Chapter XIV: Compulsory Enlightenment and Increased Oppression (2)

The imperial order gave the governor-general, who was a Jew-hater and a believer in the hideous libel, unrestricted scope for his anti-Semitic instincts. He entrusted the conduct of the new investigation to a subaltern, by the name of Strakhov, a man of the same ilk, conferring upon him the widest possible powers. On his arrival in Velizh, Strakhov first of all arrested Terentyeva, and subjected her to a series of cross-examinations during which he endeavored to put her on what he considered the desirable track. Stimulated by the prosecutor, the prostitute managed to concoct a regular criminal romance. She deposed that she herself had participated in the crime, having lured little Theodore into the homes of Zetlin and Berlin. In Berlin's house, and later on in the synagogue, a crowd of Jews of both sexes had subjected the child to the most horrible tortures. The boy had been stabbed and butchered and rolled about in a barrel. The blood squeezed out of him had been distributed on the spot among those present, who thereupon proceeded to soak pieces of linen in it and to pour it out in bottles.[1] All these tortures had been perpetrated in her own presence, and with the active participation both of herself and the Christian servant-girls of the two families.

[Footnote 1: According to her testimony, the Jews are in the habit of using Christian blood to smear the eyes of their new-born babies, since "the Jews are always born blind," also to mix it with the flour in preparing the unleavened bread for Passover.]

It may be added that Terentyeva did not make these statements at one time, but at different intervals, inventing fresh details at each new examination and often getting muddled in her story. The implicated servant-girls at first denied their share in the crime, but, yielding to external pressure--like Terentyeva, they, too, were sent for frequent "admonition" to a local priest, called Tarashkevich, a ferocious anti-Semite--they were gradually led to endorse the depositions of the principal material witness.

On the strength of these indictments Strakhov placed the implicated Jews under arrest, at first two highly esteemed ladies, Slava Berlin and Hannah Zetlin, later on their husbands and relatives, and finally a number of other Jewish residents of Velizh. In all forty-two people were seized, put in chains, and thrown into jail. The prisoners were examined "with a vengeance"; they were subjected to the old-fashioned judicial procedure which approached closely the methods of medieval torture. The prisoners denied their guilt with indignation, and, when confronted with Terentyeva, denounced her vehemently as a liar. The excruciating cross-examinations brought some of the prisoners to the verge of madness. But as far as Strakhov was concerned, the hysterical fits of the women, the angry speeches of the men, the remarks of some of the accused, such as: "I shall tell everything, but only to the Tzar," served in his eyes as evidence of the Jews' guilt. In his reports he assured his superior, Khovanski, that he had got on the track of a monstrous crime perpetrated by a whole Kahal, with the assistance of several Christian women who had been led astray by the Jews.

In communicating his findings to St. Petersburg, the White Russian governor-general presented the case as a crime committed on religious grounds. In reply he received the fatal resolution of Emperor Nicholas, dated August 16, 1828, to the following effect:

Whereas the above occurrence demonstrates that the Zhyds[1] make
wicked use of the religious tolerance accorded to them, therefore,
as a warning and as an example to others, let the Jewish schools
(the synagogues) of Velizh be sealed up until farther orders, and
let services be forbidden, whether in them or near them.

[Footnote 1: Compare Vol. I, p, 320, n. 2.]

The imperial resolution was couched in the fierce language of the new reign which had begun in the meantime. It rose in the bloody mist of the Velizh affair. The fatal consequences of this synchronism were not limited to the Jews of Velizh. Judging by the contents and the harsh wording of the resolution, Nicholas I. was convinced at that time of the truth of the ritual murder libel. The mysterious and unloved tribe rose before the vision of the new Tzar as a band of cannibals and evil-doers. This sinister notion can be traced in the conscription statute which was then in the course of preparation in St. Petersburg and was soon afterwards to stir Russian Jewry to its depths, dooming their little ones to martyrdom.

While punishment was to be meted out to the entire Jewish population of Russia, the fate of the Velizh community was particularly tragic. It was subjected to the terrors of a unique state of siege. The whole community was placed under suspicion. All the synagogues were shut up as if they were dens of thieves, and the hapless Jews could not even assemble in prayer to pour out their hearts before God. All business was at a standstill; the shops were closed, and gloomy faces flitted shyly across the streets of the doomed city.

