History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume 1 of 3. From the Beginning until the Death of Alexander I (1825)

In this way the magna charta of Polish liberty – the Constitution of May 3, 1791 – was promulgated without modifying in the slightest degree the status of the Jews. True, the new Constitution did not in any way alter the former caste system of the Polish Republic itself – the feudalism of the nobility, the servitude of the peasantry, and the privileges of the gentry. Nevertheless it conferred civil equality on the burgher class, and placed the representative institutions on a somewhat more democratic basis. Only the Jew, the cinderella of the realm, was completely cut off in this last will of dying Poland.

The sessions of the Diet, which were renewed in the fall of 1791, were surrounded by a particularly disquieting political atmosphere. The opponents of the new Constitution fomented an agitation in the country. Civil strife and war with Russia were imminent. Nevertheless the indefatigable Butrymovich had the courage to remind the Diet once again of the necessity of extending the protection of the Government to "the unfortunate nationality which is not in a position to effect its own rescue, and is not even aware of the direction in which the betterment of its lot may be found." He demanded that the Commission revise the project formerly elaborated by it, with a view to submitting it anew to the House, with such amendments as were "called forth by present-day circumstances." Butrymovich was warmly seconded by Yezierski, who in the same session (December 30) voiced the above-mentioned "radical" idea, that in his opinion the Jews were even now "useful citizens," and not merely likely to be "useful" in the future. The Diet adopted the motion, and the Commission once more resumed its labors.

The results of these labors were minimal. After protracted deliberations the Commission arrived at the following conclusion:

In order to improve the status of the Jewish population, it is necessary to regulate its mode of life. Such regulation is impossible unless that population is relieved from its Kahal indebtedness, which relief cannot be brought about until the finance committee has taken up the question of liquidation.225

The Commission accordingly felt that, before taking up the projected reforms, the Government should first point out ways and means of liquidating the Kahal debts. The resolution of the Commission was cheerfully passed in a plenary session of the Diet. A burden had been lifted from its shoulders. There was no more need of bothering about "Jewish reform" and "equality." It was enough to instruct the local courts to fix the extent of the Kahal debts and authorize the finance committee to wipe them off with moneys taken from the available Kahal funds or other special sources. Thus it came about that, under the pretext of liquidating Jewish debts, "Jewish reform" itself was liquidated.

Having been passed over by the Constitution of May 3, the Jews, if we are to believe the accounts of several contemporaries, made an attempt to influence the Government and the Diet through the instrumentality of King Stanislav Augustus, approaching the latter with the help of their connections at court. Jewish public leaders are said to have assembled in secret and elected three delegates, who were to enter into negotiations with the King looking to the amelioration of the condition of the Jews. The three delegates carried out their mandate, towards the end of 1791 and the beginning of 1792, with the help of the Royal Secretary Piatoli as their go-between. Shortly thereafter they were received by the King in special audience, with great solemnity, the King, as the story has it, being seated on his throne during the reception. The Jews pleaded for civil rights as well as for the right of acquiring lands and houses in the cities, the preservation of their communal autonomy, and exemption from the jurisdiction of the magistracies. The story goes that the Jewish delegates held out the promise of a gift of twenty million gulden to pay the royal debts. Several leaders of the Diet, among them Kollontay, a radical, were initiated into the secret. The King, according to this report, endeavored to push the Jewish reform project through the Jewish Commission and the Diet, but failed in his efforts. The problem of ages could not be disposed of at this anxious hour when the angel of death was hovering over Poland, while the unfortunate land was exhausting its strength in a final dash for inner regeneration and outer independence.

3. The Last Two Partitions and Berek Yoselovich

The death struggle of Poland was approaching. The opponents of the May Constitution among the conservative elements of the country joined hands with the Russian Government, which in its own sphere of influence had always been a baneful stumbling-block in the path of progress. The result was the formation of the Confederacy of Targovitza226 and the outbreak of civil war (summer, 1792). Though severed from political life, the Jews nevertheless showed sympathy here and there with the men that fought for the new Constitution. The Jewish tailors of Vilna undertook to furnish gratis two hundred uniforms for the army of liberty. The communities of Sokhachev and Pulavy contributed their mite towards the patriotic funds. The Jews of Berdychev took part in the deputation of the local merchants which went to meet Joseph Poniatovski, the commander-in-chief of the Polish army, and presented him with new instruments for the regimental music bands. On many an occasion the Jewish communities of Volhynia and Podolia were the victims of enforced requisitions from both belligerent armies. The community of Ostrog had to undergo the bombardment of the city by the Russian army in July, 1792.

