Part 14

II.

In 1912 the election of a Deputy to the Duma was to take place in Warsaw. The population of the town consists of between seven and eight hundred thousand. As among them there are 300,000 Jews, the majority of the electors, it was in the power of that majority to elect a Jewish Deputy. Because of their Polish national feeling, however, they gave up this right, as they wanted Warsaw, as the capital of the Kingdom of Poland, to be represented by a man who not only in spirit, but also by race, was a Pole. Of the Polish committee they only demanded that the party concerned be no enemy to the Jews. It proved, however, that the committee in its arrogance would not deal with them at all and proposed Kucharschewski, a pronounced anti-Semitic candidate and a man who publicly declared that he desired the election to the Duma only to work for the extermination of the Jews of Poland. By the way, it is strange to notice how the word "exterminate," which thirty years ago in the days of Bismarck and Eduard von Hartmann as Ausrotten was subject to the curse and condemnation of the Poles, has now come to honor, and how easily it passes their lips.

As the Jews, of course, could not vote on such a man, they urgently asked the committee to propose another candidate not inimical to them. This reasonable request was refused with coarseness and Kucharschewski's candidacy maintained. Because of that the Jews were obliged to look about for another candidate of Polish family who was fit for the position and was not hostile to them. In spite of numerous applications, they did not succeed in finding such a man; at the last moment, when all attempts had failed, Jagello, the Social Democrat, declared himself willing to accept the candidacy of the Jews.

The only thing in his favor was the fact that he was of pure Polish blood. As their leading men all belong to the higher middle class, they did not share his views. But the state of affairs forced them to support him. Lord Beaconsfield used to maintain that the natural disposition of the Jewish race was conservative, but foolish politics, instead of encouraging the conservative instincts of the race, forced it to cast its lot with the most extreme elements of the opposition. It has proved true here.

Jagello was elected.

The leading men in Russian Poland, who, as a matter of fact, through the whole new century, had fought against the Jews, although secretly, for fear they should forfeit the sympathy of the intellectual aristocracy of Europe, used this electoral victory of the Jews, which had been forced upon them, to throw off the mask and openly act as their passionate enemies. The so-called co-operative movement developed during the last twelve years, and in itself nothing but a fight against the Jewish commerce, under a different name, now changed into a systematic and cruelly effected boycotting of the Jewish population. In private as in public life, the openly pronounced password was: not to buy from Jews, not to associate with Jews.

At the head of this movement marched the intelligence of Poland, among others some of its most famous authors, avowed free thinkers as Nemojewski, nay, as Alexander Swientochowski. Literary life presents many changes, metamorphoses, which in thoroughness are not very much inferior to those of Ovid. A good deal is necessary to make one who for one-half century has witnessed the want of character among writers feel even the slightest surprise. But I should willingly have sworn that I should never have lived to see Alexander Swientochowski a nationalist, he the most uncompromising adversary of nationalism, who endured a good deal for his conviction, to see the poet of "Chawa Rubin" an anti-Semitic chief. Not only does all that Alexander Swientochowski wrote rise against him, but also the words, the powerful words, which issued from his mouth in his palmy days.

The whole Polish press placed itself at the disposal of this movement. Young Polish louts were posted outside the Jewish shops and ill-treated the Christian women and children who wanted to buy there. By means of the well-known Dumowski a new paper, Dwa Groszi, was started, which simply urged pogroms. It soon came to bloody struggles. Polish undergraduates killed an old Jew in the Sliska Street in Warsaw. In the little town of Welun peasants poured naphtha on the house of a Jew and put fire to it, burning a large family. Similar acts occurred in several other places, until the Russian Government stopped this pogrom movement in order to prevent the Polish nationalism from getting stronger.

The Polish priests in the villages incited the people from the pulpit to boycotting of and war against the Jews. After the sentence in the Beilis action the Polish newspapers were almost alone in publishing on circulars the information that Beilis had been acquitted, but that the existence of religious murder had been satisfactorily proved. Nay, the free thinker, Nemojewski, wrote a book, in which he maintained the monstrous lie that Jewish religious murders are facts, and traveled all over the country with an agitatorial lecture to the same purpose.

Under these circumstances, the Jews in Russian Poland turned to the few men whose names were so esteemed or whose characters were so unimpeachable that their words could not be unheeded.

Ladislas Mickiewicz, the excellent son of the great Mickiewicz, who had passed his whole life in Paris, first as a publisher and translator of the works of his father, and then as a Polish patriotic author, convened, together with some other prominent men, a great meeting at Warsaw to restore the inner peace. In vain he begged and besought his countrymen, who had enemies enough otherwise, not to act as enemies of the Jews, who had always been their friends. No Polish newspaper gave any report of his speech.

