HISTORY OF THE JEWS IN RUSSIA AND POLAND
FROM THE DEATH OF ALEXANDER I UNTIL THE DEATH OF ALEXANDER III
by S.M. Dubnow
A Project Gutenberg EBook
4. THE JEWS AND THE POLISH INSURRECTION OF 1831
When, under the effect of the July revolution in Paris,
the "November
insurrection" of 1830 broke out in Warsaw, it put on
its mettle that
section of Polish Jewry who hoped to improve the Jewish
lot by their
patriotic ardor. In the month of December one of the
"Old Testament
believers," Stanislav Hernish, [1] addressed himself
to the Polish
dictator, Khlopitzki, in the name of a group of Jewish
youths, assuring
him of their eagerness to form a special detachment of
volunteers to
help in the common task of liberating their fatherland.
The dictator
replied that, inasmuch as the Jews had no civil rights,
they could not
be permitted to serve in the army. The Minister of War
Moravski
delivered himself on this occasion of the following
characteristic
utterance: "We cannot allow that Jewish blood should
mingle with the
noble blood of the Poles. What will Europe say when she
learns that in
fighting for our liberty we have not been able to get
along without
Jewish help?"
[Footnote 1: Polish patriot and publicist. He
subsequently fled to
France. See later, p. 109.]
The insulting refusal did not cool the ardor of the
Jewish patriots.
Joseph Berkovich, the son of Berek Yoselovitch, who had
laid down his
life for the Polish cause, decided to repeat his father's
experiment [1]
and issued a proclamation to the Jews, calling upon them
to join the
ranks of the fighters for Polish independence. The
"National Government"
in Warsaw could not resist this patriotic pressure. It
addressed itself
to the "Congregational Board" of Warsaw,
inquiring about the attitude of
the Jewish community towards the projected formation of a
separate
regiment of Jewish volunteers. The Board replied that the
community had
already given proofs of its patriotism by contributing
40,000 Gulden
towards the revolutionary funds, and by collecting
further contributions
towards the equipment of volunteers. The formation of a
_special_ Jewish
regiment the Board did not consider advisable, inasmuch
as such action
was not in keeping with the task of uniting all citizens
in the defence
of the fatherland. Instead, the Board favored the
distribution of the
Jewish volunteers over the whole army.
[Footnote 1: Compare Vol. I, p. 293 et seq.]
From now on the Jews were admitted to military service,
but more into
the militia than into the regular army. The commander of
the National
Guard in Warsaw, Anton Ostrovski, one of the few rebel
leaders who were
not swayed by the anti-Semitic prejudices of the Polish
nobility,
admitted into his militia many Jewish volunteers on
condition that they
shave off their beards. Owing to the religious scruples
of many Jewish
soldiers, the latter condition had to be abandoned, and a
special
"bearded" detachment of the metropolitan guard
was formed, comprising
850 Jews.
The Jewish militia acquitted itself nobly of its duty in
the grave task
of protecting the city of Warsaw against the onrush of
the Russian
troops. The sons of wealthy families fought shoulder to
shoulder with
children of the proletariat. The sight of these
step-children of Poland
fighting for their fatherland stirred the heart of
Ostrovski, and he
subsequently wrote: "This spectacle could not fail
to make your heart
ache. Our conscience bade us to attend to the betterment
of this most
down-trodden part of our population at the earliest
possible moment."
It is worthy of note that the wave of Polish-Jewish
patriotism did not
spread beyond Warsaw. In the provincial towns the
inhabitants of the
ghetto were, as a rule, unwilling to serve in the army on
the ground
that the Jewish religion forbade the shedding of human
blood. This
indifference aroused the ire of the Polish population,
which threatened
to wreak vengeance upon the Jews, suspecting them of
pro-Russian
sympathies. Ostrovski's remark with reference to this
situation deserves
to be quoted: "True," he said, "the Jews
of the provinces may possibly
be guilty of indifference towards the revolutionary
cause, but can we
expect any other attitude from those we oppress?"
[1] It may be added
that soon afterwards the question of military service as
affecting the
Jews was solved by the Diet. By the law of May 30, 1831,
the Jews were
released from conscription on the payment of a tax which
was four times
as large as the one paid by them in former years.
[Footnote 1: In the Western provinces outside the Kingdom
of Poland, in
Lithuania, Volhynia, and Podolia, the Jewish population
held itself
aloof from the insurrectionary movement. Here and there
the Jews even
sympathized with the Russian Government, despite the fact
that the
latter threw the Polish rulers into the shade by the
extent of its
Jewish persecutions. In some places the Polish insurgents
made the Jews
pay with their lives for their pro-Russian sympathies.]
When the "aristocratic revolution," having
failed to obtain the support
of the disinherited masses, had met with disaster, the
revolutionary
leaders, who saved themselves by fleeing abroad, indulged
in remorseful
reflections. The Polish historian Lelevel, who lived in
Paris as a
refugee, issued in 1832 a "Manifesto to the
Israelitish Nation," calling
upon the Jews to forget the insults inflicted upon them
by present-day
Poland for the sake of the sweet reminiscences of the
Polish Republic in
days gone by and of the hopes inspired by a free Poland
in days to come.
