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.

These circumstances account for the complacency—to put it no stronger—with which merchants and leaders of the Christian community looked on at the pillaging of shops and the destruction of saloons which belonged to their Jewish rivals. And they also explain why saloons and stores of Jewish ownership were alone the objects of the mob’s attention; for the riot was not an affair of blind, popular fury, bent upon indiscriminate lawlessness. Nothing of the kind. It was deliberately organised and intelligently directed from start to finish by leaders who knew what they were about, and how to discriminate between Russian and Moldavian property and Semitic belongings, in the matter of looting, and between Jewish and Christian women in another and more infernal business.

Kishineff, in its central and chief business parts, is a handsome town. Its leading boulevard, Alexandra Street, would do credit to any American city. It is more than twice the width of Broadway, New York; is planted on both sides with acacia trees, and can boast of imposing public buildings, substantial shops, banks, and jewellers’ stores.

The municipal headquarters, built, like most of the prominent structures of the city, with a whitish stone, is situated near the middle of the leading thoroughfare and wears a stately and striking appearance. The streets are all wide and run as in American cities, at right angles to each other in uniform arrangement. They are nearly all planted; a feature which adds greatly to the beauty of the city, in combining the light green foliage of the acacia trees with the bright, clean look of the houses and public buildings.

The Royal Gardens and People’s Park are in the centre of the city. Military bands play each evening in the former, and attract large crowds of well-dressed citizens, officers of the garrison, youth, and particularly ladies.

The city, in its chief business and fashionable districts, has the look of a comfortable, fairly wealthy, up-to-date bourgeois centre, and a well-governed municipal community; a most unlikely place, in the eyes of a visitor, to offer itself as a theatre for one of the most abominable tragedies in modern times.

Kishineff owes its success and prosperity almost exclusively to the Jews. Thirty years ago it was little more than a rough Bessarabian village. To-day it ranks, in South Russia, next to Odessa—where there are over 200,000 of the same race—in population, commercial standing, and wealth, and all this is freely admitted by educated Russians.

Jews in Russia are compelled by law to reside inside a Pale of Settlement, or territory comprising some fifteen governments, or provinces, of western and southern Russia, extending south from the coast of the southern Baltic to the Crimea, and westward from Charkov and Smolensk to the borders of Roumania, Galicia, and Prussian Poland. The area thus embraced in the Jewish Pale is about equal to that of France, and the number of people of this section of Russia is upward of 27,000,000.

Under the ukase of 1882, which compelled Jews to leave the villages and live within the towns, these centres became crowded inside of what thus became virtual economic concentration camps.

Within these limits of legal domicile the density of Hebrew population is at the rate of some 2800 per square mile. In the non-Jewish towns of Russia the average is about 60 of urban to 1000 of rural population. Within the fifteen provinces included in the Jewish Pale, the average is close upon 230 of urban to every 1000 of country population.

The effects of this crowding of Jews into the towns of the Pale are as obvious as they are inevitable. There is a dense population, restricted by necessity and disposition to certain pursuits and occupations, in places where the economic conditions do not provide opportunities for the healthy exercise of one-fourth of the industry or abilities which could under normal conditions find opportunities for profitable employment.

There are towns in which Jewish tradesmen and artisans are 50 per cent. of the total population. They are literally penned in within these places.

This is the economic side of the problem of the Russian Jew. The political side is even more serious to the Russian administration, and here we are approaching the consideration of what was the real underlying cause of the outbreak of a month ago.

All the Jews of the Pale are not poor. Quite the contrary. Despite the restricted area allowed them, large numbers of them are wealthy through successful trading. Another and larger section exploit inferior Russian intelligence and capacity, and earn money in legally forbidden ways by making it fairly profitable for the obliging Christian to act as a shield or deputy for the legally boycotted Jew.

Saloons are owned in this way by Jews, and are worked for them by Christians.

The Jew must not own land. But he can organise a company, place a Russian in nominal headship of the concern, and in this manner make a profit out of Russian agriculture.

In many other ways the keen intelligence, the inherited racial capacity for financial undertakings, the greater natural ability and better education of the business Jew, and also of the higher artisan Hebrew section, enable them, even in the face of all the obstacles put in their way, to give their sons and daughters an education which is gradually evolving out of an oppressed and degraded race a people of progressive thought and of political aspirations, who are deemed to be a most dangerous menace to the government and administration of an autocratically ruled country.

