History of the Jews in Russia and Poland Volume I Part 11

The end of the seventeenth century is marked by the frequency of religious trials, the Jews being charged with ritual murder and the desecration of Church sacraments. These charges were the indigenous product of the superst.i.tion and ignorance of the Catholic ma.s.ses, but they were also used for propaganda purposes by the clerical party, which sometimes even took a direct hand in arranging the setting of the crime, by throwing dead bodies into the yards of Jews, and other similar contrivances. Such propaganda often resulted in the adoption of violent measures by the authorities or the mob against the alleged culprits, leading to the destruction of synagogues and cemeteries and sometimes culminating in the expulsion of the Jews.

The cases of ritual murder were tried by the highest court, the Tribunal of Lublin, and, owing to the zeal of the astute champions of the Church, frequently ended in the execution of entirely innocent persons. The most important trials of this kind, those of Sandomir (1698-1710), Posen (1736), and Zaslav (1747), were conducted in inquisitorial fashion.

The Sandomir case was brought about by the action of a Christian woman who threw the dead body of her illegitimate child into the yard of a Kahal elder, by the name of Berek,[152] thus giving the clergy a chance to engineer a ritual murder trial. The case pa.s.sed through all the courts of law. It was greatly complicated by the fanatical agitation of the priest Stephen Zhukhovski, who brought two additional charges of ritual murder against the Jews of Sandomir, and published, on this occasion, a book full of hideous calumnies. The case having ended in the lower courts favorably for the Jews, Zhukhovski succeeded in bringing about a new trial with the application of tortures and the whole apparatus of the Inquisition. He finally reached his goal. The Tribunal of Lublin sentenced the innocent Jewish elder to death; King Augustus II. ordered, in 1712, the expulsion of all Jews from Sandomir and the conversion of the synagogue into a Catholic chapel,[153] and the Catholic clergy placed a revolting picture in the local church representing the scene of the ritual murder.

To justify the miscarriage of justice, Father Zhukhovski and his accomplices induced a converted Jew, by the name of Serafinovich, who posed as a former Rabbi of Brest, and had testified at the Sandomir trial against the Jews, to write a book, ent.i.tled "Exposure of the Jewish Ceremonies before G.o.d and the World" (1716). The book, a mixture of a lunatic's ravings and an adventurer's unrestrained mendacity, centers around the argument, that the Jews use Christian blood in the discharge of a large number of religious and everyday functions. The Jews are alleged to smear the door of a Christian with such blood, to predispose the latter in favor of the Jews. The same blood put in an egg is given to newly-married couples during the marriage ceremony; it is mixed in the _matza_ eaten on Pa.s.sover. It is also used for soaking an incantation formula written by the rabbi, which is then placed under the threshold of a house, to secure success in business for the Jewish inmate. In a word, Christian blood is used by the Jews for every possible form of magic and witchcraft. To convict Serafinovich publicly of lying, the Jews challenged him to attend a disputation in Warsaw in the presence of bishops and rabbis. The disputation had been arranged to be held in the house of the widow of a high official, and both the Jewish and Christian partic.i.p.ants had arrived, but Serafinovich failed to appear at the meeting, where his trickery and ignorance would have been exposed. The refusal of the informer to attend the disputation was attested in an official affidavit. This fact did not prevent an anti-Semitic monk of Lemberg, by the name of Pikolski, from republishing Serafinovich's book twice (1758 and 1760) and using it as a tool to conduct a most hideous agitation against the Jews.

In the large Jewish community of Posen, the slanderous accusations against the Jews were the reflection of the inveterate hostility of the local Christian population. Towards the end of the seventeenth century the Carmelite order in Posen contrived a curious lawsuit against the Jews, alleging that following upon the desecration of the hosts in 1399[154] the Jews had, by way of penance for their sacrilege, obligated themselves to accompany the Christian processions. The Jews denied the allegation, and the case dragged on for a number of years in various courts of law, with the result that, in 1724, the Jews had to pledge themselves to furnish the Carmelites with two pails of oil annually to supply the lamp burning in front of the three hosts in the church.

