The Jews in the Eastern War ZoneAmerican Jewish Committee
History
The Jews in the Eastern War Zone
American Jewish Committee
World War, 1914-1918 -- Jews
The cruelty of the government’s policy toward the Jews has not received
the support of the Russian people, as the numerous protests uttered in
the Duma, in public assemblies and in the press clearly indicate. When
it is remembered that those non-Jews who, in Russia, dare to utter a
word in favor of the despised Jews, risk their position and prestige
to a degree unparalleled in any other country, the following calendar
of protests and manifestoes constitutes a body of evidence against the
Russian government which must compel conviction.
These protests have been grouped, for convenience, into four classes:
THE VOICE OF THE DUMA
Early in the session of the Duma the Left groups proposed an
interpellation of the Government with respect to its illegal acts
against the Jews. After some debate the proposed questions were
referred to the Committee on Interpellations, which reported them out,
on August 30, 1915, in this form:
I. Do the president of the Council of Ministers and the Ministers
of the Interior and Justice know of the illegal conduct of their
administrative officers with respect to the following:
=1. That officers of the prison administration received persons
taken by the military authorities as hostages from the local Jewish
population of Riga, Prushkov ... etc.?=
=2. That the prosecuting attorneys took no steps to obtain the
immediate release of these persons, accused of no crime and illegally
imprisoned?=
=3. That the expelled were driven by agents of the police in
Vilikomir, Zhagory and Shadov into freight cars inadequate for the
accommodation of one-tenth of them, and that the remainder, including
children, aged men and women, and invalids were compelled to follow
afoot?=
=4. That the officers of the local governments took no steps to check
the repeated robberies by the local population of the property left by
the exiles?=
=5. That the officers of the Gendarmerie of Homel prohibited the
supplying of food to the exiles, even though they were at the point of
exhaustion from hunger and thirst?=
=6. That in Novozybkov individuals who sent telegrams appealing for
help were arrested?=
=7. That the officers of the Gendarmerie, with armed threats, refused
to admit to sealed cars persons who brought food to the expelled at
the station of Bielitsa, on the Poliess railroad?=
=8. That the police officers locked the exiles in sealed cars for
several days at a time?=
=9. That in the shipment of these exiles from Zolotonosh to Kovno and
back some of them were kept in the cars ten days?=
=10. That the local government administration of the cities of Minsk,
Samara and Rostov required the reprinting in the local paper of the
story of Jewish treason in the village of Kuzhi, first published in
“Nash Viestnik”?=
=11. That the local administration of Tashkent ordered prayer for the
delivery of the army from the treachery of the Jews?=
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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