The educated Jew in Russia is more than an accidental ally of what may be termed Russian liberal tendencies. He occupies within this huge empire a semi-penalised political and racial status.

None of the higher state schools must admit more than 5 per cent. of Jew pupils, even where, as in Kishineff, the Jews are five times more numerous than the Russians proper.

The Jew cannot buy land.

He is debarred from administrative positions, except in lower grades of employment, and while he is compelled to serve in the army, he cannot claim the usual rewards or aspire to the ordinary ambition of men who make no greater sacrifice than he in the common military service of the empire.

All these facts, disabilities, and oppressive and depressing conditions, acting upon the thoughts and ideals of a brainy people, are producing a powerful anti-Russian political force along the southwestern portion of the Tsar’s most vulnerable frontier—that bordering upon the Austrian and Germanic empires. In other words, the Jewish Pale is becoming the nursery of revolutionary Socialist ideas and the active centre of an anti-autocratic propaganda.

The riots and terrorism of April, with their attendant horrors, were deliberately planned, not by robbers or murderers, not on account of religious bigotry, but for the reasons I have just given—namely, the feeling of hostility in the minds of administrative employés to a race believed to be plotting against the Empire, combined with the jealousy of local artisans and proletarians of the cheaper, better, and pushing Hebrew workingmen, compelled by absolute necessity to earn a living within a legally circumscribed sphere of industrial activity.

Hence, on the direct incitation of the local anti-Semite Bessarabetz newspaper, edited by a Russian, who is really a Moldavian, and which is the only paper published here and read by administrative employés, Seminarists, and other enemies of Jews, it was resolved, in an organised riot, to strike terror into the Jewish community of Kishineff, with the double object of punishing what is believed to be a hostile element conspiring against the Government, and of forcing the Jews to leave the city.

Letter VII

Dalkey, June 9th, 1903.

The hideous realities of the actual outrages committed during the two days’ inferno of murder and outrage surpass in the naked horror of their details almost anything which the imagination could invent. I hate to return to further reference to these deeds. It has become a horrible and repugnant subject, but I convince myself that some good will come of it in tending to keep alive the sympathy of the American people in the future of the victims who escaped with life, but also with broken hearts and the outlook of a dismal future.

Meyer Weissman had a very small store in one of the poorest Jewish quarters of the city. He had lost an eye, by an accident, when young. The mob attacked and demolished his little grocery on Easter Sunday. He offered them all the money in his possession to spare his life. It was a sum of sixty roubles. The leader took the money, and then said: “Now, we want your eye; you will never again look upon a Christian child.” He implored them to kill him instead of making him blind for life. They gouged out his eye with a sharpened stick, and left him. Amidst sobs and suffering he told me his story in the Jewish Hospital.

Near the bed of poor blind Meyer Weissman was that of Joseph Shainovitch, whose head had been battered with bludgeons, and the victim left for dead. He told me that it was this same gang who killed his mother-in-law, by driving nails through her eyes into the brain. This story I refused to believe, thinking it might be born of some horrible nightmare following the poor fellow’s terrible experience. But from no less than six different sources, one of them being a Christian doctor, I learned that the facts were as stated by Joseph. Among the other witnesses were the men who dug the unfortunate woman’s grave.

In the female ward of the same hospital there were still upwards of a dozen girls and married women, when I visited the place, whose injuries were too serious to allow of their discharge. I heard their stories: at least those which could in part be related to a man.

One of the girls, aged about seventeen, was a perfect type of Jewish beauty, with a face which a painter would envy as a model for a Rachel. Her head was covered with bandages. She had been alone for three hours in the hands of a dozen men, who had killed her father and mother, and they left her for dead. A young Jew, evidently her lover, sat at her bedside while the tale of her sufferings and losses was being told.

In the next bed was a married woman, a mother of four children. She had not fully recovered consciousness, and all the events of the night of her agony were as yet not completely known to her. She, too, had been beaten and left for dead, after having been assaulted by many men.

