Semitic Russian law. The Emperor can destroy, in Russia, the atrocious legend about the annual killing of Christian children by Jews as an alleged part of the Blood Atonement in Hebrew Paschal rites. In this humane and Christian task he is entitled to the co-operation of the Emperor of Austria, the King of Roumania, and the heads of other Balkan States, where this story of ritual mur

T HE absolute truth about the plan and purpose of the massacres at Kishineff in April may be difficult to determine amidst the conflicting accounts of Russian officials, and of Jewish witnesses of what actually occurred. The wronged and the wrongers seldom or ever agree as to disputed facts. But there can be no doubt upon any mind conversant with the state of Russian feeling, and the trend of Russia’s domestic policy, as to the intolerable position of the Hebrew subjects of the Tsar. No facts ar

N O truer general statement of the case of the Russian Jew, or nobler appeal to enlightened humanity in his behalf, has been made in our time than by Cardinal Manning, in a letter addressed to a London meeting in December, 1890. Every word of this superbly Christian epistle is as true and as applicable to-day as it was thirteen years ago, and I quote the concluding sentences of it here as being both a powerful argument in behalf of an oppressed people, and as a testimony to the liberty-loving sp

K ISHINEFF is the capital of Bessarabia, the seat of its government, and the chief centre of its trading industry. It has a present population of 130,000, of a mixed ethnological community. The Russians number about 8000; the Moldavians, 50,000; the Jews, 50,000, with Bulgarians, Serbs, Greeks, Macedonians, and Germans accounting for the balance. In the time of the Romans, Bessarabia formed part of the Imperial colony known as Dacia, and the Moldavian peasantry, who form the greater part of its

T O arrive at definite conclusions as to the immediate and the contributory causes of the sanguinary outrages perpetrated upon the Jews of Kishineff on the 19th and 20th of April, was a tedious and painful process, beset with innumerable difficulties. To try to find the truth amidst a mass of conflicting testimony, where murder and rape and rapine are charged against one side, and where the actual perpetrators of these deeds are supposed to be all in prison awaiting some form of trial, would be

T HE official explanation from the Russian Government was made by M. de Plehve, Russian Minister of the Interior, to Mr. Arnold White. The following is the full text of the document, which was sent to Mr. White in the English language, and published in The Times , June 13, 1903: “Russia’s agricultural and labour population is ill at ease, living common life with Jewish inhabitants of wide-developed commercial instinct. Hence constant antagonism, material racial religious character coming to verg

I T will be observed that M. de Plehve ignores altogether the part played by the Bessarabetz in the period which led up to the massacres. He makes mention of the fact that he sent the chief Director of Police to investigate the origin of the assassinations and the conduct of the officials. But he omits all mention of the petition presented to the Director-General Lopoukhine, in behalf of the relations of victims, in which the responsibility of this paper was clearly demonstrated in no less than

(I) Petition addressed by the Jews of Kishineff to the Director-General of the Police Department sent from St. Petersburg by M. de Plehve to investigate the causes of the massacres. To His Excellency the Director of the Police Department : We, the numerous Jewish inhabitants of the town of Kishineff, having suffered from an inhuman and sanguinary outburst which resulted in unprecedented plundering on the part of an unrestrained mob on the 6th and 7th (19th and 20th) of April, perceive in the arr

T HERE is another anti-Semite organ edited by Pavolachi Kroushevan. It is named the Znamya , or Standard . Though published in St. Petersburg, it has a large sale in Bessarabia. Both the Bessarabetz and the Znamya have studiously refrained from alluding to the indignation excited in Western Europe and in the United States over the consequences of their savage appeals to fanatical mobs. No other papers being read in Kishineff by the anti-Jewish section of the populace, these people remain unaffec

Washington , June 15.—Through their representative association, B’nai B’rith, the Jews of America to-day laid their case before President Roosevelt and Secretary Hay, and they are content to abide by whatever the Executive decides is best for them. A statement of the proceedings given out at the White House concerning the conference consisted of a memorandum submitted by the B’nai B’rith on the recent Kishineff massacre, a tentative draft of a petition to the Tsar, which it is desired this Gover

The following is the translation of a letter from Count Leo Tolstoy to a Jew who had asked his opinion concerning the outrages in Kishineff: “I have received your letter. I had already received several similar letters. All the writers request me, as you do, to express my opinion on the events at Kishineff. It seems to me that these appeals are based on a misunderstanding. My correspondents supposed that my words carried weight, and I am therefore begged to express my opinion on an event so impor

Maxime Gorky, the Russian novelist, wrote the following letter to the Kishineff Relief Committee: “Russia has been disgraced more and more frequently of recent years by dark deeds, but the most disgraceful of all is the horrible Jewish massacre at Kishineff, which has awakened our horror, shame, and indignation. People who regard themselves as Christians, who claim to believe in God’s mercy and sympathy, these people, on the day consecrated to the resurrection of their God from the dead, occupy

A Reuter’s telegram from St. Petersburg dated the 13th of June, stated: “The famous Orthodox priest, Father John of Kronstadt, whose fiery condemnation of the Kishineff massacre was published in a Liberal newspaper of St. Petersburg, has published the following statement in the anti-Semitic journal Znamya , the new St. Petersburg organ of M. Kroushevan, formerly editor of the Bessarabetz : “To my beloved brethren of Christ in Kishineff: From the newspaper accounts that followed those first publi

Simon of Trent, from an article of Dr. Bloch in the Oesterreichische Wochenschrift , No. 42, October the 20th, 1899. (Freely translated.) The case of the alleged ritual murder of the child Simon of Trent is the most important example of its kind, and is therefore frequently quoted by anti-Semites. I have given the history of the case in the Oesterreichische Wochenschrift . The Vienna Vaterland of the 17th October, and Pastor Deckert in the Deutsches Volksblatt discuss my articles, but carefully