CHAPTER XXXVII
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HELP FOR THE VICTIMS OF THE RUSSIAN MASSACRES IN 1903 AND 1905. OTHER PROOFS OF SYMPATHY.
The Kishinev massacre――Official solicitude and general sympathy―― Protest meetings and collections――The “Kishinev Petition” and its fate――Less publicity given to the later pogroms, whose victims were helped by “landsleut” from this country――The influence of pogroms on immigration――The frightful massacres in Russia in the fall of 1905, and the assistance rendered by this country――A Resolution of sympathy adopted in Congress――The 250th Anniversary of the Settlement of the Jews in the United States――Relief for Moroccan Jews proposed by the United States――Oscar S. Straus in the Cabinet.
While the correspondence about the Jews of Roumania was still carried on by our State Department, the civilized world was shocked by the reports of the brutal massacre of Jews in Kishinev in the three days of April 19–21, 1903. This massacre which is still within every one’s memory, aroused the press and the people of the United States more than the riots of 1881. “Almost from the first, the world’s indignation centered in the United States. Served by a vigorous press, whose liberal spirit voices the prevailing attitude; animated by a humanitarianism which lies at the foundation of all our public institutions; realizing also that America was the chief refuge of all victims of persecution; the people of the United States became, again, the world’s logical leaders in a campaign of humanity.”[54] President Roosevelt’s opening remark in his speech to the Executive Committee of the Independent Order of B’nai B’rith on June 15, 1903, when he said: “I have never in my experience in this country known of a more immediate or a deeper expression of sympathy for the victims and of horror over the appalling calamity that has occurred,” was fully justified.
The news filtered very slowly through the usual channels, and more than a week passed before the enormity of the Russian crime became fully known. On the 29th of April the following dispatch was sent by our Department of State:
McCormick, Ambassador, St. Petersburg:
It is persistently reported upon what appears to be adequate authority that there is great want and suffering among Jews in Kishinev. Friends in this country would like to know if financial aid and supplies would be permitted to reach the sufferers.
Please ascertain this without discussing political phase of the
## action.
HAY.
Ambassador McCormick replied, ten days later, that it is “authoritatively denied that there is any want or suffering among Jews in Southwestern Russia and aid of any kind is unnecessary.” But the people here understood that the Ambassador reflected the official view of the Russian Government, and efforts to raise money for the thousands of families which were left destitute by pillage, and for the hundreds of widows and orphans of the martyrs, were soon made, and large sums were collected in New York, as well as in many other places. More than seventy-five meetings of protest and indignation were held in fifty localities in twenty-seven States (and the District of Columbia) during the months of May and June, the most notable of which was the one held in New York, May 27, where Mayor Seth Low presided and ex-President Grover Cleveland was the principal orator. Among the largest meetings of the other places were those of Baltimore (May 17), of Philadelphia (June 3) and of New Orleans (June 13). In the most cases the prominent non-Jewish citizens, including high officials and ministers of religion, delivered addresses or expressed their sentiments in letters. Numerous sermons against Russia were preached in various churches and hundreds of editorial articles appeared in all sorts of periodicals. Public opinion was again, as it was twenty-two years before, practically unanimous in condemning Russia, and in encouraging every enterprise for the assistance of the sufferers from its barbarity.
The response to the appeals for material help was quick and generous. The contributions were sent either directly to the central office of the “Alliance Israelite Universelle” at Paris or to one of three agencies in New York――to the Relief Committee of which Emanuel Lehman was chairman and Daniel Guggenheim, treasurer, and which was in communication with the “Alliance”; to the Relief Committee of which K. H. Sarasohn was chairman and Arnold Kohn, treasurer, and which was in communication with the Central Relief Committee at Kishinev; or to Mr. William Randolph Hearst, whose newspapers, in New York, Chicago and San Francisco, did much to arouse the public to the gravity of the situation, and who forwarded the money collected by them to Treasurer Arnold Kohn. The sum sent to Kishinev from the United States through all these agencies was set down in a report made on June 7, 1903, by the Central Relief Committee at Kishinev to the “Hilfsverein der deutschen Juden” at Berlin, at 192,443 roubles (somewhat less than $100,000). It is about half of the sum which was collected in Russia itself, and a fourth of what was contributed by all the countries of the world.
It was generally understood that little could be accomplished by representations or remonstrances to Russia, but the desire to do something more than collect alms was very strong, and the sentiment naturally crystallized itself in an effort to ask the Government of the United States to use its good offices in behalf of the Jews of Russia. A petition was framed by the Executive Committee of the Independent Order of B’nai B’rith and submitted to the President of the United States with the request that it be transmitted to the Emperor of Russia. The President received the Committee cordially, and said at the conclusion of his remarks: “I will consider most carefully the suggestion that you have submitted to me, and whether the now existing conditions are such that any further official expression would be of advantage to the unfortunate survivors, with whom we sympathize so deeply.”
