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History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II by S.M. Dubnow

S >> S.M. Dubnow >> History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II




The duty of enlisting the recruits was imposed upon the Jewish communes,
or Kahals, which were to elect for that purpose between three and six
executive officers, or "trustees," in every city. The community as such
was held responsible for the supply of a given number of recruits from
its own midst. It was authorized to draft into military service any Jew
guilty "of irregularity in the payment of taxes, of vagrancy, and other
misdemeanors." In case the required number of recruits was not
forthcoming within a given term, the authorities were empowered to
obtain them from the derelict community "by way of execution." [1] Any
irregularity on the part of the recruiting "trustees" was to be punished
by the imposition of fines or even by sending them into the army.

[Footnote 1: The term "execution" (_ekzekutzia_) is used in Russian to
designate a writ empowering an officer to carry a judgment into effect,
in other words, to resort to forcible seizure.]

The following categories of Jews were exempted from military duty:
merchants holding membership in guilds, artisans affiliated with
trade-unions, mechanics in factories, agricultural colonists, rabbis,
and the Jews, few and far between at that time, who had graduated from a
Russian educational institution. Those exempted from military service in
kind were required to pay "recruiting money," one thousand rubles for
each recruit. The general law providing that a regular recruit could
offer as his substitute a "volunteer" was extended to the Jews, with the
proviso that the volunteer must also be a Jew.

The "Instructions" to the civil authorities, appended to the statute,
specify the formalities to be followed both at the recruiting stations
and in administering the oath of allegiance to the conscripts in the
synagogues. The latter ceremony was to be marked by gloomy solemnity.
The recruit was to be arrayed in his prayer-shawl (Tallith) and shroud
(Kittel). With his philacteries wound around his arm, he should be
placed before the Ark and, amidst burning candles and to the
accompaniment of shofar blasts, made to recite a lengthy awe-inspiring
oath. The "Instructions" to the military authorities accompanying the
statute prescribe that every batch of Jewish conscripts "shall be
entrusted to a special officer to be watched over, prior to their
departure for their places of destination, and shall be kept apart from
the other recruits." Both in the places of conscription and on the
journey the Jewish recruits were to be quartered exclusively in the
homes of Christian residents.

The promulgated "military constitution" surpassed the very worst
apprehension of the Jews. All were staggered by this sudden blow, which
descended crushingly upon the mode of life, the time-honored traditions,
and the religious ideals of the Jewish people. The Jewish family nests
became astir, trembling for their fledglings. Barely a month after the
publication of the military statute, the central Government in St.
Petersburg was startled by the report that the Volhynian town of
Old-Constantine had been the scene of "mutiny and disorders among the
Jews" on the occasion of the promulgation of the ukase. Benckendorff,
the Chief of the Gendarmerie, [1] conveyed this information to the Tzar,
who thereupon gave orders that "in all similar cases the culprits be
court-martialed". Evidently, the St. Petersburg authorities apprehended a
whole series of Jewish mutinies, as a result of the dreadful ukase, and
they were ready with extraordinary measures for the emergency.

[Footnote 1: Since 1827 the Gendarmerie served as the executive organ of
the political police, or of the so-called Third Section, dreaded
throughout Russia on account of its relentless cruelty in suppressing
the slightest manifestation of liberal thought. The Third Section was
nominally abolished in 1880.]

However, their apprehensions were unfounded. Apart from the incident
referred to, there were no cases of open rebellion against the
authorities. As a matter of fact, even in Old-Constantine, the "mutiny"
was of a nature little calculated to be dealt with by a court-martial.
According to the local tradition, the Jewish residents, Hasidim almost
to a man, were so profoundly stirred by the imperial ukase that they
assembled in the synagogues, fasting and praying, and finally resolved
to adopt "energetic" measures. A petition reciting their grievances
against the Tzar was framed in due form and placed in the hands of a
member of the community who had just died, with the request that the
deceased present it to the Almighty, the God of Israel. This childlike
appeal to the heavenly King from the action of an earthly sovereign and
the emotional scenes accompanying it were interpreted by the Russian
authorities as "mutiny." Under the patriarchal conditions of Jewish life
prevailing at that time a political protest was a matter of
impossibility. The only medium through which the Jews could give vent to
their burning national sorrow was a religious demonstration within the
walls of the synagogue.


