Chapter VIII: II. Letters From Kishineff3 (1)

To arrive at definite conclusions as to the immediate and the contributory causes of the sanguinary outrages perpetrated upon the Jews of Kishineff on the 19th and 20th of April, was a tedious and painful process, beset with innumerable difficulties. To try to find the truth amidst a mass of conflicting testimony, where murder and rape and rapine are charged against one side, and where the actual perpetrators of these deeds are supposed to be all in prison awaiting some form of trial, would be a formidable task even where the law and popular feeling were on the side of justice. But in a city where the injured class are placed almost beyond the protection of the law of the land, and where public passion is alike the author of outrage and the apologist of partisan officials, it is necessarily much more difficult for the searcher after unbiassed evidence to secure the object of his quest.

Disregarding entirely the accounts which have been published in the Russian and foreign press, I adopted the following means of reaching something approximating to the real facts as to the outrages; their instigators, cause, and extent, and the measure of representative Russian feeling in relation thereto:

On arriving at Odessa I interviewed Count Schouvaloff, the retiring Civil Governor of South Russia, and I reproduce from memory (not having taken notes of the conversation) what he was courteous enough to say. I also obtained expressions of opinion from Russian and other merchants in Odessa upon anti-Jewish feeling in South Russia; and these views, frankly biassed as they were, will speak for a very large class of Russian and of resident foreign Christian opinion about the Jews and their racial and commercial character, as developed in this country.

Immediately upon reaching Kishineff, I called upon the responsible leaders of the Jews to whom I carried letters of introduction from London, Paris, and New York. They are prominent citizens, and are largely of the medical profession. I obtained from them and others, including the three Rabbis of the city, a very copious statement of all that occurred there on the 19th and 20th of last month.

Resolved to compare this _ex parte_ testimony with such Russian evidence as might be least tainted with anti-Semitic prejudice in this now somewhat demoralised place, I solicited and secured interviews with two Christian doctors of Russian blood; also with one of the highest civil functionaries in the district, who is a noble of great wealth, of unique local influence, whose name I am not permitted to use, but for whose _bona fides_ I can absolutely vouch; and, in addition, I was privileged to hold fully an hour’s conversation on the subject of the riots and outrages with M. Karl Schmidt, who has been Mayor of the city for the last twenty-five years without interruption; the strongest possible evidence to his popularity with all classes of his fellow-citizens, and to his worth and capacity as a Russian municipal ruler.

I then met by appointment in the Jewish Hospital all the medical men, Jews, who had professionally attended to the persons brought there during and after the riots, who could speak as to the number of killed and wounded, and the extent of the injuries inflicted upon the unfortunate victims of the mob’s fury. The statements made to me by these doctors I repeated to the two Russian doctors I have already referred to, and I have noted down their comments upon the accounts given me by their Hebrew medical _confrères_.

My next step was to visit the scenes of outrage in the city, and in the Skulanska Rogatka district, where the most atrocious of the crimes were committed, and to obtain from the living witnesses of the outrages an account of what they saw and experienced, some of them from women and girls who went through the saturnalia of ruffianism as victims of outrage and of rape.

From these tales of revolting deeds I proceeded to the Jewish Cemetery, where I saw and counted the forty-four newly made graves of the massacred men, women, and children, whose freshly turned mounds stand there to-day with their simple Hebrew wooden marks of identity, as an appeal to the God alike of Christian and of Jew against deeds done in the pretended name of religion which might even shame devils to perpetrate.

I have taken pictures of these graves, of the shed in which the young girl of thirteen was assaulted, and killed with four men, of groups of little girls and women who passed through the two nights of horror in the quarter where the Moldavian fiends committed the worst deeds, and of houses in which numerous murders were committed.

Knowing how unlikely it would be for me, or for any man, to obtain from modest maidens and respectable married women any account, or even admission, of their having been violated, I sought the Rabbis of the city, and got from them and from some of the victims whom I met there particulars of the outrages to which they and others were subjected. These will, as far as the subject can permit it, be dealt with in subsequent letters.

Let me to this extent forestall what I shall have to say about the violation of women. All the worst of these crimes were the work of Moldavians, and not of Russians. This, I am convinced, is absolutely true. Many of these Moldavians are descended from the colony of convicts and criminals founded by Pagan Rome in the country now known as Roumania; and the several centuries’ experience by the race of Turkish rule, before being inflicted as subjects upon more civilised governments, has not morally improved the original taint in the blood of their present-day representatives.

Two letters,[4] one signed by Count Tolstoy and the other from Maxime Gorky, addressed to the committee in charge of the labour of relief in Kishineff, express the hateful feeling of indignation and of abhorrence with which the cultured Russian mind looks upon these revolting deeds of mediæval savagery in our day.

_Letter I_

KISHINEFF, May 21st.

The first survey of the situation here satisfies me there is no likelihood of any further serious outbreak for the present. The military precautions seem fully adequate to the task of dealing with any emergency.

The Jews, however, are still terror-stricken, and in fear of renewed violence. Wealthy families have fled the city, but the vast mass of the Hebrew community, numbering fully fifty thousand souls, are too poor to purchase the means of seeking protection in flight.

All the Russians I have met, from Odessa to this city, condemn the abominable acts of the anti-Semitic mobs as strongly as other people.