The year 1793 saw the second partition of Poland, between Russia and Prussia. Russia annexed Volhynia, with a part of the province of Kiev, Podolia, and the region of Minsk. Prussia, in turn, acquired the other part of Great Poland (Kalish, Plotzk,227 etc.), with Dantzic and Thorn. Once more an enormous territory, with hundreds of thousands of Jews, was cut off from Poland. The unfortunate nation, seized with a paroxysm of pain at this new amputation, burst forth against its torturers. The Revolution of 1794 took its course.

At the head of the uprising stood Kosciuszko.228 Having been reared in the atmosphere of two great revolutions – the American and the French – he had a loftier conception of civic and political liberty than the liberalizing host of the Polish Shlakhta. He was aware that no free country could exist without first abolishing the serfdom of the peasants and the inequality of the citizens. Even in the heat of his struggle for the salvation of the fatherland, the Polish leader occasionally gave proof of his democratic tendencies, and the oppressed classes could not but feel that this revolution was more than merely an affair of the Shlakhta.

The enthusiasm for liberty communicated itself to several sections of Polish Jewry. It was manifested during the prolonged Russo-Prussian siege of Warsaw in the summer and autumn of 1794, when the whole population was called to arms to defend the capital. The very same Jews who but a little while ago had been attacked on the streets of Warsaw by the burghers and artisans, and were mercilessly driven from the city by order of the administration, now, in the moment of danger, fought in the trenches shoulder to shoulder with their persecutors, digging ditches and throwing up earthworks. Frequently at an alarm signal the volunteers would rush out to fight back the besiegers. Amidst the whistling of bullets and bursting of shells they repulsed the enemies' attacks side by side with the other Varsovians, furnishing their quota in wounded and killed, and yet keeping up their courage. Among the Jews defending Warsaw the plan was conceived of forming a separate Jewish legion to fight for the country. At the head of this patriotic group stood Berek Yoselovich.229

Born about 1765 in the little town of Kretingen,230 Berek had traversed the thorny path that led a poor Jewish boy from the Jewish religious school (heder) to the post of a pan's agent. He entered the employ of a high noble, the Bishop of Vilna, by the name of Masalski, and was thereby launched upon his remarkable career. Masalski often went abroad, especially to Paris, and always took his Jewish agent with him. During these travels young Berek early acquired the French language, and observed the life of the Parisian salons in which the master moved. The plain Polish Jew perceived a new world, and he could not help scenting the new tendencies floating about in the air of the world's capital on the eve of the great Revolution.

During the years of the Quadrennial Diet Berek, who had given up his position with Masalski, and had married in the meantime, lived in Praga, a suburb of Warsaw. In the atmosphere of patriotic excitement, the vague impressions which his contact with the Polish nobility and his foreign travels had left upon his mind came to maturity. The heroic figure of Kosciuszko and the siege of Warsaw gave these vague sensations a concrete form. He realized that it was his immediate duty to fight for the freedom of the country, for the salvation of the capital, where Poles and Jews were equally shut off and cooped up by the hand of the enemy. Now was the time to prove that even the stepchildren of the nation knew how to fight in the ranks of her sons, and that they deserved a better lot.

Accordingly, in September, 1794, at the very height of the siege, Berek Yoselovich, conjointly with Joseph Aronovich (son of Aaron), a fellow-Jew of like mind, applied to Kosciuszko, the commander-in-chief, for permission to form a special regiment of light cavalry consisting of Jewish volunteers. Kosciuszko immediately complied with their request, and announced it joyfully in a special army order, dated September 17, extolling the patriotic zeal of the originators of the plan, "who remember the land in which they were born, and know that its liberation will bestow upon them [the Jews] the same advantages as upon the others." Berek was appointed commander of the Jewish regiment. An appeal was issued calling for recruits and for contributions towards their equipment. Berek's appeal to his coreligionists was published in the official "Gazette" of Warsaw on October 1. It was written in Polish, though couched in the solemn phraseology of the Bible:

Listen, ye sons of the tribes of Israel, all ye in whose heart is implanted the image of God Almighty, all that are willing to help in the struggle for the fatherland… Know ye that now the time hath come to consecrate to this all our strength… Truly, there are many mighty nobles, children of the Shlakhta, and many great minds who are ready to lay down their lives!.. Why then should we who are persecuted not take to arms, seeing that we are the most oppressed people in the world!.. Why should we not labor to obtain our freedom which has been promised us just as firmly and sincerely as it has been to others? But first we must show that we are worthy of it… I have had the happiness of being placed at the head of the regiment by my superiors. Awake then, and help to rescue oppressed Poland. Faithful brethren, let us fight for our country as long as a drop of blood is left in us! Though we ourselves may not live to see this [our freedom], at least our children will live in tranquillity and freedom, and will not roam about like wild beasts. Awake then like lions and leopards!

Berek's language is crude and naïve, and so is his political reasoning. While calling upon the Jews to join "the mighty nobles" in fighting for liberty, he evidently overlooked the fact that the liberty of the Jews was far from being secured by the liberty of the nobles, among whom men with the humanitarian tendencies of a Kosciuszko were few and far between.231 Berek, however, found solace in the hope that the participation of the Jews in the struggle for Polish independence would bring about a change. He lived at a time when the Jews of Western Europe were eager to display their patriotic sentiments and civic virtues. Before his mind's eye there probably floated the figures of Jews who, since 1789, had served in the garde nationale of Paris.

Berek's enthusiasm succeeded in attracting many volunteers. In a short time a regiment of five hundred men was made up. The Jewish legion, which was hastily equipped with the scanty means supplied by the revolutionary Government and by voluntary contributions, had the checkered appearance of militia. Yet the consciousness of military duty was keen in these men, many of whom carried arms for the first time in their lives. The Jewish regiment displayed its dauntless and self-sacrificing spirit on that fatal November fourth, the day of the terrible onslaught upon Praga by the Russian troops under Suvarov. Among the fifteen thousand Poles who lost their lives in the intrenchments of Praga, in the streets of Warsaw, or in the waves of the Vistula, was also the regiment of Berek Yoselovich. The bulk of the regiment met its fate at the fortifications, being killed by Russian shells or bayonets. Berek himself survived, and fled abroad with General Zayonchek, Kosciuszko's comrade in arms, Kosciuszko himself having been made a Russian prisoner somewhat earlier. Berek was at first arrested in Austria, but he managed to escape and reach France, where he found himself among the Polish revolutionary refugees.

The third partition of Poland, which took place in 1795, transferred to Russia the backbone of the former Jewry of Poland, the dense masses of Lithuania, the provinces of Vilna and Grodno. Prussia absorbed the remainder of Great Poland, including Warsaw and Mazovia,232 as well as the region of Bialystok. Austria rounded off her possessions in Little Poland by adding the provinces of Cracow and Lublin. Henceforward the fortunes of the Polish Jews are identical with those of their brethren in these three countries, and exhibit a "tricolored" appearance – Austro-Prusso-Russian.

However, even the third partition of Poland was not final as far as the political distribution of territory is concerned. For a short interval the ghost of a semi-independent Poland dances fitfully about. Twelve years after the third partition, Napoleon I., in juggling with the political map of Europe and calling mushroom states into being, snatched the province of Great Poland from the grasp of Prussia, and turned it into the Duchy of Warsaw, a small Polish commonwealth under the rule of the Saxon King Frederick Augustus III., a grandson of Augustus II., the last Polish King of the Saxon dynasty. This took place in 1807, after the crushing blow which Prussia had received at the hands of Napoleon and after the conclusion of the Peace of Tilsit. Two years later, in 1809, when Napoleon had shattered Austria, he tore off a section of her Polish dominions, and joined them to the Duchy of Warsaw.

4. The Duchy of Warsaw and the Reaction under Napoleon

Warsaw, having been cleared of the Prussians, once more became, after an interval of twelve years, the capital of a separate Polish state, resuscitated under the patronage of Napoleon. The Duchy of Warsaw, which was made up of the ten "departments," or districts, of Great and Little Poland, received from her French master a fairly liberal Constitution, two legislative chambers (the Diet and the Senate), and the "Code of Napoleon," which had just been introduced in France. The fundamental laws proclaimed the equality of all citizens; serfdom was abolished, and all class privileges were abrogated.

The Jews too cherished hopes for a better future. The nimbus of Napoleon as the originator of the "Jewish Parliament" and the Parisian Synhedrion, had not yet faded from the minds of the Jews, and they cherished the hope that the Emperor would extend his protection to the Polish Jews as well, but they were grievously disappointed.

The first year of the Duchy of Warsaw (1807-1808) coincided with a critical turn in Napoleon's own policy towards the Jews of France. The "Great Synhedrion" was disbanded, and its disbandment was followed by the humiliating Imperial decree of March 17, 1808, which for a decade checked in almost the entire French Empire the operation of the law providing for Jewish emancipation. This reactionary step was grist to the mill of those sinister forces in Poland which had learned nothing from the violent upheavals their country had undergone, and even now were not able to reconcile themselves to the idea of granting equality to the unloved tribe.

In the spring of 1808 the Government of the Duchy was forced to pay attention to the Jewish question, in consequence of a petition for civil rights presented by the Jews, and in connection with the impending elections to the Diet. The Council of Ministers, which had already been informed of Napoleon's decree, clutched at it as an anchor of salvation. A report was submitted to Duke Frederick Augustus, in which it was pointed out that "a somber future would be in store for the Duchy if the Israelitish nation, which is to be found here in vast numbers, were suddenly to be allowed to enjoy civil rights," the reason being that this people "cherishes a national spirit alien to the country," and engages in unproductive occupations. The Council of Ministers pointed to Napoleon's decree suspending the Jewish question for a time as a convenient means of evading the clause of the Constitution granting equal rights to all citizens.

To make sure of Napoleon's approval in this matter, the Government of Warsaw conducted negotiations with its agents in France and with the French minister Champagny, who was a Jew-hater. Napoleon's sympathetic attitude towards this anti-Jewish policy having been ascertained, the Duke promulgated on October 17, 1808, a decree to the following effect:

The inhabitants of our Varsovian Duchy professing the Mosaic religion shall be barred for ten years from enjoying the political rights they were about to receive, in the hope that during this interval they may eradicate their distinguishing characteristics, which mark them off so strongly from the rest of the population. The foregoing decision, however, will not prevent us from allowing individual members of that persuasion to enjoy political rights even before the expiration of said term, provided they will prove themselves worthy of our high favor, and will comply with the conditions which will be set forth by us in a special edict concerning the professors of the Mosaic religion.

In this way the Government of Warsaw in politely couched terms, phrased after the modern French pattern, managed to rob all the "professors of the Mosaic religion" of the rights of citizenship which the Constitution had granted them. It is true that the decree uses the words "political rights," but in reality the Jews were divested by it of their elementary civil rights. In November, 1808, they were forbidden to acquire patrimonial estates belonging to the Shlakhta. The humiliating restrictions attaching to the right of domicile in Warsaw were restored, and were embodied in a decree issued in 1809 which ordered the Jews to remove within six months from the main streets of the capital, except a few individuals, such as bankers, large merchants, physicians, and artists. There was a general tendency to return to the anti-Jewish traditions of the Old Polish and Prussian legislation.

The Jewish community became alarmed. By that time Warsaw already possessed a goodly number of "advanced" Jews, who had acquired the new culture of Berlin, and had divested themselves of the distinguishing marks in dress and outward appearance for which the Jews were penalized with the loss of rights. Relying upon the second clause of the ducal decree, which provided for the exceptional treatment of those who shall have "eradicated their distinguishing characteristics," a group of seventeen Jews of this type made representations to the Minister of Justice in January, 1809, to the effect that, "having endeavored for a long time, by their moral conduct and modern dress, to come into closer touch with the rest of the population, they are now certain that they have ceased to be unworthy of civil rights." To this flunkeyish petition the Minister of Justice, Lubenski – one of the "constitutional" ministers who managed to promote the interests of despotism under the cloak of liberalism – retorted with coarse sophistry, that constitutional equality before the law did not yet make a man a citizen, for only those could claim to be citizens who were loyal to the sovereign, and looked upon this country as their only fatherland. "Can those" – added Lubenski – "who profess the laws of Moses look upon this country as their fatherland? Do they not wish to return to the land of their fathers?.. Do they not regard themselves as a separate nation?.. The mere change of dress is not yet sufficient." The Polish minister had, it would seem, made a thorough study of Napoleon's catechism on the Jews.

Aside from the representatives of this sartorial culture, who looked after their own personal advantage, there were among the Jews of Warsaw followers of the Berlin "enlightenment," who considered it their duty to make a stand for the rights of their people. On March 17, 1809, five representatives of the Jewish community of Warsaw submitted a memorandum to the ducal Senate, in which not only the note of entreaty but also the undertone of indignation could be discerned.

Thousands of members of the Polish nation of the Mosaic persuasion, who, by virtue of having dwelt in this country for many centuries, have acquired the same right to consider it their fatherland as the other inhabitants, have hitherto, without any fault of theirs, to the damage of society and as an insult to mankind, for reasons that no one knows, been doomed to humiliation, and are groaning under the load of daily oppressions.

Contrary to the enlightened spirit of the age and "the wisdom of the laws of Napoleon the Great" – the petitioners go on complaining – the Jews are denied civil rights, have no one to defend them in the Diet or the Senate, and sorrowfully anticipate that even "their children and descendants will not live to see happier times."

We carry a heavier burden of taxation than the other citizens. We are robbed of the gladsome opportunity of acquiring a piece of land, of building a little house, of founding a household, of erecting a factory, of engaging in commerce unhampered, in a word, doing that which God and nature hold out to man. In Warsaw we are even ordered out of the main streets. And what shall we say of those blessed liberties which citizens value most highly – the right of electing their superiors and of being elected by their compatriots, so as not to be as a dead body in the civic life of the nation? Is the land in which our fathers, paying heavily for this privilege, saw the light of the world, always to remain strange to us? Gentlemen of the Senate, we lay before you the tears of the fathers and of the children and of the coming generations. We beg you to hasten the happy day when we may enter upon the enjoyment of the rights and liberties with which Napoleon the Great has endowed the inhabitants of this country, and which our beloved country recognizes as the possession of her children.

To this petition of the Jews, who classed themselves as "members of the Polish nation," and were ready to renounce their own national characteristics, the Senate replied by presenting the Duke with a heartless report, in which it was pointed out that the Jews had brought upon themselves the "curtailment of their rights" by their "dishonest pursuits" and by "their mode of life, subversive of the welfare of society." It was necessary first to reform the life of the Jews and to appoint a committee to elaborate plans of reform. It may be remarked parenthetically that a committee of this kind had been in existence since the end of 1808, and had worked out a "plan of reform" akin in spirit to the projects of the Quadrennial Diet and the Parisian Synhedrion. But all these committees were in reality nothing but a decent way of burying the Jewish question.

At the very time when the Government of the Varsovian Duchy rejected the Jewish appeal for equality, under the pretext that the Jews lacked patriotism, there lived and worked in Warsaw a shining example of Polish patriotism, Berek Yoselovich, the hero of the Revolution of 1794. After roaming about for twelve years in Western Europe, where, having enlisted in the ranks of the "Polish legions" of Domvrovski, he took part in many Napoleonic wars, Berek returned home as soon as the Duchy was established, and received an appointment as commander of a detachment in the regular Polish army. The dream of the old fighter had failed to come true. In vain had his "Jewish regiment" filled the trenches of Praga with their dead bodies. Twelve years later the brethren of those who had sacrificed their lives for their fatherland had to beg for the rights of citizenship. But Berek seems to have forgotten his former ambition on behalf of his fellow-Jews, having in the meantime become a professional soldier. It was solely Polish patriotism and personal bravery that prompted the last military exploits of his life. When, in the spring of 1809, war broke out between the Duchy and the Austrians, Berek Yoselovich, at the head of his regiment, rushed against the enemy's cavalry near the town of Kotzk.233 He fell on May 5, after a series of heroic deeds.