He compares the flourishing condition of the Jews in the
ancient Polish
commonwealth with their present status on the same
territory, under the
yoke of "the Viennese Pharaohs," [1] or in the
land "dominated by the
Northern Nebuchadnezzar," [2] where the terror of
conscription reigns
supreme, where "little children, wrenched from the
embraces of their
mothers, are hurled into the ranks of a debased
soldiery," "doomed to
become traitors to their religion and nation."
[Footnote 1: Referring to Galicia.]
[Footnote 2: Nicholas I.]
The reign of nations--exclaims Lelevel--is drawing
nigh. All peoples
will be merged into one, acknowledging the one God
Adonai. The rulers
have fed the Jews on false promises; the nations will
grant them
liberty. Soon Poland will rise from the dust. Let then
the Jews living
on her soil go hand in hand with their brother-Poles.
The Jews will then
be sure to obtain their rights. Should they insist on
returning to
Palestine, the Poles will assist them in realizing this
consummation.
Similar utterances could be heard a little later in the
mystic circle of
Tovyanski and Mitzkevitch in Paris, [1] in which the
historic destiny of
the two martyr nations, the Poles and the Jews, and their
universal
Messianic calling were favorite topics of discussion. But
alongside of
these flights of "imprisoned thought" one could
frequently catch in the
very same circle the sounds of the old anti-Semitic
slogans. The
Parisian organ of the Polish refugees, _Nowa Polska_,
"New Poland,"
occasionally indulged in anti-Semitic sallies, calling
forth a
passionate rebuttal from Hernish, [2] an exiled
journalist, who reminded
his fellow-journalists that it was mean to hunt down
people who were the
"slaves of slaves." Two other Polish-Jewish
revolutionaries, Lubliner
and Hollaenderski, shared all the miseries of the
refugees and, while in
exile, indulged in reflections concerning the destiny of
their brethren
at home. [3]
[Footnote 1: Andreas Tovyanski (In Polish _Towianski_,
1799-1878), a
Christian mystic, founded in Paris a separate community
which fostered
the belief in the restoration of the Polish and the
Jewish people. The
community counted among its members several Jews. The
famous Polish poet
Adam Mitzkevich (in Polish _Mickiewicz_, 1798-1855)
joined Tovyanski in
his endeavors, and on one occasion even appeared in a
Paris synagogue on
the Ninth of Ab to make an appeal to the Jews.]
[Footnote 2: See above, p. 105.]
[Footnote 3: Lubliner published _Des Juifs en Pologne_,
Brussels, 1839;
Hollaenderski wrote _Les Israelites en
Pologne_, Paris, 1846.]
In pacified Poland, which, deprived of her former
autonomous
constitution, was now ruled by the iron hand of the
Russian viceroy,
Paskevich, the Jews at first experienced no palpable
changes. Their
civil status was regulated, as heretofore, by the former
Polish
legislation, not by that of the Empire. It was only in
1843 that the
Polish Jews were in one respect equalized with their
Russian brethren.
Instead of the old recruiting tax, they were now forced
to discharge
military service in person. However, the imperial ukase
extending the
operation of the Conscription Statute of 1827 to the Jews
of the Kingdom
contained several alleviations. Above all, its most cruel
provision, the
conscription of juveniles or cantonists, was set aside.
The age of
conscription was fixed at twenty to twenty-five, while
boys between the
age of twelve and eighteen were to be drafted only when
the parents
themselves wished to offer them as substitutes for their
elder sons who
were of military age. Nevertheless, to the Polish Jews,
who had never
known of conscription, military service lasting a quarter
of a century,
to be discharged in a strange Russian environment, seemed
a terrible
sacrifice. The "Congregational Board" of
Warsaw, having learned of the
ukase, sent a deputation to St. Petersburg with a
petition to grant the
Jews of the Kingdom equal rights with the Christians,
referring to the
law of 1817 which distinctly stated that the Jews were to
be released
from personal military service so long as they were
denied equal civil
rights. The petition of course proved of no avail; the
very term "equal
rights" was still missing in the Russian vocabulary.
Only in point of disabilities were the Jews of Poland
gradually placed
on an equal footing with their Russian brethren. In 1845
the Russian law
imposing a tax on the traditional Jewish attire [1] was
extended in its
operation to the Polish Jews, descending with the force
of a real
calamity upon the hasidic masses of Poland. Fortunately
for the Jews of
Poland, the other experiments, in which St. Petersburg
was revelling
during that period, left them unscathed. The crises
connected with the
problems of Jewish autonomy and the Jewish school, which
threatened to
disrupt Russian Jewry in the forties, had been passed by
the Jews of
Poland some twenty years earlier. Moreover, the Polish
Jews had the
advantage over their Russian brethren in that the
abrogated Kahal had
after all been replaced by another communal organization,
however
curtailed it was, and that the secular school was not
forced upon them
in the same brutal manner in which the Russian Crown
schools had been
imposed upon the Jews of the Empire. Taken as a whole,
the lot of the
Polish Jews, sad though it was, might yet be pronounced
enviable when
compared with the condition of their brethren in the Pale
of Settlement,
where the rightlessness of the Jews during that period
bordered
frequently on martyrdom.
[Footnote 1: A law to that effect had been passed on
February 1, 1843.
It was preparatory to the entire prohibition of Jewish
dress. See below,
p. 143 et seq.]
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