At the Rabbi’s house, as already related, I met several more victims of the mob’s nameless infamies. One was a girl of sixteen, named Simme Zeytchik, very pretty, and childish-looking for her years. She said that all her assailants were Russians, mainly Seminarists, and told the Rabbi that fifteen of these young ruffians had outraged her.

She was one of twenty women who had sought refuge in the loft of the house No. 11 Nicolaievskai Street, and who were discovered by the mob, as were several other groups of women and girls in similar hiding-places.

I have before me a record of thirteen girls and women of ages ranging from seventeen to forty-eight, who were assaulted by from two to twenty men, and in many cases left for dead.

Six young girls who are known to have undergone similar violence were ashamed to come to the Rabbi’s house to tell their tale of wrong and ruin.

The foregoing list does not exhaust the number of women who were subjected to the greatest wrong that can be done to their sex.

All house-breaking and robbery were suspended in the night-time during the outbreak, and the younger men of the thirty or forty gangs of rioters went in search of the hidden girls and married women. Those who can do so naturally hide the narrative of their wrong, and suffer in silence. The actual number of the mob’s victims in the most ruffianly of their crimes will therefore never be fully known.

Apart from the desperate and hopeless efforts of the forty murdered men to save wives and daughters, and the solitary attempt at organised resistance described in a previous letter, the 10,000 or 12,000 Jewish men of Kishineff offered little or no resistance to the 1500 or 2000 Moldavian and Russian assailants of their women, homes, and property. Ninety per cent. of them hid themselves, or fled to safer parts in and out of the city for refuge.

A thousand determined men, even in spite of the action of the Chief of Police in virtually protecting the mob, could have saved many lives and averted most of the outrages on the women and girls. One plucky little Jew, Leon Koulberg by name, a member of the Kishineff Fire Brigade, with only a few helpers, faced a band of fifty-six Moldavians and drove them from his district.

Many Russians of both sexes nobly exerted themselves to protect the women from the mob. But from no quarter in the city, and from no source, did I learn of any attempt being made by Russian or Moldavian clergymen (with one solitary exception) to perform a similar Christian duty.

Instances of incredible baseness on the part of the Moldavians were given me by various witnesses.

Mordka Mynduik was escaping from a gang of ruffians in the Skulanska Rogatka suburb. He was invited into a Moldavian neighbour’s house, and murdered by those who had offered him hospitality and protection.

Israel Ullman fell a victim to a similar act of Moldavian perfidy.

Three men and a woman with a child were fleeing from pursuers, and were directed to take a certain course over a field towards the railway station. They ran into an ambush, and two of the men were killed, the woman and child, however, escaping.

Another woman and her child sought the house of a converted Jew for safety, after her home had been demolished. The “Christian” Jew holds a position under the City Government. He knew the frightened woman well, and had been on terms of the closest intimacy with her family before climbing into office as the reward of his “conversion.” He shut the door in the face of the terrified wife of his former friend.

What impressed one most painfully in Kishineff, after the narratives of outrage, was the seeming indifference of the mass of the Russian and Moldavian people over the whole infernal business. They had to recognise the great injury done to the city by the riots and their results. That was too patent to be ignored. But, with the exception of a comparatively small number of Christians, already alluded to, there appeared to be neither regret nor remorse among the citizens generally over the deeds which had riveted the world’s attention upon them as a community capable of perpetrating acts so base and inhuman. This callous bearing I attribute mainly to the tactics of the anti-Semitic press, combined with the amazing silence maintained by the Greek Church prelates and clergy in relation to these crimes.

The Bessarabetz and Znamya, the only papers circulating in Kishineff, audaciously blamed the Jews for what had occurred, and carefully abstained from reproducing the comments of foreign journals upon the rioting at Eastertide. By this means the people were prevented realising the extent and character of the external indignation aroused by the reports of the events of April, and they were left by these means, or by their own indifference, a community apparently unconcerned about the massacres and infamies which had found victims only among Jews.

As far as I could learn, there had not been a solitary word spoken or act done by any of the prominent ecclesiastical authorities of Kishineff which could be construed, even charitably, into a condemnation of the killing of harmless men and the ravishing of innocent girls beneath the shadows of the many Christian churches which adorn the capital of Bessarabia. The sufferers were only Jews.