The true origin of the massacres will need patient and careful inquiry, but it can in a general way be put down to combined racial, economic, and other factors, inflamed by violent incitations of the local anti-Jewish press.

The latest list of the killed and wounded, and accounts of looting and destruction, gives these figures: Killed, 44; badly wounded, 83; injured, 500. Houses wrecked, 700; shops and small stores looted and damaged, 600; 2000 families are said to be ruined in their business and employment, and 10,000 people require relief.

The wealthy Jews of the City and Pale have subscribed about forty-five thousand dollars, while donations from Germany, France, England, and the United States amount, so far, to some thirty thousand dollars more.

All the vengeance of the mobs seems to have been directed against the very poorest of the Jews. Shops were only looted, but artisans were killed.

Much greater help than that already received will be required to prevent starvation.

_Letter II_

KISHINEFF, May 25th.

During a brief halt in the South Russian capital, Odessa, I availed myself of an opportunity of visiting the retiring Civil Governor, Lieutenant General Count P. P. Schouvaloff, elder son of Count Paul Schouvaloff, formerly Russian Ambassador at Berlin, and subsequently the most popular Viceroy of Poland who reigned in Warsaw since the stormy days of 1863. The Count received me with courtesy and affability at his private palace, on the Nicolai Boulevard. His Excellency had, he informed me, been abroad during the last two months, and had only just returned to take adieux of the local officials and citizens of Odessa before assuming the functions of his new post in the Ministry of the Interior. Had he been in Odessa during the terrible events in Kishineff he would, _ex-officio_, have been in possession of intimate knowledge of the tragic occurrences, upon which he should have had no hesitation, he was good enough to say, to have given me the frank expression of his views. As it was, the Count regretted he could say very little indeed. Like the rest of his countrymen who had a jealous regard for the good repute of Russia abroad, his Excellency sincerely deplored the frightful popular _émeute_ in the Bessarabian capital. But there were one or two things to be borne in mind by a foreign observer and commentator, he was anxious to point out. He need not, perhaps, he remarked, dwell upon the unsophisticated condition of the Russian peasant or artisan; his simplicity, ignorance, and the practically unlimited credence he gave to sinister and plausibly mischievous counsellors. Against these qualities in the simple Russian, there was to be set, he insisted, the vastly superior intelligence of the Jew, of all grades and conditions. It was, unfortunately, an indisputable fact, in his opinion, that the Jews, more especially where they were numerically equal to their orthodox neighbours--and in South Russian centres they formed the predominant elements--exploited the Christians in a hundred unscrupulous ways, to their own aggrandisement. The Jew not only knew the law better than his Christian neighbour, but he was an adept in circumventing it. Consequently the exploited Russian failed to obtain legal redress, and occasionally the ignorant people, instigated by the worst class of criminals, whose only object was plunder, took the law--according to their own primitive conception of it--into their own hands, with such frightful results as were lately seen in Bessarabia.

In his Excellency’s opinion the limitations placed upon the Jews in this country should be made somewhat more stringent, in the protective interests of the Jews themselves. That was to say, he remarked, they should be deprived of much of the immunity under which they now exploited the uneducated Christians. On the other hand, improvement might be effected by a more careful choice being made in the appointment of Governors in Jewish centres. Younger and more active men are required, who will keep themselves fully and exactly _au courant_ with every latent movement among the people under their jurisdiction. They should be just, intelligent, and alert Governors, his Excellency said, upon whom it would be practically impossible to spring any sudden outbreak, and they should be prepared to apply instantly repressive measures at all time.

Count Schouvaloff would not enter into any discussion of the Jewish question in Russia, but he might be permitted to observe that it was, in his opinion, one for Jews themselves, in the main, to solve. Generally speaking, he had little hope in any change for the better in the inimical feeling between Jew and Christian in Russia, so long as there existed no standard of commercial rectitude among Jews. There was no question of religious intolerance, although, unfortunately, it was no difficult thing for _agents provocateurs_, whose object, as already said, was plunder, to arouse the fanaticism of simple people on occasions like Easter festivals.

Such is the view, briefly expressed, of a Russian Governor whom I believe to be, from the evidence of my own countrymen in Odessa, as well as from common repute, a singularly honest and high-minded member of the gubernatorial class in this country.

Count Schouvaloff, on parting, cordially expressed his great admiration for “the most progressive and enlightened nation in the world,” and fervently trusted the United States and Russia, as the two great Pacific powers, would ever remain the firmest of good friends and neighbours.

Interviews with three prominent Russian merchants--all men of good social standing and repute--failed almost entirely to elicit any more friendly expression towards the Jews. They denounced as inhuman the iniquities of the ignorant, savage mob at Kishineff, but could not shut their eyes to “the trade trickeries and treacheries,” to use their own words, which, at the hands of grossly ignorant, lower-class Russians, brought such terribly retributive punishment upon the Jews. None of these gentlemen could, or would, admit that religious hatred or Paschal rancour were the incentive motives of the terrible outbreaks against the Hebrews. There were exceptions, of course, they were careful to remark, but, generally speaking, the Russian Jew was very largely the author of his own persecution.