3. MILITARY MARTYRDOM

The ways and means by which the provisions of the military statute were
carried into effect during the reign of Nicholas I. we do not learn from
official documents, which seem to have drawn a veil over this dismal
strip of the past. Our information is derived from sources far more
communicative and nearer to truth--the traditions current among the
people. Owing to the fact that every Jewish community, at the mutual
responsibility of all its members, was compelled by law to supply a
definite number of recruits, and that no one was willing to become a
soldier of his own volition, the Kahal administration and the recruiting
"trustees," who had to answer to the authorities for any shortage in
recruits, were practically forced to become a sort of police agents,
whose function it was to "capture" the necessary quota of recruits.
Prior to every military conscription, the victims marked for prey, the
young men and boys of the burgher class, [1] very generally took to
flight, hiding in distant cities, outside the zone of their Kahals, or
in forests and ravines. A popular song in Yiddish refers to these
conditions in the following words;

[Footnote 1: Compare on the status of the burgher in Russian law Vol. I,
p. 308, n. 2. Nearly all the higher estates were exempt.]

_Der Ukas is arobgekumen auf judische Selner,
Seinen mir sich zulofen in die puste Waelder.....
In alle puste Waelder seinen mir zulofen,
In puste Gruber seinen mir verlofen_..... Oi weih, oi weih!_....[1]

[Footnote 1:

When the ukase came down about Jewish soldiers,
We all dispersed over the lonesome forests;
Over the lonesome forests did we disperse,
In lonesome pits did we hide ourselves.... Woe me, Woe!]

The recruiting agents hired by the Kahal or its "trustees," who received
the nickname "hunters" or "captors," [1] hunted down the fugitives,
trailing them everywhere and capturing them for the purpose of making up
the shortage. In default of a sufficient number of adults, little
children, who were easier "catch," were seized, often enough in
violation of the provision of the law. Even boys under the required age
of twelve, sometimes no more than eight years old, were caught and
offered as conscripts at the recruiting stations, their age being
misstated. [2] The agents perpetrated incredible cruelties. Houses were
raided during the night, and children were torn from the arms of their
mothers, or lured away and kidnapped.

[Footnote 1: More literally "catchers"; in Yiddish _Khappers_.]

[Footnote 2: This was the more easy, as regular birth-registers were not
yet in existence.]

After being captured, the Jewish conscripts were sent into the
recruiting jail where they were kept in confinement until their
examination at the recruiting station. The enlisted minors were turned
over to a special officer to be dispatched to their places of
destination, mostly in the Eastern provinces including Siberia. For it
must be noted that the cantonists were stationed almost to a man in the
outlying Russian governments, where they could be brought up at a safe
distance from all Jewish influences. The unfortunate victims who were
drafted into the army and deported to these far-off regions were mourned
by their relatives as dead. During the autumnal season, when the
recruits were drafted and deported, the streets of the Jewish towns
resounded with moans. The juvenile cantonists were packed into wagons
like so many sheep and carried off in batches under a military
convoy. When they took leave of their dear ones it was for a quarter of a
century; in the case of children it was for a longer term, too often it
was good-bye for life.

How these unfortunate youngsters were driven to their places of
destination we learn from the description of Alexander Hertzen, [1] who
chanced to meet a batch of Jewish cantonists on his involuntary journey
through Vyatka, in 1835. At one of the post stations in some
God-forsaken village of the Vyatka government he met the escorting
officer. The following dialogue ensued between the two:

[Footnote 1: Hertzen, a famous Russian writer (d. 1870), was exiled to the
government of Vyatka for propagating liberal doctrines.]

"Whom do you carry and to what place?"

"Well, sir, you see, they got together a bunch of these accursed
Jewish youngsters between the age of eight and nine. I suppose they
are meant for the fleet, but how should I know? At first the command
was to drive them to Perm. Now there is a change. We are told to
drive them to Kazan. I have had them on my hands for a hundred
versts or thereabouts. The officer that turned them over to me told
me they were an awful nuisance. A third of them remained on the road
(at this the officer pointed with his finger to the ground). Half of
them will not get to their destination," he added.

"Epidemics, I suppose?", I inquired, stirred to the very core.

"No, not exactly epidemics; but they just fall like flies. Well, you
know, these Jewish boys are so puny and delicate. They can't stand
mixing dirt for ten hours, with dry biscuits to live on. Again
everywhere strange folks, no father, no mother, no caresses. Well
then, you just hear a cough and the youngster is dead. Hello,
corporal, get out the small fry!"

