History of Zionism, 1600-1918, Vol. 2 (of 2)Sokolow, Nahum
History
History of Zionism, 1600-1918, Vol. 2 (of 2)
Sokolow, Nahum
Jews -- Restoration; Zionism -- History
That this impression became current among the Jews was inevitable, in
consequence of an old phenomenon which appeared before them in a new
guise. We refer to the curious mixture of expulsion and evacuation,
of pogroms and slaughters, of which they were the victims. They were
accustomed, from long and bitter experience, to expulsions from without
the pale of settlement into the regions of the pale, from villages
to towns, and to the suffering occasioned by the Russo-Turkish and
Russo-Japanese wars; but these expulsions occurred when conditions
in Russia itself were almost normal, and when the Jews who were left
untouched by the decree of expulsion were able to render assistance to
their unfortunate brethren. The combination of the two forms of trials,
of war and of persecution by their fellow-citizens, was more than even
a nation inured to suffering could bear. It was as though this nation,
which had been a wanderer from time immemorial, had only just begun
its wanderings. They were no ordinary wanderers――not merely expelled
and outlawed; but they were taken and hurled as out of the middle of a
sling from province to province and from district to district. Railway
carriages were not enough to hold them, so they were transported in
cattle-trucks, the doors of which were locked to prevent escape on the
way. The cattle-trucks were not sufficient to cope with the numbers and
horse-vans were impressed, and as the horse-vans were not sufficient,
even though the Jews paid their last kopecks for places in them, they
were sent on foot. Bands of wanderers――consisting of women, children,
aged, weak, sick and infirm――were accordingly dragged, driven, knouted
along every kind of road and over every kind of obstacle, not like
cattle beneath the watchful eye of the herdsman, not even like animals
led to the slaughter, on whom some mercy is taken because they can be
used, but simply like wild beasts pursued by huntsmen; whoever fell by
the way fell without attention, whoever fell sick was ruthlessly left
behind. Families were split up, and that iron bond which unites parents
and children was snapped; infants died of starvation pressed against
their mothers’ shrivelled breasts; weary old greybeards grew faint and
stumbled on the way and died without the last consolation of old age,
without seeing around them their offspring whose souls were bound up
with their own; tender infants were deserted without anyone to take
pity on them, and the clamour went forth from one end of the earth to
the other, “Where is my father?” “Where is my child?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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