It is alike disappointing and depressing to find with what remarkable unanimity this unfavourable view is taken by an otherwise fair-minded class of Russians, in the South Russian capital. Considering that nearly the whole of the trade and commerce of the city and port of Odessa is in the hands of Jews, it is only natural that the Christian merchant’s opinion of his Hebrew rival and neighbour should be strongly tinctured by competitive prejudice and jealousy. Much allowance must, therefore, be made for that; but, on the other hand, ’tis no less remarkable that among, for example, the resident foreign Consular corps and other independent and impartial observers in the same city, it is almost equally difficult to elicit a favourable opinion of the Jews, although the majority of these authorities were solicitous to qualify their opinions by pointing out to me that it is not against the Jews themselves, but against Jewish methods and their shady commercial _morale_ generally, that public feeling and sentiment run so strongly.

There is a comparatively large English colony in Odessa, and the shipping is almost entirely in the hands of British ship-brokers, and, as the exporters are all Jews, these agents have intimate knowledge of the latter. Here, again, one hears the same condemnatory opinions of the Jew’s want of commercial morality. This is not, I regret very much to say, a pleasing picture of the Jewish element in this great Russian centre, but my duty and resolve is to give a faithfully accurate record of the opinion and views I am seeking from authentic sources and representative people of all classes. Among educated and enlightened Russians one finds anti-Semites who are not one whit less rancorous than the ignorant and benighted Mujik. But the former would never dream of murdering his Jewish neighbour.

The only other comment that suggests itself in connection with this matter, especially in reference to Count Schouvaloff’s implied suggestion that the Kishineff massacres are mainly due to Jewish exploitation of artisans and peasants, and to their customary commercial trickery, is this: The rioters of April last were not peasants, nor were the victims of their licensed brutality usurers or profit-mongers. The murderers and looters were chiefly labourers and artisans, led by Seminarists; and the victims were, almost in all instances, Hebrew workingmen and their families. The sinister influence of the local anti-Jewish press is also a factor in the origin of the riots which his Excellency overlooked, and which others in Odessa did not refer to when expressing their views upon the Kishineff reign of terror at Eastertide.

_Letter III_

KISHINEFF, May 27, 10 P. M.

An attempt to renew disorder near the market place this afternoon was promptly dealt with and suppressed by the military. A large crowd gathered about five o’clock, near the scene of the first outbreak on Easter Sunday, when, as on that occasion, some boys were made use of to test the disposition of the police and military by throwing stones at some Jewish residences. In this instance there was no hesitation on the part of the authorities. The military rode round the crowd at once, and hemmed them in, when forty of the leaders and instigators were immediately arrested and taken to the prison.

Hundreds of families fled from the city last night, owing to threats that the deeds of Easter would be repeated to-day. The trains to Odessa were packed with fugitives, while all the hotels in Kishineff were crowded by Jews whose wives and daughters could not leave the city, and dare not remain in their homes.

The more I make myself acquainted with the measures which seem to be imperatively ordered by the central Government, the more I am convinced that the authorities here will not hesitate for a moment to employ the sternest methods to preserve order. Fifty ball cartridges have been served out to each soldier. At every dangerous point in the Jewish quarters soldiers are posted with fixed bayonets, while cavalry patrols are constantly moving from one quarter to another, day and night, in vigilant surveillance of the situation.

I visited the Jewish districts in the city and suburbs twice to-day, and found everything quiet.

The city is still paying dearly, in the virtual suspension of all work, for the riots in April. Business is completely disorganised through the injuries done to shops and warehouses, and the flight of Jewish dealers and employers.

I desire to appeal most urgently for assistance for the future of the girls and married women who were savagely violated during the riots at Easter. These girls have now no hope of marriage where the facts of their dishonour are publicly known. Under the rigorous moral law of Moses married women who are outraged must be divorced from their husbands. There are several such cases among the victims of the mob’s brutality, and their misfortunes, along with those of the young girls referred to, make a peculiarly pathetic appeal to the sympathy of those who may be blessed with the means by which the future of these unhappy creatures might be made less miserable and hopeless.

There are also from fifty to one hundred orphans, children of murdered fathers and mothers, who are to be provided for. Some of the money subscribed from abroad ought to be specially ear-marked for alleviating these three classes of exceptional suffering and wrong.

_Letter IV_

BERLIN, June 3d.

Finding it impossible, on account of the Russian censorship of all telegraphic messages relating to the Kishineff outrages, to forward this despatch from that city, I do so from this point.

I have completed an investigation as to the origin, authors, and extent of the recent massacres and looting, while I have also traversed almost the whole of the Jewish Pale of Settlement, from Odessa to Warsaw, inquiring into the present state of anti-Semitic feeling arising out of the outbreak at Easter.

The origin of the sanguinary riots at Kishineff, on the 19th and 20th of April, was not, as reported in the Russian official press,[5] an assault by a Jew proprietor of a merry-go-round upon a Christian woman, whereby a mob of peasants were incited to attack the Jews. There is no truth in this account.

The real origin of the outbreak was this:

The only daily paper in Kishineff is the _Bessarabetz_. It is a violently anti-Semitic organ. Its chief editor is Pavolachi Kroushevan, of Moldavian origin. He has systematically inflamed the popular feeling against the Jews, as the foes of Russia, as the propagandists of Socialism, and as the enemies of the Christian religion. These attacks have been continuous for the last six years. Merchants and employers giving work to Jews were held up to public odium, and the expulsion or extermination of the race was openly urged. The _Bessarabetz_ has a circulation of 20,000, chiefly among the police, municipal employés, and workmen generally.