The little ones were assembled and arrayed in a military line. It
was one of the most terrible spectacles I have ever witnessed. Poor,
poor children! The boys of twelve or thirteen managed somehow to
stand up, but the little ones of eight and ten.... No brush, however
black, could convey the terror of this scene on the canvas.

Pale, worn out, with scared looks, this is the way they stood in
their uncomfortable, rough soldier uniforms, with their starched,
turned-up collars, fixing an inexpressibly helpless and pitiful gaze
upon the garrisoned soldiers, who were handling them rudely. White
lips, blue lines under the eyes betokened either fever or cold. And
these poor children, without care, without a caress, exposed to the
wind which blows unhindered from the Arctic Ocean, were marching to
their death. I seized the officer's hand, and, with the words: "Take
good care of them! ", threw myself into my carriage. I felt like
sobbing, and I knew I could not master myself....

The great Russian writer saw the Jewish cantonists on the road, but he
knew nothing of what happened to them later on, in the recesses of the
barracks into which they were driven. This terrible secret was revealed
to the world at a later period by the few survivors among these martyred
Jewish children.

Having arrived at their destination, the juvenile conscripts were put
into the cantonist battalions. The "preparation for military service"
began with their religious re-education at the hands of sergeants and
corporals. No means was, neglected so long as it bade fair to bring the
children to the baptismal font. The authorities refrained from giving
formal instructions, leaving everything to the zeal of the officers who
knew the wishes of their superiors. The children were first sent for
spiritual admonition to the local Greek-Orthodox priests, whose efforts,
however, proved fruitless in nearly every case. They were then taken in
hand by the sergeants and corporals who adopted military methods of
persuasion.

These brutal soldiers invented all kinds of tortures. A favorite
procedure was to make the cantonists get down on their knees in the
evening after all had gone to bed and to keep the sleepy children in
that position for hours. Those who agreed to be baptized were sent to
bed, those who refused were kept up the whole night till they dropped
from exhaustion. The children who continued to hold their own were
flogged and, under the guise of gymnastic exercises, subjected to all
kinds of tortures. Those that refused to eat pork or the customary
cabbage soup prepared with lard were beaten and left to starve. Others
were fed on salted fish and then forbidden to drink, until the little
ones, tormented by thirst, agreed to embrace Christianity.

The majority of these children, unable to endure the tortures inflicted
on them, saved themselves by baptism. But many cantonists, particularly
those of a maturer age (between fifteen and eighteen), bore their
martyrdom with heroic patience. Beaten almost into senselessness, their
bodies striped by lashes, tormented to the point of exhaustion by
hunger, thirst, and sleeplessness, the lads declared again and again
that they would not betray the faith of their fathers. Most of these
obstinate youths were carried from the barracks into the military
hospitals to be released by a kind death. Only a few remained alive.

Alongside of this passive heroism there were cases of demonstrative
martyrdom. One such incident has survived in the popular memory. The
story goes that during a military parade [1] in the city of Kazan the
battalion chief drew up all the Jewish cantonists on the banks of the
river, where the Greek-Orthodox priests were standing in their
vestments, and all was ready for the baptismal ceremony. At the command
to jump into the water, the boys answered in military fashion "Aye,
aye!" Whereupon they dived under and disappeared. When they were dragged
out, they were dead. In most cases, however, these little martyrs
suffered and died noiselessly, in the gloom of the guard-houses,
barracks, and military hospitals. They strewed with their tiny bodies
the roads that led into the outlying regions of the Empire, and those
that managed to get there were fading away slowly in the barracks which
had been turned into inquisitorial dungeons. This martyrdom of children,
set in a military environment, represents a singular phenomenon even in
the extensive annals of Jewish martyrology.

[Footnote 1: A variant of the legend speaks of a review by the Tzar
himself.]

Such was the lot of the juvenile cantonists. As for the adult recruits,
who were drafted into the army at the normal age of conscription
(18-25), their conversion to Christianity was not pursued by the same
direct methods, but their fate was not a whit less tragic from the
moment of their capture till the end of their grievous twenty-five
years' service. Youths, who had no knowledge of the Russian language,
were torn away from the heder or yeshibah, often from wife and children.