But the fanaticism of the Church was on the lookout for new victims, and it manifested itself in 1736 in another ritual murder trial, which lasted for four years. Everything was pre-arranged in accordance with the "rites" of the Church fanatics. The dead body of a Christian child was found in the neighborhood of the city. There was also found a Polish beggar-woman, who, under torture, confessed that she had sold the child to the elders of the Posen community. Arrests followed. The first victims were the preacher, or _darshan_, Arie-Leib Calahora, a descendant of the martyr Mattathiah Calahora,[155] an elder (_parnas_, or syndic) of the Jewish community, by the name of Jacob Pinkasevich (son of Phineas), and several other members of the Kahal administration.

Further wholesale arrests were imminent, but many Jews fled from Posen, to save themselves from the fury of the inquisitors.

On the eve of his arrest, Calahora chose for the text of his Sabbath discourse the Biblical verse, "Who can count the dust of Jacob and the number of the fourth part (or quarter) of Israel? Let me die the death of the righteous!" (Numbers xxiii. 10). As if antic.i.p.ating his end, the preacher explained the text as follows: "Who can count the dust and ashes of those that were burned and quartered for the faith of Israel?"

While being led to jail, he addressed the crowd of Jews surrounding him with the following words: "At the hour of my death I shall not have around me ten Jews for prayer (_minyan_). Therefore recite with me for the last time the prayer _Borkhu_ ('Praise the Lord of Praise!')." The forebodings of the preacher were justified. Neither he nor the elder survived the fiendish tortures of the cross-examination. While the preacher was tortured, his bones being broken and his body roasted on fire, the elder was compelled to hold a lamp in his hand to give light to the executioner. Covered with wounds and blood, in the stage of mortal agony, they were carried to their homes, where they died in the autumn of 1736.

The deputies of the Jewish community of Posen appealed to King Augustus III. against the cruelty and partiality of the munic.i.p.al court, and succeeded in having the case transferred to a special judicial commission consisting of royal officials. Although the commission resorted equally to tortures during the cross-examination, it was not able to wrest a confession from the innocent Jewish prisoners.

Nevertheless, being convinced in advance of the correctness of the ritual libel, the judges sentenced them to be burned at the stake, together with the bodies of the preacher and elder, which had to be exhumed for this purpose (1737).

The sentence had first to be ratified by the King, and the Jewish representatives in Warsaw and Dresden, the latter city being the second capital of the King and the residence of the papal nuncio, employed every possible means to bring about a reversal of the judgment. It was difficult to influence Augustus III., the dull-witted monarch, who, in addition, was imbued with a goodly dose of anti-Semitism. But the noise caused by the trial at Posen and the pressure upon the King on the part of the Jewish bankers of Vienna, particularly the banking-house of Wertheimer, induced him to yield. After a prolonged interval and a second revision of the case by a royal commission, the King gave orders to free the Jews, who had languished in prison for four years (August, 1740). On this occasion he went out of his way to enjoin the magistracy of Posen not to resort to tortures in similar trials, but he could not refrain at the same time from prescribing to the Jews "rules of conduct"

after the medieval pattern: not to pa.s.s too frequently beyond the boundaries of their ghetto (which had been preserved in Posen), not to a.s.sociate with Christians, nor caress Christian children, nor keep Christian domestics, nor attend Christian patients, etc.

The favorable issue of the Posen trial was due to the fact that it took place in a large Jewish community, whose representatives were able to arouse the public opinion of Western Europe and secure the intervention of influential persons. But in the distant corners of Poland, in the obscure Jewish communities of the country, the ritual murder trials were in the nature of ghastly nightmares. Such was the trial of Zaslav, a town in Volhynia, which originated in 1747 as the result of a fatal concatenation of events. In the springtime, when the snow was melting, the dead body of a Christian was found in a neighboring village, having been buried beneath the snow for a considerable time. It so happened that about the same time the functionaries of the Zaslav synagogue a.s.sembled in a neighboring Jewish inn, to celebrate the circ.u.mcision of the new-born son of the innkeeper. A peasant who chanced to pa.s.s by the inn informed the authorities that the Jews had been praying the whole night as well as eating and amusing themselves, and this suggested to the Bernardine monks of Zaslav that the celebration had some connection with ritual murder, the victim of which was the discovered dead body.