Two events occurring shortly before Easter were seized upon by Kroushevan to incite the mob to murderous violence. One was the murder of a boy belonging to the village of Doubossar, situated between Kishineff and Odessa, by his relatives for gain. The other was the suicide of a girl and her death at the Jewish Hospital of Kishineff. The _Bessarabetz_ declared them to be both ritual murders by the Jews, and summoned the Russian Christians to punish the authors of the alleged crimes.

The chief Rabbi of Kishineff, fearing from past experiences the results of these ferocious appeals, hastened to the Greek bishop, and implored him to calm the popular mind by giving an episcopal assurance that no such ritual was practised, and no such crimes committed, by the Jews. The bishop’s reply was that he feared there was some Semitic sect which really did indulge in the use of Christian blood in the Paschal ceremonies, and he refused to intervene.

Ten days before the riots broke out a body of representative Jews visited the Governor and warned him that Kroushevan’s incitations would lead to murder, unless restrained. General Von Raaben assured the deputation that all necessary precautions would be taken, but no attempt was made by him to stop the appeals of the _Bessarabetz_ to the popular anti-Semitic hatred.

Chief of Police Tchemzenkov was also requested to act in the interest of peace, and curb the diatribes of the _Bessarabetz_. He replied that it would “serve the Jews right if they were driven from the city for encouraging the propaganda of Socialism.”

Having by the blood accusation articles, and through the circulation of a Roumanian anti-Semitic pamphlet purporting to give instances of numerous murders of Christian children by Jews, roused the Kishineff populace to a state of savage fury, Kroushevan’s local accomplices planned an attack for the Easter holidays. Kishineff Jews declare that Kroushevan came to the city, in disguise, from St. Petersburg, on the eve of the outbreak, to plan the riots. This statement I could not get verified. A meeting was held and a plan of attack decided on. A few days previously a band of strangers arrived at Kishineff, comprising thirty Albanians and some Macedonians, believed to be brigands brought especially for an attack on the Jews.

The chief instigators of the riots were Kroushevan and the staff of the _Bessarabetz_; a doctor who is of Greek origin; a Moldavian doctor; a Moldavian engineer; a notary; two sons of a prominent merchant; two students, sons of prominent citizens; two Odessa students; two minor officers, and several well-known citizens.

The actual leaders of the riots were students and Seminarists from the Royal School and the city religious colleges.

All the statements made to me agree that the Seminarists directed the movements of the mob on both days, disguised as labourers and strangers. The rioters comprised thirty bands, averaging fifty each, with a Seminarist on a bicycle directing the attack. Some of the bands were composed of the lower employés of the various departments of the municipality--the telegraph, post office, and other municipal offices, but artisans and labourers, and Moldavians from the suburbs, formed the greater body of the rioters, with the Albanian strangers above mentioned.

These bands, with sticks and stones, but no firearms, attacked the Jewish quarters at thirty different points simultaneously, thus proving a deliberate plan of operation.

All the evidence that I have gathered during eight days of searching inquiry in Kishineff convinces me that the riots were not a casual or accidental uprising of a mob against the Jews, but formed a carefully planned attack by the local anti-Semitic leaders, with the passive connivance of the Chief of Police and the active encouragement of some of his officers. Von Raaben’s deplorable weakness in not employing his military force to quell the riots during the first day is responsible for the horrors of that and the massacres and the violations of women and girls of the second day.

The majority of the rioters were of Moldavian origin. These Moldavians are as numerous as the Jews in Kishineff and constitute the most ignorant and brutal element of the populace.

The rioting began with the looting of the Jewish shops and the demolition of houses. The mob, finding the military not employed against them and the police witnessing the attacks sympathetically--many of the police taking part and participating in the looting--passed from murder and massacre to the violation of Jewish women and girls.

I have two detailed statements, carefully prepared by eye-witnesses of the scenes. One is a copy of the indictment of the authors of the massacres, which has been lodged with the Procureur; the other is a specially prepared statement by two Christian ladies, one Russian and one Russo-French, who investigated a certain class of outrages for my information. Here are a few instances of the worst crimes:

The Feldstein family is one of the most respectable in Kishineff. The mob attacked their saloon on the corner of Armenia Street at noon on the first day, Sunday, April 9. The police barracks are some forty paces away. The soldiers and police patrolled the street during the five hours occupied by the mob in demolishing the saloon and destroying fifteen thousand roubles’ worth of wines. A safe containing a large sum of money was also broken open and robbed. While that section of the mob was thus employed, the leader of the gang found in the kitchen of the family residence the meat for the family’s dinner. He put it on a stick, mounted to the roof of the saloon, which is of one story, and, addressing the mob, the police, and the military in the street, declared, “Here are the remains of a Christian child found in the house of the wealthy Jew, Feldstein.”

The members of the household were saved by a Russian employé of Feldstein and a humane gendarme, from the fury of the mob. On completing the destruction of the place, the leader drank to the health of Editor Kroushevan from the roof of the looted premises.

At No. 13 Asia Street in the Bender Rogatka quarter some of the worst outrages were perpetrated. Twelve families, all Jewish artisans, lived in the yard. A mob of Moldavians, some Russian workingmen, and a few Albanians attacked the occupants of the yard. The majority of the Jewish men escaped, while the women and girls, numbering sixteen, concealed themselves in a loft under the roof of a one-story house. Four Jewish men tried to defend the place, and were murdered. Their wives and daughters, with a dozen women and children, had taken refuge in a loft under the roof of No. 13. It was from some of these I obtained the facts here recorded.

