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 leading political party of Russia—the Constitutional Democratic
Party—officially voiced its sentiments on the Jewish question at a
national convention of the Party, held at Petrograd on June 19–21
(O. S. June 6–8), 1915, at which the Central Committee of the Party
submitted a comprehensive report which was adopted unanimously, and
which, summarized in the form of a resolution, was ordered published.
This resolution, after citing the loyalty and patriotism of the Jews at
the outbreak of the war, continues:
“This intense spirit of patriotism manifested by the Jews in the hour
of Russia’s danger seemed for a time to have broken down the rooted
prejudices of the Government and to have cleared the way for the
recognition in Russia, of that civic equality which is accorded the
Jews throughout the civilized world. But this would have deprived
our reactionaries, those champions of an outlived past, of their old
and well-tested weapon of black demagoguery—anti-Semitism. And so we
see that under the direct influence of these notorious Jew-baiters
measures were early adopted by the Government to set the army and the
people against the Jews. Every advantage was taken of the exigencies
of war. Isolated cases of espionage, likely to occur among the border
populations of all nations, were seized upon as a basis for universal
accusations and furnished the occasion for the invention of incredible
myths and rumors circulated exclusively to the injury of the Jews....
The Jews have been held collectively responsible for the acts of
individuals among them—a policy which outrages the most elementary
sense of justice, a policy which is no longer sanctioned by the laws
of any civilized land, a monstrous survival of the remote past....
Needless to mention the spread of discord and hatred, the growth of
mutual suspicion and distrust among the races inhabitating Russia
which must of necessity follow such a policy....
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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