The Jewish innkeeper, the Kahal elder, the _hazan_ (cantor), the _mohel_ (surgeon), and the beadle of the Zaslav synagogue, were indicted. The accused, in spite of dreadful tortures, reiterated that they had a.s.sembled to celebrate a circ.u.mcision. Only the youthful beadle Moyshe, crazed by the tortures, began to murmur something, repeating the words which were dictated to him by the accusers, though he afterwards withdrew the confession thus forced from him.[156] The accused were all sentenced to a monstrous death, possible only among savages. Some of the accused were placed on an iron pale, which slowly cut into their body, and resulted in a slow, torturous death. The others were treated with equal cannibalism; their skin was torn off in strips, their hearts cut out, their hands and feet amputated and nailed to the gallows. The memorial prayer for these martyrs concludes with the Biblical words: "O earth, cover not thou their blood, and let their cry have no place, until the Lord shall look down from heaven!"

However, the cry of the Zaslav martyrs was drowned by the shouts of the new victims of the ritual murder myth, which transformed the Christians who consciously or unconsciously allowed themselves to be infected by its poison into cannibals.

The Zaslav trial was followed by an uninterrupted succession of ritual murder accusations, which in the course of fifteen years cropped up almost annually. The most revolting among them, from the point of view of the surrounding circ.u.mstances, were the trials of Dunaigrod[157]

(1748), Pavolochi[158] and Zhytomir (1753), Yampol[159] (1756), Stupnitza, near Pshemyshl (1759), and Voislavitza[160] (1760). In the Zhytomir case, twenty-four Jews were accused of having partic.i.p.ated in the murder of the peasant boy Studzienski. Exhausted by tortures and prompted by the desire to hasten their end, they confessed to a crime which they had not committed, and were sentenced to death. Eleven were flayed alive, while the others saved themselves from death by accepting baptism. An image of the alleged martyr Studzienski, in the shape of a figure covered with pins, was spread by the clergy all over the region, to intensify the hatred against the Jews. In Voislavitza, near Lublin, the whole Kahal was charged with the murder of a Christian boy for the purpose of squeezing out his blood and mixing it with the unleavened bread. The spiritual leaders and elders of the Jewish community were brought to court. One of the accused, the rabbi, committed suicide while in jail. The remaining four were sentenced to be quartered. Before the execution the priest, holding out the promise of leniency, induced the unfortunate Jews, who had been crazed by their tortures, to embrace Christianity. The leniency consisted in their being beheaded instead of being quartered.

Terrorized by these inquisitorial trials, the Jewish communities of Poland decided, in 1758, to send Jacob Zelig (or Selek)[161] to Rome as their spokesman, to obtain from Pope Benedict XIV. the promulgation of a bull forbidding these false accusations against the Jews. In the application submitted by Zelig it is pointed out that the life of the Jews of Poland had become intolerable, for "as soon as a dead body is found anywhere, at once the Jews of the neighboring localities are brought before the courts on the charge of murder for superst.i.tious purposes." The application was turned over to Cardinal Ganganelli, subsequently Pope Clement XIV., who took up the matter very seriously, and suggested that the Papal Nuncio in Warsaw, Visconti, be instructed to submit a report of the recent ritual murder trials in Poland. When the report arrived, Ganganelli composed an elaborate memorandum, in which, as a result of his investigation of the whole history of the question, he demonstrated the falsehood of the ritual murder charges made against the Jews, which had been condemned by the popes in the Middle Ages, particularly by the bull of Innocent IV. of the year 1247.[162] In the judgment of Ganganelli all the recent Polish trials were devoid of any basis in fact, and the sentences p.r.o.nounced by the courts revolting miscarriages of justice.

Ganganelli's memorandum was examined and approved by the Roman tribunal of the "Holy Inquisition," and submitted to the new Pope Clement XIII.