One Mottel Greenspoon, a glazier, was stunned by a blow from a bludgeon, and the Albanians mutilated him while still alive. They then choked a child, two years old, and cut out its tongue, while alive.

The other three men were killed and then had feathers put on their faces. As an act of desecration of the dead, two drunken women, one Moldavian and one Bulgarian, trampled on the body of Greenspoon as it lay mutilated in the yard. The mob then found its way to the loft where the women were concealed, and remained several hours. All the women and girls were violated.

All this time the police and soldiers were patrolling the open space in front of the house where these fiendish crimes were committed. I saw blood spattered on the walls of the rooms and yard, and picked up a child’s schoolbook on which some murderer had wiped his hands.

At the household Foudyn, No. 33 Gostinna Street, four men and one woman were killed. Sixteen families lived in this yard, all those of artisans. The mob came the first day and demolished the windows and doors. It returned the next day for massacre. Sixteen women and eight children were concealed in the loft. The first killed was a boy of sixteen, who begged piteously for life, saying he had done no wrong, was a scholar of the state school, and wanted to live. His father, at the other end of the yard, heard the boy’s cries, but could not save his life. They killed him while the father lay stunned, unable to make an effort to save the boy’s life. It was Mr. Baranovitch, the father of the boy, a most intelligent and respectable man, who told me the story of his son’s murder. As at the house in Asia Street, the women and girls who had concealed themselves in the loft were discovered and violated by the mob. One married woman escaped through the roof, leaped to the ground, ran to the nearest police station, and implored help, but she was driven out by the officer, who said the Jews were only receiving what they deserved. Another married woman named Feya Katzap was bludgeoned to death in the yard of this house.

The scene of the most diabolical crimes and violations committed by the mob was the Skulanska Rogatka suburb, eighty per cent. of the population of which are Moldavians, the Jews forming the remainder. This is the residence of the poorer class of the workers of both races. The mob broke into the yard on the evening of the second day, Monday, April 20. Twenty-five persons, mostly women and children, hid themselves in a carpenter’s shed owned by one Grillspoon. The houses in the yard were demolished, and the mob was going away when the cry of a child in the shed indicated the place of concealment of the women. The shed was instantly attacked by Moldavians, led by a father and son, who were neighbours of the Jews. Grillspoon, the owner of the shed, was killed, together with four other artisans, who were defending the place, and one woman, the wife of the owner, was murdered after violation. The mob also found a pretty girl, named Feya Wouller, aged thirteen, and her fate is so awful that I can only state that after having been violated by more than a dozen of these Moldavians they fought for her body like famished wolves after life was extinct. When found the next morning by her relatives the body was seen to be literally torn in two.

The sister of Feya Wouller, whose brother died trying to defend the women and children, assured me that the Moldavian leader and his son, who led the mob in his district, are walking about free at this moment. Three brothers, well-known in the city, are implicated in several of the murders. A car-driver and his two sons took part in four murders and general looting, but none of these men are now in prison. The Jews killed by the car-driver and his son are Eydel Drochman, one Galantor, one Kantor, and the boy Baranovitch.

During the worst stages of the riot the chief police officer, Tchemzenkov, drove through the city smoking cigarettes. At one period of the disturbance, on the morning of the second day, the Jews of the New Bazaar organised a body of about 150 to defend themselves, but Police Officer Dobroselsky, on finding them able to drive the mob away, arrested several of the defenders and broke up the body.

Among the prominent looters of the Jews’ shops was the soldier servant of a military surgeon; and a son of a murdered woman, Keyla Konza, declares that among those who violated and killed his mother were four common soldiers.

Joseph Newman testifies that his father was killed in the presence of Policeman Stepanovitch.

A Christian Russian says that he heard the students from Odessa shout to the mob, “Kill the Jews!”

A prominent employé in the municipal office in the city was declared to be an active director of the mob, showing where the Jews lived, and shouting, “Kill the Jews!”

Several police officers did their duty and saved many lives in the Jewish districts. Among these was Officer Sloutschevsky, of Bender Rogatka, who, with twelve men, drove the mob away. They went from this to the Asia Street district, where another police officer was patrolling, and he allowed them to commit the murders described. Some artillery officers, who were off duty, manfully saved several Jewish women.

On the morning of the first day’s outbreak large crosses were chalked on the houses of the Christians living in streets inhabited by the Jews, and none of these dwellings or shops were injured. Ikons (images) were shown in the windows of other houses, and thus indicated places not to be attacked. During the progress of the first day’s outrages the Bishop of Kishineff, while on his way to dinner with a rich noble, passed in his carriage through the mob, giving his blessing to the crowd. Upon hearing of this incident, I refused to believe it possible, and resolved to interview the nobleman, who is Michael Nicolavitch Kroupensky. He received me courteously, and said:

“Bishops in Russia always give blessings to people when passing through the streets. This was purely an accidental coincidence. The Bishop is a humane man.”

So that the fact remains that the Bishop did pass through the mob on his way to dinner, and uttered no word to persuade the mob to stop its murder and pillage.