Each evening during my stay in this soulless city large crowds gathered in the Royal Gardens to enjoy the music of the fine Dragoon Band which performed Polish polkas, and the Hungarian “Chardash” and Russian marches in faultless fashion. Throngs of gaily dressed ladies, under the escort of the young officers of the garrison, were always in evidence, along with students from the colleges and Seminarists supplied by the religious high schools of the city. It was fashionable Kishineff’s rendezvous for evening enjoyment, recreation, and social gossip, and the tables of the cafés rang with laughter when the groups of visitors were not drinking in the music of some operatic selection or of an inviting waltz from the band.

Not a single Jew had been seen in this place of popular resort since April 19th.

One evening my dragoman called my attention to a group of young Seminarists sitting at a table near to ours. They were boisterous in their merriment, and appeared to be enjoying the recital of some unusually piquant incident or adventure, amidst the smoke of their cigarettes and the relish of their coffee.

“That gang,” observed my dragoman, “judging from what I have heard some of them say, must have been among those who violated the girls and women in the loft of No. 11 Nicolaievskai Street, where Simme Zeytchik was outraged by a number of young students.”

It was only that morning we had seen this girl of sixteen at the Rabbi’s house, and heard her story.

The Mayor of Kishineff, M. Karl Schmidt, received me most courteously when I called upon him in the fine municipal buildings on the Alexandra boulevard. He has been burgomaster of the city for a quarter of a century, almost in unbroken succession. A man of some sixty summers, of tall and commanding appearance and of cultured manner, he impresses you at once with the feeling that you are in the presence of a strong, capable, and upright personality.

He willingly accorded me an interview, but answered my questions in a manner suggesting a reserve which was more official than personal:

“What was the origin of the outbreak, Mr. Mayor?”

“The writings in the anti-Semitic press, and their effect upon the minds of ignorant people who dislike the Jews both for their race and religion. The alleged murder by Jews of the Christian boy at Doubossar and of a girl here in Kishineff, who committed suicide, inflamed the populace. When the real facts were published, the truth was believed to be an invention to cover up a Jewish crime, and the frequenters of cafés and the workingmen, who are hostile to the Jews, remained convinced that Christian blood had been actually obtained in this way for ritual purposes.”

“Do you find the Jews of the city a turbulent or provocative people?”

“No. They resemble most other people, in having good and bad numbered among them. There has been nothing whatever in their behaviour, as far as my many years’ experience of Kishineff goes, to explain or in any way to palliate the attacks made upon them. The great mass of them are very poor, but they are most patient and never disorderly.”

“Have they any secret or revolutionary society here?”

“Nothing, in my belief, worth serious attention. Some of the younger Jews call themselves Socialists, but there are not many, and I do not think they need cause the authorities any serious anxiety.”

“Is there any similar organisation, under any name, among the Russian or Moldavian workingmen?”

“There is some kind of a society which scatters pamphlets about and things of that kind from time to time. Its members were among the rioters and against the Jews.”

“Do you take the reports of the riots in the matters of the killed, wounded, and looting as having been exaggerated?”

“No. I am sorry to say there were more people killed than the forty-three reported deaths. A few bodies have been found since the last report was issued. The number of persons wounded is difficult to find out. Many poor Jews who want to obtain a share of the relief funds declare they were injured, but they carry no traces of wounds or hurts, when examined. The accounts of the destruction of dwellings and stores have not been overstated. Enormous damage has been done, and both the city and the actual sufferers will feel the great loss for years to come. I understand you have been visiting the scenes of the disorders, and you can judge for yourself as to the extent of the damage and mischief done.”

“Do you anticipate any recurrence of the trouble on the Emperor’s day?” (Date of the Tsar’s Coronation, May 27th.)

“I have seen the Vice-Governor on the matter, owing to the rumours you mention, and I am satisfied he will act promptly and severely if any attempt of the kind should be made. He will post soldiers at all points of danger near where the Jews reside, and these will be under officers who will have orders to fire on any persons who may try to renew the riots.”

“Is it true, as reported, that the police were, to some extent, participators in the Easter outrages?”

“That is not an easy nor yet a pleasant question to answer. I have no control of any kind over the police force of the city, and I was not a witness of the disgraceful events in April. Some loot was, I believe, found in the possession of a few policemen, and this fact has given rise to the charge to which you refer. But it is most unfair to impute to all the force of the city and to its officers conduct so disgraceful, owing to the very few who were mixed up with the disturbers and their looting.”