The Pope instructed his nuncio in Warsaw to extend his protection to Zelig, the spokesman of the Jews, on his return to Poland. Subsequently the nuncio informed the Polish Prime Minister Bruhl, that "the Holy See, having investigated all the foundations of this aberration, according to which the Jews need human blood for the preparation of their unleavened bread," had come to the conclusion that "there was no evidence whatsoever testifying to the correctness of that prejudice" (1763). King Augustus III. ratified in the same year the ancient charters of his predecessors, promising the Jews the protection of the law in all ritual murder cases. Yet it was not easy to eradicate the prejudices which had been implanted in the minds of the people. Even the educated cla.s.ses did not escape their contamination. The contemporary writer Kitovich, in describing Polish life during the reign of Augustus III., indulges in the following remark: "Just as the liberty of the Shlakhta is impossible without the _liberum veto_, so is the Jewish _matza_ impossible without Christian blood."

7. THE Ma.s.sACRE OF UMAN AND THE FIRST PARt.i.tION OF POLAND

Undermined by social and denominational strife, the once flourishing country was hastening to its ruin. From the election of Stanislav Augustus Poniatovski to the throne of Poland in 1764, Poland was to all intents and purposes under the protectorate of Russia. Certain elements of Polish society began to realize that only by radical reforms could the country be saved from its impending doom. But it seemed as if the _regime_ of social and religious fanaticism was too decrepit to pa.s.s its own death-sentence, and awaited its fate from another hand.

In the first years of Stanislav Augustus' reign Polish politics ran in their accustomed groove. Instead of endeavoring to effect a radical improvement in the condition of Polish Jewry as one of the most important elements of the urban population, the new Polish Government thought only of exploiting them as much as possible for the benefit of the exchequer. The Diet of 1764, which was held in Warsaw prior to the election of the King, and discussed the question of internal reforms, did not consider it necessary to introduce any changes in the status of the Jews, except to alter the system of Jewish taxation. Formerly the head-tax had been levied upon all Polish and Lithuanian Jews annually in a round sum, which the central Jewish agencies, the Waads, or Jewish Councils, apportioned among the separate Kahals, and the latter, in turn, allotted to the individual members of the communities. According to the new "const.i.tution," however, the head-tax, to the extent of two gulden, was to be imposed on every Jewish soul, and each Kahal was to be held responsible for the accurate collection from its members. The only effect of this reform was to swell the total amount of the head-tax, which as it was weighed heavily upon the Jews, since many sources of livelihood were closed to them at the same time.

The Shlakhta in turn zealously watched over its cla.s.s interests, and in electing the king imposed upon him the obligation of barring the Jews from the stewardship of crown domains, state taxes, and other financial revenues. To gratify the hereditary compet.i.tors of the Jews--the Christian burghers and merchants--the Diet of 1768 restored the clause of the ancient parliamentary Const.i.tution of 1538,[163] by virtue of which the Jews of those cities where they had not obtained special privileges were allowed to engage in commerce only with the consent of the magistracies, and the magistracies were made up of those same Christian merchants and burghers.

In the meantime, among the Russian population of that portion of the Ukraina which was situated on the right bank of the Dnieper, and was still under the sovereignty of Poland, a popular movement arose, which was directed simultaneously against the Poles and the Jews. It emanated from the lowest elements of the population, the enslaved village khlops, who had not yet forgotten the times of Bogdan Khmelnitzki. The memory of those days when the despised khlops waded in the blood of the proud Polish pans and the Jews was still fresh in the minds of the Ukrainians, and made itself felt in moments of political unrest, not infrequent in the disintegrating body politic of Poland. Fugitive Greek Orthodox peasants from among the serfs of the pans, itinerant Zaporozhians,[164]

and Cossacks from the Russian part of the Ukraina, often organized themselves in independent detachments of haidamacks,[165] and indulged in looting the estates of the n.o.bles or plundering the Jewish towns.

These incursions a.s.sumed the character of regular insurrections during the interregnums and on other occasions of political unrest. Thus, in 1734 and in 1750, detachments of haidamacks, fully organized and led by Cossack commanders, devastated many towns and villages in the provinces of Kiev, Volhynia, and Podolia, slaying and robbing many pans and Jews.