The Jews are convinced from every evidence that the outbreak was a plan of the local anti-Semitic leaders to punish and terrorise the Jews for their supposed propaganda of Socialism in conjunction with the leaders of the Socialists of Western Europe. The fanaticism and superstition of the Moldavian and Russian mob were then excited by the fabricated stories of Jewish ritualistic murders of Christian children, to cover the organised political plot against the local Socialist movement. I was informed by Nobleman Kroupensky that on the day following the riots thirty young Jews were arrested, and that five of them were found to be in possession of pamphlets appealing to the workingmen of Russia to demand a constitutional government like that of England. Some officials of the municipal department, some police officers, and others connived at the attack in order to crush the alleged Jewish Socialist propaganda. The artisans and labourers had been appealed to by the _Bessarabetz_ to drive out the Jew workers, who labour for low wages, and thus do much injury to Christian families. No evidence was adduced for me to implicate the Government at St. Petersburg in a responsibility for the outbreak which had covered Russia’s name with shame, but Minister de Plehve must have known that some kind of manifestation was contemplated. Thinking, probably, the affair would not culminate in massacres, but might assume the character of an anti-Socialist demonstration, he took no steps to meet the emergency which actually arose until too late. The present Vice-Governor of Bessarabia, Councillor of State Ostrogoff, is a notorious anti-Semite. This fact, coupled with threats of the police and the murderers at large that the next attack will be a St. Bartholomew for the Jews of Kishineff, explains the flight of nearly all the Jewish leaders and wealthy members of the race from the city, leaving only the poor members of the Hebrew community apprehending a renewed attack.

The military measures to preserve order were adequate when I left Kishineff on Friday morning, but if these are relaxed in any way, no protection remains for the terrorised men, women, and children against further violence, The journal edited by Kroushevan is still circulating in the city, and, while more restrained in its language than before the massacres, it is keeping alive the racial animosity against the defenceless Jews. I would urge the following measures to afford some immediate protection for the Jews of Bessarabia and the Pale:

First, that the Government at St. Petersburg issue a ukase declaring there is no truth in the horrible fiction of Jewish ritual murders of Christian children; second, that the bishops and clergymen of all cities, towns, and villages be compelled to read the same from their pulpits, thereby stopping the circulation of these atrocious legends within the borders of Russia; third, that a conference of the leading Jews of Western Europe be held without delay, to consider the best means to solve the problem of the Russian Jew, and how best to help the Jews of the Pale to protect themselves under the existing Russian laws.

Unless some action of this nature is taken soon, more outrages will follow. I found the feeling in the larger cities, where the Jews are strong, very excited and apprehensive. In one city the Jews have purchased 9000 revolvers to protect themselves. There is a constant panic in Kiev, from which most of the wealthy Jews have fled to Cracow, while Jewish refugees from Kishineff were refused shelter on their arrival at Kiev by the terrified Jews of that city.

In Warsaw I found more confidence than elsewhere, as, in this large city, with its quarter of a million of Jews, the Polish Socialists, who are a strong organisation, have promised to aid the Jews if any attack should be made on them by the anti-Semites. The Governor, General Tchetverikoff, is a capable officer, free from anti-Semite prejudices, and he has made it plain, in the measures already taken, and in some straight talk, that he will deal promptly and sternly with any attempt to repeat the Kishineff ruffianism in the city under his control.

Throughout the whole Pale the police and peasants are told by the anti-Semites that the Tsar has issued an order to kill all the Jews or drive them from Russia.

_Letter V_

LONDON, June 6th.

The situation at Kishineff at the present time is this: The military measures in force are fully adequate for an instant repression of any attempted renewal of outrages. Owing, however, to the notorious anti-Semitic leanings and record of the Vice-Governor, Ostrogoff, the Jews who have fled the city, and the poorer class who suffered most and who cannot leave for lack of means, dread another outbreak.

They likewise note the indulgent punishments inflicted upon the directors of the riots, while several men known to have committed murder and to have been implicated in the tortures of women were actually liberated from prison after a few days’ detention, on the ground of alleged lack of sufficient evidence of their guilt. The feeling in Kishineff is general that the rank and file of the rioting bands were retained in custody, while the instigators and ringleaders were permitted to go free.

I do not credit the statement going the round of the press which alleges that Governor Von Raaben telegraphed to St. Petersburg for permission to use the military in Kishineff in dealing with the mob, and that he waited vainly for an authoritative reply. No such permission was needed from either Minister de Plehve or the head of any other department. The criminal code armed the local Governor with the fullest power and discretion for the employment of soldiers within his government or province as a supplementary force to the police to preserve order. There were 8000 military and 350 police at Von Raaben’s command during the first day’s riot, and he was as much in absolute control of those forces in the task of dealing with the outbreak against the Jews as the Governor of New York State would be of the State militia in a similar emergency.

As to the question of remedy: What can be done to safeguard the men, women, and children within the Jewish Pale, from Odessa to the Baltic, from periodic outrage; and free the name of a great empire from the reproach of such organised Christian barbarism as that of Kishineff? This question cannot be dismissed on the plea that American and European opinion is concerned only with the humane task of relief. The best possible measure of relief that could be offered to the victims of anti-Semitic oppression in Russia, at this crisis, would assume the character and form of a friendly mediating influence exercised with the Tsar in behalf of the Jews of his Empire.