In consequence of the early marriages then in vogue, most youths at the
age of eighteen were married. The impending separation for a quarter of
a century, added to the danger of the soldier's apostasy or death in
far-off regions, often disrupted the family ties. Many recruits, before
entering upon their military career, gave their wives a divorce so as
not to doom them to perpetual widowhood.

At the end of 1834 rumors began to spread among the Jewish masses
concerning a law which was about to be issued forbidding early marriages
but exempting from conscription those married prior to the promulgation
of the law. A panic ensued. Everywhere feverish haste was displayed in
marrying off boys from ten to fifteen years old to girls of an equally
tender age. Within a few months there appeared in every city hundreds
and thousands of such couples, whose marital relations were often
confined to playing with nuts or bones. The misunderstanding which had
caused this senseless matrimonial panic or _beholoh,_[1] as it was
afterwards popularly called, was cleared up by the publication, on April
13, 1835, of the new "Statute on the Jews." To be sure, the new law
contained a clause forbidding marriages before the age of eighteen, but
it offered no privileges for those already married, so that the only
result of the _beholoh_ was to increase the number of families robbed by
conscription of their heads and supporters.

[Footnote 1: A Hebrew word, also used in Yiddish, meaning _fright,
panic_.]

The years of military service were spent by the grown-up Jewish soldiers
amidst extraordinary hardships. They were beaten and ridiculed because
of their inability to express themselves in Russian, their refusal to
eat _trefa_, and their general lack of adaptation to the strange
environment and to the military mode of life. And even when this process
of adaptation was finally accomplished, the Jewish soldier was never
promoted beyond the position of a non-commissioned under-officer,
baptism being the inevitable stepping-stone to a higher rank. True, the
Statute on Military Service promised those Jewish soldiers who had
completed their term in the army with distinction admission to the civil
service, but the promise remained on paper so long as the candidates
were loyal to Judaism. On the contrary, the Jews who had completed their
military service and had in most cases become invalids were not even
allowed to spend the rest of their lives in the localities outside the
Pale, in which they had been stationed as soldiers. Only at a later
period, during the reign of Alexander II., was this right accorded to
the "Nicholas soldiers" [1] and their descendants.

[Footnote 1: In Russian, _Nikolayevskiye soldaty_, i.e., those that had
served in the army during the reign of Nicholas I.]

The full weight of conscription fell upon the poorest classes of the
Jewish population, the so-called burgher estate, [1] consisting of petty
artisans and those impoverished tradesmen who could not afford to enrol
in the mercantile guilds, though there are cases on record where poor
Jews begged from door to door to collect a sufficient sum of money for a
guild certificate in order to save their children from military service.
The more or less well-to-do were exempted from conscription either by
virtue of their mercantile status or because of their connections with
the Kahal leaders who had the power of selecting the victims.

[Footnote 1: See above, p. 23, n. 1.]


4. THE POLICY OF EXPULSIONS

In all lands of Western Europe the introduction of personal military
service for the Jews was either accompanied or preceded by their
emancipation. At all events, it was followed by some mitigation of their
disabilities, serving, so to speak, as an earnest of the grant of equal
rights. Even in clerical Austria, the imposition of military duty upon
the Jews was preceded by the _Toleranz Patent_, this would-be Act of
Emancipation. [1]

[Footnote 1: Military service was imposed upon the Jews of Austria by
the law of 1787. Several years previously, on January 2, 1782, Emperor
Joseph II. had issued his famous Toleration Act, removing a number of
Jewish disabilities and opening the way to their assimilation with the
environment. Nevertheless, most of the former restrictions remained in
force.]

In Russia the very reverse took place. The introduction of military
conscription of a most aggravating kind and the unspeakable cruelties
attending its practical execution were followed, in the case of the
Jews, by an unprecedented recrudescence of legislative discrimination
and a monstrous increase of their disabilities. The Jews were lashed
with a double knout, a military and a civil. In the same ill-fated year
which saw the promulgation of the conscription statute, barely three
months after it had received the imperial sanction, while the moans of
the Jews, fasting and praying to God to deliver them from the calamity,
were still echoing in the synagogues, two new ukases were issued, both
signed on December 2, 1827--the one decreeing the transfer of the Jews
from all villages and village inns in the government of Grodno into the
towns and townlets, the other ordering the banishment of all Jewish
residents from the city of Kiev.

