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Respecting
the Removal of the Jews From the Polish Frontiers.*
We
have already had occasion to refer to the publication of the Russian
Ukase, requiring the Jews to remove from the frontiers of Poland.
According to the best information received from our correspondents in
Poland, and the statements which have appeared in the "Allgemeine
Zeitung des Judenthums," it seems that the Jews were of opinion
that they had no reason "seriously to apprehend being translocated
into the interior," provided that "they were free from the
suspicion of smuggling."
The
well-known benevolence of
the emperor gives us good reason to hope that this opinion will be found
to have been well-grounded, as it regards the great body of the Jews who
reside near the Polish frontiers; but we are sorry to find, from the
"Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums" for Nov. 20, that the
ukase has been proclaimed in Radziwillow, near Brody. This is the
first time that we have met with any statement in the Jewish
periodicals, showing that steps had been actually taken to carry
the ukase into effect. We anxiously await further intelligence
concerning the measures adopted with respect to this regulation.
Whatever may have been the fault of individuals among the Jews, as
alluded to in the following communication, it is most painful to hear
that a whole congregation should be exposed to a punishment, which must
be most severely felt, and which, if carried into effect to the extent
spoken of, must involve the innocent and guilty in the same common
suffering:—
Brody, Oct. 26.
Our
last holidays have been changed into days of mourning. On the concluding
days of the festival we received the distressing and overpowering
intelligence that in Radziwillow, the village nearest to us on the
Russian frontier, the chief of the police had proclaimed in the
synagogue that the ukase issued some time back (referring to the removal
of the Jews residing within fifty wersts of the frontier) is really to
be of full force and effect, and that only two years are to be allowed
for the disposal of houses and property. Thus, after so many
protestations that this decree affected only the inhabitants of the open
country; after the assurances given by the correspondents of the
"Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung," who usually draw from authentic
sources, that residents in towns were to be spared from this scourge;
we, who are so unhappy as to be eye-witnesses of the lamentable misery
of our brethren, must nevertheless be once more startled by the
calamitous news that all Jews resident on the frontiers are to be driven
from their homes! We may easily imagine what great and manifold miseries
hundreds and thousands of human beings will thus be subjected to, and it
cannot fail to touch the feelings of even the most heartless. "A
fugitive and a wanderer shalt thou be," and "In the sweat of
thy brow shalt thou eat bread," may indeed be but too often
repeated and exemplified in the case of the Russian Jew, and enforced
too; but of so comprehensive and universal an expulsion, causing the
misery of such a multitude, even bygone centuries have scarcely afforded
an example.
This
ukase is said to be merely intended as a preventive against smuggling,
but cannot, in our opinion, effect that object, for even if we were to
admit that those engaged in these illegalities are all of them Russian
Jews (which, however, especially on our frontiers, where most of the
smugglers are to be found among the Christian inhabitants of Gallicia,
is certainly not the case) yet this evil cannot be expected to be
alleviated by such a measure, as the Christian population which would
succeed the expelled Jews, would by no means disdain profiting by the
opportunities that offer for illicit trading, for where there is a
frontier and a prohibitive system in existence, smuggling will be a
necessary consequence . . . . . And is it not as if some one, suffering
from toothache, would have all his teeth drawn out, as a certain means
of getting rid of the one which causes the pain?
We
must not, however, overlook the fact that it has never been the
intention of the emperor to oppress the Jews; on the contrary, we have
proofs enough that he feels convinced of their sincerity, their
attachment, and their patriotism; that he regards them equally with his
Christian subjects; and that he desires to see them improved,
progressing, and prospering. But the great mass of the Russian
officials, to whom executive power is committed, hate and despise the
Jew so much, that neither his property nor even his life have any value
in their eyes; and they are not ashamed to resort to the basest means of
persecution and oppression, in order to effect the baptism or the
expatriation of a Jew . . . . . .
These
servants of the state are constantly planning and contriving calumny,
and the vilification of the children of Israel; and if they can but once
succeed in obtaining the imperial sanction to an ambiguous and
apparently unimportant decree, these gentlemen so comment upon and
explain it, as to render it most adverse to the Jews, and as favourable
as possible to their own purses. In the same way they mutilate, curtail,
or procrastinate, in a great measure, the favourable concessions which
the emperor so frequently grants; and the Russian Jew is, alas! as yet
too ignorant, and stands too much in awe of the official, to dare to
complain to the emperor himself of these unjust and legal vexations.
Should any one have the courage to attempt it, there are ways and means
by which the complaint is prevented ever reaching that exalted
personage, and the complainant is always a marked man, so that he will
have cause to repent his temerity . . . . . .
Our
only hope is founded in the moral conviction that the emperor had
certainly no intention of allowing his ukase to be interpreted in this
manner; and we may expect, from his well-known sense of justice, that as
soon as he is informed of the interpretation, so calamitous for his
Jewish subjects, which has been given to this decree, he will order its
immediate revocation. . . .
(Similar
expulsion decree in America, 1862.)
(Expulsion of Jews from Gaza, 2005) |
