Footnotes
1 A moving description of the
sufferings of these Jews in South Arabia, settled there for over two thousand
years, is given in a pamphlet, The Yemenite Jews, by Joshua Feldmann
(Speaight & Sons, 1913), who describes their recent emigration to Palestine.
2 The Legal Sufferings
of the Jews in Russia, edited by Lucien Wolf, p.31 (T. Fisher Unwin,
1912). This is the latest and best survey of the Jewish disabilities in
Russia, and forms the principal authority for the present account.
3 In 1911, Mr. Oscar Straus,
then United States Ambassador in Constantinople, wished to visit Russia,
but as the requisite document was worded in an unusual manner he abandoned
the projected journey. Furthermore, a British officer, ordered by his War
Office to the Far East, was refused permission to travel by the Siberian
Railway because he was a Jew (Legal Sufferings of the Jews in Russia,
p. 73). In November 1913, Dr. Georg Brandes was also refused permission
to visit Russia for a lecturing engagement.
4 The technical term for
such "drives" is oblava.
5 "In Wilna the son of the
advocate Schmerling has committed suicide by throwing himself out of the
window of the third story because, after waiting for two years, he was
refused admission to the University by reason of the percentage norm" (Hilfsverein
Report, 1911, p.123). Since last February, by an order of M. Kasso,
the Minister of Instruction, the admission of Jews to Universities must
be decided by lots, a cunning device for depriving them of all incentive.
6 The following typical episode
is related in the Vossische Zeitung of 30th March 1913: "In the
year 1908 the eleven-year-old son of a Jew named Manela, who removed from
Kielce to Lodz, was summoned by the Military commission to join the army.
The little recruit naturally did not respond. Some time after, the father,
to his great surprise, was sentenced to a fine of 300 roubles. As the matter
had become serious Manela went with his son to Kielce and convinced the
Military Commission by ocular evidence that the boy was really only eleven
years old. But the Military Commission had no power to absolve him of the
fine and advised him to appeal to the District Court, a step which he was
unable to take owing to the expense. Thereupon his furniture was seized
and sold by auction, and as this did not yield sufficient money the new
furniture that he obtained was overtaken by a similar fate. Manela then
appealed to the Governor and also to the late Prime Minister, M. Stolypin,
but without avail. Ultimately he appealed to the District Court, but three
years have now passed and he is still awaiting the Court's decision. In
the meantime his son has reached his sixteenth year, but cannot get a passport
as he is officially a deserter!"
7 Legal Sufferings 0f
the Jews in Russia, p.6.
8 The persecution of the
Jews in Russia has greatly increased in extent and severity during the
last two years. In 1913 alone, over 10,000 Jews were expelled from various
towns outside the Pale and from Polish villages, in which, in many cases,
they had been settled over thirty years. In 1912, of 3000 Jewish students
who applied for admission to the universities and technical colleges, only
350 were admitted; and ill 1913, of 3908 who applied only 162 were admitted
(Hilfsverein Report, 1914). The most serious addition to the code of disabilities
is the recent law which prohibits Jews to sit on the boards of joint stock
companies and forbids such companies as have Jewish directors to acquire
lands. This reactionary measure produced a veritable panic in the Russian
financial world. The Times (5th June 1914) stigmatized the measure as “grotesque,"
but it justified the general disabilities of the Jews on the ground that
the Jews were engaged in "peddling, liquor-dealing, and money-lending,"
and that if they were free to trade among the peasants they would soon”
‘eat up’ the tillers of the soil.” The fact is, two-fifths of the Jews
are engaged in manufacturing and mechanical pursuits; liquor-dealing is
a monopoly of the Government; and the mass of the Jews are too poor to
have any money to lend. Even if there were a shred of substance in the
allegation of the Times, it cannot justify the mass of anti-Jewish restrictions
that embitter the lives of artisans and persons engaged in the liberal
professions, nor the impending banishment of 40,000 Jews from Kiev (Russische
Korrespondenz, 18th July 1914).
9 A considerable literature
has grown up about The Russian pogroms. The standard work is Die Judenpogrome
is Russlend (Jüdischer Verlag, Berlin, 1910, 2 vols.), comprising
nearly 1000 pages of painful and often gruesome reading, which demands
very strong nerves. See also The Russian Government and the Massacres,
by E. Semenoff (John Murray, 1907), which proves the complicity of
the Government; Russia at the Bar of the American People, edited
by Isidore Singer (Funk & Wagnalls, 1904), and Within the Pale,
by Michael Davitt (Hurst & Blackett, 1903), the last two dealing
mainly with the Kishineff massacres of 1903.
10 The Blood Accusation
has been refuted by many Christian scholars, notably Prof. H. L. Strack.
It has also been condemned as baseless in several Papal Bulls. The Encyclical
issued by Innocent IV (1247) and the Report drawn up in 1758 by Cardinal
Ganganelli (1ater Clement XIV) are authenticated by cardinal Merry del
Val, Papal Secretary of State, in a letter, dated 18th October 1913,
to Lord Rothschild.
11 Professors Jorga and
Cuza were openly accused of this charge by the Liberal Minister of Education,
M. Haret, in the Rumanian Parliament (Report of the" Hilfsverein der deutschen
Juden," 1911, p.31).
12 See the Report of the
"Hilfsverein," 1911, pp. 28, 29.
13 21st March 1913.
14 The Times, 13th
May 1914.
15 Jewish Chronicle,
1st and 8th August 1913.
16 The Times, 11th
June 1914. |