Moral of the Story of the Anti-Jewish Riots

Today’s installment concludes A Russian Pogrom Against the Jews,
the name of our combined selection from Richard Gottheil and Vladamir Korolenko. The concluding installment, by Vladamir Korolenko from House No. 13.

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Previously in A Russian Pogrom Against the Jews.

Time: 1903
Place: Kishineff (modern Chișinău), Moldovia

The work of havoc proceeded. The square became almost blocked, so high was it piled with furniture, clothing, and window-frames. A Jewess told me that she wanted to get to the other side where her children were, but failed after two attempts. She held a baby in her arms. At last a Christian neighbor, known to her, took charge of her baby, so that she was enabled with difficulty to pick her way across this barricade of destruction.

At five o’clock on the same day the news spread that the “order,” which from the first had been awaited with so much anxiety, had at last come. It took from an hour to an hour and a half to restore order in the town. No blood had to be shed, nor a rifle fired. A show of firmness was all that was necessary.

Years will have to go by before the terrible recollection of these doings and of the damning bloodstain on the “conscience of the Christians in Kishineff ” can be at all effaced. There is a blot on the consciences not only of those who actually com mitted murder, but also of those who provoked to murder, by their base lies and their preaching of hatred to their fellow men; and also on the consciences of those who maintain that the fault lay not with the murderers, but with the murdered, that there exist such things as common irresponsibility, and that a whole nation may be treated as having no rights.

I fully realize how little I have given the reader in these hasty notes but I wished to pick out this one episode from the involved and impersonal chaos known as a massacre; and to show, by one concrete instance, the general character, and some of the causes of what happened. With this object in view, I have availed myself of the evidence of those who actually witnessed what took place, and who recounted their impressions personally, either to me or to my companion. It was he who helped me to reconstruct, bit by bit, the whole picture. It is true that all the witnesses are Jews, but there is no reason to doubt their word. This one fact can not be disputed, that in House No. 13 a mob murdered defenseless people — murdered them with every device that cruelty could suggest, in the center of a populated town, with as little interruption as if the horrible deeds were being enacted in a remote forest. The corpses remain as evidence. And after all, what does it matter to the surviving Jews exactly how their friends were killed? What object could they have in inventing details?

The moral is clear for any one in whom the ordinary feelings of humanity still dwell. But do any such exist? This important question comes involuntarily to my mind, after witnessing what I witnessed at Kishineff.

And yet. . . .

Overcome by the impression of these frightful details, I was busy with my disjointed notes, when I read in the paper of the death of the Kishineff lawyer, Pisargevsky. The name of this man was in every one’s mouth during my stay in the town. Young, handsome, rich, frequenting the best society of Kishineff, he was ever seeking fresh distractions. Numbers of men told me that there was no doubt Pisargevsky took part personally in the riots and even led the mob. I was also told what powerful influence had been brought to bear, in order to prevent this crying scandal from becoming known, and to hide the direct share taken in the rioting by the “lion of Kishineff society.” I wish I could believe that not all that was told me under this head was true. But even the points which are unquestioned would make a most important addition to the dreadful story of the Kishineff massacres. The efforts to suppress the truth were, however, futile. It was too apparent, and the newspapers soon reported that Pisargevsky was implicated in the late rioting. Until the moment of publication, however, he had continued his usual mode of life; paid visits, enjoyed himself, played cards. On the fatal night he was lucky at cards, and, in consequence, seemed more than usually jovial. At daybreak he went out into the garden and wrote on a seat, “Here the lawyer Pisargevsky committed suicide,” and then shot himself. The newspapers, commenting on the event, added that he had suffered from an hereditary tendency to dipsomania, that the prospect of the impending inquiry had disturbed him, and that he had had an unfortunate love-affair. Was that all? Anyhow, the price has now been paid. It seems to me, therefore, that I shall hardly be offending against the memory of this unhappy man if I presume that in the account which he settled on the garden bench there may have been other items not yet mentioned. Is it not possible that, in the dawn of the day on which he destroyed himself, there arose before him and confronted him the realization of what he, a man of education, had done toward influencing the passions of those who slew the Jews?

These are but suppositions, and are possibly much too optimistic. I heard an undoubted, though not an unexpected, truth from the mouth of a poor cabman of Kishineff , a Jew by origin. We were discussing with him the massacres and their after results, when he told me the story of a nursery gardener whom he drove a short time ago up to town. The gardener had come to town as usual to borrow money in order to pay the wages of his workmen in the summer. But the Jews, uncertain as to the way events were tending, refused the loan. The gardener was therefore compelled to apply to Christian instead of to Jewish usurers; and ” these gentlemen,” our cabman remarked, “will take three of your skins where a Jew will take one.” That this question of usury was one of the motives of the massacre is quite clear to anybody who begins to make inquiries in Kishineff. Among those who evidently sympathized with the rioters, and encouraged the crowd in their blind prejudice, race-hatred, and savage lust for plunder and murder, the citizens point to a well-known Gentile usurer who realized that his chance had at last come.

This ends our selections on A Russian Pogrom Against the Jews by two of the most important authorities of this topic:

• an article in Forum by Richard Gottheil.
• House No. 13 by Vladamir Korolenko.

Richard Gottheil began here. Vladamir Korolenko began here.

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More information on A Russian Pogrom Against the Jews here and here and below.

The Kishineff Pogrom of 1903 [IN HEBREW]

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