I have discussed this idea with a high Russian official during my tour, and I briefly summarise our conversation.

In reply to my question as to what could be done by the friends of Russia in the United States to procure some better protection for the Russian Jew, this official, who is thoroughly conversant with both American and British politics, said:

“It is no use appealing to Russia through the medium of indignation meetings. This is not how to exercise a friendly influence such as is desired. We resent attempts to meddle in our domestic affairs through the agency of political demonstration. It is an unwarranted interference by other countries in our internal concerns. How, may I ask, would your Government and press consider our action if we organised great gatherings and delivered violent speeches in protest against, say, the burning alive of American citizens, not alone without trial, but independent even of the form of legal indictment? You must look at the position of our Government in relation to the hateful crimes of Kishineff from many points of view. Our system of administration differs radically from yours, while the civil position of the Jews here has no parallel in civil and political conditions in America except, perhaps, in your treatment of the Negro and the Chinaman. Whatever faults our system may possess in your eyes, we consider it as being adapted to the domestic requirements of Russia, and to the social temperament of our people. We are not in any sense a cruel or a persecuting nation, nor do we hate the Jews on any religious ground. But we never will admit a people so foreign in every respect to the Russians in racial traits and character, in faith and in general reputation, to an equality of citizenship. You might as well ask the American people to permit Chinamen to become Mayors of San Francisco or members of Congress. There is something more to be said in relation to Kishineff; not in any sense by way of palliating the horrible outrages which I condemn as strongly as you do, but in the way of, say, such an explanation as a Governor of Alabama or Carolina would try to account to civilised opinion for some act of a mob of Christian citizens in burning a fellow-citizen at the stake. The Jew in Russia is the disciple and propagandist of Socialism. He has introduced this menace to our Government and system from abroad. He is believed by the tens of thousands of our people who are employed in our departments to be their racial enemy, and the foreign plotter inside our gates against the Tsar, who is the head of the system which gives them their means of livelihood and some prospect of future positions for their sons.

“These are the class of Russians who hate the Jews most, and the hatred is begotten of the same human selfishness which stirs up strife between rival classes in other countries.

“It is necessary to know all this in order to understand the fact that many persons above the rank of artisans and labourers took part in the shameful outrages at Kishineff.

“Allow me now to reply direct to your question:

“I can only make a suggestion, which is this: Let some prominent statesman or highly respected citizen of the United States visit St. Petersburg and seek an interview with the Emperor. This would be welcomed as an act of friendship, and could not be considered as an intrusion even by our Government officials. The Tsar would be sure to receive such a visitor as the spokesman of friendly American feeling.

“No kinder-hearted man lives to-day than the Emperor. No one in your country deplores the outrages of April more than he does. Moreover, like all Russians, he holds the great American nation in high esteem, and cherishes the friendly relations which have so long subsisted between the two countries. If, then, some one of your leading men, commanding wide respect, would undertake such a mission, he would accomplish a thousand times more to guarantee the Jews against further outrage than 10,000 public meetings organised by the Jews of your cities or on the suggestion of Russia’s kind friends on the London press.”

I most urgently beg your advocacy, and that of the American press generally, of this proposal. It would be a mission worthy of a statesman, and its certain fruits would be the Tsar’s protection for the Jews from Odessa to Warsaw against further organised outrage during his lifetime.

The public man in the States eminently qualified for this humane mission is ex-President Cleveland. Such an ambassador on a friendly visit to St. Petersburg would attract the world’s attention, and success would be sure to crown his undertaking.

I attended several meetings of the Central Relief Committee while in Kishineff. The last one was on the eve of my departure, last Friday. The committee meets daily to examine applications and distribute assistance in money, food, and clothing. Kishineff is divided, for relief purposes, into twenty-two districts. Each has its local committee, who report to the Central Executive Committee of Fifteen, whose chairman, Dr. J. S. Mutznik, is a leading physician and one of Kishineff’s wealthy residents. Assisting him are several equally representative Jews, like Dr. Kohan-Bernstein, Rabbi Ettlinger, S. M. Grossman, E. Galperin, S. Perelmutter, I. Kipperwasser, E. Reidel, M. Kligman, Z. Rosenfeld, Israel Pappervasses, and several other well-known citizens.

A Ladies’ Committee gives valuable co-operation, attending to and reporting upon the women, girls, and orphans requiring aid. These ladies showed me over the food, clothing, and general assistance departments of the Central Committee Headquarters. I found everything well organised and efficiently executed. The Rabbis and leading members of the Ladies’ Committee have founded an asylum for the orphans of massacred parents.

I visited this temporary asylum and photographed the orphans and their guardians. Up to the date of my departure the Central Relief Committee had expended a total of 130,000 roubles; one-fourth of which was used in the purchase and distribution of food for the people whose homes had been destroyed, and for others made workless by the riots. Small sums of money had been advanced to the owners of shops and little stores to enable them to renew business; 1000 roubles were given in several instances.

This action of the Committee was severely criticised by the friends and representatives of the Jews who were killed. These complained that the money contributed from abroad ought to be apportioned according to relative loss, and that the subscribers would not estimate the injury done to a tailor’s or shoemaker’s store at three or four times the value of a murdered father, mother, or brother.