“What forces, military and police, were in the city in April?”

“Probably about seven or eight thousand troops and three hundred police and officers.”

“Surely, there were in these forces means enough to have dealt promptly and effectively with the bands of rioters?”

The Mayor showed evidence of painful hesitation before replying to this question, but ultimately said:

“Oh, there was a most lamentable and unfortunate misunderstanding!” Whereupon he politely handed me another cigarette, to indicate that it would be no use to pursue that subject any further.

“Can you suggest any remedy to prevent these anti-Semitic outbursts, Mr. Mayor?”

“I fear not. The Government measures promulgated, from time to time, with regard to the Jews, are deemed necessary for the preservation of order. I cannot discuss the worth or wisdom of these measures, but I can understand why the Jews should think them unjust.”

“One question more, sir: Do you think that the Zionist movement offers any feasible or effective solution of the question?”

“As the Mayor of Kishineff, I would consider the loss of the Jewish community as a commercial calamity for the city. But, I confess, if I were a Jew, I would be a Zionist.”

CHAPTER IX

III. M. DE PLEHVE’S VERSION

“Russia’s agricultural and labour population is ill at ease, living common life with Jewish inhabitants of wide-developed commercial instinct. Hence constant antagonism, material racial religious character coming to verge of frenzy at least possible occasion. Strained relations between Russians and Jews of Bessarabia were made the worst by fact of finding outlying village murdered Christian boy, murder attributed by population to ritual Jewish habits. Official denials ritual murder not given credit by peasants, attributing other murders of Christians in towns Kiev and Kishineff likewise to Jews. On Easter Day, on market place of Kishineff, workers holiday-making saw a Jew proprietor of carousing machine strike a Christian women, who fell to the ground, letting go her infant baby. This incident was nearest cause of outburst. Workers began breaking windows, pulling down Jewish stores as sign of protest. Police, which always gives much to be desired in provincial towns, failed to make efficacious intervention, the many thousand mass of onlookers and holiday-makers approving riot, hindering policemen’s actions. After demonstrators came plunderers’ outbreak, lasting from five in the afternoon to ten evening, and leaving nine Jewish bodies on place. Night brought disturbance to end what goes far to prove momentous character of outbreak letting loose popular passions with strength natural forces. On Monday morning Jews wishing intimidate and inflict punishment on Christian workers, began on market place, assembling in groups armed sticks and weapons; Jews being more numerous had best of it in two first encounters, and a Christian was seen to fall, receiving bullet wound. This called forth popular passion in all its abject force and abomination. Russian peasants driven to frenzy, excited by race religious hatred, under influence of alcohol, being worse than South Americans lynching negroes. Unfortunately Governor of Bessarabia did not make appearance in person. Easter Sunday and Monday gave over command to military men what he had no right of doing, as he, in consequence, had put the police aside, and on the other hand, left the military forces without actual guidance. Troops can take towns by assault, but cannot carry out police duties without special instructions. In the end, the town being divided in districts, with a special military command in each, the disturbances ceased on Monday evening. By this time the Minister of the Interior had ordered by wire to proclaim martial law, and—an unprecedented fact—had sent the Director of Police Department to investigate as to the responsibilities of local officials. In consequence the Governor, the chief of the town police, and some other officials were dismissed outright. Many hundreds of rioters are in prison with hard work in the Siberian mines awaiting them after trial. The Minister of the Interior has issued a circular to the Governors all over Russia authorising them to make immediate use of firearms in case of anti-Jewish disturbances.

“The Russian Government is the first to disapprove of such horrid acts of violence, but it cannot, in compliance with the requests of the Radical and revolutionary Press, give the Jews new rights of citizenship, as this is sure to drive the Russian population to new excesses against the Jews, who are hated by peasants with such extraordinary force.”

A further statement was made by M. de Plehve to Mr. White[6] in reply to a communication calling his Excellency’s attention to the statement “from our Russian correspondents” in The Times of June 6th, that General Von Raaben, the Governor of Kishineff, telegraphed three times to the Minister of the Interior during the riots for permission to use force before he received any reply: