The Duluth News Tribune — October 28, 1915.


Persecution In Russia

The facts regarding the persecution of the Jews in Russian Poland are only gradually reaching this country, says the Kansas City Star. They show that the government has taken advantage of the anti-Semitic feeling to oppress an important part of the population. Apparently the necessity was felt of shifting the blame for the Russian retreat. The Jewish residents were accused of helping the invading Germans. As a result large numbers were expelled from their homes and subjected to mob violence.

In a dignified and moderate speech in the duma the Jewish deputy, Mr. Freedman, recently recounted the sufferings of this people. He insisted that thorough investigation had proved the stories circulated of help to the enemy to be without foundation. Case after case he cited of whole communities reduced to poverty. His estimate was that a half million Jews had been beggared by the persecutions.

World public opinion has been brought to bear on Turkey for its slaughter of the Armenians. If the reports from Russia are verified — and the facts seem well established — the czar's government cannot escape moral condemnation for its wholesale persecutions in Poland.



Holdwater: As it served no political purpose for the Allies, Russia easily escaped moral condemnation.

 From the Dallas News, July 29, 1919:


MORGENTHAU SAYS REPORTS OF POGROMS IN POLAND EXAGGERATED

Paris, Sunday July 27. —  (Havas Agency.) —  Henry Morgenthau, former American Ambassador to Turkey, appointed by President Wilson as head of the American commission to investigate reported pogroms in Poland, told newspaper men here today that the short visit which he made to Poland had convinced him that the reports of pogroms were tremendously exaggerated.

Mr. Morgenthau added his view that the Polish Jews sometimes overlooked the fact that equal rights involved equal duties. If the Polish Jews wished sincerely to collaborate with the State, he declared, they must follow the example of their American coreligionists, who consider themselves, above all things, patriotic Americans.


The above is an incredible report, on several levels.

1) How was Morgenthau to know the extent of the cruelties the Russians performed upon Polish and Lithuanian Jews from a "short visit," years after the fact?

Morgenthau's horrid "Story" book had already been out for more than half a year, and he had a vested interest in showing the Turks to be as bestial as possible; he was, or was soon to be, the National Vice-Chairman of Near East Relief, very attached to the Armenian Cause by this time. It certainly would not do to have the Russians compete with the Turks in the role of "monster." It was Morgenthau's duty to downplay the Russians' role, even if it meant giving short shrift to fellow Jews.

2) If Polish Jews were so terribly treated by the Russians in 1915, how could Morgenthau have expected the Jews to consider themselves as "patriotic"?

(A caveat: It is not clear whether these pogroms were related to the massacres from a few years back, or if they were brand new ones... in which case the persecutors could possibly have been the Poles themselves. If the Poles were the guilty party here, then the question needs to be asked who fired the first shot. It is doubtful that it would have been the Jews.)

But here is the greatest outrage:

3) If Morgenthau was wagging his finger at the Polish Jews for neglecting their allegiance to the State, then why did he not require the same from the treacherous Ottoman-Armenians?


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ADDENDUM, Dec. 2006: Thanks to Erju Ackman, further insight on this episode may be found below. The Russians are off the hook, with this one.

From "Vilna," by Israel Cohen, Jewish Publication Society; the following excerpts are from pages 377-382, "5. The Polish Liberation":

"The arrival of the new 'liberators' opened a fresh chapter of Jewish agony. The Bolsheviks, before retreating, made their last stand from the old Jewish cemetery at Shnipishok. This circumstance, together with the fact that some Jews had sided with them, although many Poles had likewise done so, sufficed to make the Polish legionaries see a Bolshevik in every Jew. After a couple of days' fighting the Bolsheviks were driven to flight, whereupon the legionaries defiled and desecrated the cemetery, smashed the tombstones, and opened up the graves (including some of Vilna's earliest rabbis) in the belief that they would find in them arms and money. Disappointed in their search, the Poles transferred their attention from the dead to the living and ran amuck in the Jewish quarter. For three days they seized Jews in the streets, dragged them out of their homes, bludgeoned them savagely, and looted their houses and shops. About eighty Jews were shot, mostly in the district of Lipuvka, where some were ordered to dig their own graves; others were buried alive, and others were drowned, with their hands tied, in the Vilia. On April 21 [1919] a detachment of soldiers fired at a house from which they said, Jews had been shooting through a window. They drove out all the occupants, who included the writers A. Weiter, Lieb Jaffe, and Samuel Niger. Weiter was shot on the spot; the two others were seized and imprisoned for several days. [The author goes on in this vein for several long paragraphs].

[...]

"On July 19, there arrived an Inquiry Commission sent by President Wilson, and headed by Mr. Henry Morgenthau, a former American ambassador to Turkey. The purpose of the commission was to ascertain the facts about the atrocities and to find a means of bringing about the conciliation of the Poles with the Jews. It proved a failure, for, although it heard a few hundred witnesses and took 1500 'protocols' of cases of looting, assault, and murder, its report, which was published in January, 1920, utterly failed to give an adequate account of the extent and character of the disorders or to express unqualified condemnation of those responsible."

(An explanatory note from page 512: "The Mission consisted of Mr. Henry Morgenthau, Brigadier General Edgar Jadwin, and Mr. Homer Johnson. It had been appointed by the 'American Commission to Negotiate Peace, " which sat in Paris in 1919....
The Mission was in Poland for two months from July 13 to September 13, 1919. Its report which was published in full in the *New York Times* of January 19, 1920, provoked a controversy which raged on both sides of the Atlantic for several months. Of the four closely-printed columns of small type, only a paragraph was devoted to Vilna, confined solely to the incidents of April 19-21.)