The petition was couched in courteous terms, extolling the Czar personally and pleading that “he who led his own people and all others to the shrine of peace, will add new luster to his reign and fame by leading a new movement that shall commit the whole world in opposition to religious persecution.” The petition was circulated in thirty-six States and Territories, and 12,544 signatures were obtained. Among the signers were Senators, Members of the House of Representatives, Governors (22), high judicial officers, State Legislators, Mayors of cities (150), clergymen of all denominations, including three Archbishops and seven Bishops, a large number of other officials, and many prominent men in the professional and the business world. President Roosevelt consented to transmit the petition, but the Russian Government declined to receive it, and the matter was thus ended. By permission of the President, the separate sheets of the petition bearing all the signatures, suitably bound and enclosed in a case provided for the purpose, have been placed in the archives of the Department of State.[55]
It was impossible to arouse the general public and even the general Jewish public at the recurrent pogroms and massacres at near intervals after Kishinev. But as is always the case with Russian or Galician or Roumanian cities when they suffer from fires, it became now the custom for all natives of an afflicted city to form some sort of organization in the rather rare occasion when there existed no synagogue or benevolent society of the “landsleut,” and to collect funds for the succor of the unfortunate families of the victims at home. Each of the riots and massacres between Kishinev and the terrible October days, the largest of which occurred at Homel (September 10–14, 1903) when eight Jews were killed and nearly one hundred injured; at Bender (May 1, 1904), and at Zhitomir (May 6, 1905), where twenty-nine were killed――each of these riots was a miniature Kishinev among the natives of the stricken place or its vicinity in this country. America became for the suffering Jews of Russia the Egypt of the time of the Patriarch Jacob, and the Russian immigrant who settled here before was the prosperous brother Joseph whom God sent to the New World before them to preserve life. To the emissaries from Palestine and from religious institutions in Russia, especially the Talmudical Academies or Yeshibot, who were coming regularly to the United States for many years to make collections among the conservative immigrants who prospered here, were now added emissaries from the radical or revolutionary parties from Russia, who were enthusiastically received by the working classes and the radical element in general, and their appeals for funds were seldom in vain.
The most substantial and most beneficial form of assistance sent from here to Russia was, however, not in response to appeals through Jewish newspapers or through personal representatives of causes, of parties or of institutions, but to requests made by members of families, by relatives or by friends to be taken out of Russia as soon as possible. While public appeals were made for charity of various kinds and for defense funds and similar objects, private correspondents solicited only one thing――steamship tickets. And the private responses, while they attracted less attention, were more generous, and in many instances verged on self-sacrifice. This can be deduced from the results, i. e., from the increased Jewish immigration, which was easily absorbed and little burdensome to the general Jewish public or to the larger charities, because most of the new arrivals had near relatives or friends who took care of them in the short time which elapsed until they could find employment. The increase of Jewish immigration on account of the pogroms can best be seen by a comparison of the number of Jewish arrivals at the Port of New York, where nearly nine-tenths of them arrive, with the general immigration for the five years 1903–07 (each ending June 30). The figures for 1903 are: Jews 58,079, total immigration, 857,046; for 1904: Jews 80,885, total 812,870; for 1905: Jews 103,941, total 1,027,421; for 1906: Jews 133,764, total 1,100,735; for 1907: Jews 117,486, total 1,285,349. It is seen that while general immigration in 1904 was about 45,000 less than in 1903, Jewish immigration was about 22,000 more. On the other hand, while general immigration rose to an unprecedented height in 1907, and was larger than the preceding year by 185,000, the number of Jews arriving in New York was about 16,000 less. The Jewish immigrant is not the man who fails at home or the adventurer who cares for no home; he could get along very well where he is if he were not molested, and Jewish immigration from Russia would become as insignificant as Jewish immigration from Germany if the former country could rise to the political and social conditions of the latter.