In this connection, I pointed out to Dr. Mutznik that, as those whose stores were looted could, under Russian law, claim adequate compensation from the city or the government, it would be more equitable to devote the major portion of the funds received to the present and future assistance of those who have suffered the greater wrong and injury in the loss of parents, of employment, and in other ways. To this view he agreed, though he was very doubtful if the claims for compensation already lodged in behalf of the store-owners will be fairly dealt with, or even considered, by the authorities.

Under the law as it stands, three independent witnesses must depose, not alone to the injury done to a particular store or business, but to the person or persons accused of being guilty of the looting or destruction. And no blood or marriage relative of the person seeking redress is permitted to testify! Under such conditions, and in view of the fact that most of the male Jews fled and hid themselves when the outbreak occurred, many of the claims for compensation will fall to the ground for want of sufficient evidence as to the names and complicity of the actual perpetrators of the destruction.

Dr. Mutznik believes that the relief work must be continued during the coming winter, to the larger number of artisans and labour applicants. Most of the Jewish merchants and employers have fled to Odessa, Cracow, and other cities. They will not return until they are assured of safety, and in their absence those whom they employed will, in all probability, remain without work.

My appeal through the press in behalf of the violated women and girls, and for the orphans, was warmly endorsed by the Ladies’ Committee and the Rabbis. Mesdames Mutznik and Hornstein, leading members of this committee, with true matronly feeling, pleaded the exceptionally hard cases of the young girls and of the violated married women. The case of the orphans speaks for itself, and needs no advocacy apart from the cruel facts which plead so forcibly for their utter helplessness.

When visiting these little ones in their temporary shelter, and while learning from the girls and women, whom the Rabbi assembled in his house to meet me, the stories of the irreparable wrongs done them, and their fears of the future now before them, I could not help indulging in the hope that some wealthy Jewish merchant or banker in New York, London, or Paris might have the heart and head to bring himself a life’s happiness in the humane task of aiding these orphans and terribly wronged girls and women which all the wealth of all the Jews in any one of these cities could not purchase in palaces, banks, or pleasures.

A Warsaw paper having published an account of the appeal in behalf of the Kishineff sufferers, my hotel soon became a centre of attention and of supplication. Hundreds of poor creatures of both sexes came to beg to be enabled to emigrate. They had heard that the _American_ was proposing to devote some of the money subscribed in New York and elsewhere to the task of taking a few thousand families away from the city of blood to the United States or to the Argentine. No matter what was the proposed destination, they were willing to go, if it were only to some country where Christians did not kill Jews. One petition, signed in behalf of 122 families, was presented to me to be forwarded to the _American_ in the hope of having an early consideration of their claims.

No explanation by my most capable dragoman would disabuse the minds of these poor people of the forlorn belief that escape from a dreaded recurrence of the horrors of April might lie in such a petition.

Among my most persistent callers were two matronly-looking ladies, who also begged to be sent to America. On the first occasion they did not disclose the nature of their calling, or the extent of their losses. I pressed them on these points when they came again. One of them replied, “Our business has fallen off entirely since the riots.”

And what was the business, inquired my dragoman.

“We are midwives,” was the answer. The petition had, of course, to be refused.

_Letter VI_

LONDON, June 6th.

A few facts concerning Kishineff will be essential to the right comprehension of the causes which led to the perpetration of the black deeds of April, and to a proper understanding of a story of deliberately plotted political crime.

The last census, that of 1897, gave to Kishineff a population of 108,296 souls. Of these over 50,000 were males. The present estimated population may be put down at or about 130,000. These are divided racially as follows: Jews, 50,000; Moldavians (Christians), 50,000; Russians, 8000, with the residue comprising Bulgarians, Serbs, Greeks, Macedonians, Albanians, and Germans. These figures and estimates are given me by Dr. Kohan-Bernstein, a leading physician of the city, and are confirmed by one of the Rabbis, who holds some kind of a government position in connection with the special taxes levied on the Jews.

The Jews are thus numerically in excess of the Russians and of all other Christian sects combined, excepting the Moldavians, who are equally strong in numbers, and even more bitter in their anti-Semitic feeling than those of Russian blood.

Fully fifty per cent. of the Jews of Kishineff are artisans and labourers, and in the great majority of cases they are wretchedly poor. The stern needs of daily life, the want of bread and the shelter of a home, compel them to work for any pay that may be offered to them.

The Jewish artisan is far and away more intelligent and skilled than his Moldavian or Russian neighbour of like occupation. He is more expert in technical details, and more ambitious to do better and to perform more work for his employer. Poor as he may be he reads more newspapers, and is an all-round formidable rival to workers who dislike him for his race, and who dread him as an increasing and competing factor in the industrial world of Kishineff.

These facts will account to some extent for the part which Christian workers took in the organised riots of April.

One fact more in this connection has an important bearing upon another feature of the outbreak--the pillaging of shops and saloons. Kishineff is the capital of Bessarabia, and is its largest trading and commercial centre. There are rival Christian and Jewish interests at work in catering for the needs of so large a place, and these interests collide in competitive activity in almost every branch of business life.

There are shops, warehouses, and saloons where Christian and Jewish rivalry conflicts, and in such a combat the Gentile is nowhere, in trade competition, with the fertile and adroit Jew. Hence, there is as strong a commercial antipathy toward the unpopular Hebrew in fairly educated Russian and Moldavian circles as is found on other grounds among the anti-Semitic artisans and labourers.