The stern command from St. Petersburg ordering that the case be "positively probed to the bottom" and that the culprits be apprehended gladdened only the heart of Strakhov, the chairman of the Commission of Inquiry, who was now free to do as he pleased. He spread out the net of inquiry in ever wider circles. Terentyeva and the other female witnesses, who were fed well while in prison, and expected not only amnesty but also remuneration for their services, gave more and more vent to their imagination. They "recollected" and revealed before the Commission of Inquiry a score of religious crimes which they alleged had been perpetrated by the Jews prior to the Velizh affair, such as the murder of children in suburban inns, the desecration of church utensils and similar misdeeds.

The Commission was not slow in communicating the new revelations to the Tzar who followed vigilantly the developments in the case. But the Commission had evidently overreached itself. The Tzar began to suspect that there was something wrong in this endlessly growing tangle of crimes. In October, 1827, he attached to the report of the Commission the following resolution: "It is absolutely necessary to find out who those unfortunate children were; this ought to be easy if the whole thing is not a miserable lie." His belief in the guilt of the Jews had evidently been shaken.

In its endeavors to make up for the lack of substantial evidence, the commission, personified by Khovanski, put itself in communication with the governors of the Pale, directing them to obtain information concerning all local ritual murder cases in past years. The effect of these inquiries was to revive the Grodno affair of 1818 which had been "left to oblivion." A certain convert by the name of Gradlnski from the townlet of Bobovnya, in the government of Minsk, declared before the Commission of Inquiry that he was ready to point out the description of the ritual murder ceremony in a "secret" Hebrew work. When the book was produced and the incriminated passage translated, it was found that it referred to the Jewish rite of slaughtering animals. The apostate, thus caught red-handed, confessed that he had turned informer in the hope of making money, and was by imperial command sent into the army. The confidence of St. Petersburg in the activity of the Velizh Commission of Inquiry vanished more and more. Khovanski was notified that "his Majesty the Emperor, having observed that the Commission bases its deductions mostly on surmises, by attaching significance to the fits and gestures of the incriminated during the examinations, is full of apprehension lest the Commission, carried away by zeal and anti-Jewish prejudice, act with a certain amount of bias and protract the case to no purpose."

Soon afterwards, in 1830, the case was taken out of the hands of the Commission which had become entangled in a mesh of lies--Strakhov had died in the meantime--, and was turned over to the Senate.

Weighed down by the nightmare proportions of the material, which the Velizh Commission had managed to pile up, the members of the Fifth Department of the Senate which was charged with the case were inclined to announce a verdict of guilty and to sentence the convicted Jews to deportation to Siberia, with the application of the knout and whip (1831). In the higher court, the plenary session of the Senate, there was a disagreement, the majority voting guilty, while three senators, referring to the ukase of 1817, were in favor of setting the prisoners at liberty, but keeping them at the same time under police surveillance.

In 1834 the case reached the highest court of the Empire, the Council of State, and here for the first time the real facts came to light. Truth found its champion in the person of the aged statesman, Mordvinov, who owned some estates near Velizh, and, being well-acquainted with the Jews of the town, was roused to indignation by the false charges concocted against them. In his capacity as president of the Department of Civil and Ecclesiastical Affairs of the Council of State, Mordvinov, after sifting the evidence carefully, succeeded in a number of sessions to demolish completely the Babel tower of lies erected by Strakhov and Khovanski and to adduce proofs that the governor-general, blinded by anti-Jewish prejudice, had misled the Government by his communications. The Department of Civil and Ecclesiastical Affairs was convinced by the arguments of Mordvinov and other champions of the truth, and handed down a decision that the accused Jews be set at liberty and rewarded for their innocent sufferings, and that the Christian women informers he deported to Siberia.