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The small pogroms which were designated above as miniature Kishinevs, and even Kishinev itself, were soon forgotten or began to look very small in comparison with the frightful massacres of the last day of October and the first days of November, 1905, with which the Russians inaugurated their quasi-constitutional regime. This time there were about a thousand Jews killed, the wounded numbered many thousands, the losses by destruction of property amounted to hundreds of millions. America again responded nobly, and a committee, of which Oscar S. Straus was chairman and Jacob H. Schiff, treasurer, collected considerably more than a million dollars, from Jews and non-Jews, mainly through the same agencies and by the same methods as the funds for the sufferers from Kishinev were collected. There were again mass-meetings at which prominent non-Jews spoke words of sympathy for the martyrs and their families and condemned the government which permitted such carnage. The general press was as friendly and sympathetic to the Jews as on former occasions. When the great march of Jewish mourners after the martyrs took place through the streets of New York, in which nearly one hundred thousand participated (December 4, 1905), several Christian churches tolled their bells in expression of sympathy with the weeping masses which passed by.
Illustration: Hon. Jacob H. Schiff. Photo by Dupont, N. Y.
There was also an official expression of sympathy from Congress. Representatives Henry M. Goldfogle and William Sulzer introduced into the House resolutions to that effect, and a third one as a substitute was introduced by Representative Charles A. Towne, who, like the former two, represented a New York City District. The House Committee on Foreign Affairs granted a hearing, on February 8, 1906, to those interested in the passage of the resolutions. In its final form the joint resolution was introduced into the Senate by the late Anselm J. McLaurin of Mississippi, and in the House by Robert G. Cousins of Iowa, and read as follows:
_Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled._ That the people of the United States are horrified by the reports of the massacre of Hebrews in Russia, on account of their race and religion, and that those bereaved thereby have the hearty sympathy of the people of this country.
This resolution was adopted without debate, and unanimously, by both houses on June 22, and approved by the President on June 26, 1906.
On two other occasions about the same time the friendly disposition of the people and the Government of the United States towards the Jews was manifested to the world. The first occasion was only semi-official, when the Jews of the country celebrated the Two Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of the Settlement of the Jews in the United States, on Thanksgiving Day (November 30), 1905. Meetings and special services were held in more than seventy localities between November 24 and December 10, but the principal celebration was in New York on the above mentioned date, in Carnegie Hall, where notable addresses were delivered by former President Grover Cleveland, Governor Francis W. Higgins of the State of New York, Mayor George B. McClellan of New York City, and Bishop David Greer. Cordial letters were received from President Roosevelt and Vice-President Charles W. Fairbanks. The principal oration at that memorable meeting was delivered by Judge Mayer Sulzberger of Philadelphia. Our present Ambassador to Russia, Curtis Guild, Jr., who was at that time Lieutenant-Governor of Massachusetts, was one of the speakers at the celebration meeting which was held in Boston, a day before the New York meeting.[56]
The second occasion attracted less attention, but was strictly official. The International Conference about Morocco, which was held in Algeciras, Spain, from January 6 to April 7, 1906, was participated in by the United States, and its first delegate, Henry White (Ambassador to Italy), received instruction by a special letter from Secretary of State (now Senator) Elihu Root to work for the protection of the Jews of Morocco. These instructions were accompanied by a letter received by Secretary Root from Mr. Jacob H. Schiff, setting forth the pitiable condition of the Jews of that country and enumerating the legal restrictions to which they were subject. Through the exertion of Mr. White, a provision was inserted, on April 2, in the treaty, with which the Conference was concluded, according to which the signatory nations guarantee the security and equal privileges of the Jews in Morocco, both those living in the ports and those living in the interior. (See “American-Jewish Year Book” for 5667, pp. 92–98.) The chief value of this provision, however, consists only in its indication of the good will of the Government of the United States. Its practical value for the Jews of Morocco, as far as protection from riots and massacres are concerned, is hardly more than that of the well known “Article 44” of the Treaty of Berlin regarding the Jews of Roumania. The Jews of Morocco probably never heard of that provision, and the credit of ameliorating their condition rightfully belongs to France, which has, according to the latest agreement among European Powers, become the protector, or ruler of the Shereefian Empire.
Illustration: Hon. Oscar S. Straus.
Near the end of the same year (1906) President Roosevelt appointed Oscar S. Straus, the author and diplomatist, Secretary of Commerce and Labor. The first Jew to be thus honored with a seat in the Cabinet has served twice as minister plenipotentiary (and since he left the Cabinet, again as Ambassador) to Turkey, and also succeeded the late Benjamin Harrison, former president of the United States, as a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague. His oldest brother, Isidor Straus (b. in Bavaria, 1845; a. 1854; drowned with the “Titanic” April 15, 1912), was a well known merchant and philanthropist in New York, who was a member of the Fifty-third Congress, and has been for many years President of the Educational Alliance. Another brother, Nathan Straus (b. in Bavaria, 1848: a. 1854), who is also known as a philanthropist and served as Park Commissioner, and, for several months, as President of the Board of Health of New York, is two years older than the former Cabinet Minister.
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