The expulsion from the Grodno villages was the continuation of the
policy of the _rural_ liquidation of Jewry, inaugurated in 1823 in White
Russia. [1] The Grodno province was merely meant to serve as a starting
point. Grand Duke Constantine, [2] who had brought up the question, was
ordered "_at first_ to carry out the expulsion in the government of
Grodno alone," and to postpone for a later occasion the application of
the same measure to the other "governments entrusted to his command."
Simultaneously considerable foresight was displayed in instructing the
grand duke to wait with the expulsion of the Jews "until the conclusion
of the military conscription going on at present." Evidently there was
some fear of disorders and complications. It was thought wiser to seize
the children for the army first and then to expel the parents--to get
hold of the young birds and then to destroy the nest.

[Footnote 1: It may be remarked here that the principal enactments of
that period, down to 1835, were, drafted in their preliminary stage by
the "Jewish Committee" established in 1823. See Vol. I, p. 407 _et
seq._]

[Footnote 2: Commander-in-Chief of the former Polish provinces. See p.
16, n. 2.]

The expulsion from Kiev was of a different order. It marked the
beginning of a new system, the narrowing down of the _urban_ area
allotted to the Jews within the Pale of Settlement. Since 1794 [1] the
Jews had been allowed to settle in Kiev freely. They had formed there,
with official sanction, an important community and had vastly developed
commerce and industry. Suddenly, however, the Government discovered that
"their presence is detrimental to the industry of this city and to the
exchequer in general, and is, moreover, at variance with the rights and
privileges conferred at different periods upon the city of Kiev." The
discovery was followed by a grim rescript from St. Petersburg,
forbidding not only the further settlement of Jews in Kiev but also
prescribing that even those settled there long ago should leave the city
within one year, those owning immovable property within two years.
Henceforward only the temporary sojourn of Jews, for a period not
exceeding six months, was to be permitted and to be limited, moreover,
to merchants of the first two guilds who arrive "in connection with
contracts and fairs" or to attend to public bids and deliveries.

[Footnote 1: See Vol. I, p. 317.]

In 1829 the whip of expulsion cracked over the backs of the Jews
dwelling on the shores of the Baltic and the Black Sea. In Courland and
Livonia measures were taken "looking to the reduction of the number of
Jews" which had been considerably swelled by the influx of
"newcomers"--of Jews not born in those provinces and therefore having no
right to settle there. The Tzar endorsed the proposal of the "Jewish
Committee" to transfer from Courland all Jews not born there into the
cities in which their birth was registered. Those not yet registered in
a municipality outside the province were granted a half-year's respite
for that purpose. If within the prescribed term they failed to attend to
their registration, they were to be sent to the army, or, in case of
unfitness for military service, deported to Siberia.

In the same year an imperial ukase declared that "the residence of
civilian Jews in the cities of Sevastopol and Nicholayev was
inconvenient and injurious," in view of the military and naval
importance of these places, and therefore decreed the expulsion of their
Jewish residents: those owning real property within two years, the
others within one year. By a new ukase issued in 1830 the Jews were
expelled from the villages and hamlets of the government of Kiev. Thus
were human beings hurled about from village to town, from city to city,
from province to province, with no more concern than might be displayed
in the transportation of cattle.

This process of "mobilization" had reached its climax when the Polish
insurrection of 1830-1831 broke out, affecting the whole Western
region. [1] Fearing lest the persecuted Jews might be driven into the
arms of the Poles, the Government decided on a strategic retreat. In
February, 1831, in consequence of the representations of the local
military commander, who urged the Government "to take into consideration
the present political circumstances, in which they (the Jews) may
occasionally prove useful," the final expulsion of the Jews from Kiev
was postponed for three years. At the end of the three years, the
governor of Kiev made similar representations to St. Petersburg,
emphasizing the desirability of allowing the Jews to remain in the city,
even though it might become necessary to segregate them in a special
quarter, "this (i.e., their remaining in the city) being found useful
also in this respect that, on account of their temperate and simple
habits of life, they are in a position to sell their goods considerably
cheaper, whereas in the case of their expulsion many articles and
manufactures will rise in price." Nicholas I. rejected this plea, and
only agreed to postpone the expulsion until February, 1835, for the
reason that the new "Statute Concerning the Jews," then in preparation,
which was to define the general legal status of Russian Jewry, was
expected to be ready by that time. Similar short reprieves were granted
to the Jews about to be exiled from Nicholayev, from the villages of the
government of Kiev, and from other places.

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