The plenary meeting of the Council of State concurred in the decision of the Department, rejecting only the clause providing for the reward of the sufferers. The verdict of the Council of State was submitted to the Tzar and received his endorsement on January 18, 1835. It read as follows:

The Council of State, having carefully considered all the
circumstances of this complex and involved case, finds that the
depositions of the material female witnesses, Terentyeva, Maximova,
and Koslovska, containing as they do numerous contradictions and
absurdities and lacking all positive evidence and indubitable
conclusions, cannot be admitted as legal proof to convict the Jews
of the grave crimes imputed to them, and, therefore, renders the
following decision:

1. The Jews accused of having killed the soldier boy Yemelyanov and
of other similar deeds, which are implied in the Velizh trial, no
indictment whatsoever having been found against them, shall be freed
from further judgment and inquiry.

2. The material witnesses, the peasant woman Terentyeva, the soldier
woman Maximova, and the Shiakhta woman[1] Kozlovsta, having been
convicted of uttering libels, which they have not in the least been
able to corroborate, shall be exiled to Siberia for permanent
residence.

3. The peasant maid Yeremyeyeva, having posed among the common
people as a soothsayer, shall be turned over to a priest for
admonition.

[Footnote 1: i.e., a member of the Polish nobility; comp. Vol. I, p. 58, n. 1.]

After attaching his signature to this verdict. Nicholas I. added in his own handwriting the following characteristic resolution, which was not to be made public:

While sharing the view of the Council of State that in this case,
owing to the vagueness of the legal deductions, no other decision
than the one embodied in the opinion confirmed by me could have been
reached, I deem it, however, necessary to add that I do not have,
and, indeed, cannot have, the inner conviction that the murder has
not been committed by the Jews. Numerous examples of similar
murders.... go to show that among the Jews there probably exist
fanatics or sectarians who consider Christian blood necessary for
their rites. This appears the more possible, since unfortunately
even among us Christians there sometimes exist such sects which are
no less horrible and incomprehensible. In a word, I do not for a
moment think that this custom is common to all Jews, but I do not
deny the possibility that there may be among them fanatics just as
horrible as among us Christians.

Having taken this idea into his head, Nicholas I. refused to sign the second decision of the Council of State, which was closely allied with the verdict: that all governors be instructed to be guided in the future by the ukase of 1817, forbidding to stir up ritual murder cases "from prejudice only." While rejecting this prejudice in its full-fledged shape, the Tzar acknowledged it in part, in a somewhat attenuated form.

Towards the end of January of 1835 an imperial ukase reached the city of Velizh, ordering the liberation of the exculpated Jews, the reopening of the synagogues, which had been sealed since 1826, and the handing back to the Jews of the holy scrolls which had been confiscated by the police. The dungeon was now ready to give up its inmates, whose strength had been sapped by the long confinement, while several of them had died during the imprisonment. The synagogues, which had not been allowed to resound with the moans of the martyrs, were now opened for the prayers of the liberated. The state of siege which for nine long years had been throttling the city was at last taken off; the terror which had haunted the ostracized community came to an end. A new leaf was added to the annals of Jewish martyrdom, one of the gloomiest, in spite of its "happy" finale.

7. THE MSTISLAVL AFFAIR

The ritual murder trials did not exhaust the "extraordinary" afflictions of Nicholas' reign. There were cases of wholesale chastisements inflicted on more tangible grounds, when misdeeds of a few individuals were puffed up into communal crimes and visited cruelly upon entire communities. The conscription horrors of that period, when the Kahals were degraded to police agencies for "capturing" recruits, had bred the "informing" disease among the Jewish communities. They produced the type of professional informer, or _moser_[1], who blackmailed the Kahal authorities of his town by threatening to disclose their "abuses," the absconding of candidates for the army and various irregularities in carrying out the conscription, and in this way extorted "silence money" from them. These scoundrels made life intolerable, and there were occasions when the people took the law into their own hands and secretly dispatched the most objectionable among them.

[Footnote 1: The Hebrew and Yiddish equivalent for "informer."]

A case of this kind came to light in the government of Podolia in 1836. In the town Novaya Ushitza two _mosers_, named Oxman and Schwartz, who had terrorized the Jews of the whole province, were found dead. Rumor had it that the one was killed in the synagogue and the other on the road to the town. The Russian authorities regarded the crime as the collective work of the local Jewish community, or rather of several neighboring Jewish communities, "which had perpetrated this wicked deed by the verdict of their own tribunal."