All this took place before the war. The provisional result was the economic destruction of the Russian-Polish Jews. But now during the war the glow of the bloody hatred of the Jews has blazed out in far stronger flames and the Russian Government has as yet done nothing to subdue or quench the fire.

During the mobilization several Polish newspapers, for instance, The Glos Lubelski, brought the alarming news in heavy type: "In England great pogroms against the Jews. The English Government does not check them." The paper was conscious of the lie. But the question was to set an example to follow.

When the lack of gold and silver began to be felt the Polish newspapers accused the Jews of hiding the valuable metals. On closer examination, it was found that many non-Jewish business people (for instance, Ignaschewski in Lublin, a very rich Pole) were withholding whole bags full of gold and silver coins, for which they were punished rather severely; but this was not proved against a single Jew.

Furthermore, the Jews were, among other things, accused of having smuggled in a coffin 1,500,000 rubles in gold into Germany; and the protest against the accusation entered by the representatives and ministers of the Jewish congregation at Warsaw was printed in Russian papers, but not in a single Polish one.

All these things were preparations for pogroms; but many others were made. The anti-Semites printed a proclamation in Yiddish in which the Jews were called upon to revolt against Russia; they took care that this proclamation was put into the pockets of the unsuspecting Jews in the streets of the different towns; those who had distributed the papers denounced the party concerned to the police. Everybody upon whom the proclamation was found was shot.

At last the Jews were, as in the Middle Ages, both in word and writing accused of having poisoned the wells. If some Cossacks or other Russian soldiers died, the Poles accused the Jews of having caused their death.

The chief accusation was, however, the accusation of espionage, which obtained general credence and was used both when Austrian troops came to some town or village and when Russian troops expelled the Austrians. The result was the same. A suitable number of Jews were conscientiously shot by the Russians as well as by the Austrians. There are, however, lists of those who really have been unmasked as spies. A Potocki was among them, and had to pay for it with his life; but no Jewish name is found on these lists.

The accusation is, however, always believed, as the Jew has, for about two thousand years, been characterized as Judas.

The legend about Judas may without exaggeration be described as one of the most foolish legends of antiquity; that it has been believed is one proof among thousands of the indescribable simplicity of mankind. Few legends carry like it the stamp of lie on their faces and few legends have millennium after millennium caused so many evils and horrors. It has tortured and murdered by hundred thousands.

According to the supposition the story is impossible. The supposition is that a man in possession of superhuman attributes, a god or a demi-god, day after day goes about and speaks in the open air in a town and its neighborhood. So little does he make a secret of his doings that a short time before he had made his entry at broad daylight, welcomed with exultation by the whole population. He is known by each and all, by each woman and each child. So little does he want to hide that he walks about accompanied by his disciples, preaching day and night, sleeping among them. And to think it should be necessary to buy one of his disciples to denounce him and deliver him, to betray him, and that--for the sake of the effect--with a kiss! Indeed if he had hidden in some cellar, then there would be some meaning in it; but as things are, those who seek him need only ask: which of you is Jesus? He would not have tried to deny his name.

Judas is then not only quite superfluous, but an absurdity, the origin of which is to be found in the desire to place the black traitor opposite the white hero of light and in the hatred of Jews arising among the first Gentile Christians, who later made the world forget that not only this straw-doll, Judas, but also Jesus and all the Apostles, all the Disciples and all the evangelists were Jews.

Nevertheless, in the conception of the rude masses this Judas--as he was called--has become the Jew, the typical Jew, the traitor, and the spy.

Still as late as in the last decennium of the last century, Capt. Alfred Dreyfus fell a victim to this old foolish legend.

And now it is again rehashed against the Jews in Russian Poland.

The pogroms have, by virtue of these Judas accusations and the many other dreadful accusations, spread all over Russian Poland and there they are spreading more and more, while Galicia as well as Posen has proved susceptible to the incitations which have not failed. Many hundreds of innocent people have fallen victims to them.

Here are a few instances from many:

In the town of Bechava, conquered by the Austrians, the Polish leaders, among whom was a very well-known estate owner, applied to the Austrian commandant, accusing the Jews of secret connection with the Russian Army. In consequence of this the Austrians killed a 67-year-old man called Wallstein, and his 17-year-old son. When, after a short time, the Austrians were driven away, the same estate owner accused the Jews of the town to the Russian commandant of being in communication with the Austrians, having delivered to them all provisions for the purpose of depriving the Russians of them. In consequence of his accusation, many Jews were shot and their houses burned down.