The haidamack movement of 1768 was particularly furious. The Russian Government, which, beginning with the reign of Stanislav Poniatovski, was practically in control of the affairs of Poland, demanded that the "dissidents," the Greek Orthodox subjects of the country, be granted not only complete religious liberty, but also political equality. A considerable part of the Polish Shlakhta and clergy objected to these demands, and, seceding from the pro-Russian Government of Poland, formed the famous Confederacy of Bar,[166] for the defense of the ancient religious and political order of things against the encroachments of the foreigners. While the united royal and Russian troops were fighting against the Confederates, dissatisfaction was brewing among the Greek Orthodox peasants of the Polish Ukraina. Agitators from among the Orthodox clergy and the Zaporozhians instigated the peasants to rise for their faith against the Poles, who had formed the Confederacy of Bar for the annihilation of Greek Orthodoxy. A fict.i.tious decree of the Russian Empress Catherine II., known as "the golden Charter," circulated among the people from hand to hand, giving orders "to exterminate the Poles and the Jews, the desecrators of our holy religion," in the Ukraina.

The new haidamack movement was headed by the Zaporozhian Cossack Zheleznyak. Beginning with the month of April of 1768, the rebellious hordes of Zheleznyak raged within the borders of the present Government of Kiev, murdering the pans and the Jews and devastating towns and estates. The haidamacks were wont to hang a Pole, a Jew, and a dog, on one tree, and to place upon the tree the inscription: "Lakh,[167]

Zhyd,[168] and hound--all to the same faith bound." A terrible ma.s.sacre of Jews was perpetrated by the haidamacks in the towns of Lysyanka and Tetyev, in the province of Kiev.

From there Zheleznyak's hordes moved towards Uman,[169] an important fortified town, whither, at the first rumor of the rebellion, tens of thousands of Poles and Jews had fled for their lives. The place was crowded with refugees to such an extent that the newly-arrived could find no room in the town itself, and had to camp in tents outside. Uman belonged to the estate of the Voyevoda of Kiev, a member of the famous Pototzki family, and was commanded by a governor called Mladanovich.

Mladanovich had at his disposal a Cossack detachment of the court guard under the command of Colonel Gonta. Despite the fact that Gonta had long been suspected of sympathizing with the haidamacks, Mladanovich saw fit to dispatch him with a regiment of these court Cossacks against Zheleznyak, who was approaching the city. As was to be expected, Gonta went over to Zheleznyak, and on June 18, 1768, both commanders turned around and, at the head of their armies, marched upon Uman.

During the first day the city was defended by the Polish pans and the Jews, who worked shoulder to shoulder on the city wall, fighting off the besiegers with cannon and rifles. But not all Poles were genuinely resolved to defend the city. Many of them merely thought of saving their lives. Governor Mladanovich himself conducted peace negotiations with the haidamacks, and was reconciled by their a.s.surances that they would not lay hands on the pans, but would be satisfied with making short work of the Jews. When the haidamacks, headed by Gonta and Zheleznyak, had penetrated into the town, they threw themselves, in accordance with their promise, upon the Jews, who, crazed with terror, were running to and fro in the streets. They were murdered in beastlike fashion, being trampled under the hoofs of the horses, or hurled down from the roofs of the houses, while children were impaled on bayonets, and women were violated. A crowd of Jews to the number of some three thousand sought refuge behind the walls of the great synagogue. When the haidamacks approached the sacred edifice, several Jews, maddened with fury, hurled themselves with daggers and knives upon the front ranks of the enemy and killed a few men. The remaining Jews did nothing but pray to the Lord for salvation. To finish with the Jews quickly, the haidamacks placed a cannon at the entrance of the synagogue and blew up the doors, whereupon the murderers rushed inside, turning the house of prayer into a slaughter-house. Hundreds of dead bodies were soon swimming in pools of blood.

Having disposed of the Jews, the haidamacks now proceeded to deal with the Poles. Many of them were slaughtered in their church. Mladanovich and all other pans suffered the same fate. The streets of the city were strewn with corpses or with mutilated, half-dead bodies. About twenty thousand Poles and Jews perished during this memorable "Uman ma.s.sacre."