About eighty Kahal elders and other prominent Jews of Ushitza and adjacent towns, including two rabbis, were put on trial. The case was submitted to a court-martial which resolved "to subject the guilty to an exemplary punishment." Twenty Jews were sentenced to hard labor and to penal military service, with a preliminary "punishment by _Spiessruten_ through five hundred men." [1] A like number were sentenced to be deported to Siberia; the rest were either acquitted or had fled from justice. Many of those who ran the gauntlet died under the strokes, and are remembered by the Jewish people in Russia as martyrs.

[Footnote 1: Both the word and the penalty were introduced by Peter the Great from Germany. The culprit was made to run between two lines of soldiers who whipped his bare shoulders with rods. The penalty was abolished in 1863.]

The scourge of informers was also responsible for the Mstislavl affair. In 1844, a Jewish crowd in the market-place of Mstislavl, a town in the government of Moghilev, came into conflict with a detachment of soldiers who were searching for contraband goods in a Jewish warehouse. The results of the fray were a few bruised Jews and several broken rifles. The local police and military authorities seized this opportunity to ingratiate themselves with their superiors, and reported to the governor of Moghilev and the commander of the garrison that the Jews had organized a "mutiny." The local informer, Arye Briskin, a converted Jew, found this incident an equally convenient occasion to wreak vengeance on his former coreligionists for the contempt in which he was held by them, and allowed himself to be taken into tow by the official Jew-baiters.

In January, 1844, alarming communications concerning a "Jewish mutiny" reached St. Petersburg. The matter was reported to the Tzar, and a swift and curt resolution followed: "To court-martial the principal culprits implicated in this incident, and, in the meantime, as a punishment for the turbulent demeanor of the Jews of that city, to take from them one recruit for every ten men." Once more the principles of that period were applied: one for all; first punishment, then trial.

The ukase arrived in Mstislavl on the eve of Purim, and threw the Jews into consternation. During the Fast of Esther the synagogues resounded with wailing. The city was in a state of terror: the most prominent leaders of the community were thrown into jail, and had to submit to disfigurement by having half of their heads and beards shaved off. The penal recruits were hunted down, without any regard to age, since, according to the Tzar's resolution, a tenth of the population had to be impressed into military service. Pending the termination of the trial, no Jew was allowed to leave the city, while natives from Mstislavl in other places were captured and conveyed to their native town. A large Jewish community was threatened with complete annihilation.

The Jews of Mstislavl, through their spokesmen, petitioned St. Petersburg to wait with the penal conscription until the conclusion of the trial, and endeavored to convince the central Government that the local administration had misrepresented the character of the incident. To save his brethren, the popular champion of the interests of his people, the merchant Isaac Zelikin, of Monastyrchina, [1] called affectionately Rabbi Itzele, journeyed to the capital. He managed to get the ear of the Chief of the "Third Section" [2] and to acquaint him with the horrors which were being perpetrated by the authorities in Mstislavl.

[Footnote 1: A townlet in the neighborhood of Mstislavl.]

[Footnote 2: See above, p. 21, n. 1.]

As a result, two commissioners were dispatched from St. Petersburg in quick succession. On investigating the matter on the spot, they discovered the machinations of the over-zealous officials and apostasized informers who had represented a street quarrel as an organized uprising. The new commission of inquiry, of which one of the St. Petersburg commissioners, Count Trubetzkoy, was member, disclosed the fact that the Jewish community as such had had nothing whatsoever to do with what had occurred. The findings of the commission resulted in an "Imperial Act of Grace": the imprisoned Jews were set at liberty, the penal conscripts were returned from service, several local officials were put on trial, and the governor of Moghilev was severely censured.

This took place in November, 1844, after the Mstislavl community had for nine long months tasted the horrors of a state of siege. The synagogues were filled with Jews praising God for the relief granted to them. The community decreed to commemorate annually the day before Purim, on which the ukase inflicting severe punishment on the Jews of Mstislavl was promulgated, as a day of fasting and to celebrate the third day of the month of Kislev, on which the cruel ukase was revoked, as a day of rejoicing. Had all the disasters of that era been perpetuated in the same manner, the Jewish calendar would consist entirely of these commemorations of national misfortunes, whether in the form of "ordinary" persecutions or "extraordinary" afflictions.