Simultaneously smaller detachments of haidamacks and mutinous peasants were busy exterminating the Shlakhta and the Jews in other parts of the provinces of Kiev and Podolia. Where formerly the hordes of Bogdan Khmelnitzki had raged, Jewish blood was again flowing in streams, and the cries of Jewish martyrs were again heard. But this time the catastrophe did not a.s.sume the same gigantic proportions as in 1648.

Both the Polish and Russian troops co-operated in suppressing the haidamack insurrection. Shortly after the ma.s.sacre of Uman, Zheleznyak and Gonta were captured by order of the Russian General Krechetnikov.

Gonta with his detachment was turned over to the Polish Government, and sentenced to be flayed alive and quartered. The other haidamack detachments were either annihilated or taken prisoner by the Polish commanders.

In this way the Jews of the Ukraina became a second time the victims of typical Russian pogroms, the outgrowth of national and caste antagonism, which was rending Poland in twain. The year 1768 was a miniature copy of the year 1648. A commonwealth in which for many centuries the relationship between the various groups of citizens was determined by mutual hatred, could not expect to survive as an independent political organism. A country in which the n.o.bility despised the gentry, and both looked down with contempt upon the calling of the merchant and the burgher, and enslaved the peasant, in which the Catholic clergy was imbued with hatred against the professors of all other creeds, in which the urban population persecuted the Jews as business rivals, and the peasants were filled with bitterness against both the higher and the lower orders--such a country was bound to perish. And Poland did perish.

The first part.i.tion of Poland took place in 1772, transferring the Polish border provinces into the hands of the three neighboring countries, Russia, Austria, and Prussia. Russia received the southwestern border province: the larger part of White Russia, the present Governments of Vitebsk and Moghilev. Austria took the southwestern region: a part of present-day Galicia, with a strip of Podolia. Prussia seized Pomerania and a part of Great Poland, const.i.tuting the present province of Posen. The annexed provinces const.i.tuted nearly a third of Polish territory, with a population of three millions, comprising a quarter of a million Jews.[170] The great Jewish center in Poland enters into the chaotic "part.i.tional period"

(1772-1815). Out of this chaos there gradually emerges a new Jewish center of the Diaspora--that of Russia.

FOOTNOTES:

[120] [p.r.o.nounced _Ookrana_. The spelling "Ukraine" is less correct.

The meaning of the word is "border," "frontier."]

[121] [The author refers to the compulsory establishment of the so-called Uniat Church, which follows the rites and traditions of the Greek Orthodox faith, but submits at the same time to the jurisdiction of the Roman See. The Uniat Church is still largely represented in Eastern Galicia among the Ruthenians.]

[122] [A contemptuous nickname for Pole.]

[123] [The word "Cossack," in Russian, _Kazak_ (with the accent on the last syllable), is derived from the Tataric. "Cossackdom"--says Kostomarov, in his Russian standard work on the Cossack uprising (_Bogdan Khmelnitzki_, i. p. 5)--"is undoubtedly of Tataric origin, and so is the very name _Kozak_, which in Tataric means 'vagrant,' 'free warrior,' 'rider.'" Peter Kropotkin (Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th edition, vii. 218) similarly derives the word from Turki _Kuzzk_, "adventurer," "freebooter."]

[124] [Derived from the German word _Hauptmann_.]

[125] [From the Russian word _Za porogi_, meaning "beyond the Falls"

(scil. of the Dnieper).]

[126] [Literally, "cutting," _i. e._ the cutting of a forest. Originally the Cossacks entered those regions as colonists and pioneers.]

[127] According to legend, the chief of the district had pillaged Khmelnitzki's tent, carried off his wife, and flogged his son to death.

[128] [In Polish, _Pokucie_, name of a region in the southeast of the Polish Empire, between Hungary and the Bukowina. Its capital was the Galician city Kolomea.]

[129] The clause in question runs as follows: "The Jews, even as they formerly were residents and arendars on the estates of his Royal Majesty, as well as on the estates of the Shlakhta, shall equally be so in the future."

[130] [See p. 98, n. 2.]

[131] [Allusion to Amos v. 19.]

[132] ["Mire of the Deep," from Ps. lxix. 3.--The Hebrew word _Yeven_ is a play on _Yavan_, "Greek," a term generally applied to the Greek Orthodox.]